A life of innocent security came to an abrupt end one day when i asked my mother to buy me a toy. She replied that she didn't have the money for it, to which i replied that she should just go to the bank. She then explained that the bank wasn't just a place that gave you endless amounts of money whenever you wanted it. It was your money in the first place, and could run out just like that.
the world
2,715 beliefs in this area
I'm terrible with recognizing accents, and until I was 16, I was convinced Newcastle was in Scotland. I knew loads of people from Newcastle and whenever they told me where they were from I used to say 'Oh, your Scottish then?!' Not one person corrected me on that! I took 6 different people and three different atlases to prove to me where Newcastle is. And I still think they must have moved the border!
i live probably 15 miles away from antietam battlefield (where one of the bloodiest battles of the american civil war ocurred) i can remember going on a field trip there when i was about 4. they told us about Bloody Lane. I was really scared to go there. I thought there would actually be blood everywhere...but confused and somewhat disappointed to find that it was now a bloodless paved walkway.
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I am Canadian and I moved to Switzerland. I would tell people that I was English because I couldn't understand how I wasn't. I spoke English, didn't I?
when I first heard about insurance, I thought it was a small group of old men in black (clothes, hat, shoes, sunglasses...) that you gave your money to, and when the house burned down - or something like that - they would come and pay for the damage
For the longest time, I used to believe Russia and Germany were the same country. I would often get them confused when watching a WW2 film or a James Bond movie. The both talked with funny accents and seemed evil.
Blame the media.
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I used to believe that we lived on the inside of the world, and that aeroplanes could just fly in a straight line across the middle to get from place to place
As a child we lived only a short distance from a beach on the Queensland coast, Australia. When I was about 4 I used stand on the beach and gaze out over the sea to the horizon and imagine I could see tiny buildings and people, and thought it was America!
I lived in a state capital and enjoyed playing in the capital building as a child. I used to think that all cities had capital buildings and was quite confused when there wasn't one downtown. Luckily, I again live in a state capital so everything is right with the world. :-)
When I was about 6, I saw a country called "Egypt" in the atlas and thought it was pronounced "Egg-pit." I thought that it was some sort of fantastical land of make-believe, and I asked my parents repeatedly if we could go to Egg-pit. It took them a while to figure out what I was talking about. When they finally did, they took me to the Oriental Institute in Chicago and I was placated.
I had beliefs about The Netherlands, even though I never had Dutch friends as a child. They stemmed from a traditional song that you might have sung yourself about a mouse wearing clogs in a windmill and from cartoons. I believed that all Dutch people wore clogs, lived in windmills, made cheese and grew tulips. I didn't think many of them had bikes nor horses and walked everywhere-It was flat so it didn't matter. I also thought when I was a bit older that hamsters came from Amsterdam and I imagined them around the streets (I knew that Dutch people didn't all live in windmills etc. by then :-). I thought they dropped the "h" to make the Amster- part sound a bit less like the cute critters. Oh and the age-old belief that all Egyptians “walked like an Egyptian” and still dressed as they did in the days of the Pharaohs. :)
Until very recently, I was convinced that Cleveland was in Denmark. I don't know why, I just sort of thought that the word "Cleveland", sounded Denmark-ish.
My little cousin Robbie who is about 6 thinks that all American money is the same---he counts a penny as one, a 20 dollar bill as one, and a 5 dollar bill as one dollar, it doesn't matter what type of money it is. All bills and coins---to him---are counted as one dollar!
For example one day he had a five dollar bill and a one dollar bill in his pocket. He took the money out and counted it aloud. "I have two dollars". He actually had 6 dollars!
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my girlfriends kid ryan always thought that when golfers teed off they yelled fart instead of four .This was amusing for some time
As a young child, learning the United States map....I believed each state had the lines around them, there were times in travelling I looked for those lines
When I was young (about 7) I would hear my parents talk about Liability Insurance. The whole time they discussed this I thought it was a great thing....buy this insurance and if you had a wreck you could lie about what really happened in the accident. Not until I was older and paying for my own insurance did I realize the truth. My mom thinks that story is so funny.
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My father told me that Frenchmen had three legs.
I used to believe that Scotland was actually London, because all important things are at the top aren't they?
When my sister was 4 she got into an argument with my Dad that Marineland was at Ontario Place and not at Niagara Falls. She explained this by singing the Marineland commercial song, "at Niagara falls ONTARIO, it's always a fun PLACE to go"
When I was a kid, I can remember the teacher explaining about the equator and I was certain she said it was an invisible lion that went around the middle of the Earth...