Me too. Even when I knew what it meant, mentally I still couldn’t help picturing the coal carts and train tracks. Except in the dark because they had to do it secretly, right? To this day I think I still get that mental image even though I know it was not a real railway.
I also can’t help picturing something like brownies for Turkish Delight. I know what it is, but in Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe, enchanted Turkish Delight was like crack to Edmund so I pictured it as something good. And real Turkish Delight doesn’t hold up, I’m afraid.
Once again, I offer a moment of gratitude to the cosmos that I was an only child.
Count me as another one in the chorus of people who had weird metal-related mental images about the Iron Curtain. Mine was something akin to the ornate screens people have in front of their fireplaces.
This just triggered a memory for me; sitting in my aunt’s apartment, watching the news–which was reporting on the various degrees of radiation sickness–and being convinced that we were all going to die of radiation poisoning. It must have been just after Chernobyl. The fact that I was in Massachusetts and therefore quite safe never occurred to me.
Oh, god I was so disappointed the first time I had Turkish Delight. It was so far from what my imagination had conjured up! (I was about 25, too, you’d think I’d be more mature about it, but no.)
My point is: do see if you can get some freshly made Turkish Delight. In the US, it seems like it’s mostly available imported from Turkey, but if you can find it freshly made, it actually is delicious. It’s common everywhere in the Balkans (where it’s called lokum no matter what the local language is) and is a nice treat. The best I ever had was in, surprise surprise, Turkey.
Off topic–when I was little, my mom made egg foo young for dinner. It was disgusting. In order to get me to eat it, she told me that if I took 3 bites (or something) that I would get “Chinese eyes.” I thought that was awesome, so I ate three bites, to the bathroom mirror, and found that I had the same old round eyes. I reported back to her, and she told me that I’d have to eat a little more for it to work. So I ate some more, back to the mirror, no Chinese eyes. Lather rinse repeat.
She claims she doesn’t remember the incident, but it’s etched into my memory, gastronomic and otherwise. I won’t touch egg foo young with a 10 foot pole and I still have boring old round eyes.
I loved fresh turkish delight from the middle-eastern groceries on Atlantic Avenue when I was kid. With pistachios, of course. It’s tasty but I did think C.S. Lewis had oversold it, as a child. What I didn’t understand then, but do understand now, is the children might not have had sweets for some time, due to rationing and the war, and candy would be a symbol of happier & more peaceful times (remember the kids were evacuees and separated from their parents).
I suppose these don’t count as current events, but I used to watch Rush Limbaugh on TV when I was a little kid all the time and didn’t understand why everyone in my left-leaning family thought it so weird. All I knew was that Rush Limbaugh’s TV show was on late at night on Friday and I loved staying up late at night on Friday so I watched it. His positions didn’t even register on my radar at that time. He was just the guy who was on TV late on Friday nights.
Another: my dad was a big CNN watcher back in the day and I would always watch Larry King and the like with him (and, again, usually never understood what they were talking about). One time there were discussing this guy, Pat Buchanan, and I remember telling my dad I thought Buchanan should be president. My dad, the life-long liberal Democrat, did a double-take and asked me why. I said, “because he sounds the most American.” The reason why I said that, though, was because I enjoyed reading about American presidents as a kid and I knew there was an old president also named “Buchanan” and that the word “Buchanan” was often mentioned on those political shows on CNN and, hell, if “Buchanan” has such strong ties to American politics and the presidency, then this current “Buchanan” should be the president! Why the hell not, eh? Of course, when I was mortified at this anecdote when I grew up and discovered just who this “Pat Buchanan” was and what his views were (although, to be fair, my dad did meet Pat Buchanan once and said he was very nice and polite).
I will…I’m generally not into sweets that aren’t chocolate, though. I mean, if I hadn’t read about Narnia, I would have probably just been, “Oh, whatever.” But since it was presented as food to sell your soul over and sell out Aslan and your siblings for, I was hoping for more nectar and ambrosia. I think everyone who’s grown up on Narnia is a little disappointed when they encounter Turkish Delight.
Hello Again–that is a good point. I think if sweets were a huge rarity it would be different.
I think one day I’ll make a list of all the food I thought was awesome based on literature. Trying to think what else would be on the list…
Long long before I had any understanding of how a car engine was put together, my uncles and father and grandfather etc were talking about car problems and how bad it was if you had your “rods knocking”.
Stop giggling, that’s NOT where my juvenile mind went.
Actually what I visualized was something like a pencil holder full of pencils that were too loose and could rattle around and whack into each other as the pencil holder spun.
The funny part is: fast forward a couple decades and I had taken a few engines apart and could argue the advantages of 4 bolt mains or molybdenum versus chrome piston rings, and yet someone would say something about “the rods in that 327 are knocking” I’d get the visual image of the pencil holder thingie for a moment or two.
Egg creams, based on the Al books, I think. I went to New York and just had to try an egg cream (I was about 13). It was horrible. However, given that it was a diner in a subway station, it’s still possible that egg creams are amazing confections of wonderfulness and I just picked the wrong place to try it.
I remember Harriet the Spy liked them but I don’t think I ever had one. I hate anything with milk in it (even milkshakes) so I probably wouldn’t like it.
Growing up I wished I liked milk because those “Milk: It does a body good!” ads made milk sound so cool.
I remember hearing on the car radio that Bing Crosby had died, and my mother was trying to reassure me (with limited success) that the host of Fat Albert was OK, this was a different guy.
I remember hearing on the news that a local man had “collapsed” and had a heart attack, and I pictured a guy collapsing inward like a house of cards.
When I was a bit younger than that, I was puzzled at why baseball broadcasts seemed to be centered around pancakes, what with all the references to batter and a pitcher.
Another one who confused “gorilla” with “guerilla”
I was 8 (almost 9) when JFK was assassinated, and I remeber not being all sorrowful. I didn’t know why it was such a big deal. For all I knew, Presidents got killed all the time.
I thought the Iron Curtain was basically a shower curtain, made of chain mail. There were fences with barbed wire and such around it, of course, but there was an actual iron curtain there.
