neighbourhood

I used to believe that if something wasn't "on sale" at the store, that it wasn't for sale. When we'd go to the grocery store and I'd ask for something, mom would say, "No...it's not on sale." I thought the store wouldn't let you buy it if it wasn't on sale.

When I was 6 my swim coach told me that if you slow down when your swimming, that the pool alligators will get you. I was afraid to go to practice for awhile, until my mom told me that there werent any alligators.

Thanks to my parents, I believed that the only way you could open one of those Automatic Sliding Doors (the kinds at Stores) was by smiling really big.
I'm sure the camera people thought I was nuts!

When i was about 5 or 6, I used to think that, in order to get statues of people, they covered them (and their horses) in cementto get the perfect shape and likeness. Seemed logical at the time!

When I was little, going to the grocery store with my parents was an adventure. At the end of the first isle was the dreaded produce section. My dad liked to pick up a coconut and tell me it was a monkey head. The three dots at the end were the eyes and mouth of the monkey. He would wave the "monkey head" at me and make me scream until my mom told him to cut it out. When I grew up and realized it was NOT a monkey head, I turned around and did the same thing to my little sister. LOL

I used to believe that the giant mushroom shaped water towers were the door knobs that opened up huge doors in the earth. I had heard bible stories of giants living in the earth in the old days.

When I was little I had the worst fear of being locked in a store. When the lady came on the intercom saying the store would close in 10 minutes, I started panicking. I thought I would have to spend the night in the store. There was more than one occasion when I would start bawling when my mom wouldn't leave right away. 0.o I practically dragged her out of the store everytime.

I used to believe that you were supposed to ride your bike in between the double yellow lines in the middle of the road. It seemed like just the perfect size for a bike tire, even though I had never seen anyone riding there. For some reason I never actually rode there, even though I felt I should be.

My parents used to swear that only they could tell the difference between the 'musical bus' and an actual ice cream van. We used to run round the house to find them and excitedly ask, "is that the ice cream van?"

"....no, musical bus" they almost invariably replied.

I used to believe that if you weren't wearing rubber soled shoes when you rode on an escalator, you would be sucked into it unless you jumped before you reached the last step. ( My Grandmother used to tell me this!)

I used to believe that the smurfs lived on the other side of the pool filter at the bottom of the deep end of the pool. When my older brothers dove into the deep end and didn't come up immediately, I thought that the smurfs were bringing them to their enchanted world to meet the other smurfs! I was so jealous.

When I was a kid, my parents never used to go to Chevron gas stations. So for some reasons, I always associated them with making "gas" medicines such as Kaopectate.

My dad used to tell me that, at restaurants, a big burly man with a tatoo on his arm was swirling a huge vat of food in the kitchen. When I asked how the food came out, he said they would stick in a plate and out would pop exactly what you ordered. I believed him until I was about 12. I should have known better, because I watched my parents cook my food for me all the time and they didn't have a huge vat of goo.

My cousin once told me that the city had a special chemical that could detect if people had peed in the public pool. She said it would cause the urine to turn the water green, thus outing the perpertator for everyone to laugh at. I still don't like to swim in public pools for fear of seeing the water turn green.

My dad had me so convinced that I was actually driving the boats at Disneyland (they're on tracks, of course), that I later had nightmares of crashing them.

To make matters worse, I confused one of those nightmares as being a real memory and thought that I really had crashed one. (It wasn't until I was a teenager that I realized I was wrong).

Whem I was about 4-5 and we went to washington D.C. My parents were talking
about there being no restrooms a the Washington momorilal. I thought that they were talking about the capital. so when we went to the capital, i had to go. so i went to the top of the stairs, uzipped, and let her rip!