When I was about eight or nine years old I had seen quite a few blind people grocery shopping or just walking around malls etc. I was pretty sure that they could do everything that everyone else was capable as long as they had their dog. I even thought blind people could drive if they had their guide dog with them!

Post Image: Mike Kline : CC

I used to never get into a swimming pool by myself because I thought that invisible sharks would attack me.

Apparently these invisible sharks could only eat one child at a time?

Post Image CC: edenpictures

When I was little I used to secretly believe that the hills around my home (in California) were actually giants that had fallen asleep thousands of years ago, and had slowly been covered with dirt and trees before normal-sized humans had settled the area. I never told anyone this believe because I knew they'd think it was silly, but I figured when the giants awoke, I'd be prepared to befriend them and save humanity!

I also believed that if I saw a cloud in the shape of any given animal, one of that kind of animal had died that day. For some reason cloud shapes always looked like alligators to me, and I worried about their population numbers.

Clearly I had an active imagination.

Up until I was about five, I thought all girls were vegetarians and all boys were omnivores. This was because me and my mom were both vegetarians, but my dad ate meat. I also thought that tigers were female lions.

I realized how wrong I actually was as soon as I started school.

When I was young I had a white rabbit. I always thought that the only way for it to stay white was to wash it with milk. So I did. A couple of times. Poor bunny. I don't remember what happen to him. I am sure I didn't dunk it in a glass of milk and eat it with my cookies.

Inexplicably, I thought that hay bales out on a field were hibernating cows, and I believed it much, much longer than I would care to admit. Even now (at 33), it somehow seems logical to me.

No worries. Once my mother was convinced that she was looking at buffalo out in a field. It took me a while to make her realize that they were really hay bales. Those damn things will confuse everyone if we don't stop them.

My coworker has two rabbits and she was told they were both males. However, one of the rabbits recently gave birth to several baby rabbits, so it is apparently a female. When she mentioned this at a family gathering her dad (somewhat of a wildlife expert) told her "Well, you know, if you put two male rabbits together, one of them becomes a female."

She believed him and shared the news with me the next day. I looked at her and said, "that's probably why they reproduce so prolifically." Another co-worker set us straight and her dad confirmed that he was joking.

Post Image: Mark Hillary

When my (now) husband and I were dating, he had me convinced that if wood peckers didn't peck on the trees the sap inside the trees would build up pressure and the trees would explode. And I believed him!!

MelodicMom sends in this happy Easter tale:

When I was very young, my crazy aunt decided to give me a baby chick for Easter as a pet (to my parents' horror). I was a huge animal lover and proudly named my chick "Chicky." I had overheard a relative say that it was dumb for someone to give young children chicks as pets, and that the chicks should be free. I didn't want my little chick to be a prisoner, so I marched outside, threw Chicky in the air, and yelled, "You're free Chicky! Fly away!!"

Poor Chicky hit the ground. No one told me that he couldn't fly.

Post Image: grendelkhan

Barrett schemes a plan to befriend the animals.

When I was a small child, I was obsessed with the TV show "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams." I loved the way Adams "had a special kind of way" with the animals, and how they would "walk right up to him as if he were a natural part of the wilderness."

As much as I wanted the same ability for myself, I knew that I didn't have this particular talent, and I realized that few (if any) people did. Still, I also realized that there must have been some Hollywood trick to getting the animals in the TV show to be so trusting and friendly. The secret, I surmised, was costumes.

I figured that when the camera showed a raccoon or a skunk walking up to Adams, that there must in fact be a sort of "stunt Adams" standing behind him off camera. The "stunt Adams" would obviously be dressed up as a skunk or a raccoon, and that is what the animal was responding to, not the actor Dan Haggerty.

If only I could get my hands on a set of animal costumes like that, I could also befriend all of the wild animals – squirrels, birds, and such – in my own neighborhood. The idea seemed so flawless that I finally broke down and asked my mom to make me a raccoon costume. When she asked why I wanted one, I laid out my plan for her. She just laughed, shook her head, and walked away.

I felt not only insulted, but disappointed. My plans were thwarted, and I never realized my dream of becoming the next Grizzly Adams.