the world

I was very little when President Nixon's Watergate scandal happened. My father sat me in front of the television and said "Darling, this is history you need to watch. Our president has been very bad and he's going to get impeached"
I was about three so I thought that they were going to lock Nixon up in a giant peach and I got very upset. I had heard about Peter-Peter Pumkin Eater's wife and I didnt think locking people up in vegatables was nice.

I thought that bank tellers had little vaults underneath their desks with customers' names on them, and when you came to the bank to deposit or withdraw they would open up your little vault and add or take money out of it.

When I was a kid growing up in England I used to watch a sports show on Saturday mornings. They had steeple racing and when the jockeys fell sometimes their hats fell off and landed right side up on the ground. I actually thought that the jockeys had sunk into the soft mud and couldn't figure out why no one was trying to help them. Yes I am weird!

my mother used to tell me that in new york city, it was against the law to look up at the buildings. she told me this because she didn't want me bumping into people, but i believed it for the longest time, and to this day i regret not having looked up at the twin towers more often.

I used to believe that all the roads of the same name were part of the same road. So if you stayed on Main St. in one city you would eventually continue onto Main St in the next city, and the next one and the next one and so on.

I saw a basketball game on TV and the announcer said, of the four teams in the playoffs, only TWO WOULD SURVIVE that day. I thought the players on the other two teams would be executed when they lost. I pictured trapdoors opening up on the basketball court to drop the losers to the depths of who-knows-where.

When I was 3-4 years old, my grandmother went on a trip to Scotland. We, as a family went to the airport to drop her off. We watched her sit down in the departures lounge, on the other side of the baggage check. I remember thnking to myself "Scotland" didn't look like a very fun place.

When I was 5 or 6 my mom would watch game shows all day. Then when Nixon was having his problems she must have watched a lot of the hearings. I remember thinking that our President was on a game show called Watergate?

I used to believe that "left" and "right" were cardinal directions like "East" and "West." I would point with my left had and ask my mother if that was left or right. She'd tell me left. I'd then turn 180 degrees and point in the same direction with my right hand, and thought she must be lying when she told me that it was now "right".

When I was 4 or 5, we took a family trip to North Carolina. As we were driving back, it was getting late and my mother mentioned that we were getting close to Pennsylvania. My father then said "Uh-oh, it's getting late! I hope it's not closed!" For the longest time after that I really believed that certain states closed at night, and everyone had to leave and come back in the morning.

I wonder if parents realize that kids take everything literally!

I, like other posters, thought that when people said miami they were saying My ammy! But, I thought only men said it because I only heard sportscasters and weathermen say it, and they are both men on the station that I would watch! I thought that an ammy was a wife, like for example "My ammy is going to lose in the game against Tampa Bay today!" and "My ammy is going to get wet today, lots of rain!" I thought it was like a little form of banter.

I was about three years old, and Roosevelt and Dewey were running for
president. All of the adults in my life were voting for Roosevelt. A
slogan of his campaign was, "Keep Roosevelt in; keep Dewey out." I had
visions of this poor man, going from door to door, maybe in the rain,
trying to get inside somewhere. I thought that if he came to our house
I would let him in. I used to say, "I'll let Dewey in." My adults
laughed and thought that was funny.

When I was a real little kid I thought that the modern-day American west was as it was portrayed in westerns. As an older kid I saw a movie in which in English kid believed this. I thought, "how stupid this kid is" until it jogged my memory about my own belief as a little kid. 

When I was about 7 or 8, I started hearing people call JFK, "Jack," instead of, "John," like I'd always heard before. I knew he had a brother, but at the time I didn't know his name, so I just assumed that Jack was the brother. I think I even commented that it would have been funny if Jack had married Jackie. Little did I know...

I believed that the money one put in the bank was the exact money that one would get back. I cried in the bank when my mother handed me a ten dollar bill instead of the ten silver dollars my grandfather had given me on my fifth or sixth birthday a few months before.

Like an earlier poster, I too took Miami wrong. I grew up in nearby Tampa so the word was used a lot, and somehow I assumed that an "Ami" was some sort of ediface like another house or a very small building -- at least that is what I pictured in my mind. Soooo, when any adult referred to "My ami" I just assumed they were talking about their building somewhere.

My dad was an avid golfer.He would go golfing even if it was raining outside. He always said that it never rains on the golf course. One day during a terrible thunder and lightning rain storm, I was so scared that I kept asking my mother to take me to the golf course ( where my father was at). Finally my mother asked me why I wanted to go to the golf course. I told her what my dad had told me... Then she explained what my father meant and that it does rain there.

I used to torment my sister by telling her that we would leave her in MINNESOTA. I learned in geography about the Arctic region and thought that Minnesota was a state there. She would cry everytime i said that -- afraid that we would leave her in the cold, barren land. Heck i would cry if i had to live in Minnesota too haha.