In kindergarden, when one kid was about to hit another, the other kid would say “if you hit me, you have to pay the health insurance!”. None of us had any idea what that could mean, and I have no idea where that idea came from, but it worked, because to us, that sounded bad.

Some of my class mates thought that wrestling was real, and a few of them thought there was a place in the US where it was legally possible to kill a man during a wrestling match. They were quite offended when I told them how ridiculous that notion sounded to me.

I thought space rockets had to wait for. Ight to go into space. If they took off during the day whey would just go into the blue sky like planes do.

My dad has this long running bit, that if I needed his help on something, he needed to go to the shop to get a “round tuit”. I remember asking what store he had to go to, and how much it cost, and being annoyed at how he hadn’t gotten a round tuit yet.

He must have thought I was really committed to the bit.

I thought that you would get your grandparents by just going into a train station and picking some random (preferably older person) to be your grandparent.

I was convinced that my parents had done that for me, and that’s why I had grandparents.

I had to go to a private Christian school in third grade - not because we were religious, we were not, but because gang violence was getting serious in my town and the private school was seen as the safe option my mom decided on for a year even though we couldn’t afford it.

Again, not religious, but Christian school meant we had to go to “Chapel” every day - Sing bible songs and get the typical religious indoctrination. Anywho… In the chapel, there was a giant rectangular speaker box suspended up at the center of the ceiling. Not sure how but with all the talk of Jesus dying for your sins and everything, I became convinced that that speaker box was his coffin. I thought he was there, suspended above us, every day at Chapel in our little school

That life would be better as an adult.

Wedding rings were there to show who was married and who was available. Once you wanted to get married, you just found a friendly person who didn’t have a ring, and then you asked if they’d marry you. I mean, that IS what happens I suppose, but my 8 year old brain played it out like someone asking a nice stranger for the time.

Not sure what age I was, maybe 4. I thought the music on the radio was live, that the musicians went to the radio station to sing and it was broadcast from there.

The USA was the moral leader the world. But I watched CNN as a kid so…

I’m gonna sound so stupid, but I thought checks just gave you free money. I thought my parents were wasting a check by writing such a small amount, and ask them something like why not write a bigger number?

Then they explained that you need money in the bank to work. I was too young to even be embarrassed, I was just like ok cool, didn’t even realize how dumb I was.

In my defence, I was like 9 and I just arrived in the US and never heard of a “check” before.

That we had to pay our employer to get a job.

I thought the “Gulf War” was in fact the “GOLF War” and was happening at a golf course near our home… like … halfway to see uncle Peter!! 😅

I remember knowing that knives will cut you and make you bleed, and that when people were shot in movies they would bleed, therefore bullets must be shaped like little blades.

I believed a kid who told me that every 4th of July, former US presidents who were still alive - which I somehow imagined was a large group - stood in a circle around the statue of liberty and held hands singing, “He’s got the whole world in his hands.”

My parents didn’t specifically tell me if Santa Clause was real or make-believe. They wanted me to come to my own conclusion, I guess. My dad is a rationalist person, and my mom’s from a culture that doesn’t traditionally celebrate Christmas.

So what I believed was that the appearance of presents on Christmas was an unsolved mystery, and Santa Clause was just a hypothesis to explain it.

I suspected the real explanation probably involved the tree working as an antenna for some kind of cosmic energy that triggered the appearance of presents. Perhaps in ancient and more superstitious times they discovered this phenomenon by accident and continued to put up the tree ever since.