I remember feeling really sorry for that poor Nickelodeon announcer who had to repeat the same things over and over again all day, the exact same way. I also thought game shows all took place as I was watching. I guess it took me a while to get the concept of shows being TAPED.
I had this fear of overpasses; I was convinced that there was a chance they’d fall every time I was on them. Then, years later, I am in LA for the Northridge quake. They DO fall, and I was RIGHT, dammit!
When I was in fifth grade we ran into the principal of my school at the grocery store. Maybe fifth grade is a bit old for this sort of thing, but I was just shocked at the idea of the PRINCIPAL doing something as mundane as buying food. I’m not sure if I ever thought teachers lived at school but I probably did.
I used to have this weird thing about toilets; some of them were “happy” and some of them were “mad”, based on the shape and size and whatnot of the hole. I still think that, actually. And I STILL (at 24) have this weird fear of the automatic ones that flush after a set period of time because when I was 13 I was at DFW and in the middle of doing my business when the damn toilet flushed underneath me! (I hadn’t seen those before.) Can anybody say “conditioned response?”
This is a great thread. I wish I could print it out without taking up so much paper. ( The elders in my family would get a hoot out of this.)
Anyways,
When you are alone in your room at night. Your lights are turned off. You are on the verge of sleep, if you peek out through your slitted eyelid, your stuffed animals and toys move around the room and play and have meetings. ( Toy Story stole my childhood bedroom.)
I thought that the bands on the radio were actually at the station, waiting to play their tunes. I had a distinct vision inside my head of The Beatles lined up, followed by Elvis, everyone holding their instruments and waiting for Tommy James and the Shondells to finish so they could move up in the line. This is weird, because I knew that there wasn’t just one radio station, so I wasn’t quite sure how these groups could travel back and forth from station to station playing their songs and have time to do things like make the Let It Be film. Very perplexing to a 5-year-old.
I thought that my mother was Lucille Ball. During her I Love Lucy phase. I didn’t think that Lucille Ball, the lady on TV, was my mother – I thought that my mother was Lucille Ball. Well, it made sense to me then.
I thought that your internal organs were just hanging there, floating freely inside the body. I think I got this idea from seeing a diagram of, e.g., just the digestive system – so no other organs showed, just this floating esophagus, stomach, and intestines.
I can only think of two off the top of my head:
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I didn’t make the connection between the sun and daylight. I thought the light came from the sky itself. After all, there was light on an overcast, cloudy day, but no sun.
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I thought the clouds were made by airplanes. I got that idea from watching planes leaving contrails.
My wife was raised on a small farm in the bible belt. She was told that Jesus drank wine only because “the water was bad in those days.” She suddenly realized a few years ago how dumb that was.
actually…I kinda thought that all adults could read kids minds. I was verrry careful. also, I do recall thinking that I was the butt of a “Truman Show” type deal where everyone acted around me, just to observe me…this was before the movie too…weird. I’ve grown to a “normal” teen now.
Oh! I forgot the biggest one! I would always duck for cover when a plane would fly overhead cause I thought that all planes were spy planes and they would drop giant nets on me and then come and get me. I also thoght that Operation Desert Storm took place in Mexico. I mixed up “Persian Gulf” and “Gulf of Mexico” and so I thought thats what happened.
I could fly if i kept my arms out like an airplane and ran fast enough. However i was young, and my legs too short to get to that speed.
Anything that happened in my dreams really happened…that’s how i knew i could fly, but only sometimes.
My toys would grow old and die if i ignored them. I have the hardest time giving away unwanted stuffed animals, and i feel guilty for not spending any more time with my oldest toys. If i stop and stare at them too much, they must go on my bed, or hidden somewhere so i couldn’t see their hurt/angry faces.
When i went to the beach one day i discovered that the wet sand could hold up better then the dry sand. I imagined building a huge underground sand home by the waters edge. I made a whole about 3 feet deep and 4 feet wide. Then the tide came in, and started to fill the hole with water from underneath. I realized the land was there to keep the water from rising onto the land and covering the earth >consequently ending all life<. I furiously replaced the sand, but the water kept rising through every couple of shovelfulls i tossed in. I eventually plugged up the hole, and told my parents, who didn’t believe me. Conclusion: If the smart adults didn’t know about the holes you can put in the earth then no one did. All the little kids would build holes and in the middle of the night we’d all drown. I was terrified of any form of water, even swimming pools. They had cement around them, make a whole and the water will get you.
On long trips we’d pass tourist trap places next to the freeway. One had giant dinosaurs with a store and a restaurant inside them. As we’d pass them going somewhere they were on the left, and we’d tell my little bro “look at the dinosaurs on your left.” When we came back they were on the right, and we’d tell my little bro “look to your right, the dinosaurs walked across the freeway.” It was few years before he figured that one out.
Three-prong electrical outlets are sad faces warning you not to play with electricity. This was before three-prong plugs were at all common.
Boys and girls wear different clothes. Other than that, they are identical.
If you drop anything down the laundry chute, you’ll never get it back.
You can talk to dead people through the floor registers. If you yell loud enough they’ll yell back and you can hear them. Dead people also live on the Moon, because the book says, “The Moon is a dead world.”
And I once saw the planet Jupiter. We had a big picture window in the dining room and this one day I went in to breakfast and there it was, Jupiter, filling the window. Jupiter was orange and striped like the pictures in the books. I had a great breakfast looking at Jupiter and wondering what planet I’d see the next morning. I still feel a little heartache when I think how Jupiter was just a cloudy sunrise.