When I was little I thought that "Dead End" signs meant that if you went down that road you would die. We got lost one time and I screamed for my mother and father to turn around on another road because I wasn't ready to die.

Post Image CC BY 2.0 bennylin0724

When I was a kid, up until about 16, I thought the name Trey or Tre was a name reserved for mentally challenged people and that you HAD to name your kid that as a heads up to others. I lived in a small town and only knew two people named Trey, and they were both autistic.

For reasons that are too complicated to explain here, we never went to church when I was a child, but that doesn't mean that I didn't come from a religious family. I received a Bible for Christmas when I was about seven, and, being curious about such matters, I set about reading it as best as I could.

Most of it went right over my head without even pausing, but one thing that interested me was the Ten Commandments. I'd seen portions of the movie The Ten Commandments on TV, and thought it was super weird and confusing, not to mention scary as hell. I didn't want anything even connected with that movie to ever happen to me, so I figured that I should probably learn the Ten Commandments and stick to them if I knew what was good for me.

The thing was, I didn't really understand them. Some of them were obvious, such as “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal.” I wasn't planning on killing anyone, and my mom would most likely kill me if I ever stole anything, so those ones would be easy. Other commandments, on the other hand, would require some adult help for me to interpret.

The one that sticks out most was “Thou shalt not take my name in vain.” I asked some grown-ups what this meant, and they told me that while it was okay to say the word “God” if I was praying, it was not okay to say something such as “Gawd! Gag me with a spoon!” That was taking His name in vain because you were not actually talking about God, and he didn't like that. It was just as bad as killing someone, apparently.

What I took this to mean was that while God ignored almost everything else we humans ever said, every time someone said, “God,” God could hear it and would perk up as if he had to respond to it. He'd be busy wadding up stardust into comets and whipping them around the firmament, and then suddenly some valley girl would take his name in vain, and he'd have to stop what he was doing to figure out what she wanted. Eventually, he'd figure out that she didn't want anything and in fact she wasn't even talking to him, which would seriously piss him off and consequently he'd damn her to Hell for all eternity.

The whole thing seemed plausible. But still, it probably never once stopped me from taking the Lord's name in vain.

I used to believe that Down Syndrome was an extremely mean name for the condition. I thought that down part somehow referred to people that have it being "below normal people."
It wasn't till I took biology that I learned it was named after a doctor.

Interestingly enough, my captcha includes the word "phenotype"

Post Image: Dr. John Langdon Down

Growing up in the Midwest, tornado season was just as prevalent to my family as hurricane season is to families in the south. However, until the age of three or four, I thought they were called "tomatoes".

Now, we had always had a garden at the side of my house, and my favorite things to grow were tomatoes. My mommy had explained to me that when there is a storm warning, we have to go into the basement because it'll suck us up. My four-year-old mind could only think of my precious tomatoes swirling around our house, and so I thought that tornadoes were actually called "tomatoes".

Post Image CC BY 2.0 rightee

Back when I was a little kid I apparently believed that television shows differ from TV to TV. One day I went to a friend's house and watched TV. and when I told my mom about one of the shows I saw, I was suprised to hear my younger brother and sister saw the exact same episode even though I knew we all liked that show.

Post Image CC BY-SA 2.0 avlxyz

When my brother was five or six years old he used to pretend he was at the Olympics so he ran by himself and at the end of the race he would perform the award ceremony where he would always get the 2nd place.

Imagine that, running by yourself and always finishing 2nd.

I used to think that going up to the north pole would bring you directly to the south pole .

Image: CC BY 2.0 stevendepolo

When I was a little kid, my parents told me that the Sears Tower was the tallest building in the world. I naturally took this to mean that the local Sears was the tallest building in the world and would proudly point it out to people every time we passed it. "Look. There it is. There's the Sears!"

Post Image CC BY 3.0: mheisel

When I was younger, I used to think that my dad could buy double or triple yolked eggs whenever he wanted. I now know they do exist but are very rare. It wasn't until, at the age of twenty, that I realised he made them every week by simply frying the eggs in the same pan.

Post Image CC BY-SA 3.0 : MattHurst