the world

I thought the borders were determined by a big red rope, that had been there since the beginning of time. I thought passports broke the rope, and when you had walked into the new country, the rope was magically fixed again!

I used to think that Hawaii and Alaska were different countries. I wondered were the other 2 states where!

In fifth grade, I thought that part of the reason that Quebec wanted to secede from the rest of Canada because English was printed above French on cereal boxes, and they wanted French to be on top. I thought that they should have a better reason for making such a fuss.

I used to believe that planting coins in the yard would literally grow Money Trees. My oler brother convinced us and used to take our money to go "plant". So, I also believed that any coins I found on the ground had fallen off of a money tree.

I am from a small town in a small county full of small towns in the Midwest of the United States. When I was quite young, our trips away from that small town were adventures of magic and grandeur as far as I knew. Another small town, about half the size of my hometown, was about fifteen minutes away, and we passed through it on our way to my grandparents' house and to the nearest malls. This town was called Wayland. However, for many years, I believed this town was called Whale-land, and I believed that whales lived there. For this reason, I always wanted to visit Whale-land, but we never stopped (because there was nothing there but people's homes, a restaurant, and a gas station; I wanted to see the whales.)

After my parents' divorce, my mother moved to Wayland and I live there when I am with her. Now I know there are no whales, but I do love this town.

An adult had told me that people in China are of the 'yellow' race and that people in India were 'brown' and people in Africa 'black.' Naturally, I was confused why there were countries on the globe colored pink, green and blue, too.

When I was about six, my father introduced me to the map of the world. He pointed to my country (Sri Lanka) and said, 'see this country the size of a grain of rice, that is where we live'. For years after that I lived in mortal fear of waking up one day to find myself and everything around me engulfed in boiling water. I figured if our country is as small as a grain of rice, it's only a matter of time before somebody decided to cook it!

I used to believe…

That when the labour party won the election labour party ment just a special type of party

I used to believe my Dad when he told me that many people that lived in our Canadian capital city Ottawa couldn't say "Ottawa" so they relocated to "Oshawa"... both cities are in Ontario.

Yup. I believed it.

I thought money came from banks, that they literally made it in back, lol, and would give it to people who filled out those little slips of paper at the desk or used an ATM. I knew there was some kind of code you'd break to get it... of course this was way, way before I got a checking acct, PIN number (my code! lol!) and a job (my money!) Good times.

I'm white, but my father is pretty swarthy and has kinky hair. I inherited my mother's coloring -- very fair. One day when I was about six or so I held up my arm because I thought I had a sort of tan. My dad held up his (much darker) arm next to mine and said "Look! We're of different racial sects!" Ah, that's why he's so much darker, I thought: because he's black! I didn't really understand genetics, obviously, but I thought of one of my best friends as black, and he had a white mom and a black dad, so it all seemed totally reasonable. I don't remember how long it took for me to figure things out.

As an add-on to this, the picture of Abraham Lincoln hanging up in my 1st-grade classroom looked a bit like my dad, so I decided that he was black too. Made sense why he would want to free the slaves, didn't it?

When I was very little my parents travelled all around Canada with me (we visited every province and territory that existed at the time, except for the Yukon and Prince Edward Island).

We went to Halifax just after the first really warm snap of the spring had melted all the snow, and everything that had been in the snow all winter was now on the sidewalk. My mother commented on the mess, and asked me if I knew why there were poops all over the place.

Maybe she expected me to say "dogs left them and people didn't clean up", or "they were frozen in the snow all winter". But with my head full of new knowledge about Canada's east coast, I theorized that "the lobsters must have done it!"

I used to think that the huge clock tower of the local university was the London Tower with the Big Ben! I used to believe this until I was like 8 or 9. My mother enlightened me when I asked how could we see Big Ben from the other side of the Atlantic!

I used to think my aunts friend Willa Mae must be the sister of Willie Mays

I used to think that all $1 and $2 coins were made of entirely gold because they are a yellowish color (they are made of mainly copper). I also thought that 5 cent, 10 cent, 20 cent and 50 cent coins were made of nothing but silver (they are actually a mixture of copper and nickel). I live in Australia by the way.

I used to believe that there were actually people inside ATM's to give you money. When my mom would pull up to an ATM I would sit very prim and proper and be very nice...I thought that if they saw me acting badly, then they wouldn't give us any money!