the world

I grew up in Nova Scotia, Canada where a lot of places are named in Native Canadian (ie, tatamagouche, etc) and we used to drive by a place called Musquodobit Harbour on our way to Clam Harbour beach. I always thought it was called Mosquito Bite Harbour and thought I would never like to go there!!

Some older kids showed us how to file pennies (USA) down to the size of dimes. At this time a bottle of coke from a machine was ten cents. We’d pound nails into a board, around a dime, remove the dime and then use the nails as a guide. We’d keep filing until the penny fit between the nails and under the nail head. As you can imagine, it would take much of an afternoon to come up with five or six dimes. We did this in a shed in back of one of our houses. Knowing this was a federal offense, both in counterfeiting and in defacing a US coin (the penny), we actually stationed lookouts, one at each corner of the front yard, fully expecting a big black car full of Federal Treasury agents to come barreling down the dirt road at any moment.

this is one that only people from the UK will get, but I did used to believe that international cricket matches were always played in Yeovil ....

My father took me on a bus past Blackwall Tunnel - a Victorian road tunnel under the river Thames with an imposing building above the entrance. "See that" he said "that takes people all the way under the river" For a long time I thought that the windows and doors were closed and the whole building slid down under the river, like some kind of submarine ferryboat.

Born in the USA in 1951, the Communist scare was in full swing when I was young. I was about four, I think, and the kid across the street was named 'Conrad.' I confused this with the word 'Comrade,' which was what the bad guys on TV called each other. I told my mother that the people across the street were Communists. "Oh!" she was sincerely interested, "why?" I told her that they called their son "Conrad." I'm sure my mother got a big laugh out of that one.

Once when my sisters and I were little (me, 9, one sis 8 and the other 4), our granny, whom we called Nanny, was visiting. Our father was leaving and phoned home before leaving town, heading for Miami. When my granny told us where he was going, my baby sister said, why is he going to my nanny's ami?

During my first years at school we had an outline map of the world on our classroom wall. I often wondered why someone had written the word 'and' in the bottom right corner near Australia. Years later I realised that this was New Zealand.

When my sister and I were little we used to go and stay with our aunty who always gave us nice things to eat so when my sister heard my aunty say that she was going to buy some premuim bonds, she thought she heard 'creamium buns' and was really disappointed when they didn't turn up on the tea table. For years she was convinced that that was what she had said. Mind you she's forty and still claims that she goes to China every night to visit her friends so what can you say.

I used to believe that all countries could only be countries if they were islands.i live in England, so grew up thinking that.so when i saw a map and things i didn't understand how somewhere could be a country if there were other places around it.So you can imagine me getting confused when i thought the whole of Europe was an entire country.

when I was about 10 I used to sit in Benhill Rec, a park in Sutton, surrey. In the distance I could see what I believed to be the eiffel tower. It wasn't till a few years later I realised it was a electricity pylon in Croydon

when I was about 5 my Dad went to a conferance in Basingstoke. when he came home he gave me a pair of chopsticks from a restaurant he'd been to. For a very long time afterwards I thought Basingstoke was in China

When I was younger my grndad used to take me to villages outside canterbury on sundays after tea for an ice cream and a bottle of stella. He would tell me that we had left England and had gone to russia...I believed it...maybe I was drunk????

I have just recently been approached by an investment broker to invest in stocks & shares via HSBC
I have only just found out that HSBC does not stand for High Street Banking Corporation ----------- PS;- i am 68yrs old

I grew up in Atlanta and everytime I went to the Atlanta Braves games with my dad I thought they were saying "Home of the Braves" at the end of the national anthem.

I used to believe…

for the first 15 years of my life my dad convinced me that the whole 'quinnella' and 'trifecta' at the horse races..were horses..until i realised...'gee those horses must be old by now' i am still 15

Until very recently (I am 13), I thought "Islam" was a country - apologies to any Muslims reading this. I guess I got it confused with Iran. For those that don't know, Islam is a religion.