Ahh, it’s all so clear now. No, my name is not Crystal. I was a little confused by the question at first. And as an aside, unless Crystal is a guy with an unusual moniker, we’ve got a confusion of genders on our hands, as well.
[Seinfeld]
Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
[/Seinfeld]
There are so, so many. I was a really flaky kid.
As a kid I used to believe that when you turned the TV off the actors at the TV station stopped moving and just sort of ‘froze’ in time.
For whatever strange reason, I believed that rather than looping a yo-yo string around your finger, you had to get a hole drilled through your finger and have the string threaded through. Once when I was (maybe) five my uncle offered me a yo-yo and I started crying inconsolably. Poor guy.
I used to have a children’s book on dinosaurs. One page showed a painting of a modern house surrounded by translucent dinosaurs to show their scale or perhaps where they once stood. I interprieted it to mean that there were invisible dinosaurs running around, ready to gobble me up.
When my folks told me that we were moving I thought we were going to physically lift the house and carry it to a new neighborhood.
I thought that each and every comic book was drawn by hand.
A little off subject, but once as a kid I watched as a mouse scuttled across the floor to a mouse trap, nibble the bait, set the trap off with a SNAP! Than I laughed and laughed and screamed “Daddy! Make him do it again!”
notcynical I do remember that far back :). It was shortly after we’d moved to a new house in 1978. I’m pretty sure it’s before I started preschool, and I went to preschool as a late 3. I think that the cabinets in the kitchen were still the “old brown”, although they may have already been painted the “new brown”. I think that the cupboards were painted less than a year after we moved into the house.
I do clearly remember parts of the car journey from our old house to the new house. We were transporting four cats, sedated (for “sedated” read “stoned out of their tiny cat brains”), in cat boxes. One by one the cats clawed their way out of the boxes. And I remember things about the old house. My dad and I would go and watch the planes at the airfield. The next-door neighbour sometimes gave us cabbages from his garden. We were adopted by our fourth cat.
My earliest memory is of sitting in a highchair drinking strawberry Nesquik. I’d have been two, max. That’s a one-off memory, though, from the house before the “old house”.
My best one:
I thought that when I would get older, my nipples would fall off, or just fade away, I would have breasts, but no nipples. That came from trying to learn anatomy from my Barbie doll.
Notcynical There have been a few recent threads on “How Far Back Can You Remember” where a few of us memory freaks describe memories that occured prior to the age of four. It’s not common, but it does happen (e.g. I have memories of getting my diaper changed etc., and my SO has surprised her parents by describing a detailed memory of a relative that died when she was about 2.)
If you do a search you can find at least two more “earliest memory” threads.
I had been really sick with pneumonia at age 6. Mom had taken quite a few days off work to be with me.
On the way home from my 2 week hospital stay, she told me she might get fired. I recall crying inconsolably because I could picture her boss forcing her into a wooden room with wooden crates and wooden barrels and throwing a lit match.
Another time, I must have been 7, mom was going on a trip from Ohio to New York. I was so angry at her not taking me, I went outside to jump on as many cracks as I could find. (“Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.”)
While mom was away, Grandma came in and told me mom had a car accident in Pensylvania and she broke her back. I was convinced it was my fault. Pretty traumatic for a young kid.
My brother— well, he’s had a few, too.
One time, mom, brother and I were riding in the car when mom told brother to “crack the window”. Brother cried, “But then you’ll be mad at me!”
At a Kmart, mm gave brother $5 to go buy whatever he wanted. He chose dominoes that cost $4.99. Mom gave hime some change “in case they put tax on it.” I could literally see the wheels turning in his head when he said,“I don’t want tacks on it.”
Since I am 9 years older than my brother, it was my job to torture him, of course. When he was about 3 or 4, he had something (forget what) of mine that he was trying to keep from me. He actually raised it above his head, presumably to keep it out of my reach, not realizing i could just snatch it away from him, which I did.
I also SWORE Richard Stands was the president… “And to the republic, for Richard Stands…”
Oh, yeah. I thought a penis was a pen is.
Indianapolis was Indiana Police.
My grandfather always told me that coffee would make my knees turn black. I always wondered why grownups would drink it.
I had no idea where babies came from, or how they were made, but it certainly wasn’t possible to have one without being married.
As a child of five, I had a firm grasp of how fleeting life can be. See, we had a family friend who died suddenly. When I asked how she died, my mom told me she fell off a chair. That was pretty sobering to a clumsy child like myself. I was really, really careful for years. That explanation stuck with me and while I never questioned it, often I would muse about what kinds of injuries she could have sustained in a simple fall from a chair that would result in death. Over the years, I came to the conclusion she must have just fallen in a really strange way and probably sustained some pretty severe head trauma.
It has only been in the past year that I learned this woman actually died from an aneurysm in her brain. Why did they tell me she fell off a chair? I have no idea and my mother still denies she did it.
Now, I’m sure you’re thinking that she did it since I was so young and wouldn’t understand. This may be so but she had absolutely no trouble traumatizing me for life by explaining how our neighbor’s two young sons were killed later that same year when lighting struck the tree they were hiding under, causing it to fall on them, crushing them to death.
My mother is weird.
And I’m still terrified of storms and extraordinarily uneasy sitting on a high stool.
More of the same:
Now, to hijack: Alice, you mention a belief you had until about the age of 4, and Tansu, you mention one you had at the age of 3. Can you really remember that far back? Are you sure of these ages, and if so, how? **
[/QUOTE]
I do remember that far back. I know I do, because my father died when I was just 5. Most things from my childhood I remember as before or after that. I think a lot of people can remember things from when they were 3 or 4, but have no way to position their early memories in time. Memories from that early do often have a dream like quality though. (I also remember the last time I wore nappies/diapers at night.)
