the best of places
When I heard on the news that some on was shot at gunpoint, I thought "Gunpoint" was a place; I wondered why people kept going to Gunpoint.
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When I was a little kid, my family used to go to a river in Maryland (a state in the USA). Somehow I got it in my head that the river divided the United States from England. I used to squint to see the English people on the other side of the river and thought one day maybe I would swim across and visit Elton John.
When I was in the 7th grade, our country was in a huge depate over Quebec seperating. One day in Social Studies we were discussing the repercussions if this were to happen. One boy in my class raised his hand and asked "Will we feel it?"
My teacher perplexed by the question asked the boy what he meant.
"Well if Quebec seperates will we feel it? Will there be an earthquake?"
He actually believed that if Quebec seperated it would actually be cut away from Canada by huge jackhammers!
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I thought the whole of the island of Ireland was Northern Ireland, and that therefore "Southern Ireland" was a completely different island, namely Madagascar.
The first place I ever saw fireworks was Disneyland. When I saw the 4th of July fireworks in my town, I shouted "Disneyland! Disneyland's over there!" My mom tried to prove me wrong, but I was convinced that Disneyland was somehow picked up and moved into the hills in the distance where the fireworks were shot from.
When I was small, when I dug in a sandpit, I thought if I dug far enough I would end up in China.
China isn't even the other side of the world for me!
I think I got the idea from a cartoon or something.
When i was little, i dug a hole in my backyard and found some shards of old broken dishware. i honestly blieved that this is what people meant when they spoke of "digging a hole to china" and assumed i had done so.
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i thought if you went to the bottom of the earth you would fall off.
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Until age seven, I thought a certain red-brick building down the street was Florida. Turned out it was a funeral home.
pick of the bunch
My father often went to Texas for work. One day my younger sister asked my mother why he spent so much time in taxi's.
I used to think that when my mum talked about our 'address' that she was talking about and actual dress. I some how thought that each house was identified by a dress that was allocated to it by the government. This belief was also justified when I overheard mum talking to someone about where we lived and she said 'we live on the outskirts of town'. I always wanted to see this dress she was talking about.
I used to think a large radio tower down the street from my house was the Eiffel Tower. I knew it was a historic monument and I lived in a historic town, so it made sense.
I used to believe the UK wasn't really free. I always heard that the US was special because it was a "free country", and learning about the American Revolution confused me as well, so I assumed the UK still wasn't "free"
This is quite similar to the belief about gunpoint being a physical place, but when I first heard about certain items being sold "on the black market" on the news one day, I believed that the black market was an actual place. I imagined it to be a famous and popular marketplace somewhere in the world, just like any other market in a big city. When I found out that it was used to sell many illegal items I asked my mother why the police didn't just go there and shut it down, since everyone knew which city it was in.
I grew up in Washington State, and used to love to sit with my parents' atlas and look at maps of the world. Every different country was colored a different color, and I thought this reflected the dramatic differences one would find in other countries.
When I was about seven, we drove ``across the line'' to British Columbia, in Canada. I was so disappointed to discover that the grass and trees and flowers were exactly the same colors they are on the US side of the border.
When I was a kid, I can remember the teacher explaining about the equator and I was certain she said it was an invisible lion that went around the middle of the Earth...
I used to believe…
im from new zealand and n.z is pretty much just two large islands (north island & south island) i lived in the north island, when i was about 5-6 i thought that jesus lived in the south island with the queen.... i didint relise that the world is some-what larger than n.z
when i was younger my brother told me that the 'angel of the north' in england was put there because in the past the devil came down and he shot big balls of fire down and was killing everyone. so apparently the people put the big statue thing there to protect themselves and the devil hasnt been here since because of it.
I tried to dig to China in my backyard, but after a while I realized that was impossible. So I thought it would be a more realistic goal to dig to Canada instead...
I used to think if I looked at a globe or map under a really strong magnifying glass, I could see the tiny people and animals covering Earth. I thought if I looked really close at Powell, Wyoming (my childhood home), I could see myself at the time the "picture" of the Earth was taken.
I thought that the Far East was the same thing as the east coast of the United States. I once asked my dad, "Don't Grandma and Grandpa live in the Far East?" (they live in Boston) He said no, and then I guess I figured it out!