Crazy Ideas That Made Sense When You Were A Kid

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

One time I had to pee really bad on my way home from school, so I burrowed into someone’s hedge (they grow 'em big in WA, and the branches form little tunnels inside) and peed in there, then finished walking home. The guilt over this grew and grew in my mind, until I had myself convinced that “they” had some sort of machine that could detect human urine in soil, and that they’d use it and figure out it was me. I finally asked my mom if such a thing existed, and after she assured me it did not, she asked me why I would want to know such a thing. I cracked like an egg and confessed to my misdeed.

She had me write a letter of apology to the property owners, probably to get me to quit worrying about it more than anything else. I was a weird kid.

82

Oh, man…it’s good to know I’m not alone. When I was little (probably around second grade) this rumor started up, and for some reason it really upset me (maybe it was because I was quite fond of KFC–or it might just have been that I was a weird, sensitive and gullible kid). Anyway, pretty soon many of the kids figured out that all they had to do to get me upset was to come up to me and go, “Chicken!” I laugh about it now, but I remember it as being quite traumatic at the time.

Other things I believed as a little kid:

Our house, a standard California tract house, had two bathrooms, one in the master bedroom and one off the hall. The two shared a common wall, but I didn’t believe this, because it seemed like there should have been some extra space between them given the length of the hallway. So I was convinced that there was a “secret room” in there and wanted so badly to discover it.

Oh, and I once sat on a robin’s egg I found, thinking I could hatch it. But the less said about that, the better. I think I even knew it was stupid at the time, but experienced a momentary lapse of judgment followed by a broken egg and eggy pants.

83

I always read that abbreviation as “libbits” when I was a kid. I knew it meant “pounds,” but “libbits” was always how I heard it in my head.

84

For a brief period, I thought that when my brother and I were dragged to the bank by our mom on her errands, that we just might encounter Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army on a stick-up. (This possiblility was both exhilarating and very scary.) I believed this, even though we were in Florida… and as if there weren’t any other bank robbers to worry about.

85

They’re not “libs,” they’re “ulbs.”

86

Don’t feel too bad. I remember at the time, there were adults who had paid serious money to be able to sleep in concrete bunkers.

There’s some wonderful retro graffiti here in Sydney, on a railway cutting wall. You can still just make out a faded “It’s raining cats and skylabs”. Aaah, such wit.

87

I used to think that too! How come that guy on the TV manages to say it the same way every time?

mm

88

Actually, they’re “lilliblibs.”

And no, I don’t know how “lbs” becomes “lilliblibs” either. I guess I just wanted to add more l’s and b’s for fun.

89

As a kid, I believed that thunder was caused by clouds bumping together.

I also couldn’t understand why they couldn’t get aeroplanes to tow rainclouds to places like Africa so they could have rain too…

90

When I had to go somewhere special once, my mother had me clean my shoes extra carefully. To my mind, it seemed to make sense that I should put shoe polish on the soles of my shoes as well, to be an extra good boy. When I walked in my newly cleaned shoes across the carpet to tell mum how clever I had been, the poor woman didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the shoe polish footprints I unwittingly left along in a trail behind me.

And I recall eating loads of chicken at my grandmother’s house one Christmas, to the point where Dad joked that if I ate any more, I’d grow feathers. I carefully put the piece of chicken I had in my hand down in deep fear, and nothing they could say would reassure me. It was years before I ate chicken again.

91

Hell, you would never have wanted to come to my childhood home-I lived above the funeral home where my father worked until I was four years old.

IIRC, sometimes my mother would come downstairs to help clean and I’d sit on the kneelers in front of the coffins and chat away to the bodies.

But then, I thought they were just fake people. I think I remember asking my dad when he was going to get “more glass people”. :wink:

92

I remember playing outside with another little girl and we were digging in the dirt with a spoon. Dirt in my neck of the woods is tan to light brown in color. I had dug a fairly deep hole (for a four year old with a spoon! probably 5"-6") and came across a red streak of something. I didn’t know what is was and she carefully explained that I’d scraped the roof of the DEVIL’S HOUSE and boy, was he going to be mad at me for disturbing him. I filled that hole back in lickety split and promptly went home, scared out of my mind. I had nightmares for weeks, praying furiously for protection from the devil!

Was several years before I heard a grown up talking about how all the red clay in our soil was messing up their gardening efforts and I realized that’s what I found all those years before.

:::sigh of relief:::

93

When I was a kid and I used to see piles of cigarette butts in parking lots from when people would empty their car ashtrays, I figured that someone had just stood in the parking lot and smoked 3 or 4 packs of cigarettes while just hanging around.

I also thought that people who spoke Spanish were doing the English translation thing in their heads.

94

I used to think that chewing gum stayed in my stomach for seven years after I swallowed it - and I used to swallow my gum all the time. I can’t remember who told me that, but it stuck with me for years.

Teachers lived at school. I remember being absolutely floored when I saw my teacher at the grocery store. What was she doing away from school?!

