the world

In my early childhood days, of which my memory is vague, the TV show The Honeymooners was still on live, and my parents were big fans of it. That is no doubt why I'd heard of Audrey Meadows, one of its stars. But I wasn't clear whether Audrey Meadows was a person, place ot thing, or whatever. I probably heard her first name more like "Autree", like that might be a kind of tree, perhaps. Meanwhile, in those same days and ongoing to times of my slightly clearer memories, my family often visited the North Carolina mountains, where one of our frequent stops was a Blue Ridge Parkway recreation area called Crabtree Meadows. I perceived that Crabtree Meadows and Audrey Meadows must be similar entities, reinforcing my probable tendency to hear Audrey as "Autree", like it were perhaps a kind of tree. I got to wondering why on most of our mountain trips we would go to Crabtree Meadows, but we never went to Audrey Meadows, which must be some kind of similar place. It wasn't until I came home from college that I realized who Audrey Meadows was and why I'd heard of her back then, for at that time my parents were again watching The Honeymooners, then in reruns.

When I was about 4 I used to think that "China" was a bad word. I guess it was becuse I heard a child at my pre-school say that if you dug and dug in the ground, there would be China. And sence the middle of the Earth was hot and I thought it was hell or some'm. To summerize that, I thought China was in the middle of the world. Well one night at dinner, my Grandapa said, "Do you know what happens when you flush the toilet?" "What?" "It goes to CHINA!" And so I slaped him really hard. "You said a bad word!!" I got a lession on China affter that.

I grew up in a suburb of Walsall, but the local accent pronounces it a lot like Warsaw - so when on the news there was talk of tanks moving on Red Square, I got really scared there was gonna be a riot outside my front foor

When I first heard "USA PATRIOT act" from the news and in the magazine, I thought that "USA PATRIOT act" is something about the Americans involved in patriotism like people should love America and be patriotic about the nation.

I was told when I was young that I could get a new petticoat from the Sears Catalog when our ship came in. I thought our money came twice a year on a ship that also brought our Spring and Fall clothes from Sears Roebuck.

When I was growing up there were only four countries: The United States, Canada, China, and Russia. China and Russia were on the other side of Earth and right next to each other, like Canada and the US are. And the Cold War was named that because it was in Russia, and it was cold there.

When I was about 4 years old, we had a globe that had all the countries in different colors to outline their political borders, and it also had a compass that was drawn on the Pacific Ocean next to San Francisco, California. I believed that you could see the different colors and the compass from outer space, or at least from an airplane. When I was five I thought I would finally see the compass because my mom & I flew to the Philippines from San Francisco, and we would be flying over the compass. An hour into the flight, I then had a feeling that the compass didn't exist becuase I kept staring out the airplane window the whole time and I didn't see it.

I used to think that there was a place called "Random". This was the place where all the winners of competitons were decided. Id always hear that the winner would be chosen at random but only figured it out when I was about 10

When I was younger I used to think that gunpoint was an actuall place. Because you would hear in the news about a person being held up at gunpoint and terrorists are terrorizing at gunpoint and I always wondered why people continued to go there

Back in elementary school, my class was learning about the different coins and the presidents represented on them. Several people in my class thought that JFK must have been the smallest president, because his picture was on the smallest coin, the dime.

Having seen a few Diseny films, I concluded yhat America used to be a fantasy land full of beatiful princesses and magic mirrors, and states like Disenyland were still kept like they used to be. I couldn't work out why they gave it all up to become a nation of skater cowboys

I think until I was like 12 I thought there were only like 3 countries in the world: the U.S., Russia and China. The U.S. and Russia were on this side of the world, and China was on the other side. This separation was due to the well known 'fact' that if you dug a deep enough hole, you would end up on the other side other world, in China. And Russia was in there because I think our history books talked about the "Cold War" with Russia and how little kids used to have the drills in school to prepare in case of attack. I remember when I first looked at a world map, I was totally confused, I thought the map must be wrong or something, because I had this idea so entrenched in my head.
All, I can say is: Where were all the world maps in elementary school!?!?!?!?!

When i was younger and lived in england my
dad told me that people flew around different parts of america, for some reason i imagined that everyone in america had a odd colored house and had a ariplane in there drive away.

When I was young, I thought coins were better than bills because they were shiny while paper money was ugly. Whenever I would get money in bills, I would exchange the bills with my cousins for coins. Finally, my parents found out and my cousins got in trouble.

When I was little I thought that you could just go to a bank and get some money, there was a very nice person in there who would just give you some if you asked nicely. So when I asked mum for expensive things and said that we didn't have enough money or whatever, I couldn't understand why she wouldn't just go to the bank and get some!

When I was younger I knew about racism here in America, and I thought that it worked in reverse in Africa - like if I was a white person born over there, the black people would look down on me and treat me badly. It only seems fair, really. Of course, I also thought they didn't have cities over there, just tribes of people on the savannah. I hope they educate children better these days.