Every time I went on the underground in London, I used to queue up to get a ticket inspector to let me through rather than use the automated gates, which I was terrified of. One day, aged about 13 and after many years of gate-avoidance, I was travelling with my father who got fed up waiting for me and finally asked why I couldn't use the ticket gates like normal people. I explained that if you didn't get the timing just right and run through at exactly the right time you would get cut in half. I'd been told that dozens of people got killed on the underground every year because the gates caught them, and I wasn't brave enough to risk it.
He was horrified by my gruesome childish beliefs. "But that's rubbish! They have sensors and things to stop you getting hurt - who put this nonsense in your head?". "Er - you did, dad." He had spun me this yarn when I was four and instantly forgotten it.
A childhood belief about trains
others believed things like this
- I used to believe that elevators were gates to other worlds and the void.Anon
- Until i was about 6, i used to believe that when the police gave you a ticket, it was a ticket to the movies!— mari
- When I was little I thought the london underground was a terrorist organisationAnon
- I used to believe that Automatic Toll Boths had underground room where people counted your money.— Dillon
- For a very long time I believed that there were little men underground that changed the traffic lights!— Melissa
- The Beatles song "Ticket to Ride" always came out "She's got a tick in her eye."— Kurt