Ira Glass

Turns out, I'm not alone.

I've been talking to people about this for weeks, and there's a lot of us out there, like me and this woman, Jodi Mace, carting around our childhood beliefs well into adulthood.

Jodi thought there were lots of Zings, deer Zings, railroad Zings.

It makes sense.

In talking to people, I found out that a lot of these lingering misconceptions involve mispronunciation.

And often, the mispronunciation survives into adulthood because the mistake just sounds better or makes more sense.

the crossing if he's smart he's gonna zing consider the word misled i talked to three people including my own father who used to pronounce it misled all three believed it was the past tense of a non-existent verb misle which means to deceive or to mislead there's another guy i spoke to who thought well into his early 20s that the word quesadilla was spanish for what's the deal

Most of the common childhood myths, like that babies come from storks, get corrected sooner or later.

They're not obscure enough to sneak into adulthood unscrutinized.

But occasionally, even a very popular childhood myth can make it through.

Like unicorns.

This is Christy Krueger.

As Christy Kruger grew up, she says that if she ever thought about unicorns, they were on a grassy plain somewhere in Africa, drinking from a watering hole with the wildebeest and the impala.

And then one night she found herself in a conversation at a party.

As you might be gathering, at some point in all these stories, you come to a big gap of silence.

Sometimes a ridiculous belief will survive into adulthood, and it's our parents who are to blame.

Robin didn't think there was anything strange about the way she was raised.

She lived together with her sister and her parents in a nice house in the suburbs.

She went to school like the other kids, watched TV and did her homework.

And she ate the exact same thing for dinner every night of her life.