Talking to a coworker just triggered a funny memory. When I was a Little Lacha, I believed that grownups were actually robots wearing skin coverings. It didn’t scare me badly, just freaked me out a little. More profoundly disturbing than simply believing it, though, was the thing I didn’t see:
At night, when I was asleep, adults would peel off their skins and walk around in their “natural” robotic forms. They would never do it while I was awake, and they knew when I was awake, so they could never be caught out, walking around in their metallic glory. When my parents had a party and I had to go to bed, I would think about a whole roomful of grownups talking and yet listening for me to fall asleep, so they could “unzip” and fully relax. I would think about their tubular metal bodies, and their skin and clothes lying on the ground like discarded banana-skins.
I mentioned this to mom a while back, and she figured out where I got that idea from. We lived next to a taxi barn. On summer nights, when I would have the windows open in my room, the sounds of the radio-dispatch could be heard. On very humid nights, the CB transmissions would get distorted, and the voices would take on a metallic quality, especially if the radios weren’t tuned quite right.
I can’t remember when I stopped believing in the robots. I must have stopped looking for my own zipper years ago …
See, I was a little ol’ skeptic when I lost my first tooth at six. My parents told me that this little gauzy fairy creature was going around taking my teeth. I played with the idea in my head for a while, but I just couldn’t buy it.
On the other hand, some supernatural agency was clearly at work. I mean, I put the tooth under my pillow at night, and in the morning it was gone! It was like some sort of miracle.
Wait a sec… God did miracles. And God was a lot easier for me to believe in than the tooth fairy. Obviously, God had a sideline hobby of transmuting teeth into quarters. Mystery solved.
I used to believe that all inanimate objects were alive and that I could communicate with them with my mind. (And no, they never talked back to me. I was young and stupid, not insane :D)
Similar to your belief about the robots, I beleived that everyone was a giant lizard (think gila monster) but they weren’t allowed to show themselves in lizard form when I was around. Despite many tries I was never able to catch anyone in lizard form.
I thought the exact same thing. I also thought there were monkeys inside stoplights operating them, and three men dressed like gangsters inside the television making the images go by so fast that they appeared to be moving.
Daithi Lacha, that was actually true. Except it was not just grownups, it was everyone. Everyone but me. The washer and dryer were sophisticated fabrication devices where all things came out of. (Hey, I SAW them make clothes!)
The purpose of these evil machine-beings? To make me miserable, by witholding necessary commodities such as toys and candy.
Cars don’t actually move. Cars stay still and the world moves around them.
I grew up in a once-rural area with lots of straight, flat roads so that seems relatively normal for a small mind. What I could never figure out is how, when we went into the nearest “city”, the world knew how to move for all those other cars.
mauxlicious and pravnik, were you especially freaked out knowing that people were really giant lizards? Or did you consider them to be relatively benign? I actually didn’t care that grownups were robots, as I loved my parents, and no-one had done me ill.
Now that I think back, I recall I thought the robot-people looked like this, “unclothed.”
btw, that robot is taking care of your fabrication device for you, tdn.
I was convinced I could fly. We lived in an old house with a curving, steep stairway and I flew down it all the time. Luckily I never tried it. Didn’t have to! I was certain.
I believed that it was necessary for one to go to sleep in order to make the next day arrive. If a person stayed up, it got endlessly late and later, until that person finally fell asleep.
And that’s why you should never trust anyone over 30.
I remembered something else goofy that I believed. We would go visiting friends in upstate New York; their house was at the bottom of a steep road off the main road. Trees overhung the road quite thickly, and in summer, would (to my eyes) block out the sky. I believed that we passed through a tunnel and came out on the other side. The other side of what, I’m not quite sure. But it was the definitely the other side. To re-enter the real world, we’d have to go up the hill, through the tunnel and re-emerge on the other other side. You know, the original side. One summer, as we went down the hill, I realized it was just that: a hill.
I believed there was an alien behind the mirror in the dining room. He was silvery and looked a bit like E.T. He could squeeze himself very thin to fit behind the mirror. On the back of the mirror were switches that could turn on and off every light in the house. Every once in a while he would flip one of the switches and that was why the lights would sometimes flicker even though no one had touched them.
I also had ‘invisible friends’ who were cats and unicorns. They bred like rabbits! I was always writing them cards to congratulate them on their new children.
Like in Toy Story, I firmly believed that my toys and dolls had a secret life while I was at school.
And that kids in Australia and China must be used to living upside down.
And that portals, such as the wardrobe, the tollbooth or a natural disaster (tornado) could transport you to another world. A Wrinkle in Time made perfect sense to me…
That my parents were never young like I was.
That a skeleton lived behind my door, but ONLY when it was open halfway. And the crocodile lived under my bed, so that to avoid the skeleton and the croc, I had to put my door just so and leap into my bed from my doorway, which was quite a feat. Otherwise, the croc would stick out his snout and get my ankles… :eek
I thought the exact same thing. Went on a lot of road trips as a pup, and sitting in the car staring at the road and the endless white lines it seemed like we were on a treadmill.
Also when I was a puppy, I believed I was adopted, a changeling baby though I hadn’t as yet heard of any changeling stories. According to my mother, on one road trip I pointed up at a star and said, “That’s where I come from.” I couldn’t decide though whether my “real” parents were cowboys or aliens or fairies.
I was like that next door neighbour kid in Toy Story. I would constantly find ways of torturing and destroying my dolls, excuse me, my “action figures”, even tho I secretly believed them somehow to be concious and felt soooo guilty for putting them through hell.
Back in the house I lived in in Du Quoin, Illinois (where I was born; we moved when I was seven) there was an antique mirror high on the mantle. I remember thinking that if I could only get up to the mirror, I could go through it to my pre-school. I liked pre-school.
I also had a little menagerie of imaginary robots and tiny little people called ‘mousies’. I remember picking up and eating mousies who were abusive to their children. I must have looked strange, picking up and eating things only I could see.
