Had you lived in Spain 1974 you would have greatly enjoyed Franco’s last months. He had scores and scores of bullet ins. With lots of fancy words like peritonitis.
When I was 6, I believed that people changed their names every now and then. I couldn’t imagine someone keeping their same name for their whole lives. I figured the name change would kick in once I hit age ten or so, and I would get to choose.
So one day I was 6 or 7 years old on an airplane with my father, and the flight attendant asked me, “What’s your name?” and I replied, “I haven’t decided (my next name) yet”. She looked at me quizzically, and so did my father, who apparently hadn’t gotten the we-change-names-every-now-and-then memo.
I remember thinking that after a Presidential election, the loser got to be Vice-President. I didn’t understand political parties, and how that would invite assassinations.
Of course, that’s the way it originally worked, before the 12th Amendment.
50 years ago, you could change your name when you felt like it. Several of my friends (women) changed their names when they were old enough to make their own decisions: it’s like your clothes: when you are young, your parents choose your name and your clothes: when you get older, you get to make your own choices.
I can remember a talk-back radio lawyer explaining that you could use any name you wanted, but that courts would assume you were doing so for criminal purposes or to avoid debt: 60 years ago, when my relative worked in Chicago, public hospital patients often had a different name (with no medical record) when they came in.
I was told: “Every 4th child born in the world is Chinese”. You are the 4th child in our family, so you are Chinese. And they would talk to me in “Chinese” and I would cry because I didn’t understand them.
That was the basis of a Little Rascals episode…
When Mickey reads something in a jokebook stating that one out of every four children born is Chinese, he begins to worry that his new baby brother or sister will be Chinese as well. The Gang put Mickey at ease by telling him that it will not be so bad to have a Chinese sibling. The gang then introduce Mickey to Spanky’s friend Lee Wong. Once he has learned that people are people no matter what their ethnic background, Mickey is happy—until he discovers that his much-anticipated “kid brother” is not only a girl, but twins to boot.
In my younger days, I would look at the TV listings to see what daytime shows I would be missing due to being at school. Besides the usual game shows and soap operas, one program title intrigued me: “To Be Ann.” It seemed to be on various channels at different times, and I was curious to see who wanted to be Ann. It sounded like a soap opera, so my interest in following up waned as time went by.
We were, and then . . . fission. I became the radioactive product, and Trinopus became a far more stable element.
Tripler
Hey man, I can’t explain it. It’s just science.
He doesn’t know me very well, does he? Hehehehehe
It’s like I’m talking to myself, because you don’t know me very well, do ya? 
Tripler
Boom.
Grin! It’s like finding a long-lost brother!
Start a thread, reunite a family. What a place we have here.
Ha ! I had a blanket that had a little hole in it, so I’d put it over my head with just my nose poking out. Did that every night, over an embarrassingly long period.
Our local equivalent to TV Guide always had a page giving the preview of the TV Guide for next week, including a shot of next week’s front cover. To me, this meant next week’s TV Guide was obviously already printed, including the preview page for the following week, so all the TV Guides for all eternity were already ready and somebody over there knew what would be on TV in 3 years, etc.
Shrimp were little pink things that came in a can and tasted funny. It took a few years until I found out these were aquatic bugs I was eating whole; at that point I stopped eating them. I haven’t eaten a shrimp willingly in about 43 years.
Similarly, around that age, I thought the clicking noise of a turn signal “allowed” the car to make a turn.
Heh. You invented preformationism Preformationism - Wikipedia
I believed that gas stations were built over underground gasoline deposits, which is why there were always several gas stations clustered together. It must have been clever city planning that allowed them to mostly be on corners.
When I was in stationery stores I’d look to see if they sold checkbooks. But I never saw one for sale in any store. They were obviously very valuable because you could buy anything with them. I thought a checkbook would probably cost a million dollars.
When I was very small, I thought that Noah measured the ark with a measurement called a Q*bert.
Also, I believed until some time in the second grade that there was a very important historical figure named Richard Stands. I kept waiting to learn about him, but we never did. Finally I saw the words to the pledge of allegiance written out and understood my mistake.
My brother and I tried to send Morse Code messages to each other at night in our bedroom using flashlights. We were convinced that signalling “SOS” out the window would result in the police coming to our house. Tried it- didn’t work.