neighbourhood: excursions

I used to believe…

When I was little, my family lived 8 hours away from our grandparents and always drove when we visited. Sometimes we would pass wind power plants on the fields. I thought they were windmills. Like the ones in golf courses, but life size.

I used to believe…

When I was little, I imagined that the carnival workers in the booths slept there with a TV on top and a blanket, with the booth windows closed.

I used to believe…

When I first heard the word "suburb" I thought it meant the bad parts of town, since I knew "sub-" meant "under" or "less than" (i.e "sub-zero") so I thought it meant the part of the city that was less good than the rest.

I used to think that a "carnival barker" was a person who barks like a dog at a carnival.

I used to believe that the Hwy on road signs (highway) meant Hawaii so I got excited because I thought we were going to Hawaii. It was always just Hwy 98...

I used to believe…

When I was a little girl I learned about the Holocaust. I was probably too young to know about these horrors because sometimes I couldn't get the images out of my head. I knew that people had been killed in gas chambers and didn't realize there are different types of gas. When we would go to the gas station and dad would put gasoline in the car, I would try to hold my breath the whole time - but I could never do it. I thought my dad was very brave to put the gas in our car. I thought that gas station workers were extremely brave to be doing their jobs. I assumed that because they were exposed to gas for long amounts of time that they didn't live long.

I used to believe…

THE SAND IS DANGEROUS :

When I was five years.I went to the beach, and I remember that I didn't want to go on the sand because I believed that the sand would eat me when I was walking on it because when you walk on the sand your feet disapear under it. So for walk in I placed my beach towel on the sand and walk on it, and repeat the operation to move. I admit, that it was very ridiculous and slow but it's the only solution that I found when I was child. Now I laught about that

I used to believe…

When I was a child I used to believe that when I slept in the car, if I leaned on the door, the door would break and I would fall down the road and die.

I used to believe…

As a preteen, I believed that a strip club was where patrons actually stripped naked and pole danced themselves, rather than merely watching professional strippers do so.

I used to believe…

When I was about five or six, my mother and I got into a taxicab and the driver said, "Where do you want to go?".
I thought he was talking in general, so I said, "New York!"
Note: I was living in England at the time.

I used to believe…

To leave the town in which I grew up you could drive through a tunnel that crossed beneath an estuary, and then came out in the adjacent town. During one of my earliest memories of going through that tunnel, my dad was driving, and as we reached the halfway mark through the tunnel he said, "We're driving under water right now." I thought it was amazing that we didn't have to hold our breath! Also, I remember that there were maintenance doors in the sides of the tunnel, and I imagined that if you opened one of those doors you would see an underwater scene with fish swimming by. Somehow in my imagination, the water didn't just come rushing in through the door and flooding the tunnel.

I used to think that if you accidently lost a book or DVD you checked out at the library, the librarian would take my library card away and never let me read books again. Needless to say, I took care of my books really well.

I used to believe that room numbers in hotels were literal. So, if I was staying in room 305, it meant there were more than 305 rooms. I then found out that it just meant the 5th room on the 3rd floor.

I used to believe that carnival rides at the fair were like tulips or daffodils in that they grew up from the ground in the days before the fair and when it was over they sunk back into the ground, dormant until next year.

I used to believe…

Once, I sat behind a neon sign in a restaurant. It said "Fallon" on the back, which is the name of the company that makes the neon signs. I didn't know the name Fallon, so I thought it was pronounced "Fall on" and that it meant the sign would "fall on" your head.

I used to believe…

When I was a kid, I thought that the electrical stations on the side of the road looked like a playground (monkeybars, slides, etc). When I asked my mom if we could go there, she told me those weren't for kids, and that only adults were allowed. From that point on, I couldn't wait to grow up so I could play on the adults-only playground.