Did any words or phrases have a different meaning to you as a child than what they really are?
I used to think that when a car was “impounded” this meant that after they hauled it away they would smash it down and put it in the junkyard. Similarly, I thought when dogs were sent to the “dog pound” they killed the dogs by pounding them.
When I first heard about money laundering I thought this meant that they literally washed the money. I didn’t understand why this was such a bad thing. I mean, everyone wants clean money, right?
I heard that my uncle “got carried away”, and I imagined him being picked up in a blanket by a lot of people (like when they toss people into the air), who then trotted off with him.
Later I heard that he got “dropped off” somewhere, so I figured the Blanket People all just let go at the same time. Can’t say I blame them – my uncle was a heavy guy.
Baby showers and wedding showers were steamy, oddly intimate social gatherings in my 7 year old mind. “Why would a bunch of women get together to take showers?”
I confused “abortion” and “divorce” for a long long time- growing up Catholic, I just knew that both were things my parents didn’t approve of. When I finally figured out which was which, I had a hard time accepting that you can abort a baby, but you can’t get a divortion.
My maternal grandmother is called “gran” by all her grandchildren. When I was very small and first started ballet class, we learned grand plies and the teacher explained to us that “grand” sometimes meant something was very good, but in ballet it meant that something was big. The next day, I had a big epiphany and got all excited and ran to tell my mom- “Mommy!! I know why Gran is named Gran! because when she was born, her mommy looked at her and said, ‘this is a really good baby. I think she’s grand.’ so she named her gran!”
I was always reading books that were a little bit over my head. I remember asking my Mom if rape was like hanging, apparently associating the words “rape” and “rope”.
When I was a kid I was a train fiend (much unlike now :D). One day my parents took me to see the real live trains. I think my Grand Ma was coming into town. It was very cool, and I was like a kid in a – well, train yard. Until my parents pointed out a certain one, which they identified as a “freight train.” I started crying.
You see, I thought it was a 'fraid train, because you were supposed to be 'fraid of it. I was terrified. Until the concept of freight was explained to me, at which point I thought it was neato.
I was in elementary school and watching a cop show with my mother, and the episode involved a teenager girl who had been raped. She was naked and wrapped in a blanket, tearfully talking to the police about her ordeal. I deduced that being raped meant having someone strip all your clothes off you and leave you naked in public, which was as bad as anything I could imagine at the time. It was horrifying and I had bad dreams about it. Thank goodness no one explained what ‘rape’ meant.
First day of first grade I was confused when the teacher told us the rules. Number One Rule was “No talking to your neighbor.” Huh? Neighbors are people who live next to you. None of mine were in class.
I was also confused by Number One and Number Two – “If you have to do #1, hold up one finger; #2, two fingers.” What difference does it make? One takes precedence? No wonder we grew up constipated.
I skipped kindergarten, where they probably explained all that stuff.
I read or heard something about the evils of being Lesbian when I was a kid. In my kid brain I thought–> why would any one think that Danny Thomas was evil?–> Danny Thomas being Lebanese. Why or how I knew that Danny Thomas was Lebanese I don’t remember. It wasn’t till years later that I got a copy of Our Bodies Our Selves and put together Lesbian does not equal Lebanese. Yes, I led a sheltered life. :smack:
I used to think that “comment” was the opposite of “compliment.” Compliments were good, comments were bad.
I also had a rather salty grandfather who referred to women’s breasts as “accoutrements,” but he pronounced it “uh-COO-truh-ments.” I was probably 10 or 11 before I realized that (a) that wasn’t the right way to pronounce it, and (b) that wasn’t what it meant. I still find it kind of amusing, though.
I used to think that “being (financially) broke” meant you were literally broken into pieces. My Mum and her boyfriend used to say they were “broke”. I remember having dreams where I would walk in to a room and they would be in there. Instead of looking like real people, they would be those russian dolls, lying shattered on the floor.
I had also heard the term “screw” in reference to having sex. Guess what I had instead of a penis in my early sexual dreams? That’s right, a screwdriver.
When I was a kid I thought street smart meant smart about streets and not getting lost. My mother used to let me wander around a lot more than she’d let my brother and she said it was because I was more street smart. I thought I was really getting away with something because, in reality, I used to get lost all the time, especially on my bike. I’d find my way home again eventually and thank my street smarts.
When I started kindergarten, there were signs up in my school and ads im magazines and such that said “don’t drink and drive.” There must have been commercials or something as well becuase I certainly got it into my head that drinking and driving was a very dangerous thing to do and the police would arrest you for it.
So we stopped by McDonald’s one day and my mom got a soda and started drinking it while she was driving.
:eek:
I started bawling. “no mommy! don’t drink and drive! You could crash the car and die or get arrested!”
When I was a child the term “restroom” always conjured up images of a room full of beds where people went to have a rest. I pictured it rather like the afternoon naps that we used to have when I was at pre-kindy. The same image still comes into my mind now when I hear the word.
I was convinced until my early teens that somehow my maternal grandmother had been killed in the war (WWII). This was because at a much younger age (maybe four or so) I had heard that she had died of a heart attack, and the only kind of attacks I had heard of were of a military nature. I went on believing about my grandmother for many years after I learned what a heart attack actually was, because it never occurred to me to examine the basis for my belief in her combat-related death until it finally occurred to me that by 1950 (the year of her death), WWII was well over, and she just *couldn’t * have been in Korea!
Cunctator, I wish restrooms really were like that!
