places

when i was about 5, I lived in Brazil and my family visited Iguazu Falls. my mom explained to me that down there (bottom of waterfall or something) was Paraguay, and over there (across the river or something) was Argentina, and where we are standing is Brazil. Somehow I concluded this means that Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil were parallel plains/landscapes of separate altitudes. The three countries were stacked like floors in a building, overlapping. So most of Paraguay was uderground. So when someone said "Paraguay is below Brazil", meaning south, I would think "oh yeah, I've been there, I know what's going on".

trevor

I used to believe that all the pencils in the world were made in Pennsylvania. I asked my teacher that once and she laughed at me.

Mary

When I was little I always heard about this city called "Pittsburg" and I always wondered why there wasn't a town called "Armpits-burg." Finally one day I asked my parents why there was no Armpitsburg, and they just laughed, and didn't ever tell my why they thought it was so funny. I was so confused, because I was totally serious.

Lindsay

I used to believe that Chicago was a state. No matter how many times people tried to tell me that it was a city in the state of Illinois, I refused to believe them.

Lindsay

My grandmother lived in Boise, Idaho. We visited her one summer and while there, we rode innertubes on the Payette River. I lost one of my shoes in the river and my dad remarked it was "on its way to China". From this, I believed the Payette River went through China and China and Idaho were neighbors! I was about 5 at the time.

Anon

when i was little, i used to think that the Gulf Coast was the Golf coast and people plaed lots of golf when they went there

mr nobody

I used to believe that California was my house, not the state I lived in.

Katie

i used to believe that we could dig a hole through the sand which went to australia and wed see all the people walking around upside down!

Becky

i used to believe Houston was a person, not a place (as in, "Houston, we have a problem")

Kirsty

I remember being in the first grade and hearing the phrase "Red China." I translated this as to mean that everything in China was red, the sky, the grass, the people. I felt bad for the kids there because they didn't get to see the pretty colors I got to see. It wasn't until I was in college that I found out what "Red China" really was.

Anon

I was about 6 years old at the time the Berlin wall fell and Germany became reunited. We used to get those Weekly Reader newsletters in school, and the story about Germany being unified was accompanied by a story about a kid who found out that his hometown wasn't on a map and had it changed. For some reason, I thought these two things were the same story, and for at least three years I thought that Germany had been divided into East and West because someone had made a mistake on a map.

Those darn cartographers are messing with world politics again...

When I was young I thought that 'going to Manchester' meant going to the doctors, because the doctor was a man who put his stethoscope on your chest.

Dave, Lancashire

I used to think that each house was a different state.

Wow, America sure is small!

I used to think that Toronto was in Pennsylvania. I was 13 and about to go into 8th grade when I found out it was in Canada.

Meg

When I was a child, my dad used to get in the car and go off on his own on some Sundays -- his only day off. I always wanted to go, and when I asked him where he was going, being from Arkansas, he would say, "Off a piece". Until I was in sixth grade I thought there was a town in the San Joaquin Valley called Ofapece.

Gary Adams

when i was younger i used to believe that since there was the countries hungary and turkey that there was one called spoon, and i found it on the globe once and i always wondered why i could never find it again

Anon

When I was younger I thought that if I dug a hole that I'd fall through the Earth and into outer space.

Colin

I used to believe that the North Pole was the coldest place in the world and the South Pole was the hottest...

Logica