Step on a crack, break your mother’s back - my brother pointed out to me that I had just broken mom’s back and it was ALL MY FAULT. I was so upset…

The Library Police would arrest me if I lost or damaged a book.

If I didn’t hold my breath when passing a cemetary, I would die.

The ice cream man was rich. He had the coolest little metal change-giver that he wore on his hip. It had sections for quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies, each in a tubelike cylinder. Push on the little lever and the change would come out one by one. (What can I say? I’m a child of the 70’s). Anyhow, anyone with that much change had to be rich!

When I cut the fur off of my stuffed animals, I firmly believed that it would grow back over time. Poor kitty. :smack:

We could have a horse. What was the problem? It could just eat the grass in the back yard and I would take real good care of it, I promise…

If I pinched my skin tight when a mosquito bit me, preventing it from pulling out, the mosquito would eventually explode. I never did get a mosquito to explode, but I sure did get some huge mosquito bites.

Dad told me that his gall bladder scar was from fighting off the Indians back when he and mom crossed the prairie in their covered wagon. Old knife wound, you know. I still remember it; “There I was - Indians to the right of me, Indians to the left of me… Indians all around. My back was against the canyon wall. My trusty bowie knife was clenched in my sweaty palm…” I remember asking mom what it was like to wear a bonnet and travel in a covered wagon LOL.

Chicken pox was called chicken pops.

There was a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

I better stop now. I was an impressionable youth, wasn’t I?

95

I remember at one time believing that Jesus was born on Christmas day, grew up very fast and died on the following Easter. The idea of Jesus growing from a baby to adulthood in just a couple of months didn’t seem impossible to me because he had special powers and lived during biblical times.

96

I thought a concentration camp was a retreat for people who needed some time to think about tricky problems without people distracting them.

I thought babies were made by the male squishing his penis on the girl’s labia and something along the lines of a poppy seed was transferred in the process. Then when I found out about ejaculating for some reason I thought it was like a dribble that came out for a few days every month and that they probably had male maxi pads that they’d wear at that time.

I also thought it was fairly common to tie a note to a bird’s leg and deliver a message that way.

Oh and one time I asked my mom why everyone on TV was white and she said it was because it was filmed far away in the US and didn’t really reflect reality. So I thought everyone in the US was white for quite a while and if a show had people on it who were not white I figured it was a local show.

97

Oy, I just thought of a few more…

When I was little, I went on a hayride with my church group. I didn’t have to pee before I left (ahem) but I certainly did after bouncing around on a hay wagon for what seemed like an eternity.

I was sure if I just peed a little, I believed it would go directly from my body to the wagon, never considering the scientific fact of the wicking properties of the fabric of my pants. When the hay ride was over, I had a very visible wet spot on my bottom. I, of course, being the truthful sort, complained loudly that I sat in something wet on the wagon.

When my stepson was little, we took our first road trip. The awe in his voice was stunning when we reached the first new town and he discovered that they had a McDonald’s there too!

98

Oh man, that just makes me feel really sad.
…
Did anyone else have weird bathroom ideas? When I was little I remembered I believed something lived in the toilet, and if I didn’t wash my hands before it got done flushing, this long hand-creature would reach out and grab me. I would also be grabbed if I touched any walls in the bathroom. It lived there, just waiting for me to screw up.

Also, the face in the bathtub. Does anyone know the face? The handle that plugs the drain has two screws on the plate that look like eyes, and the handle is the nose… I used to sit in the bathtub and stare at that thing in mute silence, waiting for its eyes to open. I still can’t take a bath without eyeing the face with utmost suspicion. Maybe if he didn’t have such a long, spindly nose…

And this isn’t really a belief, but it is a case of extreme misjudgment when I was a kid. One morning when I was 6 years old, I missed the school bus and was afraid to tell my babysitter for fear she would be mad at me. So naturally, I decided to ride my bike to school. Fifteen miles away. In February. Down Interstate 127.

My babysitter assumed I’d caught the bus. Meanwhile I was hugging the shoulder of the interstate and trying not to slide on the ice as the semi trucks passed. I left in the dark, around 7am. I was really sure I knew where I was going. Eventually after going several hours and only about 3 or 4 miles, I found the courage to bang on someone’s door.

Why yes, I did allow this man to put my bike in the trunk of his car and drive me to school, why do you ask?

Fortunately for me, he did. I made it to the school around 2pm.

My Mom didn’t even find out what happened until she picked me up at the babysitters. As she collapsed into a nervous breakdown heap on the floor, I insisted, “But Mom! I did it the safe way! I checked the air in my tires before I left!”

99

I saw an explanation of how animation is done (I think it might have been Walt Disney himself!), and decided all TV shows and movies were drawn by hand, frame-by-frame. The only thing that baffled me was how those “cartoonists” doing the live-action shows could draw so well!

Meanwhile, a neighbour kid and I got together in my back yard to collaborate on a hole to China.

100

I used to think animals were professions. When you grew up you could be a lawyer or a doctor or a chicken or a lion …