[Grand Rapids, Mi, circa 1953]
In first grade, a classmate said that she liked me and was going to visit me on Saturday. I played on front of my house for hours looking out for her arrival, but she never came.
On Monday, I found that she had been killed crossing a busy street that her traveling to my house would have taken her. I was young enough to believe that I had some responsibility and had some ambiguous concern.
Later, the city installed a "WALK/DON'T WALK" signal along with a new traffic control signal at the intersection at which she died.
My macabre experience resonably linked the two events and I realized that all traffic lights were put up only after someone was killed.
A childhood belief about people
others believed things like this
- when i was young i always thought that traffic lights were big lolly pops that changed colour— rudiger2
- I believed that traffic lights had police officers inside them, turning the lights on and off...— CrowHeart
- when i was about 5-8 i used to believe that oompa loompas lived in traffic lights and controlled the lights!!— ~wierd ~
- I used to belive that there was a god living in every traffic light, controlling the traffic!— Sukhi
- On motorways the person at the front of the traffic had set out
first— andy - I used to believe that God controlled the traffic lights. He would decide when it was everybody's turn to go.— Amanda