appearance

When I was 5 or 6, I used to believe that the age you were was the grade you were suppose to be in (like 6 is 6th grade), and that you never stopped growing. I thought that one day I would grow so tall I was going to have to have a hole put in the roof my car so that I could fit in the car when driving.

Funny how I only reached 5'2".

Kat

My brother used to believe that any elderly woman who wore red was red riding hood, he used to yell out to anyone of this description calling them red riding hood!

Rae

When I was seven and my mum was pregnant, I thought that because my step-dad was really tanned (he's got Spanish roots) my new little sister would be mixed race and have really curly hair like black people, and that I'd be able to plait it without having to tie it up at the ends. I was really disappointed when she didn't.

Anon

Thanks to my older siblings I used to believe that little boys grew up to be girls, and little girls grew up to be boys. Until I was 7 I wanted to be a waitress when I grew up! I could never figure out why grownups would laugh when I told them my future occupation...

Ken

I used to believe that if i pulled my t-shirt over my head, that i could turn into Captain Caveman. When this was over, and i lowered my t-shirt, i then became Gary Adams, a fictional creation of my own, only becoming myself after a non-specific period of time had passed.

Gary McKenna

I had just started school and I came home and told my mum that I wanted twigs in my hair like my new best friend who's name I couldn't remember. For days I went on about these twigs and mum hadn't a clue what I was on about until I pointed out my new best friend. Her name was Barita, she belonged to the only black family in my town and she had little plaites all over her head!

Claire UK

When I was, before I startd school, I was very thin. People would say to me, you as skinny as a toothpick. You are so skinny you could go down the drain. Well I believed them and my sister would terorize me, threating to pull the plug in the tub and I would scream thinking I was going to go down the drain.

Anon

I used to believe that when women grew up that they could no longer wear socks. When I was a child, my mom and Grandmother's all wore panty hose. It wasn't until I was a teenager did I ever see my mom wear a pair of socks.

Anon

When I was about 5-6 my dad came home from work looked at me & said I see you have been looking through the screen again. I did'nt know what he meant. Mom said I have freckles. So i thought you got freckles from looking through the screen door..

Tina

When I was two my family gave me a Chinese hat. They hoped it would tether me to my Chinese roots. It did, and I wore the hat everwhere -- until my aunt told me (well, she never actually said this, but this is what I morbidly interpreted) that a monster lived in the hat and was just waiting for the right moment to cave in my skull and eat my brain. I never wore it again, and my family didn't know why until a couple years ago.

Tom

when i was in first grade we had an african man come in to teach us how to play drums all my classmates who hadnt seen an african man before started saying that he was black, but i didnt understand that. i'd never heard the term black before and i stated very loudly 'he's not black! he's brown!'. i just didnt understand why pink people were called white and brown people were called brown. i still think its a dumb way of naming skin color.

K.L

I always used to wonder how it could be that people still recognised me after I'd had my hair cut

E

One day when I was about four years old I noticed my uncle had a little hole in the middle of his chin. When I asked him how he got it he told me that he was standing on the runway at the airport and that a jet plan landed and the tip of the plane hit his chin. Later I found out that it was just a demple lol

Travis

i used to believe that if u got permanent marker on yourself it would stay there for ever and ever

abi

Until i was about 7 years old i believed that if you were born black you would eventually turn white and if you were born white you would turn black. I remember my mum asking me when i very young what i wanted to be when i grew up and i rubbed my face and said "black! black!" i think she tried to explain but i didnt believe her and when we were asked the same question in the first grade i said i wanted to be a Janet Jackson inpersonator, since i was going to be black!

Anon

In kindergarten, a boy I did not know well had an oral retainer for his upper teeth. He was twiddling it around in his mouth one day and since it was flesh colored, I thought that he had a hole in his mouth that lead to his brain and that the retainer was actually like a man-hole cover. I was very frightened of him and never spoke to him. I did not learn about orthodontics until middle school.

Tree

I watched the show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air all the time when I was little. Every time I saw a black man on the street I would think he was "French Prince" and would yell out, "Look it's French Prince!" and point.

Ashlyn M.

When i was around 10/11 i went into a store and saw a tube top- i thought it was a skirt so i put it over my jeans. my sister and her friends started laughing at me so hard-- i thought they were laughing at the REALLY short skirt.

Jenny

My cousin is seven and KNOWS she's a secret agent. She leaps into the crowded dining room in her black ninja clothes, jogs in place, humming her theme song, then sneaks along the wall, thinking she's invisible.

I told her that sneaking around in black doesn't work well in a white room.

Jess

When i was born i was bald but had a lil "tail" that had hair. It was called a tail cuz it looked like one. So i heard my parents say that when i was born i had a tail. Well one day when i was like 8 or 9 i asked my parents what they did with my tail. They said they cut it off which made my start crying. It wasnt till after i calmed down that they told me it was just hair. I thouhgt i had a real tail. u know like a dog. Everyone laughed at me and even now ppl bring it up and laugh.

Baby Tail