general

I used to believe the noon hour was the only time you could eat lunch. If it was before noon it was too early, and if it was afternoon it was too late. Thank goodness that's not true.

Megan

My sister believed that october was the 10th month!

Sally

I used to think that, at the end of every century (and thus, at the beginning of each new one), a giant shooting star crossed the sky. That was the way people learnt it was already a new century.

Anon

"mom can you getu ball back for me? "Sure I'll bring it to you in a jiffy." "What's a jiffy?"

A

when i was a little girl, i knew rainbow is wonderful thing. but i believed the rainbow came because there was mothers of fairy just took a bath at the river and used a rainbow as the slide as a way to go to river.

Tiara from Palembang, Indonesia

I used to think that minutes were calculated by counting to that number a certain amount of times. So 5 minutes meant you had to count to 5, five times.

Anon

I had a hard time with clockwise and counterclockwise because I thought you had to know what country you're from to know which one.

Ainion

My sister tried to explain time zones to me. She told me, "When's it's 9 o' clock here, it's 6 o' clock across the country." Then when I saw ads for movies that were playing on TV that said they started at 9, I got really jealous of the people across the country because I thought that they didn't have to wait as long for the movie to come on.

Ingrid

When I was about 5 or 6 years old, I thought in order for it to be morning, the whole world had to be asleep. So I saw many of my neighbours lights on, and I was like great! Now I have to wait for them to sleep for it to be the next day.
That was before me learning about time zones.

Anon

I used to believe that time zones were a gradual thing, and as you travelled towards one or another, you would go a few minutes ahead or a few minutes behind. So, when we travelled to my grandmother's house a half hour away, I would always think we were about 5 minutes ahead. It wasn't til I was about ten and somehow it came about me telling my mom that it was okay, we wouldn't be late because we gained 5 minutes on the drive over that I was set straight.

Anon

I remember when I was a kid someone tried to explain the Theory of Relativity to me but I completely misunderstood and thought it meant when time seems like its going slow because you're bored it really was going slower

SkyNet

When I learned that the two alternative circular motions are called clockwise and counter-clockwise, I was told that clockwise is called that because it is the direction in which a clock moves. This misled me about why counter-clockwise is called that. The prefix counter is used to mean opposite or reverse, so this name means that counter-clockwise is the reverse of clockwise. But I thought that there was something called a counter clock, which is like a clock but goes on a counter and moves the opposite direction.

Also, I'm not sure if this ins't a misinterpretation, but I think that we call it counter-clockwise here in America, while people from the UK call it anti-clockwise, which sounds like a better name to me.

Anon

I thought my age started at 4, because I couldn't recall any mention of my age before.

Anon

I used to think that a holiday would take place throughout an entire month. So, during each day in October, I kept saying it was Halloween.

Then, after finding out that Halloween is the last day of October, I was thinking that every holiday was the last day of the month.

Anon