My father worked for a large print and engraving company in Philadelphia. One of his job titles was “stripper” (stripping film negatives in pre-press). As a kid, I used to innocently tell my classmates and teacher, “my dad’s a stripper.” I didn’t understand the odd looks I got as a result.
Hey, I did that too, for a couple of years. It was fun telling people that I worked as a stripper.
No. Well, she said that happened to dogs, but she made it clear – long before they tried to breed their Rottweiler – that happened with human copulation as well.
I can actually pinpoint the exact date I learned what “virgin” meant: January 14, 1994. I was 12. I learned it from watching an episode of Family Matters and if IMDB is to be believed the episode in question aired on that date.
I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this story, but the wife of a friend of mine likes to tell about how when she was young, she got the idea that “virgin” meant something like “killjoy” or “stick-in-the-mud”–basically someone who never wants to do anything fun. Which led to her once shouting, in a crowded school cafeteria, “I am NOT a virgin!”
I recall in fifth grade or so, I was also confused about sex. The mechanics of it. For some reason I thought the vagina was at at a 90 degree angle (you’d put the penis straight in) but my penis when erect was more upward. I wasn’t clear at all about how I’d ever be able to insert it into a woman.
Reminded me of a sci-fi novel I read years ago: Rakehells of Heaven, where the configuration of the alien (but potentially human template) and human sex organs is a very minor plot point.
When I was little, my family always had margarine on the table (butter was strictly at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter feasts). And the boxes that the margarine came in always bore the rubric “color added.” So, naturally, I would always peek inside the box to see if this time, we’d get an interesting color, like red, or green, or blue. But nope, it was always boring old yellow.
It prepared me for the life of disappointment that I endure today, anyway.
Is that why I was called You little puke so much? 
I thought foreign languages were like a code, and operated exactly like English, but you just had to know the code to translate.
I have two. My first comes after you jogged my memory with a word sounding like “die.”
(1) Was in preschool. In the evening, mom came to pick me up, and stayed, because there was an Easter egg-coloring event. They served coffee (and maybe snacks). The egg dye was also in styrofoam cups. Mom accidentally sipped some dye instead of her nearby coffee, and laughed about it. I, being a 4 year old, was afraid it would make her die.
(2) “No Minors.” When I was 8, I took a family trip up the Pacific coast into BC, where we boarded a car ferry that took us all the way to Skagway, AK. Among the various stops included at least one ghost town with (old) mines nearby, or so I heard. Aboard the vessel, at one point, I walked through a small bar on the way to the dining area. There was a small sign saying “No Minors” and I wondered why they’d be discriminating against miners. I could imagine that they’d be very thirsty…
I had that exact same conversation with my mother when I was about 7 years old, and we were at the local bowling alley. There was a “No Minors” sign above the doorway to the alley’s bar, and I, too, didn’t understand why they would not allow miners. 
(Not that there were a large number of miners in the western suburbs of Chicago, mind you…)
I used to think demented leprechauns worked the lights from their lairs in the sewers under the intersection. Only explanation I could come up with for the hopelessly inefficient traffic cycles that I witnessed.
50 years on and at least in NE Florida they are still doing their diabolical worst.
I used to think “prevent” meant the opposite of what it actually means. I am pretty sure my older brother and sister gave me that idea but they deny it to this day.
So, I was really confused when Smokey the Bear would come on TV and tell me that, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires!”
I think it wasn’t until 8th grade that I got that straightened out in my head.
Shall we discuss how Bobby Hill looks nothing like Hank Hill but does look a lot like Bill Dauterive?
When I was young I thought all Canadians spoke French.
In my defense, I grew up near Quebec and all of the Canadians I encountered spoke French. And I figured it made historical sense. I knew Europeans had colonized North America. So I figured the United States was where the English people settled, Canada was where the French people settled, and Mexico was where the Spanish people settled.
Me three when my parents took me to the local horse race track and I saw the sign by the betting windows.
Near my childhood home was a fairly narrow stretch of water called Middle Harbour. On two opposite headlands were large concrete buildings which both bore the sign “WARNING: SUBMARINE CABLE!” (presumably a major power cable crossed under the water at that point).
Somehow in my mind I confused CABLE with CARGO, and I was always hoping to see the cargo submarines pull up there to load and unload.
When I was 7, my friend and I used to sneak onto wooded, private property down the street to fish in the creek. The sign at the entrance always scared us, however. It read, Trespassers will be Prosecuted.
My friend was a bit naive. I had to explain to him that “prosecute” was just another word meaning “electrocute.” Sure, being sentenced to fry on Old Sparky for walking on the grass seemed a bit extreme, but there you have it.
I was about 5 when one day I walked over to my friend’s house, and above his doorbell was a sign that said No Solicitors, but all I could read was the NO, so I walked home without ringing the bell.
The other one I thought of when I saw this thread was that my brother and I believed that poop was stored in the buttocks until it was ready to come out.