neighbourhood: in the street

Up until very recently, and I am now 22 years old, I always thought that the reason some people's lawns were a kind of teal or light bluish-green color rather than regular green was because they had their lawns painted so that they would stay a pretty color all year long. I was driving with my husband one day and saw a lawn like that and I actually said out loud, "I wonder why people paint their lawns?" and he said, "that's not paint, it's pesticide". And laughed.

When I was ten or eleven, I asked my mother, "Do they paint the lines on the road by hand or do they use a machine?" My mother answered, "They go and bend over and paint it by hand. They have to go to a special school to learn how to paint so straight." Yeah, thanks Mom.

When I was younger, I lived in the city. So, naturally I never saw a UPS man. When I was around 7yrs. old, I moved to a small town. I asked the neighbor kid about the UPS man and he told me that whenever I saw the UPS truck, I had to run. When I asked him why he told me that the UPS man was a child-stealer. For months, I would run in fear of the UPS man. Until one day, my mom saw me running away and told me the truth.

i used to believe that when you moved they would put your house on wheels and just pull it to a new place. I really wasn't even that young i was like nine and now i'm 13

The restaurant Arby's has a big cowboy hat as their logo. I thought this meant it was a restaurant only for cowboys, and that you wouldn't be allowed in if you weren't a cowboy.

My older brother and I were out riding our tricycles, and a car drove by. The man in it gave us the OK sign (thumb and index finger making a circle). I asked my brother what the sign meant, and he said 'That means he's going to come back and kill us later.' I was terified!

I used to believe that if I was walking along the street and I saw someone walking in step with me, left foot same time as my left, right same as my right, that that person would some day help me.

When i was little i used to believe that the people on billboards were giants. I thought that the photographers had to get giant people to take a picture of and then make a huge print out of the picture and there was the billboard.

In singapore we have these drain gratings on the pathways next to roads. On rainy days, my mom used to tell me "Watch out for the gratings, they're slippery". Only i thought that she was calling them "Grey Things" because well, they were grey and i thought she didn't know wat they were actually called..

At pedestrian crossings with red and green men on the lights my mum always used to say wait for the green man, for months id wait for a man wearing green to walk by on the other side of the road. Whenever i said we could go my mum said no the green man hasn't come.I tried to convince her he had. it was only one day when i looked up high enough i realised why i was always wanting to go at the wrong time!

I live in a place called Catlett. I used to believe it was called that because there were so many cats roaming around.
Additionally, there's lots of those neighborhood watch signs around, and I thought the criminal guy on them was a cat, so I figured that was special just for us.

I used to believe that those signs on the roads that say HIDDEN DRIVE was a game set up on the road. The rules? that you had to find them. I told my mom one day that I always won and see just stared at me and laughed. I felt so dumb!

I believed that poor people lived in the little "glass house" skylights that used to be on the roofs of apartment buildings in Chicago. We were on the elevated train and my grandmother pointed at the buildings and said "poor people live there" and I thought she meant the little glass enclosures. I thought that was a lousy deal, no privacy.

There was a little restaurant three blocks away from the house I grew up in, it had the words "Bar and Grill" painted in the front window. Until around age 9, despite being quite literate, I thought that it actually read "Bar and Girl." Reflecting back, that might not have been such a horrible advertisment to attract the men!

My brother and I believed that when a streetlight went out at night, as you were sitting/walking/driving near it, it was because your brainwaves caused it to.

Driving in the car one evening I asked my mom what the towers with the lights on them were for. She told me it was so low flying planes wouldn't run into them. I couldn't figure out why anyone would build a tower just so planes won't run into it. Later I learned they were radio towers, the lights were to warn the planes. Thanks for listening to the question Mom.