neighbourhood

When I was little I used to think that the oval-shaped water tower in my home town was a storage chamber for a gigantic dinosaur egg and one day it was going to hatch and crush us like godzilla.

my mother used to play jokes on me all the time. This is a good example:

We were living in germany, my pops stationed at an Army base over there. Me and Mom go out to the Post Exchange (for you civilians out there, think the military version of a Wal-Mart)

A bunch of men were doing excercises. They were stretching out their quads by placing their hands against a wall of a small building. To anyone, especially a gullble child, it looks like they are, with all their might, trying to hold up the wall

My mom says, "During World War II, American bombers destroyed most of this area. Ever since, they have had to have people hold up the walls so the building doesnt collapse"

For at least 6 months, every time i saw soldiers doing stretching exercises, i totally believed that they were actually holding up the wall

as a sidenote: my mother did this so often, by the time i turned 10, i didnt believe ANYTHING she said. To this day.

When I was 7 my parents took me to Disney World and I came out of the It's a Small World ride singing Hit the Plumber on the Head. They really needed better speakers

so i'm 7 and looking through this mail order catalogue full of high-tech gizmos and wanting most of it but thinking i'd never save enough money for any of it. after all, it was all over $100. then i saw it. some items said "rush" and then a much smaller amount. so i asked my aunt what that meant and when she explained i was perpelexed.
why would anyone spend 100 on something and have it take a month to be delivered when you could just spend 7 and get it in less than a week?

I believed that poor people lived in the little "glass house" skylights that used to be on the roofs of apartment buildings in Chicago. We were on the elevated train and my grandmother pointed at the buildings and said "poor people live there" and I thought she meant the little glass enclosures. I thought that was a lousy deal, no privacy.

I used to think that when a business put "Support EMS" up on their sign, that it wasn't a message intended to support the local Emergency Medical Service, but that the business needed help, thus they were asking for "Support 'ems" (like support them). I believed this until I worked up the courage to ask my mother. Needless to say she set me straight. To this day every time I see one of those signs I feel embarrassed...

Years ago in the early 70's I believe Ronald McDonald was at every McDonald's in America. I convinced my little brother and sister of this. We went to our very first McDonalds and of course no Ronald. They cried the whole time. I was older but I wanted to cry too.

Neighbourhood- Ice Cream Vans.

OK, so my parents did tell me that an ice cream van sold ice cream, and they also told me that when they play music you can buy ice cream from them. Unfortunately they also told me that all ice cream from ice cream vans is flavoured with petrol, and is deadly poison.

My mom never thought twice about expanding on my already vivid imagination. One particular story I'll never forget was one that involved little men who lived in lamp posts, a bit like lighthouse keepers. They controlled the street lamps and on darker days, they were always "around" to protect me on my way home from a friend's house. Their little doors, regardless of the advances in technology, can still be seen on the side of lamp posts.

When I was a kid and you used to see posters in empty shop windows saying "Bill Posters will be Prosecuted" I thought Bill Poster was a person and must of been really naughty to warrant so many notices put up about him!!

When the ice cream man plays his tune it means he has run out of Ice Cream. At least that is what my friends parents told him.

(Im putting the optional name down as his)

one night, when i was 4 or 5, i heard sirens and went to my dad to ask what they were, i thought he said "they're simon" so for a while after that everytime i heard sirens, i'd think "there's simon, he's kinda scary"

I thought all the streets of every city connected to each other. So if you started on Main St in New York, for example, you could keep walking through to Main St Chicago, Main St Denver, and Main St Los Angeles.

I was about five and my mother was taking something to some re-sale shop to be sold and she said she was doing it for Christmas money. In my mind she was going to end up with all this gloriously shiny and all different colored coins. I could hardly wait to see that Christmas money.

When I was really young, I was always escaping the house into the yard or street or whereever. My mom had decided the best strategy was to instill fear into me by telling me that if I strayed too far, dogs and cats would attack and kill me, tearing my body to pieces. At the age of 2, I was pretty gullible. (I'm pretty gullible now, but not to this extent.) One day, I was at my cousin's place and we were going up a steep set of old stone steps in the backyard. I was in front and being much younger could not see the neighborhood's meanest cat ("Rusty") at the top of the steps who turned and hissed at me. I remember waking up in my aunt's place with my head supposedly split open. It would be another couple of years before my fear of dogs would go away.

I used to believe that I could find a route to ride my bike
to my friends house that was all down hill. Maybe this
was not so far fetched, but I also thought, if I tried really hard,
I could also find a route to coast downhill ALL THE WAY HOME!