Hmm, from "Bonghit" to "mirage corpses"... ;-P

I just could have sworn I overheard this family in the museum refer to their small child as Bonghit.

You've heard that old cliche about children being born out of a bottle of whiskey? consider it a modern variation.

My friend who grew up in downtown Baltimore also believed for several years that his next door neighbor's child's name was Asshole, because sadly that's all anyone ever called him.

Bill Cosby had a great riff on that. he said that because of his dad's scolding he thought his name was "Jesus Christ," because his father would always say "Jesus Christ, will you stop that/be quiet/etc" and that his brother Russel's name was 'Dammit!' for the same reason. Then he says that his father caught him playing outside in the rain and said "Dammit, will you get inside!" and he answered, "But, Daad...I'm Jesus Christ!"

Jon, you beat me to it!

I lived for a while in graduate student housing at Emory University. One night, I heard in the distance very distinct screams, as if from a woman in great distress, so I called 911. Turns out, we were very near Yerkes Primate Center. Still kinda creepy, though.

Once in college, walking across the bridge in dead of winter, I passed two very tall guys, one of whom was wearing an enormous shapka. As I passed them, I swear I heard Mr. Silly Hat lisp to his friend: "...I've never studied a foreign language before, but somehow I know what they're saying..."

I've spent an embarrassingly large amount of time over the last decade wondering in what context that snatch of a sentence makes sense.

A friend of mine once went until he was about 18 or 19 thinking the last character in "Disney" was a P instead of a Y with a loop.
≡ Click to see image ≡

I'm not sure if these fit, but I've been thinking about them anyway...
*As a kid, I was convinced that football referees had really loud voices, not microphones.
*I was also sure that when my mom got into the driver's seat of the car, she put her right leg in, sat down and closed the door on her left leg. It would fall off and then grow back by the time we got to the destination and out of the car.

I once went for a walk with a neighbor around our area. We passed a yard where a dog, chained to a tree, started barking at us. I lazily yelped to the dog, "Shut up!" A little girl, no more than five, in the next yard looked at us and said, "Do you know that Damn Dog?" We just fell apart.


Another time, when I was feeling evil, a friend and I were having a conversation, and a person nearby seemed to be listening in. So we very casually went into a talk about how I was pregnant, didn't know who the father was, and how he was going to steal a car later that night (we were about 19 years old at the time). Our eavesdropper's eyes got really, really big.

Disnep, hee hee!

I have a lot of these. One of my favorites:

Some friends and I were at the beach well before dawn and quite a ways past midnight. This beach had a bit of a cliff going on, which provided for alcoves as the cliff followed the scallops of the shoreline.

So, we're sitting back in one of these alcoves away from the water, up against the cliff, just kicking back and talking.

Suddenly some guy comes into view around the south corner of the cliff.

He is apparently dressed in nothing but a leopord print g-string or posing pouch and several scarves or bandanas tied around his neck.

He also appeared to be carrying what seemed to be a live, unplucked chicken in a plastic grocery bag. Either that or a large feather duster. Odd fare for a night at the beach, regardless.

He seemed to be more shocked to see us then we were to see him, drawing up short to a quick, full stop.

Just then some member shouted, probably without any seriousness, "GET HIM!" and suddenly we were all spontaneously up off the rocks giving chase. For some strange reason. I don't think anyone gave any particular thought about what to do if we actually caught the guy. Chasing people down wasn't normally on our agenda, being artists, nerds and geeks.

That poor guy took off faster than I've ever seen anyone or anything move across beach sand. He literally kicked up a roostertail of sand as he accelerated away from us. Somehow we lost him in the weird mix of light and shadow and didn't see him again until he crested the cliff, backlit by the parking lot lights at the top of the cliff. He must have ran straight up the cliff at some point.

And all told, thankfully we didn't catch him. I don't know why we all suddenly thought that that was a good idea, and I saw more than enough already.

My dad has bad hearing so for the first year of my cats life he thought I named it "asshole". It's actually "alex".

Geez, it's "axel" not "alex". His hearing isn't that bad.

We're all just axels on the Internet.

My ex has a friend whose husband is named "Athel" or "Athol" or something. Generally pronounced ATH-ole or ATH-ell. He's surprisingly well adjusted about it.

My mother told me the acts of life when I was about 11. And from what I understood from what she told me, whilst the adults were asleep, the penis would lengthen like a fire hose and slowly wind its way towards the woman's vagina like a snake. Whilst the affected parties slept.

Although I believe she gave me a proper explanation at the time my misunderstanding terrified me. I asked her if it was really difficult not to get pregnant if you slept in a bed with a man. Her answer that "Yes, it was very difficult" only managed to reenforce my image of the nocturnal snake sex.

I asked a multitude of questions about sleeping in separate beds and boxes and moats and barriers of all kinds and although the answers she gave confused me I was always left with the image of this prehensile thing nudging its infinitely long way around barriers to get to its goal.

When I was a kid I refused to eat Hovis, because I thought it was sold door to door by the Hovis Witnesses, and my mum told me repeatedly that I should never answer the door to the Hovis Witnesses because if I did we'd never get rid of them.