death

I used to believe…

This story is still a source of hilarity in my family whenever it is recalled. When I was a very small child, my family had goldfish and tropical fish as pets. Occasionally, when one of the fish would die, I would see my mother or father removing the fish from the tank and giving it a rather inglorious funeral service by flushing it down the commode. It happened that one of my aunts died and my mom and dad were readying themselves for the funeral and when they explained to me where they were going and why, I apparently asked them if they were going to flush Aunt Wanda down the toilet. Of course, up until that point in my young life, my only experience of death were the fish being transported away through the toilet.

I used to believe that when you died your body would kinda crack open in a line over head down your shoulders and arms and so on for the blood to get out. I have no idea where I got that idea from.

I used to believe…

Someone told me that I would die from blood poisoned if I got ink stains on my hands. A couple of days after being stained, I would see a blue line developing from the stain, and I'd be dead when the blue line reached the heart! I was terrified!

I used to believe…

I used to think that my parents would die before they got home. So I used to believe that if I just said something like: "I hope my parents don´t die" to god, many, many times they wpuld get home safe.
But they always did so I don´t know if it helped or was just something in my head.

I used to believe…

My dad would drive past a funeral palour on our way home from school and it was called 'Docking Funerals' I thought for years that you had to dock a funeral when sombody died.

I used to believe…

When my grandad died I was only 4 years old. My mum told me that he was needed by God to paint the skies blue as he was a painter and decorator. When ever there was a brilliant blue sky I would look up and say to my parents and my nan that it was grandad's shift starting!

I used to believe…

My friends fooled my to touch a wire by a telephone pole and said that I would die before the end of the week afterwards. I was really scared!

I belived that you could died if you laid your hair in the wrong way. If you one day had your fringe in the wrong direction you would die at night! My older friends were really good at keeping me beliv in this...

I used to believe…

As a kid I used to believe that the flower holders in cemetaries were for the dead people to come out of their coffins to take a drink from after they were filled up by relatives when they left flowers.

I used to believe…

The old vicar of our parish church is buried near the boundary of the churchyard - you can see the grave clearly from the road. At primary school, many of us believed that if you went to the churchyard at midnight on the anniversary of his death and said the right words (unfortunately for amusement purposes I cannot now remember them) you would see his ghost fall from the top of the church spire and into his grave.

I don't know where we got the idea he had topped himself by jumping off the spire, but many of us believed this for years. It was only as a teenager that my parents disabused me of this notion.

I belived that when someone died they would be watching down on you from above....fair enough! But it led to a strange paranoia about whether or not they were watching me whilst I was on the toilet.....

I thought the cremations were for people that wanted their love ones buried at home.

I used to think that muesli was the same as hamster food. So I fed it to my hamster. For three weeks. It died. Something about condensed milk?

I used to believe…

When my granded died I thought he turned into a daffodil. He would buy me dresses in my dreams and I would search for them in the morning and be shocked that they weren't there. Sometimes I was scared of daffodils because I thought my grandad was angry that I had lost the dresses.

I used to believe…

At my first ever camping trip I was horrified to see a small piece of burnt twig in the potato billy. I pointed this obvious hygiene hazard to the scoutmaster. He simply used his knife to flick the offending ember out of the boiling water and offered the following advice. "Son, it takes a ton of s**t to kill you: and then it's got to fall on your head."

I used to believe…

When I was younger I thought you could die only from being shot or hit in the head or the heart. I have now found out you can die from everything from an undercooked hamburger to alcohol poisoning, just to name a few.