in the street

The house I grew up in when I was young had a sewer cover at the end of the driveway. I used to think that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lived down there, so I would stomp on it everyday while waiting for the bus hoping that they would bust out and say, "Turtle Power!!"

Rebecca

I used to believe that the divots in the road before you get to a toll booth were little trolls under the road drilling with jackhammers up at us because they were mad we were making all that noise....

Rebecca

i used to belive that when you walk across three drains its bad luck so i awlays go sround the drains!!

steph

Whenever my mother and I were driving home she would make whining noises that she pretended were the road we lived on asking me to make it breakfast. No matter what time of day it was I would pretend to make toast and orange juice and bacon and then throw it out the back window. For some reason I wound up thinking that bacon was called cheltenham because that was the name of the road I lived on.

D.Scully

When I was little and visited the Greek isles with my parents, I always saw "Rooms to let" signs and wondered how is it possible that 'toilet' is mispelled EVERYTIME? I also couldn't understand why the signs mentioned toilets-didn't all rooms have them as standard? And signs that just said 'Rooms'-did they not have a toilet?

Vicky

When my brother was little, my father told him that a mouse lived in the little box on top of the street lights. When it got dark, the mouse turned it on. That was why they didn't all turn on at once, some mice thought it should be darker before they flipped the switch. He went to school and told all his buddies, who laughed him out of the room. He still hasn't forgiven my father - and my brother's 31.

Anon

I used to believe that jay-walking meant crossing the street diagnally.Every time I crossed the street(any street)I would look all around,paranoid.I thought someone would come and arrest me.I Thought I was so clever and cool."Look at me ,crossing diagnally.I'm so bad ass".

Nebula

I was afraid of bridges - particularly those over water. I was afraid they would fall down. I always used to hold my breath when we drove over a bridge because I thought that would make the car lighter.

medina

At the end of my childhood neighborhood, there was a house where an old lady lived. For some reason, a bunch of us kids got the idea that she was a witch! Maybe because she lived alone with her cats, or something, who knows? There was also a slab of sidewalk where someone had put their shoe prints before the cement dried, and one kid said that the witch had caused another boy to disappear, leaving only his footprints behind.

Vivienne

When I was little there were a signs inside the trams saying “No smoking or spitting allowed”. I understood about noisy spitting but I could never understand how someone could smoke out loud…

Dora

I used to believe that the statue of the WWI soldier in front of the high school was the Statue of Liberty. I don't know why.

John B.

When I was young I would get on a swing and launch myself as high as I could thinking if I jumped too high Superman would swoop down and catch me. I stopped believing that when I jumped off a swing got really high and racked myself on a fence.

Bubs

When I was little my mom always told me never to walk outside barefooted. One summer day I touched the street (twas scorching) then I realized that if I walked on the street barefooted I would be engulfed in flames.

Bubs

There was a USAF military base near our house and my mom and aunts used to always warn one another and us, "Watch out for the airmen." I had this vision of a huge child-eating alien wearing an astronaut's helmet walking around downtown, and wondered why the government didn't stop it.

Stacy

The neighbor kids told me that if you stand too close to a cement truck while the back is turning you would get sucked up the chute.

Anon

I used to believe that george morlan was an ice cream cone. So whenever we drove by the goerge morlan plumbing store i would ask to stop for ice cream but my mom could never figure out why.

Anon

Just down the road from our house, there used to be a depot where they made, sold and hired out scaffolding. This company had an advert on the side of the adjacent bridge which carried the railway line over the main road. To allow double decker buses to pass under this bridge, the road dips to a lower level. The advert on this bridge used to read “Sale+hire”, indicating that you could buy or hire scaffolding from this depot. I thought it was an instruction to motorists to “sail higher”, i.e. return to the normal height when you reach the other side of this bridge where the dip in the road level comes to an end.

Alan, Sheffield