A childhood belief about technology

I use to believe that when you faxed someone something the paper would somehow travel through the machine through some wires and tunnels in the ground where workers would read it and laugh at the sender and into the next machine. The first few times I used a fax machine i would fold the paper I wanted faxed in half so that no one else coud read my message then fax it. It was a few months later, and many blank faxes before someone told me (amid laughter) how a fax machine worked.