What are some of the strange things that you believed as a child?
Before your ability to “think within the boundaries” really kicked in.
For instance:
When I was young (about 3 or so), I came to the conclusion that given the fact that cows gave milk, and a) horses were the opposite of cows and b) water was the opposite of milk, therefore horses gave water.
I also thought that the American Revolution was fought because the English were mad that the U.S. had stolen their language.
My brother was convinced that if he ate too many “nemmy emms” he’d get “dire rear.”
I distinctly remember not believing in cause and effect. I was about 5, and had been taking cross country skiing lessons at night. I returned one night with my feet so cold that they hurt as I sat in front of the fireplace to thaw them. As my mother helped me take my shoes off, she said “How come you wore such thin socks? That’s why your feet are cold! You have to wear thick socks when you ski!”
I clearly remember thinking she was nuts. What had socks to do with whether or not my feet got cold? It was COLD out! My feet were going to get cold if I went out! There was NOTHING I could do about it.
The President lives in Washington. And, as everybody can see, the President lives inside the TV. Therefore, Washington is inside the TV and you can go there by crawling into one of the little slots.
If you dig a very deep hole, you will eventually get to China. China is a big country with a lot of bamboo. There is a lot of bamboo around the house down the street, so this house is also in China.
And if you swim very far out to see, you’ll end up in England. England is a bad country because they don’t have any freedom. You have to do whatever the Queen tells you to do, and if you don’t she will chop off your head. That’s why we had the Revolution.
There is another country called Mexico. Mexico is south of here, which means it’s in Florida. In Mexico they speak Spanish, like this: Bonjour. If you have to talk to somebody who speaks a foreign language, you should give them an English dictionary. They can look up a word, and then they can look up all the other words that are in the definition, and then they can look up all the words in THOSE definitions. Sooner or later they’ll come to a word that has a picture next to it, and from there they can work backward and figure out all the other words they just looked up. It’s quite simple, really.
The little seedling thingy in between the two halves of a peanut? It’s deathly poisonous. She had a vaccination, but they quit giving it out the year before I was born. I had to give her all my peanuts until my Dad clued me in.
I was adopted, even though I’m a dead ringer for my mother!
I was supposed to be a boy, because my room was blue and my sister’s was pink.
You know how, when you approach a toll booth, the car vibrates three or four times? It’s because the car knows you’re approaching a toll booth, and it’s warning you to get your money ready. You only get this feature on '82 Chevy Impala station wagons, as far as I know.
LOL I used to think the same thing when I was three! I also thought that radio stations had the bands at the studio, and that when a song was played the band was actually playing at the station. I could imagine them being asleep in the middle of the night, and then being awakened to play their hit.
When I was a little JuanitaTech, I used to put caterpillars in bowls, poke holes in the lid and wait for them to turn into butterflies. I used to put them on the back porch and go outside everyday expecting to free a pretty butterfly! The butterflies always managed to escape before I got outside, though.
Obviously, my Mom would go outside ahead of me and dump the dead caterpillars out!
I thought you automatically became pregnant when you were 16 or so. I was a bit of a chubby kid and was worried that I was pregnant WAY too early (7 or 8?), so I would practice lamaze breathing in the bathroom (I saw it on that after-school special “My Mom’s Having a Baby” - obviously I didn’t pay close enough attention or I would have actually learned where babies came from). I was really scared for a while.
I thought that you could see in mirrors that were drawn in cartoons. I remember trying to see myself in one in a Nancy comic.
Once for an entire day I was consumed with the notion that I was myself and that if my parents had met a day later, I would have been someone else, but how would I ever know? Maybe I WAS someone else. I wandered around repeating the phrase “I am me.” over and over in my head until I really got freaked out.
I thought that teachers lived at the school. The first time I saw my kindergarten teacher outside of school (at the mall or something), I asked her why she wasn’t at school.
I also recall my brother asking our grandfather what life was like before color was invented.
I was just talking about this last night over supper!
One of my own and one from my friends:
I thought that in Puff The Magic Dragon that it was 'celing wax, not ‘sealing wax.’ I thought that it was a special wax that you used on your celing when it got dirty, to make it bright white again. …and it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I realized that I thought this!
One of my friends thought that the line in Home On The Range “Get along, little Doggie” meant “go get a dauchund.”
Russia is a country where it snows all the time. The USSR is a country where everyone is mean all the time. The two countries are at war, called The Cold War, because the USSR wants the snow.
You can get pregnant if a boy kisses you. Imagine my shock and horror when little Mike Chang kissed me while we were at the public pool. Fortunately this proved not to be true – the chlorine in the pool stopped the kissing germs.
It’s sunny all the time in California. This makes it very hard for people to sleep at night, because it is so sunny and bright.
Canada if you keep going across Lake Erie, you will get to Canada. Ergo, Canada is across any body of water. The United States is bordered by the Great Lakes on the north, the Atlantic Ocean on the east, the Pacific Ocean on the west, and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. Canada can be found in all directions.
Our president is President Nixon. He did a bad thing by not giving someone his Scotch tape, because anything he has while he is in his office is really the property of the American People, not him. Poor Trisha Nixon. Very soon the Police will come to her house and take all her toys and clothes, because they belong to the American People, not her. Boy, I hope my Dad doesn’t mess up while he’s in his office down at the steel plant!! *This makes me wonder if I had seen the Checkers speech on TV, and somehow got the idea that Trisha Nixon was still a very little girl during Watergate *
I wish I could see The Godfather. It is about a nice old man, who kisses people a lot. He gave someone a horse! I wish he was my Godfather.
I used to think that every morning, a bunch of guys shot the sun up into the sky with a canon or some type of big gun. Well, how else could it get way up there?
I also thought that TV shows stopped when I turned off the TV. What, the world didn’t revolve around me? What a jip!
I was quite baffled by the notion of waxing a ceiling- same stuff they use on surfboards? But why do you want a slick ceiling?
I was probably 28 when I heard it for the first time in years and it was SO obvious- “ohmigod! that’s what it is!” Strange, because I’d certainly seen it in print a number of times, but never put it together…
Ever see a plastic farm?
Farmers place plastic sheets over some of their crops to keep them warm in cold weather. At least, that is the theory I used to replace the -they’re growing plastic- theory. My new -keepin em warm- theory could be wrong too.
apparently, i thought i was the only person in the world brilliant enough to tell lies.
i have a strong childhood memory of an episode in second grade. the teacher had told us to try and eat a meal blindfolded so we could understand the life of the blind. well, when the kids starting telling their stories, it was interesting.
the first kid said that they knocked over their milk. the next kid said that he dropped his sandwich. then, caught up in the moment, Debbie B. showed how she missed her mouth and tried to put the food in her cheek.
it struck me–even with your eyes closed, you can find your mouth. my world crumbled! this was my first proof of a lie told my somebody other than me–all of a sudden my superpower became so pedestrian. i was never to fully recover.
The world was flat, and the sky was a dome. If you traveled to the edge of the world, where the dome met the land, you could touch the sky. The grown-ups told me that I was wrong, that the earth was round and the sky was not a solid, but I thought they were unbelievably stupid. You could see the dome!