Post #2 over in this thread mentions using a flamethrower to assist with clearing the driveway of snow. Man, that idea brings me back…
<cue wavy flashback lines across the screen>
I was, oh, I dunno…four, maybe five or so? We had a really good snowfall – probably better than a foot. Terrific for a good day of playing, but still, it just wasn’t enough.
You see, I was waiting for “the big snow”. I hadn’t seen one before, but I figured they must come every couple of years. We’d get ten, twelve feet or so…and then I’d have dad go down to the basement and get the flamethrower (What? We had to have one lying around somewhere in the basement). I figured he could take the flamethrower and blow some nice long, twisty tunnels through the snow. And naturally, all that melted snow would coat the walls of the tunnels and instantly freeze – tunnel ice sliding fun for all!
So, what’d you have in mind as a kid that may have been just a bit of a stretch?
Parachuting off the top of the house with a bedsheet. Found out the hard way that it just doesn’t work like that. After the sheet filled with air, it got yoinked out of my hands and I was in a 20some feet freefall. I’m damn lucky I didn’t kill myself.
We used to cut a tennis ball in half, light it on fire, and kick it down the street. It would leave a trail of fire 3 feet high, sorta like what you see in “Back to the Future” after the DeLorean disappears in front of the theater.
I decided that the easiest way to make a fort was to go into a clump of tall rushes by the creek, find a clear spot, and tape up walls around it. I started with aluminum foil taped to the rushes, and quickly ran out, so I switched to Saranwrap, which I thought of as picture windows. This all looked great for about an hour, when the first gust of wind made a mess of it.
I believed that the reason you wore a hat in the winter was because most of your body heat escaped through your head.
The reason it escaped through your head was because of all of the holes where your hair comes out.
I still believe this is a perfectly reasonable explanation to give children for wearing hats…
When swimming in my friends plastic swimming pool we decided we would really like to breathe under the water but we didn’t have snorkels. We couldn’t figure out why drinking straws didn’t work just as good.
Running your mother’s clothesline between the garage and a tree so you could just cross from one to the other hand-over-hand never worked out as planned.
Building a shelter out of sticks that would keep rain out never worked as planned either no matter how many sticks you used. Even though they showed people living in them in our social studies books.
I was a suburban kid. I always assumed that, when they built houses, they had to come back later and jackhammer the cement in the front yards so they could put the lawn in.
You know how in large grocery stores they have an intercom system through which they frequently page employees and lost children?
I used to think these stores had a second floor, like an attic, and that people were paid to go up and lie down on their stomachs and talk through a hole in the floor so everyone could hear. To this day I cannot shake this mental image every time I hear a page.
I remember feeling really sorry for the Nickelodeon announcer guy when I was a kid. He had to do the same large assortment of announcements, the same way every time, dozens and dozens of times a day! How difficult and stressful a job that must have been!
Oddly, it didn’t occur to me that it was all taped…
When I was very little (like about 4), I thought that you could find all the animals you saw in the zoo or on TV in the woods around your own house. We lived in a rural area and I could freely wander around even then and I had my sights set on a Gorilla. I planned how I was going to catch one very carefully because I knew they were strong and I even got up the courage to go on some hunts around the perimeter of our semi-wooded property. I got discouraged after a few of those though. A few weeks ago, my 4 year old daughter asked me to go with her through the woods to catch a tiger. We are still working on a good strategy because tigers can be dangerous especially when you try to catch them with your bare hands.
I thought the reason commercials existed was so the actors in the show could have a chance to go to the bathroom. I even applied this reasoning to cartoons. Hey, after scarfing down all those Scooby Snacks, Scooby had to take a dump sometime, right?
When I was really young (3-4, I guess) I thought Oral Roberts was God. He came one the television every Sunday morning when we were getting ready for church. Older, distinguished-looking (to a four-year-old) man appears on TV every Sunday and talks about the Bible–it’s gotta be God, right?
I was certain that our house in eastern Idaho was part of the underground railroad and that long-ago owners had helped smuggle into Canada slaves who had escaped the southern US. The [laminate or somesuch] wood planks [panels] were nailed to the walls to hide the tunnels they used to help people get to freedom.
One of my best friends, not LiLi, believed that air conditioning/heating in cars worked by sucking hot air in during the summer to blow out in the winter, and vice versa.
I had an irrational fear that I would become permanently affixed to the toilet if it was accidentally flushed while I was on it. I would flush it then run like mad out of the bathroom.
