the law

I thought crimes were a lot rarer than they actually were--for instance, if someone held up a gas station in Maine, it would be on the news all over the country, with pictures on TV and massive manhunts going on. When I read in a book that "there has been no crime in all of Mexico for five days" (because the criminals were all working together on a huge plot), I didn't see why that was such a big deal.

Up until I was nine or ten, I believed that if you broke the law--for anything, ever--you would go to jail for the rest of your life. I didn't know that there were such things as five-year or even three-month sentences. You went to jail, end of story, never came out.

I was very confused when I watched the third Wallace and Grommit movie and the paper said "Grommit gets life" for being framed as a sheep-stealer. I thought that meant he was going to be executed.

I used to believe that if somebody manages to break into someone's house, they are legally entitled to stay there, and that's why people lock their doors.

When I was four years old my aunt and uncle stayed at our house while my parents went on a camping trip. One afternoon they were driving my cousin and I who were acting up in the back seat. My uncle turned his head around and told me if I didn’t behave myself he was going to take me to the police station and give me the electric chair. I sat there thinking I couldn’t understand why my aunt thought that was so funny. Nevertheless, for most of my early childhood I believed every police station had an electric chair

When I was little, a slew of "don't drink and drive" campaigns began playing more and more often on the radio and television. I didn't take long before I was interrogating my father, caught red-handed, sipping from his can of pepsi while taking me with him to the grocery store. - seems they left a pretty important detail out of the slogan.

When I was young, my mom used to say she was gonna call the cops on me when I was bad. I really believed she would and I was so scared of policemen. When my sisters were young (I'm 9 years older than them) I said the same thing to them but I made it worse by saying they would go to prison and never see mom and dad again. They used to cry and the one would scream so much! I didn't realize at the time how mean it was... :P

When I was little, I believed that the road signs that said 'DO NO PASS' meant that we weren't supposed to pass that spot. I was always so scared that the cops would pull us over because we passed the sign.

I used to believe that Prosecution meant Execution so whenever I saw a sign that said "Shoplifters will be Prosecuted" I thought "Oh my gosh if I steal this they're going to kill me!".

When I was little my dad was a really bad driver and loved to speed and run red lights with me in the car. Once he told me that getting a ticket from the police was actually a ticket to disney world. This prompted me to encourage him to speed, and break other laws of the road until he eventually got a ticket for zig-zagging across the road. The cop told him he was irresponsible for doing this with a child in the car. Then I asked the officer for the ticket so that we could go to disney. He looked at my dad with disgust.

When I was a child the D.A.R.E. program worked for me (for a few years). My biggest fear as a child was toliet paper in public; I thought that junkies would go around to all the gas stations and put drugs in the toliet paper. I made my mother always keep toliet paper in the car so I didn't have to use the drugged up toliet paper and get addicted.

When I heard on TV that someone would get sentenced to "Life plus 20 years" in prison I thought that after they died their dead body would have to still be in the cell for that number of years before they could be buried.

I thought 'No Drinking and Driving' meant no drinking of any kind while driving. I was shocked my father would break the law. He was drinking Soda...

For some reason I thought sometimes when the police found a dead body it wasn't real but a fake one the bad guy had made that was so realistic even the police, coroners etc couldn't tell

When I was younger I used to believe that "Don't Drink and Drive" meant do not drink and drive any beverage at all so I was very upset when I saw my dad drinking a soda on a road trip, took me a while to realize they meant alcohol.

When I was young, to stop me and my sister playing with the electric windows in the car our mom told us it was illegal to open car windows on the freeway. I didn't realise this wasn't the case until I was 17 years old when taking a road trip with my buddies. Embarassing.

I used to believe that taxis (with their rooftop lights) were a division of the Police, and I always scrambled to check that my seatbelt was on when one drove by.