the world

i used to believe that the ozone layer is made up of plastic and that USA is another planet.

I was bourn on 23 April 79 just days before Margaret Thatcher became prim minister and so until around 8 years old I thought you had to be a woman to be Prime minister.

I used to believe that whenever I saw someone that looked like the German Chanceller Schroder they were realy him So I would always say : It is an honor to meet you Mr.Chanceller Sir.
After I finnaly got it into my head that I would never ever have just met Schoeder on the street like that I was a embarresed that I never went out of the house without peeing in my pants.

When I was a kid, I used to think that all animals reflected their owner's nationality. For instance, I am Portuguese so I thought my dog was Portuguese and my cat and my parakeet were all Portuguese. I believed the butcher's dog was Greek; the Pizza Parlor guy's dog was Italian and my best friend's dog was Polish. My father used to curse the parakeet in Portuguese every time it got out of its cage and "pooped" on the curtain so that only confirmed to me that the bird was Portuguese. Just a dumb Portigee Kid.

I used to believe water from our bathroom sink flowed
through the earth to Australia. I shouted down the plughole to my aunt in Brisbane every night. I could never figure out why she didn't answer back.

i used to think that the japanese were so cool with their fans all the time til a friend told me that they(the women) only did that becos back in those days they didnt have toothpaste so they had gross breath and the fans were there to cover their mouths and the smell and hide their yellow (unbrushed) teeth ;)

When I was in the 5th grade, our geography techer always used the word "Vice-Versa"...for almost a whole year I believe that it was a mountain or something in some distant part of the world.

We grew up abroad, and didn't get many foreign newspapers and anything American was considered a real treat. When I overheard my parents talking about subscribing to a newspaper that I understood to be called The Herald Tribillion, I assumed this meant that each issue cost tribillion dollars. I reached the happy, yet misguided, opinion that we were phenomenally rich.

I used to think that people who live on the Tropic of Cancer were more likely to get the disease cancer. Because of this, I assumed that there was also a disease called "capricorn" because of the Tropic of Capricorn

You know how the U.S penny is copper, and most of the rest are silver-looking? When I was in kindergarten, I firmly believed that Abraham Lincoln was a black man due to his color on the penny--- after all the rest of the presidents had silver (white) coins, while Lincoln had copper (brown) coins. Even when I saw a picture of him, I though the press was lying to us. I never understood why all the adults kept on saying that "We should have a black president" and I would always say impatiently that we already had one! As a result people just laughed at me and called me an idiot. Man--- all that over a damn penny! I was mainly laughed at the rest of my childhood. Needless to say, I have learned not to judge anyone by the amount of melanin they just so happen to have in their skin!

As a child in the U.S., I once saw a detailed map of London, on which I noticed Picadilly Circus and other circuses. I became envious of the people of London, thinking that circuses, of the kind that come to town only once a year where I live, were going on all the time in London, and there one could go and be entertained by the acrobats, clowns, and animals, etc. any day of the year.

Until a shamefully short time ago (I'm 22 now) I thought that Gibraltar was just a large rock in the sea (as per the Rock of Gibraltar) about 40feet high, with absolutely nothing on it apart from small monkeys, seagulls, guano and perhaps a red phone box.

Until I was 12 or 13, I used to believe that if a soccer player got a yellow card or red card, he or she was given that card to take home after the game, just like you take home a medal you win.

You know maps of the world that are on classroom walls, well in those maps the world looks flat. One day i asked my mom what was on the other side of the world.

I used to scoff at kids who somehow got the idea the people in Australia were upside down, since I knew that they were exactly like us, except that if they jumped they wouldn't come back down.

I thought president's state of the union speech was about the best state in the union. I would listen to the speech hoping Illinois would be named number one. After I figured out what the speech was about, I never listened again.