neighbourhood

When I was around the age of 5 or 6, my parents would take me to places to eat and I would not want to cooperate with them so they would say this freaky guy would come and kill me or take me away if I dont eat. So I would start to cry and try to eat. It was pretty scary for me at the time, But, now, I'm just like thats pretty sad.

I used to believe that the M.D. or PhD after a doctor's name meant that they were doctor's only in that state. M.D. stood for Maryland. I was so proud that we had that many docotors in our state.

I used to believe…

whenever i saw those big spotlights from car dealierships, i used to think that it was a big hollywood premiere. i remember really wanting to go and see the movie stars and wondering why my parents didnt think it was as big a deal as i did

I used to believe…

that my neighbors house across the street had a "magic" attic. My buddy said his house was so tall (it was huge) that it was far enough away from the earth that there was no gravity and you could float around up there. I was 4 when he told me this, and I begged him every time I saw him to take me there until I was 5 1/2 and we moved.

A kid on my block showed me this particular square on the sidewalk under this tree, kind of at the corner. He said it was a big secret for kids on our block. If you rode your bike really fast around the block three times and then concentrated really hard when you passed over that square, you could go into the future. If you went the other way around the block, you went back in time, of course. He must have had a great time watching me try repeatedly. I think maybe he was influenced by that Superman movie.

I used to believe - because my brother told me so - that if I stood on a manhole cover and cover both holes with my feet, the road would blow up because of the build up of pressure underneath. I felt genuinely uncomfortable and anxious when he did just that.

My mother had me convinced that water towers were huge onions. So every time we would pass on in the car, she could somehow make her eyes water. She was very convincing :)

Sometimes during the summer in my sort-of poor neighborhood, this certain ice cream truck would make the rounds as late as 9 PM, when it was already dark and no kids were outside. We didn't actually believe it, but my sister and I had this theory that that ice cream truck was actually peddling drugs. We thought there was probably some sort of code, like 'Screwball pop' was, after 9 PM, the code word for 'cocaine'.

My brother used to believe that the handicapped parking spaces were spots that you could squat to go to the bathroom if you couldn't hold it long enough to get into the building. He thought the handicapped symbol looked like a person on a toilet.

My father was a lawyer, so I knew what a law suit was. When I'd see real-esatate signs saying "Build to Suit" I thought this meant that they would build something for you until you got mad and sued them.

I love motorcycles, and I enjoy sometimes just going to drool over the new models--
My mom had me duped for a long while that there was a "chrome-polishing fee" to enter a motorcycle shop so I couldn't go if I didn't have the money!
Not to mention the fact that a motorcycle-thug bouncer would kick you out if you'd spent too long or gotten fingerprints on the metal!
The kicker is, I had to actually *ask* a woman who'd been to this shop whether or not this was true, because my mother was evasive about the whole thing...

(And I'm ashamed to admit this wasn't too long ago, either! <*cringe*>)

When I was little, my Mom would not let me get ice cream from the ice cream man, because it would inevitably come around when we were getting ready for dinner. So, to keep me from bugging her, she would tell me that he was really a music man who drove a truck around with people playing a song in the back. When I saw other little kids running up to it and asked her what they were doing, she said that his song had hypnotized them so he could kidnap the one he liked the best, then proceeded to describe his favorite child as one that looked exactly like me. I was so frightened, I didn't get ice cream from the truck unless she took me out there and held me. Still have odd feelings about little children going up to the truck alone, and I'm 22!!!

When I wanted to know if the mail had come or not my mom would tell me to see if the flag was still up or not. I can't tell you how many hours I spent looking for some secret flag on a flagpole

I realized that there were tons of cracks in the cement and asphault right about the same time that the space ship Challenger blew up. For many years I was convinced that the explosion caused the cracks.

Every Saturday my daddy and I would run errands and we always passed through a certain neighborhood that had a shop called Your Store in the middle. He told me that it was all mine and let me get anything I wanted when we stopped. For years I thought the store appeared when I was coming and disappeared when I left.

To prevent me from falling in the pool while i tried ot pick a stick out of the water, my grandmother told me that the weren;t just sticks, but alot of them were buggs and could bite me. Mind you i have never seen an actual stick bug anywhere near where i live to this day, but i still pick sticks out of the pool very delicately even now.

As a very squeamish child (my brother had a cartoon encylopedia of the human body that absolutely TERRIFIED me, if you want to know just how squeamish), I used to be afraid of any store that bore the name "Body Shop," as I assumed they sold organs for transplant. I kept visualizing a clean, white doctor's waiting room-looking place, with a back door that led to a freezer room full of bloody coolers. Needless to say, I caused quite a scene when my father needed to stop in.