as a child i once saw my grandad eating tripe. when i asked my mum what it was she choose not to explain the nasty business and told me it was a fish. some 30 years later i was aked to buy tripe for a dog, when i asked where from i was told the butchers could get it, i said how suprised i was that the butchers would sell fish and you can imagine how stupid i felt afterwards. my question to you is have you believed something ridiculously untrue for a similar (30 year) period? and do you remember why
My mother's Norwegian. It took her 30 years in Britain to realise that 'misled' was pronounced "miss-led" rather than "mye-zzled". (Extra confusion with 'mislead'). For those 30 years, she wondered why she'd never heard anyone say the word she kept reading in books!
as a little kid my mum told me that a condom was a fruit machine or "one-arm bandit". i vaguely remember saying that made sense as they were a bit of a con.
When I was young the Vietnam war was still on and I remeber hearing news reports about Viet Cong Guerillas and thinking to myself how clever they were in training Gorillas to fight
I was born and raised in a dockyard area (almost sounds like a C&W song?!) - it is now of course a thriving dockland inhabitation. In my time however there was obvious street prostitution. I remember a hushed chat one night between my parents, my mum telling my dad not to talk about prostitutes. They then started calling them the "pros". About the same time I started to hear about professional footballers - also pros. For a good many years I thought they were one and the same. Anytime the word "professional" was used I associated it with sex!
my mum used to tell me that whisteria was a magical plant where garden fairies lived and made miscief, (may i also metion i had slight ear problems when i was young) and for some reason i always thought it was pronounced mysteria 'cos the faires were mysterious and everything. and for 8 years i mispronounced the word and most AMAZINGLY no one seemed to notice!
.....maybe they just weren't listening :(
ive been telling everyone the ice cream van one, mysteria has set me off giggling again, thanks everyone, nice to know i'm not alone...keep em coming :-D