going shopping

For a few years in early childhood, I thought that all places that played Muzak had a full orchestra above the ceiling. I imagined them all sitting up there playing their instruments, tucked out of sight.

T

When I was little, one time when I was little I needed to get some new school shoes. I tried on a pair that were quite uncomfortable but I decided to choose them because I thought that the person who made them would be sad if no one got them.

Mark

I used to sit on the bus and see the big supermarket 'Safeway', I believed it was a place where people could feel safe.

Lisa-Dionne

For a while until I now(I'm 15!) I misunderstood when expensive looking jewelery was called"paste"(fake) I thought that it was literally made out of glue. Though I always wondered how they made the gem stones out of glue...

Glow worm

When I was a kid, typical grocery stores in my town had slanted mirrors in places, like behind the produce bins. For a long time, I didn't realize that they were mirrors. I thought they were windows allowing a view into a different part of the store, a part that wasn't level but steeply slanted. It seemed almost a magical part of the store. Shoppers there seemed to effortlessly walk up the steep floor with no danger of sliding down. And they could leave their shopping carts in place without them rolling downhill. I figured that it was only a matter of time until my parents would have occasion to shop in that other strange and wonderful part of the store, and they would take me there with them. Eventually I was very disappointed to learn that no such thing would ever happen.

Bobby

When I was little I would not go on the escalator as I thought if I did not get off on time, I would be taken underneath. Walked a lot of stairs in those days.

Helen Wildman

This isn't my belief, but something a friend of mine heard a small girl say as she was exiting a store.
In New Zealand, there's a store called "The Warehouse." In the commercials, it always says "The Warehouse -- Where everyone gets a bargain!"
This girl was only about three or so, and so she didn't know what a "bargain" was, only that everyone who went to the store got one. Apparently, she was heard crying and wailing upon leaving the store about how she "didn't get her bargain!"

Alison Sha

When we were about to park in some mall's parking lot, my mom looked around at all the cars and said "it's gonna be a zoo!" (as in, the place is gonna be packed). When I went in with her and looked around, I asked her where the animals were. XP

Someone You Probably Don't Know ^_^

When I was younger my mother used to go to a butcher shop to get her meats. I believed that they killed the cows right there in the back rooms and I was always trying to get a peek into the back hallway.

k.e.

I believed that garage sales were on a special day, like christmas or the fourth of July or something.

Cara

i used to believe that when i heard of a flea market, i thought they used to sell fleas at the super market.
and when i saw a garage sale i thought they were selling their garage.

arlene

The first time I heard of a store being "out of" an item, I was very surprised. I had previously thought of stores as magical places able to create an unfailing supply of whatever things they sold.

Alice

My parents are a big supporter of The Salvation Army charity and would talk about it a lot when I was little. And I remember my Dad saying he was going to take some old clothes to the Salvation Army store and I BEGGED to go with him and when we got there and I saw all the old clothes and furniture and stuff I started crying and asked my dad "Where are all the guns?" You know, cause it was the Salvation ARMY - I was picturing guns and bombs and soldiers marching. Until my dad explained it to me that day I never understood why my parents were supporting an army.

JennyLou

When I was little, and my mum was pregnant with my little brother, we went to the supermarket. In the checkout behind us was a man with a very large belly, I turned around and said to him, "Oh my mummy's having a baby like you are too!"

Anon

I used to believe that the Pillsbury doughboy actually lived in the refrigerated shelves in the grocery store. I always secretly looked for him when we went grocery shopping just hoping to be able to push his belly.

Natalie

I love motorcycles, and I enjoy sometimes just going to drool over the new models--
My mom had me duped for a long while that there was a "chrome-polishing fee" to enter a motorcycle shop so I couldn't go if I didn't have the money!
Not to mention the fact that a motorcycle-thug bouncer would kick you out if you'd spent too long or gotten fingerprints on the metal!
The kicker is, I had to actually *ask* a woman who'd been to this shop whether or not this was true, because my mother was evasive about the whole thing...

(And I'm ashamed to admit this wasn't too long ago, either! <*cringe*>)

L.A.

Whenever I'd ask for something when my mom and I were shopping, she'd tell me we couldn't buy it because she didn't have a coupon or it wasn't on sale. I used to think that you LITERALLY weren't allowed to buy it without a coupon/sale, and it was only for display until it actually went on sale. I never threw a tantrum about not getting what I wanted because I thought the store wouldn't let us buy it.

Anon

I used to believe that the overhead-pages on the loudspeaker in supermarkets was from lost children looking for their parents.

Jackie F

My parents used to take me to the mall a lot when I was a kid. The mall used to look a lot bigger on the inside than it did from the outside (at least it did to my 4-year-old eyes). My dad told me this was due to the fact that a man who worked for the mall would punch a button to shrink the building down at the end of the day. I believed him. So whenever I would whine about not wanting to leave the mall, my dad would tell me that we only had 5 minutes before "the man" pushed the button, so we had better get out of the mall quickly before it shrank and trapped us inside.

Tom

As a child, a place like the grocery store can seem enormous! I grew up in the 60's-70's. During that time there were a lot of colorful and unique characters regularly used as spokespersons in comercials for products. You probably recognize many of these: Madge (Palmolive dishwashing liquid "You're soaking in it."), Mr. Whipple ("Don't squeeze the Charmin!"), Jolly Green Giant (Ho Ho Ho!", Mr. Bubble, Kool-Aid Pitcher, Honey Bear (Golden Sugar Crisp cereal)...and lots more...There were hundreds of them! And I believed that somehow they magically resided somewhere in the grocery store. So, for that reason, I really didn't mind going shopping with my mom. Well, that and I could help pick-out the snacks!

Rich G.