A childhood belief about tv

I remember once when my grandmother--a dear old soul, but never the sharpest tool in the shed--was watching a Western with my family, and she asked, "How did they film that? Did they have movie cameras back then?"

None of us made a sound, but the silent laughter was deafening.

She also thought, when somebody got killed in a movie, then they really were dead.

She could never get the concept of that show, "Police Squad" either--you remember, the show that was like "Airplane," but it made fun of cop shows. There would be a cop (Leslie Nielsen) and a bad guy firing at each other, and the camera would pull back to reveal that they were, like, two feet apart. No matter how many times we explained to grandma that the show was a spoof, and was supposed to be stupid, she'd still say, "Well, that's just silly. How can they miss! Even I could hit somebody that close!"

I have a zillion stories about her like that. TV was a lot more fun when she was around.