A childhood belief about cars

Once, before I stopped believing everything my father told me, my brothers and I were riding in the backseat of our new car. I had never seen shoulder-strap adjusters before (elastic-held clips for pulling seatbelts away from smaller people's necks) and had begun to fiddle with them when my father cried out, "Son! Don't touch that!" With conviction in his voice inspired by his insatiable desire to make a fool out of his eldest, he continued, "That is the ejection seat cord! If you pull on that, the rear windshield will blow out and rockets will fire the seat out of the car. It is only to be used in case of an accident. Do you understand?" I felt as if I'd almost put my hand into a shark's mouth. Pale-faced, I asked, "Is there a parachute?"
"Of course there is," he sternly replied. "You need to be able to float down away from the accident. Now don't mess with them anymore, they're very sensitive."
As any kid would do, I then bragged to my friends and my friends' parents about our 'ejection seat' that my dad had told me about. Somehow those good parents kept straight faces and my friends were either clueless enough to believe me or thoughtful enough to let that one slip by. Some eleven years later and it might as well have happened yesterday. Sheesh.