my grandmother is the second oldest of six sisters and a brother, and she's a very short woman. several of her younger sisters are a bit taller than her, and my mother is pretty tall. I was also a very tall child. this led me to believe that when getting old, people actually "shrunk", and eventually disappeared. this was a short lived-belief: my uncle was very tall, and I went to his funeral.
A childhood belief about getting older
others believed things like this
- That everyone had the same amount of skin and that short people were fat and tall people were skinny.Anon
- My dad told me that playing basketball makes you taller. Basketball players are tall, so I believed him.Anon
- I didn't want to get tall when I was younger because I believed that I would fall over. — Gabi
- i used to think water towers were houses for really tall people. I thought they had big heads to.— Alyssa
- I used to believe that when you are 90 years old, you are also 90 feet tall.Anon
- I used to believe that eating vegetables would make me particularly tall— Aleksandr