places

While playing Trivial Pursuit, I discovered that my seven-year-old sister thought the Statue of Liberty carries a "stick with spikes on."

Rachel

I grew up in Birmingham, England and became interested in the exotic animals of Africa such as lions, monkeys, giraffes, elephants and so on. As a child of 3 or 4 I had no concept of outside the city let alone other countries and continents. Being introduced to these creatures I had to somehow place them satisfactorily in my comprehension of the world. So I worked out that at the end of my street, the part that I was not allowed to play in, there must be a huge wall and on the other side of that wall was Africa and that was where all those exotic animals lived.

Lee, England

When I was little I heard on lots of T.V. shows that parents went backpacking through Europe before college. So I thought that Europe was this barren land with no countries or anything. Just mountains and forests and people hiked for thousands of miles. I always wondered why someone would want to do that. Now I wonder where I used to think all those European countries were...

Obviously not European...

Theres a city called Powell River around where I live. Whenever my family used to say we're going to Powell River with their British/Fijian accents it sounded like "Poweldriva" and to this day I still mistaken it and say that when my parents and family talk about it.

Lime

Once I came home from school and my mom told me we had bombed Iraq. I wondered what she was talking about. After a few moments of thinking I asked her, "Were there people on the rock?".
I actually thought she had said "we bombed a rock". :P

Dyth

I live in Baltimore, Maryland, and I used to think that Maryland was the name of my city and Baltimore was the name of my state! I also thought that you had to get searched when you crossed state boarders, but not when you crossed national boarders. Boy was I confused when we went to Pennsylvania to visit my grandparents!

Brittany

My sister used to think that Sheffield (the city we live in) was actually a country, and that England was a city in the country of Sheffield. We had many many arguments about that, and I won eventually when mum and dad agreed with me.

Anon

As a toddler my parents took me on my first airplane trip to visit relatives in Indianapolis. I believed that because we had to take a plane to get there that the city was actually located up in the sky. Even after our visit, I continued to believe that all of my cousins were living up there somewhere in the sky.

athena

a friend of mine during geography class asked if the earth was round then why did it take so much time for travelling frm us to australia when they could go the other way round it would be faster.
answer her!

someone wise

A while ago, I was babysitting and the little girl, stacie, came running up to me and said 'The Princess of Wales has died?' I told her yes, it was quite the tragedy and she asked me why everyone was making a big deal about it. Then she promptly pulled out a map and pointed to the little island of Wales off of Canada and said: 'That island's small! It ain't even fit for me'. Of course, I had to show her where Wales really was and even then she didn't believe me! Ah, kids :)

Anon

In early 1990, our school was one of the first from the West to visit the former GDR after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Having grown up to fear the horrors of communism, we fully believed that everyone in the GDR must be starving and miserable, and when our minibus approached Halle, we were all terrified because we thought we'd be staying in these tiny little sheds, crammed up close together, with miniscule plots of land in front of them, where they were growing cabbages because there was nothing else to eat. It was only when we reached the city centre that we discovered that these were people's gardening allotments and that everyone lived in normal flats with electricity, hot water, toilets and shop-bought food, and had done for the past few decades.

Jane

I had just discovered the vast world of online...and my dad let me IM someone for the first time. I asked them where they were from and they said "Portland". Me being about 7 I thought Poland not Portland, Oregon. So I was like "That is so awesome!" Later my dad told me that Portland was NOT a foreign country.

Anon

until i was 9 i used think Mexico was part of the US and i figured it out it front my class it was embrassing.

lumpy

I used to think that people from different states(I live in the USA) spoke different languages. When my parents told me we were leaving going to Colorado for a vacation one year, I became terrified that I would have to learn Spanish! Thankfully, however, I understood everyone there. In fact, my younger self might be surprised to learn from my older self that, living in Arizona, most people seem to a speak a different language from me IN state!

Ally

When we were little me and my twin sister thought that America was the world and that every house was a country. So whenever we drove by houses we'd shout THERE'S CHINA! and when we ran out of countries we'd make them up. For instance THERE'S INGASHMITEN!

~!~SARA~!~

When I was a child there was this certain filed where we would always go for a picnic on Easter. So I got the idea that that place WAS Easter, rather than Easter being a day.

Bobby

When I heard the song "Swannee River" as a child, I didn't know that it was about any particular river. I thought it was "swanny river", meaning a river with a lot of swans swimming on it. So I supposed the song to be about any river with lots of swans.

Naomi

As a tiny kid in the Midwest, I used to overhear the tv newscasters talking about the Mid-East. I was embarrassingly old when I finally realized that they weren't actually talking about Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

propchick

When I was seven tears old, my family flew from Alabama to Denver. When we we over the plains, I saw the lines dividing farmers fields. I Assumed they were borders separating states and could not understand why there were so many since there are only 50.

Anon

I used to believe that the black lines that divide states were actualy on the earth. We used to drive from Missouri to Maryland and I'd always watch for the lines, but because I never saw them (duh) I thought Missouri was just HUGE.

I figured it out when I was 8

Daena