make-believe

I use to believe that penis' flew away somehow because my dad's friend kept telling me that... my penis flew away.

After awhile, I began to think he chops them off (since he was a chef at my dad's restaurant). So I was pretty scared and around when I was 7 or so, my sister's friend started telling me about stuff like Bloody Mary and Candy Man. One day she told me a little kid got up one night and went to the toilet without the lights on and he then got his penis chopped off (which is basically what is in the Candy Man movie if anyone has seen it) so I was all freaked out at nights and stuff.

It all began to fade away when we moved houses which was around when I was 10. =)

I used to believe…

When we were younger my cousin had me convinced that he came from a toothbrush planet and could change into a toothbrush at wiil. He explained that boys were blue toothbrushes and girls were pink. He made me swear never to tell anyone or he'd be taken back to his 'home planet!'

I used to believe…

When I was five my big brother told me that a big fire ball came round every year. It rolled around the streets sucking people in and killing them. I believed him and was totally terrified. I'm 23 now and he still laughs about it today.

I used to believe…

There was a big window over my parents bed. I used think that a giant would walk through the streets every night peer into people's windows to look at sleeping children. Whenever I slept in my parents bed I would hide way down in the covers so that the giant wouldn't see me.
I would picture him looking in the window and saying to himself, "Nope, no sleeping children here."

I used to believe…

When I was 4, at our play school somebody painted bunny footprints, in blue paint, up and over the wall outside the main door. The teachers told us the easter bunny had hopped to our school, but said nothing about him actually standing in the blue paint, so i thought he had blue feet and pogo-sticked everywhere (hence "hopped to our school")

I used to believe…

When I was about 5, I asked my parents about where the easter bunny gets the chocolate from and they told me that he made the eggs.
I was baffled by this, and then concluded that he must lay them, and until I was 10 i though all chocolate was layed by special rabbits. White chocolate came from white rabbits and dark chocolate came from brown rabbits etc...!

I used to believe…

when i was young, i was petrified of the tooth fairy. for some reason i got it in my head that she was this really old hag who had lost all of her teeth, and she would go around at night to find little kid's teeth that she would then put in her mouth to replace her own lost teeth. it was harder for me to fall asleep on a tooth fairy night than it was on christmas eve ...

I used to believe…

My daughter has always been a cynic. I tried desperately to keep her believing in the fantasy, going so far as to have a friend drop off gifts from Santa inside my house while we were out of town. That worked for another couple of years, every time she'd start to wonder I'd remind her...but finally and mind you she was only 6! She insisted that I tell her if Santa was real...Convinced that she really wanted to know and uncomfortable with out and out lying, especially since she'd been so persistent about her doubts for so many years in her young life, I tried the old "the SPIRIT of Santa is real, the spirit of love and giving..." but no, she wasn't buying any of it and insisted she wanted to know if Santa was a real person.

So finally I broke down and confessed that I was her Santa Claus, and yes I was the one who wrapped her presents and put them under the tree like all little girls and boys parents, and that's why some children recieved more at Christmas than others...While I was rambling her eyes grew huge and round and she blurted out, "Your Santa?! Where are all your reindeer and how do you get around the world in one night???" I guess she wasn't quite as ready not to believe as I had thought :)

I was an army brat, and believed my mother when she told us that all the
"extra" Santas were his "helpers". How else could the newsman announce Santa's departure from the North Pole right after I'd seen him waving from a helicopter on the military base AND ringing the bell for the Salvation army kettle (in several locations I might add). I was perplexed as to how you could tell who the real one was. My mother told me that you could never be sure, so I'd better be nice to them all....

Since we moved every year and even lived in Germany for awhile, my mother was forced to be very creative in explaining the different customs and Christmas quirks wherever we lived. I don't kow exactly when I outgrew my belief, I guess it all just strained my credibility too much. But the highlight of my life was singing Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer while sitting on Santa's knee in the crowded town hall for Ogden, Kansas when I was 9. My friends excitedly told me the next day that I'd been on the radio! With Santa no less. I was quite a hero with my crowd for a while, especially since I had recieved an extra large "special" stocking stuffed with toys and candy from him for my song.

