neighbourhood: going shopping

I used to believe that buying something "on the black market" meant you had to walk down a scary, dark, corridor, to find what you were looking for...in the dark. I pictured disfigured vendors, trying to sell you all manner of weird things that weren't available anywhere else.

When I was probably around 2 (unfortunately this is one of my first memories) I was in a video rental store and I strayed from my father and into the adult section. It was curtained off. I remember standing in there looking at all the jacket covers, and thinking to myself that behind every curtain there were pictures of naked people. Everywhere I went after that, I'd peel back curtains to check for the creepy naked people... dad told me you weren't supposed to be naked, so I wanted to tell on them!

I used to think that there were two worlds, and that both were exactly the same. The reason was because when we went shopping we would go to the shopping entre, enter through one door on the ground floor, then go out of another on the first floor. Wasnt until I was older I realised they were just built on hills.

One of my earliest shopping trips with my mother, I noticed that she had to pay more than she'd expected and needed to look into her handbag for change. When I asked why, she said she had to pay for the tax. So when we got home, I dumped out the bag looking for the "tacks." I told mom that we didn't get them!

i come from a small little town where we don't have supermarkets , just little vending stands so when i heard we were going to the super market for the first time i was shoked, i though a super market was for super heroes (i.e super man) so i though wow im finally going to meey a real hero!!!

you can imagine my disapiontment

When I was little, I believed that the grocery store was just a gigantic pantry that you went to get things to fill your house pantry with. I didn't realize that my parents paid for the stuff, so on one of the trips to the store, I took a candy bar and began to eat it.....Boy did I get in trouble!

I used to believe that there were people inside a vending machine that made the snacks.

Up until I was about 8, I used to think that EVERYTHING had feelings in some way or another. When we used to go clothes shopping, I would say that I liked the most hideous outfits when my ma or sister said they were ugly, because I thought the clothes would be upset.
I also did this with products in chain stores, thinking that the sales clerks would be offended if I didn't like something they were selling, not realising that they were just working there to pay the bills!

i used to think that if you don't step off the escalator when toy get to the top that you would get sucked down underground and your clothes would be left behind and that for the rest of your life you would live in an underground nudist colony!

Our local shopping centre is built on an old quarry, so the underground car park has sheer rock walls. My nan used to tell me to stay close to her or the dragon that lived down there would 'get' me. As I had a habit of not staying with my mum and nan, this kept me very close to them whenever I was at this shopping centre. I believed this tale for a very, very long time. I enjoyed passing the tale on to my little brother ten years later.

You know the signs in the handicapped parking spots? They have a picture of a person in a wheelchair. My daughter believed they were pictures of a person on the toilet, and the parking spaces were marked that way for people who had to go really bad, so they needed to park close to the store.

I used to think the store WHSmiths (pronounced double u H Smiths) was called Wuh-smiths. I always wondered where my parents meant when they were talking about going to "double u H Smiths".

When I was 11 or so I saw a sign on a flower pot outside a shop that said no butts please. I interperted this as you weren't supposed to sit on it. I thought the wording was very funny

i used to beleve that only adults cuold buy things, and that ment anything, not just certen things.

When I was little my parents would say that if i wondered off in the mall and went into a store that it would turn into a dungen fillied with monsters and goblins ( at that time i was scared of monsters and goblins)

i used to believe shopkeepers lived in their on shops