make-believe

I used to believe…

when my daughter was 9, she had an imagined father figure. One day, she said: "I know he is my father, he walks with me, he talks to me, he says, I am his very own.."

I used to believe…

one night i heard a monster growl. i screamed and my mom came running in with an aerosol can and claimed to capture them inside somehow. i imagined them all sitting in this cylindrical cell. i still believe in monsters, but not in spray-cans.

I used to believe…

My four year old daughter has four imaginary friends: Salads, a broadway performer; Corona, her imaginary daughter; John Allen Scott, Scott for short who is her life(husband); and Neckalace, Scott's boyfriend. She makes up crazy songs, like all kids do and when we ask where she heard it she says,"Oh, Scott has that CD."

I used to believe…

When I was little, I never believed in Santa Clause, Big Foot, or any other imaginary creature because I was smart, skeptical of what adults told me, and knew what to believe or not. This aggravated my mother who taught me to think this way so she decided to play a trick on me. So when I would lose a tooth she would always leave me a gold dollar (I only played along so I would get some money), but she would also make tiny footprints outside my room with her finger in the dirt leading up to my window, and she would sprinkle some fine silver glitter in a little path to my pillow. The next day she would be all excited and say she wished she could have seen her. Needless to say I believed in the tooth fairy until I was about 8 years old. Sneaky mom.

I used to believe…

At the age of eight or so I found out that Santa didn't really come down the chimmney and leave behind presents, but I refused to believe that he didn't actually exist; instead I insisted that he had a remote control that he used to make my parents buy me toys at the right time of year, because he was so old that he was probably retired anyway, and besides, my parents would NEVER buy me toys on their own...

I always wondered how on earth did the tooth fairy could carry those big 50p coins. All my friends had 50p for every tooth they lost. As fairies are smaller than a thumb.

I was putting my daughter to bed one night at the age when she was not only losing teeth, but also her belief in the tooth fairy. As I left her room, she told me, "Now don't forget my tooth!" I told her that was the tooth fairy's job to remember, not mine, but she insisted that the tooth fairy and I were one and the same. I asked her if I *looked* like the tooth fairy, for goodness sakes, and she replied, "Well, you put on a costume." It was really hard for me not to crack up laughing!

I used to believe…

Where I grew up, I lived in an apartment with a porch but no fireplace. One year I got a present from Santa on the porch. Being morally afraid of Santa every year of Christmas (until we moved) I would make sure I would lock the porch door tight and place booby traps so Santa wouldn't come through. But every year I would get a present.

I believed zombies were everywhere and they came out at night to get you...making that horrible moaning sound and dragging one leg. I chose the bedroom furthest away from the top of the stairs so I would be the last to be eaten and therefore, have a chance to escape as the zombies came to get us.

I also was told that due to not having a chimney, Santa had a magic key. I would listen intently, and I swore one year I hear the keys jingling then opening the front door!

i was born on easter monday, so my mom used to like to tell a story about how the easter bunny brought me a day late cause there was not enough room in his basket the day before- i used to believe that this was true and told my entire grade one class about it!

I used to believe…

When you are riding an escalator, look carefully when you're at the very bottom and there is a flash of greenish light.

I used to believe that magic alligators lived under the escalator. They kept it going around, and were basically friendly creatures, unless you failed to jump as you got off the escalator. Then, they might come up out of there and bite your feet.

I tell my 3 year old kid now that there's alligators under there. He says hi to them every time.

I used to believe…

My father told my sister and I one year on Christmas eve that Santa and the reindeer were getting really tired of all of the milk and Christmas cookies that all the nice girls and boys left him and that what Santa would REALLY like was just a beer and a salami sandwich.

Did we leave it for him? You bet!

Look for my dad's story about the children in China above!

I used to believe…

One year at Christmas, my parents were tired of being woken at the wee hours of the morning, so my father told us a little white lie. He actually told us that there had been SO MANY children born in China in the past year that Santa could not POSSIBLY make it to our house before 8 a.m. that year, and that we needed to stay in bed until then. I don't remember anymore whether or not it worked.

My father had all kinds of Santa stories - look for the one about beer and salami below!

I used to believe…

Without any prompting from stories or movies, I believed faeries, elves, and many other such creatures were real from a very young age... faeries were generally small and had wings, but elves were beautiful people, roughly human-sized with long pointy ears, usually had no wings, liked to sing to the stars at night, and sometimes gatheried into great shining elven armies and made war on bad creatures or people who really pissed them off. Maybe I was accidentally channelling JRR Tolkien or something. :D That was all before I read my big bro's Dungeons & Dragons set, too. Imagine my surprise some years later when I read Lord of the Rings...

I can't look at the mirror in the dark, even at 14 i can't. But it's not because of the following:
I remember the Bloody Mary thing. Ya know I researched that and found a whole bunch of info on it and even though I knew it couldnt be true I've always been creeped out. I tried chanting Bloody Mary according to the ditrections, but I always panicked and left the bathroom, somehow I always thought that the room was red and the door would be locked..from the outside.Creepy.

I used to believe…

When I was four or five years old, my parents and I were living in an apartment at the time. It was Christmas, and I asked how Santa Claus got in, because we had no chimney. My mother told me Santa had to come in through the front door. I pointed and asked why I hadn't heard the bells on the wreath (hanging on the front door), and my parents both failed miserably in not laughing.

I used to believe…

when i was young, my mother and my much older sisters would tell me that if i played with my shadow against the wall, that while i was sleeping at night, the shadow would come alive and wreak havoc in the house. for many years, i was scared to even look at my shadow. many of the young children in my family believed this.