Because of a mean ol’ kindergarden teacher I had, I thought it was bad to sit in a knealing position, with your feet under your bum. She had some thing about us sitting ‘Indian style’, and told us that if you kneal, your knee can pop out of place because it’s a ball and socket joint. She probably believed it, too, the dumb bitch.
I used to think your name came ingrained with your body, like the “Downtown Frank” sign in Osmosis Jones.
When a family friend asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, I told him “I want to make money.” I didn’t know why he laughed. What I meant was that I wanted to make counterfiet money. I thought that was all it took to get rich.
I asked my dad what it took be be strong, because every seven-year-old kid in the 80s wanted to like Aah-nald. My dad told me it took ‘hard work’, so I imagined a guy in a suit and tie at a desk getting buff while filling out paperwork. I wanted to be an accountant for many years.
Can anyone else remember some of the goofy stuff they used to think about or believe when they were just a little Doper? Please share.
Oh, and cooties don’t exist, but a really big slingshot would be a great way to get to school.
When I was in kindergarten, me and my girlfriend thought she could get pregnant if we slept together–not had sex (I didn’t know what that was), but just slept together . . . although it was safe to sleep next to each other on separate mats during naptime.
I used to be afraid to die and go to Heaven because I thought it would be like church for all eternity and that I’d have to sing those stupid songs forever and ever and ever. I also remember at some point (three? four? no older than five, surely) having trouble distinguishing between God, and the priest who stood up there at the pulpit and yelled and screamed all the time. I wanted to know why God was mad at me, and kind of scared.
I used to comb my hair before sitting down to watch the Brady Bunch because I had a crush on Marsha and thought that she could see me during the opening credits/song when she’s looking at the camera through her little window.
In cartoons, when the character is tapped on the knee by the doctor’s hammer, various wacky things happen - high kicks, 360 degree rotation, and so on. So, in my child mind, I thought that the joke was - when your knee is tapped, nothing is supposed to happen. The doctor looked surprised when he tapped my knee and found I had no reflex action.
Osakadave, but, but, but … ISN’T lightning caused by clouds rubbing together??? You’re gonna tell me that the thunder isn’t God bowling, too aren’t you? And there’s no Easter Bunny? If we’re going to discuss Santa, don’t even go there dude.
I used to think that the batteries in my battery operated toys actually had to SPIN to make the electricity. Whenever the batteries would go dead, I’d try to spin them around to get a little more life out of them…
I was also convinced that the monster in the closet (it WAS in there, I know it was) couldn’t get you if you put a pillow in front of the closet door. If the monster couldn’t open the door, it couldn’t get out, right? For years, I always tossed a pillow in front of the closet door in any bedroom that I slept in - motels, grandma’s house, everywhere. I think I was around 10 or 11 before that one stopped.
When I was a little kid, we used to buy the generic (Eagle Foods) bread and it said “Enriched White Bread” on it. I couldn’t read, and my mom always just called it the Generic bread. For years, I thought that the word “Generic” was spelled “Enriched”. Confused the hell outta me when I learned to read.
Babies grew in a mother’s stomach came out of their bellybuttons (Alien stole that from me gagnabbit!).
Whenever I touched our couch a small amount of my skin would come off. I would have to rub my skin to make it come back. I did that until I was in high school. I still catch myself doing it occasionally.
An evil presence lived at the end of our long hall, but it was afraid of lights. If I didn’t sprint from my room to the family room while the lights were off it would catch me. If I tried to turn the lights on before I went down the hall it would catch me.
My father never directly killed anyone in his 17 years in the air force. He was on a cargo plane so I figured they never had to fight.
The girl who lived next door when I was about 6 told me that your heart stopped beating when you went to sleep. I didn’t really believe her, but I used to lie in bed with my hand on my chest just in case…
I never believed in Santa Claus but I believed in the tooth fairy.
I would feel her come to my room and slip her hand under my pillow to take my tooth and leave me money. I would lay very very still on my side the rest of the night.
I thought that if I rolled over to try to get a look at her, she’d bash me in the head with her magic wand.
That crickets chirping was the sound of the stars twinkling. Really. Guess I was kind of a poetic kid.
That the monsters under the bed couldn’t get you if you pulled the corners of the bedspread up on the bed, because that’s how they climbed out of their Bad Dark Space to come get you.
My father had my sister and I in tears one time because he was cleaning his rifle on Holy Saturday and told us he was going to shoot the Easter Bunny the next morning. Since we often had fried rabbit and rabbit stew, we took him at his word, and since he was a great raconteur, he kept it going, saying how much he liked rabbit stew and his mouth was watering just thinking about it… My mother finally said, “Lou! That’s enough, now.”
There was a large steel manufacturing plant near our home. Every time we drove by it, white smoke billowed from its smoke stack. I thought that’s where clouds came from.
I used to think that God was not so much a being as a position. Dads from all over the world took turns being God, for a few days at a time. Kind of like jury duty, maybe. I always wondered when my father’s turn would come. I pictured a man in a room on a cloud, sitting behind a huge console with lots and lots of monitors, so they could see what everybody was doing and operate controls to make things happen.
Maybe because of my observations at home, it never occured to me that women might be called up for God duty. From what I see of political leaders, most of whom I suppose are male, I think I’d just as soon have somebody’s mom at the console. Back then, though, being God was a man’s job.
I remember as a kid I was afraid of spiders. Nothing serious, just didn’t like them and, being a kid, had no capacity to control my dislike. Anyway, I had seen a spider right before bedtime, and was afraid to go to sleep. My dad, seeing the most expedient way to get me to bed, simply told me that spiders don’t go into people’s bedrooms.
I didn’t realize how deeply that was ingrained into me until I was about fifteen. I happened to see a spider climb into my trashcan in my room and a chill went right down into my bones.
Of course, now I wish I had the luxury of only being worried about spiders. (Damn giant cockroaches. . .)
Also, I had the hardest time figuring how the car knew what speed it needed to go.
And don’t get me started about the first time I found out about the big difference between boys and girls. (“Where is it? Where is it?”)
Like Mephisto mentioned, I also used to think that all a man and a woman had to do was be in the same bed in order for the woman to have a baby. I didn’t know at the time that there was more to it than that.
I used to think that all the rocks in the world were manufactured at some rock factory and then spread all throughout the landscape wherever someone felt they belonged.
I used to think that if you turned a radio off in the middle of a song and then turned it back on, it would continue playing the same song. The first time I tested this theory, of course, I was proven wrong.
I used to think that God was lighting matches whenever there was lightning, and I always thought that thunder was caused by the sky collapsing. As a corollary to this, I used to think that the sky was a physical blue dome above us, made of material, so when it thundered I was afraid that some giant chunks of “sky” would come falling down on me.
I used to think that there was a secret camera hidden in my bedroom somewhere and that one of these nights there would be a scene of me in just my underwear appearing on the news.
I was told that Santa wouldn’t come to a house unless everyone inside was asleep. I spent some Christmas Eves begging myself to go to sleep. I was sure I was going to ruin it for everyone… I’d look and see both my sisters asleep, and go into the boys’ room and see my brothers asleep, and peek into my parents’ room, and crawl back into bed knowing I was going to go to hell for SURE for this one.
Oh, wow, was I ever happy when I woke up!
dwc1970 reminded me of a few things. Used to think that there was a really big salt factory somewhere in the world just dumping salt into the ocean. Why else would there be salt in there?
I, too, used to think I was being filmed somehow. I thought all of us were. And the hidden cameras that caught a really interesting people, were turned into feature films. I always thought there might be a movie of my life sometime, so I should be on my best behavior.