A childhood belief about traffic lights

My father is a terrible practical joker. He inflicted his sense of humour on all 4 of his children, and, unfortunately, now on my nieces and nephews too. Amongst the things that I believed were:
That dad was a god, with magic powers. He could change traffic lights from red to green, by commanding "lights please change". Miraculously, the lights would change colour - it wasn't until i was about nine that i realised that dad was watching for the lights in the other direction to turn before his command!
He also told me that the giant bales of hay in farmers paddocks were in fact 'wild hay', a type of very shy animal that would move only when no-one was looking at it. Occasionally they were covered in a tarpolen, because they were prone to catch colds, and the farmers were worried about them. I suppose its not that unusual for a city kid like myself to believe this, but unfortunately my older sisters kids - born and bred in the country - believe this as well!
Unfortunately, my father's jokes appear to be genetic - last week i convinced my three year old niece that bread grows on trees. We spent nearly an hour hunting around the backyard for bread to have with dinner. Amazingly, we found a french stick and two rolls - that i had hidden earlier.