death: people

I used to believe that my grandpa died while mowing the lawn. I imagined that as he walked across the lawn, the mower went out of control and flew backwards, severing his legs. I figured that he must've died from the loss of blood, and I felt bad that he had to die in such a cruel way.

Later I learned that he died of a heart attack in his home. I didn't believe my parents when they told me the truth of his death. Lawnmowers still frighten me; I'm afraid that they'll sever my legs, too.

When I was little, I used to believe that if you put your hands in the air, then you couldn't be killed. This was why whenever anyone pulled a gun in Starsky & Hutch, everybody would quickly put their hands up.

When I was a kid I was convinced that the world would end by a nucleur explosion.

As small children, my friend and I believed that when you die you must always lie flat on the ground, face up, arms straight out like a "T", with your eyes shut. It was impossible for people to die any other way.

This wasn't my belief, it was my sister's friend's. When he was a kid he would spend the evenings in the living room with his family. He thought that he had to look at them all in turn in a particular order and if he stopped, then the last person he looked at would die. He was also too scared to tell them why he did this. So every evening he would keep looking at everyone in turn and his siblings got really freaked out!

My mate used to live near a cemetry and we would walk through it occasionally. He used to tell me not to walk on top of the old graves because you'd wake up the dead people.
We did a lot of jumping.

When I was in either kindergarden or early elementary school, the idea of death was creeping around my mind, and I used to think that if i held my breath once in a while, someone else could live just a little while longer because there would be more air for them in the world.

When I was little me and my brother used to have a competition to see who would be the prime minister of the house for a week, and we had policies and debates [yes, as all children do]. One day when I was writing down some policies I saw on the news that someone had committed suicide and that it was tragic, and I thought that committing suicide was mass murder or something. Later on when we had out "debate" I proposed "Everyone that commits suicide should be put in prison for life"... oh my.

My parents didn't get married until I was 4 and my brother was 8. One day my aunt was taking care of us and I asked my borther where my parents were. He said they were getting married, but I thought he said 'buried' and cried until they came home because I thought they were dead.

When I was little I used to believe that those little storage beds that go in the back of a truck, was a coffin. I thought the trucks that had those storage things had dead people in them.

I thought "cemetery" was "Jim and Terry", a couple that were friends with my parents. When anybody mentioned the cemetery, i thought they were talking about Jim and Terry's house.

As a child I believed that when people died a kind of huge soul vaccuum would hover over the deceased's houses and then suck people's souls out up to heaven through some kind of tube. But as time went on and I physically never saw these tubes the belief finally was replaced with atheism

When I was little I believed that people only died at night. So, I'd sleep with my light on thinking that I'd die if it was turned off. I only thought I was safe if someone else was there, like a friend. Until one night when it was lightning and the lights went off, I panicked for awhile and went to sleep at 6 a.m. when I found out I was still alive.

When I was a little kid I believed that everyone's heart in my family beat at the same time. I thought that if one of us died we would feel their heart stop beating.

As my deceased aunt's coffin was being sent into the furnace at the crematorium, my cousin's four year-old son said loudly to his two year-old sister "you do know they all come back as zombies...". He was rapidly silenced by his mum.

When we were quite smallmy sister and i would avoid the dining room. We thought since there was a "living" room that the dining room was the "dying" room". We thought people went in there to die. We were weird kids.