I used to believe…

not my belief, but when I was little, I had a friend who believed the tooth fairy was real because he had seen her. His parents had a friend who had long, really curly blond hair and who was really tiny, and she lived sort of far away so he had never met her. She was in town when he lost his first tooth and they devised a plan. They found a really flowy, gauzy blue dress, and brushed her hair so it was really fluffy and they had her climb in his window in the night to get his tooth. She made sure to make noise so that he would wake up and see her, and I swear, he was in junior high or high school before he was finally convinced that the tooth fairy wasn't real.

I used to believe…

My four year old son Dorian has an imaginary family that consists of Grandpa
and Grandma Dorian who make him warm milk
and tell him stories and a brother named Dorian who always gets into trouble they go on all kinds of adventures that always
happen fifty years ago.

I used to believe…

My mom was frequently laid off from work around Christmastime when I was a kid. I never understood why she was so worried about financial stuff around Christmas. She explained to me that Santa made the gifts himself and brought them for free, but she had to pay the post office a fee for him to deliver them.

I used to believe…

When I was a baby, my brother had an imaginary friend called Brenda Pineapple. Although sometimes, he would tell people that his name was Brenda Pineapple. Wehn I was about 4, he had changed to Johnny Boy, and since I didn't have any interest in having an imaginary friend, he decided to create one for me, and he would make up elaborate things that they would do. When we went places, he would say "Come on Johnny Boy!" and then he would nudge me and I would half-heartedly say "Come on Johnny Girl." The weirdest thing, is his daughter has a couple of imaginary friends, Milo is the main one and he is really bad. If something happens "Milo did it!"

I used to believe…

My imaginary friend was Pogo. I don't know if I got that from the comic strip or not, but he did all the dangerous stuff. Mom tells better stories about Pogo than I can even recall. All I remember is that he was pretty darned sophisticated.

I used to believe…

My 6-year-old sister is convinced that there's a frog in our sink overflow. (This isn't strictly a Used To Believe.) It's a girl frog called Charlie. I think my sis believes this because of the gurgling noise the sink makes when you pour water down the overflow. It doesn't even really sound like croaking...

I used to believe…

My Dad used to do a little trick where he'd take a penny and cup it between his hands, let me blow on his fingers, and then shake his hands and the penny would disappear! WOW! And then he'd retrieve it from my ear! DOUBLE WOW!

I was so enamored of this trick that I pestered him all the time to perform it. Finally he said it only worked with 1943 pennies, and he didn't have one on him today... but if I had one he'd do it.

Of course, 1943 pennies were made of steel-coated zinc (copper was needed for the war effort) and are really rare in circulation. But I didn't know that, I'd just scamper off to rifle through my piggy bank for twenty minutes, unintentionally leaving my dad in peace.

I grew up with snowy winters and I believed for some reason that in winter the "Little People" needed shelter. Consequently, I would make little hollows along the snowbanks for them to get out of the cold. Occasionally I would make more elaborate ones.

It never occurred to me to check to see if they had been used, or where the "Little People" stayed in summer. In fact, I don't recall ever thinking about them at all if there wasn't snow on the ground.

I used to believe…

When I was little I used to tell my younger brother and sisters that our house had an attic, and that there was a girl that had lived up there long ago and they never let her down... I had them believing that there was whole bedroom up there where the girl died, and that her ghost still haunted the place. Of course, we only have a crawlspace with an entrance through my mom's closet, and there's definitely no bedroom up there, but they believed it for a long time. I still get scolded for being such a mean sister, but it was worth it. ^.~

I was the only child, and when I was about 10 I believed I had a brother who lived in a parallel world. I wrote letters to him, and little stories about how we'd eventually run into each other (even though I had no idea how that could happen).

I used to have an imaginary friend named "Nanoo-nanoo" who was made out of electrictiy and of course, lived in the electrical outlets. For my 8th birthday he was the only person I invited. I was crushed he didn't show up.