Once, when I was only 3, Mom put a great breakfast on the table but it started to smell really bad...Dad announced very ominously that there was a skunk in the courtyard and that we children were to STAY IN THE HOUSE! Dad then went outside and tracked that skunk to the pumphouse, later coming in to say the skunk was dead. Being I didn't understand what dead meant, I always expected that "dead" skunk to come back and GET ME & I no longer wanted to play outside by myself. That unreasonable fear of skunks stayed with me well into middle-age. Childhood experience must be stronger than common sense!
A childhood belief about general
others believed things like this
- if you got sprayed by a skunk you had to have a bath in tomarto sauce— rob
- I used to believe that a street sign that read "Dead End" meant that there were dead people buried there.Anon
- I used to believe that if you swallowed your gum that you would crumble up and smell like a dead animal !!!!— jordan
- I used to believe that the rays of sun coming through clouds were how God led newly dead souls into heaven.— Jenni
- I used to think that raisins were dead flies. I only recently started to eat them again.— Toinette'
- I used to think that when I saw someone on TV whom I knew to be dead , it meant that it was his or her ghost.— Sophie