Sorry - that was to notcynical…the one time I don’t preview :smack:
I definately remeber some things from when I was 3. The house we lived in then we only leased for about five or six months. It was when the World’s Fair came to Seattle so there’s no mistaking the time frame. The only memory I have of the fair itself was that I pitched a fit because my brother, who was two years older, got to go on a ride that my parents wouldn’t let me go on. My favorite memory I have of the house was when we used to ride our trike down the slanted driveway and crash into the garage door. I remember my mom telling us not to do that but we did anyway.
OK, on to things I used to think as a kid. I used to think that the songs on the radio were performed live by the bands. I couldn’t figure how they could move their equipment from one station to another so fast.
I thought the ferries that we have that cross Puget Sound were on pilings that moved across the sea bed.
My brother told me that if you pull out all you eyelashes, your eyeballs would fall out. Though I had doubts I sort of believed it because he was older.
And though I couldn’t picture my mom lying when she told us she had no television when she was a kid, I didn’t believe her either.
I really didn’t until video games and computers have come along, something so common now but that I didn’t have as a kid!
Until about 2 years ago, I believed that my family had made up the songs “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”.
My mother, who is a very intelligent woman (especially verbally) used to believe the word “misled” was pronounced “MY-zled” and thought she could drop the “-d” to have the word “misle”.
I also believed the Catholic Church wanted to hurt me. On Ash Wednesday I somehow got the idea that the ashes were actually embers, and it would burn a cross into my forehead. On the feast of St. Blaze, where they bless throats with candles, I believed the candles would be lit and again, would burn me. Why I thought the Catholics wanted to burn me, I’m not certain.
Somewhat related, when I was young, I made up a word, “almorrow”. What this meant was, “almost tomorrow”. It’s a very subtle word, and it works like this. Let’s say that on Wednesday is your birthday. It’s currently Monday afternoon. Your birthday is the day after tomorrow. However, by Monday evening, your birthday is “almorrow” - you’re almost to the point where it’s tomorrow. Come Tuesday, your birthday is tomorrow. So it’s kind of like the day after tomorrow, except that tomorrow is almost here.
Being a very Catholic kid from a very Catholic family, I thought pretty much everybody was Catholic, and the Pope was like the president, only of the whole world. And something about him seeing you when you’re sleeping and knowing when you’re awake, but I may be mixing my memories a bit there. 
StG
I used to believe that the police would arrest little kids who misbehave. Every time we were driving in the car and I saw a police car or a cop standing on the corner, I was literally scared stiff. I would sit up straight and still and be quiet, in other words, I was trying my hardest to look like a model child. As soon as the danger had passed, I would start bouncing around again. My parents never really did anything to discourage that belief, until I was old enough to figure things out for myself. Somehow, I can’t blame them. Heh-heh.
I thought that pregnancy just infected some women, like a virus, and I remember hoping that when it struck me, I’d be married so that I’d have a man to help provide for it. I thought teenage mothers were just REALLY unlucky, and I hoped I wouldn’t be one.
Then my best friend Stacey explained sex to me when I was six…but in such cloaked terms that for awhile, I thought anal sex was really how kids were conceived. I thought pregnant women were kind of nasty after that.
My big brother told me that I was going to grow a penis, and I got very upset and cried about it because I didn’t want one.
I also thought for awhile that boys menstruated, too, because I remember seeing a diagram of Pampers that mentioned the different “leak absorption areas” for boys and girls. Somehow, in my head, that meant that men, like women, bled every month. (I remember telling my brother this, very authoritatively, and the fact that he didn’t want to believe me just made me even more smug.)
And I remember, being raised Protestant, that my mother told me never to picture God in my head…because trying to give God a face was a sin. I couldn’t help picturing a white-haired old man in a black suit, though, and every time I said my prayers, I hoped that God didn’t notice the picture in my mind.
Okay, I’m full of these weird things. haha As usual.
When I was little one of our dogs got run over, but mom didn’t tell me this. She and dad told me the dog got married and had to move with his wife. I didn’t think too much about this, until mom WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY later in life commented that the dog had been run over. I was probably 17 at the time, and I actually started to say outloud “Huh-UH! Sparky got married!” Then it occurred to me how impossible that was. haha Was still very funny.
I had a friend with an older brother. They knew EVERYTHING about sex (also known as S–E--X). Anyway, when my friend was explaining to me how it happened, I thought that the penis went through the woman, and out her butt. (btw, I realize that is a lovely way to say it, but didn’t know how else to explain the way I thought it worked when I was 6).
I thought attorney was a word my dad made up. I couldn’t say “lawyer” when I was a little kid for some reason. My mouth just wouldn’t say it, so my dad told me to say “attorney” instead. I thought he made it up. haha
I also didn’t believe that people called dogs canines, because I couldn’t find it in the dictionary that I had. Of course, I looked under “K” for K9.
When my teacher in the 3rd grade called role, we were required to say what lunch we wanted (option 1 o 2 for school lunch, or if we brought our lunch, we had to indicate that too). I remember my teacher getting so mad any time anyone said “Brung”. She’d always tell us that “brung” is not a word. I remember thinking how stupid she was, because I knew “brung” was a word!
I can’t think of any more right now, but I’m sure I’ll remember some more tonight! haha