at home: around the house

I used to believe that, after going to bed with cold sheets and blankets, my mom would go into another room and turn a knob to slowly heat up my bedcovers. I remember feeling so relieved when they began to get warm.

When i was little i always wanted to be helpful! One day i wanted to help my dad mow the lawn. Him being in a hurry told me that i could get my toes chopped off. To this day i still scared to move the lawn.

When I was about five, my sister would tell me that the funky noises coming from behind the big chest freezer was a valasa-raptor from Jurassic Park. I would have to make the "Caoo-Caooing" noises it made in the movie to fool it every time i walked by.

In the old house where I grew up there was pink insulation on the attic floor between the beams. My parents always told me not to step on it or I would fall through the ceiling. I thought it contained some sort of magic power to propel me upwards through the roof. I was disappointed to learn years later that they'd meant the ceiling of the floor beneath me!

When I was about 4 or 5 my mom told me not to break the coffee table because "a lot of money went into that". Of course being a small child I tried to break it open so I could get the money out!

I used to believe that inside everything with a clock(alarm clocks, computers. etc) there was a little man who changed the numbers every minute. and that he had his wn clock with it's own little man and that there was an endless chan of little men in clocks.

I used to believe that if I put my arm in the washing machine while it was going that it would rip off.

My parents always told me about "Not wasting electricity!" Well when outside, I came across the electric meter. I gave myself the idea that if the meter got to showing all 9s, we would be out of electricity forever, so that's why it was bad to waste it.

When I was little I asked my mother about a painting we had. It was of a man in armour on a horse. She explained that it was 'Don Quixote" and was from a book she loved. I heard 'Donkey Hotay' so I thought the book must be about the 'donkey' the man in the painting was riding. It was a number of years before I learned the truth.

When i was little my sister told me that the small island that would connect to the beach infront of our house would flip over at night and zombies would start to have a party on it.

I used to think "forced air" heating was "four stair" - somekind of multilevel system.

When I was much younger (possibly 4-7 years old) I used to spend my play time running around the the hot Houston sun - video games... nope. All summer long I scoured the backyard with my cousins imagining ourselves in some sort of beautiful and wilderness filled jungle. We had quite an imagination... amongst the "jungle" of a backyard, there were scattered *tree support rods* (Spelling*) used to help the healthy growth of young trees. Of course, we did not know this at our tender age of naievity.

Now, to give you a bit of a visual, the rods are described as followed: Rusty old rods about 5 - 5 1/2 feet tall. They are at most 4 centimeteres in diameter. Furthermore, at the foot of the rods, there was a triangle shaped design (another rusted piece of copper that was welded on). The edges were sharp and stuck out about 4 inches on either side of the rod. This was where a gardner would press down with his/her feet to dig and secure the rod into the ground.

Much to our dismay, we were way off on what exactly these "rods" were and what they may have been used for. My eldest cousin, at the time, was maybe 7 or so years old... He used to tell us and believed it himself likewise that these rods were the devil's unused canes growing out of hell - unused because of old age. The fact that they were rusted and "burnt looking" and sticking out of the ground - leaving the sharp edged triangle unexposed until completely yanked out of the ground - made this fabricated story seem so REAL and true. Now, we never feared the rods and merely respected their space and went on with our expeditions without dismay.

Kids... they say and think the darnest things.

I used to believe that those tanks by peoples' houses, containing propane, contained milk, just in case the people ran out!

I used to believe that if something was moved from its proper place and not put back it would get really moody and wouldn't work!
Of course, it turns out now that I actually have OCD, so maybe this was an early sign?

When i was in my tween years and started using a curling iron, my brothers made me believe that if i left the house without turning the curling iron off, it would explode and burn our house down. Then i realized that it had a self power OFF option and wanted to slap my brothers in the face for worrying me to death!!

When I was 9, my mum told me that some places on the attic floor would collapse if i even touched them and that I would fall to my death....I then fell against one of these boards and fainted from concussion. I woke up an hour later screaming, I died! I died! My parents were baffled. Duh.