nature

In elementary school in the play field we had oak tree's. On these oak trees there we these sprays of needle like things that I was told that if you stare at them they will spit on you. To this day I still don't stare at those things...LOL

I was told that in order to make a toothpick, they had to chop down and use an entire tree. One tree = one toothpick. I couldn't figure out how anyone could be that wasteful.

I remember watching a television show about how SOMEDAY the sun would turn into a red giant and burn the Earth up.

Well, I thought that meant like NEXT WEEK, so for days I kept glancing at the sun through squinted eyes to see if it was getting bigger.

I used to tell my sister that the equator didn't move with the Earth, but the Earth moved and the equator would pass over it, and that's why it was so hot in summer. She believed me for a few years.

When I was younger I either heard someone say or saw on tv that if you speak to plants it's good for them. So when I would walk home from school I would stop in front of my house and talk to our tree(mind you, the tree was probably done growing). I would tell him he was the best tree on the street and that he had the greenest leaves. When fall would come around and the trees would start to lose their leaves, I would root him on. I'd tell him he was the strongest and toughest tree, and not to give up his leaves yet. Like it was some sort of contest. Lucky for me it was a healthy tree or I would have had a lot more disappointment in my childhood. As a red sox fan, I think I'd had enough(until last year!)

Trains ran past the Hudson River that I lived near as a boy-- they still do, in fact. I always used to think that clouds were a product of pollution-- that the trains puffed smoke and steam, which stayed up in the sky to form clouds. I asked my mum about this, and she agreed with me.

I at the time was very proud of myself-- I'd figured out a force of nature, and was thereby smarter than all of the kids in my class. When my teacher asked said class about clouds-- and what they were, I immediately raised my hand and stated my theory on cloud production.

Needless to say, I didn't believe her for the longest time, 'cos my mum told me I was right.

When I was little I used to think snow came out of lights, like daylight and street lights.
During the day, it was light everywhere so it snowed everywhere. At night, because it was dark when the street lights were on, you could only see it falling in the light.

One of the weirder things I genuinely believed in was a physical border between the world of the imagination and the world of the 'real'. This border was a sharp division (like the equator or something) which sat on the very outmost edge of the universe and represented a border which mankind could never cross.

I used to believe if you could build a spaceship with a warp drive, a person could jump to the border between the two realities and put their hand through the curtain, to the other side. Everything that existed in 'unreality' lay on the other side... with effort you could bring people and objects back through the curtain - (they were unable to cross through on their own free will)- things like the animated Transformers on TV, or the imaginary heroes from books that only existed in your mind.

Later on this would evolve into my working definition of the afterlife for many years.

When I was about 5 or 6, an older kid at my Day Care told me that if I put a stick in the ground and stuck a leaf on it near the top, it would grow into a tree. I believed him, so everyday when we were out on the playground, I would take a stick, stick a leaf on top, and stick it in the mulch around the jungle gym..Then I would yell at anyone who even touched it "YOU'RE KILLING MY TREE!"

I grew up just North of New York City where we obviously had no farms or livestock. We had relatives in Kansas, and every summer we would visit. Driving along the plains and prairie there is not too much to see, except the occasional windmill rising up from the endless rolling fields.

Not knowing why a farmer would place giant "fans" in the middle of his property, I assumed that this was to blow the smell of the cows away whenever the farmer was working in the field.

My brother, sister, and I had a HUGE climbing tree in our front yard. We named it Ms. Hokewell (I have no idea how we came up with that name). We would talk to the tree and "spend time with Ms. Hokewell". If any of her branches came off or someone hurt Ms. Hokewell, my brother, sister and I would get upset, and try to tape the branches back on or wrap any "injuries" up in bandages. We really thought that "she" had a mind of her own.

My father told me that cotton grew inside aspirin bottles. I believed it for a long time. I still think of him when I open up a new pill bottle and pull out the cotton.

I can vivdly remember my sister laughing when I suggested to her that it was impossible to get dirty in winter because all the dirt was frozen. Seemed like sound logic as a kid being told it was time to take a bath.

I used to think that the moon was just a reflection of Earth. I used to stand at my window at night and wave upwards, thinking that my mirror-image would be waving back down at me.

When i was about 6 i went on a trip with my school to a water cleansing factory, we were then told how the water was cleansed and that we could be drinking water which dinosours had 'pee'd' in it and i was drinking their urine! I didn't drink water for a long time after that, i stuck to fizzy bottled pop...

I used to believe that when it thundered that was God's stomach rumbling because he was hungry, when it rained that was God crying, the wind was God breathing and i thought that lightening was God's lightbulb blowing.