the world

I am from Ireland but grew up in london in the 1980's. At that time Northern Ireland was in the news a lot as was Sinn Fein. Until i was 8 i thought Sinn Fein was a woman and i couldn't work out why she never came on tv herself.

I didn't realize the whole checks and balances thing when I was little, and I thought the president could just order something to be done, and it would have to be done. So I always wondered why he didn't order the nation to reelect him, so he could be president forever. I thought that maybe the ONLY thing a president couldn't do was order himself to be reelected, so I thought that he should confer with another country, and come to an agreement that if the other country's president would help his pass a law so he could be president forever, he would help that other president in doing the same thing. At least that's what I was planning on doing if I ever became president!!

when i woz about 5 i thought that when adults got money from a cash machine there woz a guy bihind da wall putting money through a hole an u got da money 4 free

I used to believe that all the money in the world was your money and no one else's. So for example I used to get a pound coin every week for pocket money. I'd go and spend it and then the next week I thought my parent's had gone and got the same pound coin from the sweet shop and I was getting exactly the same pound coin as before. Now I'm older I realise that I was completely wrong and infact the amount of people that pound coin has belonged to b4 u is astonishing!

I used to believe that if I put my finger on a map on the city I was in I could see my finger out the window!

I used to believe that "Bush" (the president) was an actual bush. I thought that was kind of stupid that people were listening to a bush, so I didn't tell them what I thought so I wouldn't offend them!

When I was little, my mom would always take us to visit my Grandparents in a city she called "Miami". I really liked visiting them, so I would always ask her when we were next going to "your Ami".

I used to believe that every family could have no more than $100 dollars at a time. If you spent some of your money, you would get it back the next day to make up $100. If your family wanted something that cost more than $100, you had to go in on it with other families and share it.

I used to believe you could only marry another person from your country -Canadians couldn't marry Americans, and you had to be the same age.
I also thought there were only Canadians and Americans, and when I found out about British people I was amazed and thought that now you could only be one of those 3.

I always saw the cartoons about digging a hole to straight through the Earth, and I wanted to try it. I never did, however, because of one fear. I was afraid that when I came out of the whole, with everything being upside down at that point, I would fall out and into the sky. It never struck me that coming out of a hole in China would be just like one in the US.

When I was 5 years old I was out digging in our yard and I hit a roof shingle! Well now hasn't everyone always talked about digging to China? I thought that I had hit someones roof, (why there rooves would be in the dirt I do not know.) I ran into the house so excited to only get told that I had hit a shingle that was thrown there years and years ago when the previous owners had shingled their roof. I now, obviously know the difference but I gave my parents a good laugh! :)

I didn't realize Egypt wasn't a part of Europe until I saw a museum exhibit about Pharaoh Ramses II when I was 10. Funny thing is, my Mom had to learn the same thing when she took me there!

When I was a child, and my father had first tried to explain (American) Football to me, he said how a team has "four downs to gain ten yards". In my first attempt to understand that, I got the idea that it meant a team, in advancing 10 yards, had to knock down four players of the opposing team or they would lose the ball. So at the first several football games I watched, I was counting how many players on the defensive team fell down, and trying to see if four fell down by the time the offense advanced ten yards, to see if the offensive team would retain possession of the ball. Naturally it was confusing, as often a team retained possession when I clearly thought they shouldn't have, and vice-versa.

When I was a child, my family occasionally rode by a neighborhood about a mile from where we lived. That neighborhood had rows of virtually identical houses. I'm sure such things are common some places, but in my home town at the time such arrangements of houses were quite unusual, that one neighborhood being the only place I'd ever seen them back then. Back then I guess it was current to consider Mars as the quintessential alien place, and anyone who seemed really different or not "in the know" might be asked "Are you from Mars?". I guess that might explain the notion I got back then. That neighborhood of rows of virtually identical houses must have seemed the most unusual place I'd ever seen at the time. I got the idea that that neighborhood was Mars, and I remember thinking of it as Mars for quite some time.

When i was about 8 years old i remember our teacher showing us a map of the world. The world on the map was flat and round, so i thought there was more countrys on the other side. One day when i was in grade 6 i asked my teacher if she would show me other half of the world, i was shocked to find out that was the whole world.

While in kindergarten one day, I remember somebody interrupting the class and telling us that Jimmy Carter had been elected president. Shortly after I asked my teacher what a president did and was given a rushed answer, "he runs for stuff...". For the few years following I believed that the president was a marathon runner who did so wearing a suit followed by other suited runners wearing dark sunglasses.