make-believe

I used to believe…

When I was a kid, I was told about Santa Clause like most young children. The difference is that when Santa was in your house delivering toys, if you were awake and tried to take a peek at santa that he would spit in your eyes. The spit would make you blind until he would leave if not for life.

I used to believe that if you flushed the toilet, turned around three times, and said "Bloody Mary" then looked in the mirror, you would see a woman's face covered in blood. Even though i knew it wasn't true, i still wanted to be sure. So everytime I flushed the toilet, I would wash my hands first, flush, and run.

I was magic and had coins that could appear behind my ears. My very old, very credible neighbor used to pull them out for me.

I used to believe…

The gurgling of water in the s-pipe under the bathroom sink was a monster. It needed to be fed bits of lollipop on a regular basis. If it was not fed then Santa Clause would know. Then I would not receive any presents. I was 6 1/2 when I thought this. The monster is probably quite hungry now as it hasn't been fed in over 20 years.

I was in fourth grade when i decided that I ought to have an imaginary friend. My first one was a pilgrim, and her name was Sandra. I imagined her walking under a schoolbus after about a week, though, because she didn't like to read.
Then came Kim. I hated her after three days, because she was too perfect. She was a shape changing fairy with blonde hair. I then imagined Kim spontaniously combusting, which was very fun.
Then came Elanor, my soul mate. She liked to read, was far from perfect, and she only stopped by when I wanted her. We lived happily ever after, to this very day.
"We're in love, aren't we, El?"
"Yes, dear, we are."

I used to believe…

When our oldest boy was 5, we bought him a bow-tie, in a brown paper bag, for his first school concert, but his little brother cried because he'd missed out on a present.
In a moment of desperation, we told him, "There's no need to cry, your present is still in the bag."
Of course, the bag was empty, but we told him that only Mommies and Daddies could see the little Fresh-Air inside.
Well, we had that little Fresh-Air doing somersaults, jumping in and out of the bag and all sorts of circus tricks.
He carried that crumpled little brown paper bag around for months, showing it to envious friends and to grown-ups with looks of barely strangled laughter on their faces. We had to warn family in advance that the Fresh-Air was being brought for a visit.
Things came to a head 6 months later when he realised that nobody was feeding the Fresh-Air.
We told him, "He's eating the inside of the paper bag"...
"But there's no holes in the bag", said he, triumphantly...
"But it only eats the inside of the bag", we shot back...
That bought us another couple of weeks. He swears blind now that he twigged it straightaway.
We all know different...

I am the youngest of four kids and I guess my Mom was getting tired of the holiday gift giving thing so when the opportunity came up to burst the bubble on the Easter Bunny, she was happy to stop having to give out the Easter Baskets. The same happened with Saint Nicholas' gift giving a few weeks before Christmas. To me this meant the death knoll for Santa Clause and the almighty gift giving he enabled so I remember my thinking I would never, ever admit to not believing in Santa. That led to my Mom finally coming out and asking me at 15 that I really didn't still believe did I? Oh yes, of course I did I lied.

I heard our renter scream when she came into her room and saw a big, dark shadow on her ceiling. I thought it was the boogie man coming to get us. So I never went back to that room again! (I later was told it was a leak)

I used to believe…

When I was about 9, I had some friends who found the name "Kevin Traas" scratched onto the door of an old disused toilet at school. They took this to mean that a ghost named Kevin Traas (pronounced "Kevin Trays") lived there.
At playtime they would wander round with a plastic Ghostbuster PKE meter (which they termed an "Amy Peeker") to try and catch him. He even found his way into our creative writing lessons, along the lines of
"I went to scool one day an I found Kevin Traas an he tryed to kill me but I got him with a gun and he was dead"
Our teacher couln't make head or tail of it.

I used to believe…

My Mum once told me that my freckles were fairy kisses. I remember thinking is was gross that they wore brown lipstick,and wishing that the fairies would stop liking me so much.

I believed in elves and fairies and one night a bunch of neighborhood children and I went to a toadstool ring under a full moon and we saw them dancing!

So...I still believe!

I used to believe…

When I was about 5 years old, my cousin and I used to tell people that we were half "martians" and every year on our birthday they came and picked us up in the spaceship to take us to our "mars-parties" and we were gone for a month but to the "earthlings" it was only 1 day.

I used to believe that People who had wigs were aliens in disguse and once I went up to one and took off his wig to see if he had a green head underneath. Of course he didn't but I still go a clip round the ear!

I used to believe…

When I was young, I believed that if I shined a high powered flashlight, like a MagLite, into the night sky, that I could signal UFOs and communicate. I would flash the light on and off into the sky, and think my message to the aliens, figuring that my blinking was translating my thoughts to a code the aliens would understand. My communications were generally invitations to come visit me.

I used to have an imaginary friend who went everywhere with me. We had just moved and my mom was talking to a new neighbor, and I came running up to her crying because my imaginary friend was stuck in the fence and couldn't get out. I made her come to the fence and pull my imaginary friend off.

Another time, we were in a store and we went to the checkout. After we left and were walking home, I started crying and screaming. My imaginary friend was still at the checkout sitting by the cash register. My mom had to go back into the store, lift my imaginary friend off the counter, and walk out of the store with it.

I used to believe…

One Christmas I didn't leave a mince pie out for Christmas. Dad asked me why. I told him he would be having millions of them and I would get better presents as Father Christmas would not be forced to eat another mince pie.