media

I made up a theory when I was about 5, that every night when I was asleep, all the cartoon characters that I would watch on TV the next day would sneak into the house and climb into the back of the TV before I got up the next morning.
I didn't really believe it was true. I wonder why I made up this 'theory'?

I used to believe…

Until quite recently I thought that all cartoons were made by drawing the same picture over and over and the pictures then being flicked in front of a camera, like the flickbooks you make in school. I imagined a poor, underpaid Korean man (for some reason exploited workers were Korean) standing in front a camera and flicking thousands and thousands of pictures.

I used to believe that if you made a movie film, the pictures would be kept in a pretty coloured envelope just like still photographs, except that the content of each picture would keep moving according to the piece recorded by the camera. For some reason, I never associated a home-made movie with a movie of the kind seen in a cinema.

I thought that the news anchors on tv were actors, even though the news was real. It made sense, since people on tv and in the movies had real names and screen names.

I always thought there was a magic way to step into the television from behind, but could never account for the shrinkage in size I noticed with most of the characters. It puzzled me for so long where that entrance was too, seing as how after looking behind the tv i could see no remote openings.

I used to think that the world was black and white until some clever person invented colour and painted everything. This was because I used to watch the old black and white films......

I used to believe…

My mother had my sister and I *convinced* that there were only 7 child actors in Hollywood. No matter how much we protested that they all looked different, she still insisted that they were all the same actors. Let's just say that we were really confused us when we watched the Cosby Show.

To this day, I have no idea why she lied to us like that.

I once was absolutely terrified of steam or any other white gas. This was because i'd seen a halloween special of the simpsons. At the end it showed the family getting turned inside out by a mysterious fog. They then started dancing around and singing.
I didn't want to join a freak show!

I used to believe that the show Unsolved Mysteries was 100% true. My father used to watch it with me eveynight, and I'd get so scared, because when they showed reinactments, I thought it was real life footage. I remember wondering "Of they have it on tape? Why is it unsolved?"

I used to believe…

when i was really little there was this TV show with Lee Majors... i'm pretty certain it was The Fall Guy... so in this one episode, him and his sidekick were driving through this desert with bad guys chasing after them... so the sidekick is holding these batteries like hot potatoes and he's throwing these hot batteries out the window at the bad guys... and they were exploding and blowing up the cars that were chasing them!

so i asked my mom if batteries would blow up if you threw them... and for whatever reason she was like "yes, don't ever throw batteries! thats dangerous..." and that was all the proof i needed... i thought for years that batteries were like bombs and would explode if i dropped them or knocked them too hard...

I used to believe…

My dad was a cop, who worked every crazy shoft there was.
I used to believe that Andy Griffith was my Dad and I could watch him at work via the tv.
They were both cops and both named Andy. I just couldn't figure out why Opie never came home.

I once believed that newscasters could see you through the telly 'cos they were looking straight at you, and was always on my best behaviour in front of the tv. :)

I used to think that the characters on TV shows were real people. For example, I used to watch re-runs of Bewitched all the time, and I really wanted to be friends with Tabitha.

I also wondered why some of the people (in what I later learned were old programs) dressed in such out-of-date clothes.

I used to think that the only things they were allowed to show on television on Sundays were golf and the news, because that's what my dad was always watching. I thought it was some religious thing and they weren't allowed to show anything that kids might enjoy watching.

I used to believe…

When i was younger, my step father had a very large set of speakers that were almost as big as me for his sterio system. When ever he would listen to the radio, i swore that there were little tiny people that lived in the speakers that would do all the talking, when i asked my step dad about it, he told me that it wasnt true. but all he could was laugh the day i left a sandwidge by the speaker just incase those tiny radio hosts were hungry.

I used to believe…

My parents allowed me to watch Hitchcock's "The Birds" when I was about 7 years old. To this day I so believe, in the fall when the birds are migrating and sitting on wires, that they are about to attack that the hair on the back of my neck stands up and I have a compulsion to RUN to safety.

I used to believe that TV presenters all lived in the TV and when once confronted with Richard Whitely at a charity do aged approximately 5 years old I marched up to him and asked him 'how he had managed to get out of the telly!'

Altogether now, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh