neighbourhood

I thought that the local bars advertising "pool" had swimming pools in them. I swore to myself that when I grew up I would frequent these bars and do nothing but swim all day.

There was a little restaurant three blocks away from the house I grew up in, it had the words "Bar and Grill" painted in the front window. Until around age 9, despite being quite literate, I thought that it actually read "Bar and Girl." Reflecting back, that might not have been such a horrible advertisment to attract the men!

Before I started kindergarten my mother told me that I would be participating in a carpool. I was so excited for school to start. About a week after school had begun I asked my mother when we were getting the car with the pool.

i use to believe at night that indians were coming down my street pounding on there drums i could actually hear them!!

I was terrified of shop dummies or mannequins. I was convinced they were moving behind my back and that every time I turned around they'd get closer and eventually kill me. But then I couldn't look them in the eye either. I had to make sure I was facing them, but with my eyes averted.

I believed for many years if I was caught taking the shortcut to school I would be glued to the ground. I was in grade one when the older kid told me this. I thought I would turn into a statue with birds nesting on my shoulders.

Our church had a charity drive to collect clothing for the poor. My mother bought a pair of mittens to donate. I asked her, "But what if the person who gets them lives somewhere where it's not cold enough to need mittens?" She explained that these clothes were all for people <i>right there in our town!</i> I had no idea that there were poor people so close to us - I thought they all lived in faraway countries, like on the "Save the Children" commercials.

My parents took us children for a drive and I saw this sign on a building that said, "Flea Market". I kept asking my parents,"why do people want to buy fleas?" I never got a reply, or an explaination! It wasn't until I was an adult that I found out that a "flea market" was used goods sale.

I was told that the ice-cream man fills his ice-cream pushcarts with boys who were caught being naughty.
Until i mustered enough courage and sufficient height to steal a look into one of these boxes, i avoided him with great tact (or so i thought!)

When I was little, I always thought handicapped parking places were wheelchair parking only--I actually thought people would park their wheelchairs there, then get up and walk into the building. I could never understand why those spots were never used like that.

When my brother and I were younger, my mother didn't want us wandering around in the grocery store and getting into things. For that reason, she told us that it was illegal to get out of the shopping cart. "What about the other children that are out of the cart?" we asked. "Their mommies are going to be arrested."

We lived one block from a fire station until I was 2-1/2 years old. I heard the sirens and would always run to the window to watch the trucks drive by. My father once carried me outside to watch. As they drove by, I asked him where they were going. He explained they were going to put out a fire at someone's house. I wondered WHY anyone would want to set fire to their house, just to have the fire trucks visit them. I never asked this question out loud, just pondered over it. Still ponder 'humanity' questions at age 62.

Since I was a baby, I've always had a fascination for the sea. One day, while living in Indonesia, I took a fish from my fish pond and dove into my swimming pool with it and swam with it, pretending I was a mermaid in an ocean and the little fish was my best friend. The poor little thing died pretty quickly because of the chlorine but it's a story that my friends love because of how innocent we all are when we're young!

My neighbors got a brand new pool one year and we all went over to swim. Before we got in the dad came over and told us "Now, we put a special liquid in the water that turns colors if you go pee in the pool, so don't pee in the pool or we will all know you did it."

I didn't believe him... not completely, but I never peed in his pool either.

When I was little I always thought that people were bought in stores and there were coathangers through our heads (that's why there's holes in our ears) and there were about five of all the people and ur parents just picked the best one from the store!

My dad used to tell me that the ice cream vendors from the ice cream trucks tasted every ice cream, thus they had their saliva.

Obviously, I never wanted an ice cream from them and a few times my dad caught me spying on ice cream trucks trying to discover the vendor licking the ice cream.