neighbourhood: in the street

I used to believe…

k, so you could get to my house 2 ways. you could go by the Clark gas station or go by the Shell. Well, i thoughyt the gas stations swiched places depending on the day. I never relized, for a long time, that i could go home 2 ways.

I used to believe that the highway signs reading "No Littering up to $100 fine" meant that if you found some litter and turned it in, you could get up to $100....even though it was "fine" and not "found" or "if found"... I assured myself this was a mere grammatical error...and always kept my eyes peeled for trash.

I used to believe that the large telephone pole outside my bathroom window was where Jesus lived. The Cross at the top I think is what led me to think this. I would pray to that pole everyday..does that count as a false Idol?

when I was a kid, I used to hear the trash collecters come by in the middle of the night. The screech of the metal and crash of the recepticles on the concrete would always wake me up. I was convinced that dinosaurs must be pillaging through the neighborhood, and I was the only one awake to hear them.

Some of my friends and I in kindergarten during recess found a photo of a couple naked people. We found the photo near a drain in the ground, so somehow we concluded that there was a place underground where a bunch of naked people lived.

You know how on old buildings, down in the corner there is the "EST." followed by a date, like 1910 or something. For years I thought the "EST." stood for estimated, like they weren't sure, but they think the building was built around that date...

One time I was walking with my mom and saw footprints in the cement. I asked her, "How did they get their foot print in there?" She replied, "Because they stepped on the cement when it was wet." Oooh. So for the longest time after that, every time it rained, I would stomp the ground, hoping to leave an imprint. Since I never could do it, I reasoned that it must be because I was still a child and was too light to sink into the cement.

I used to think that robbers had keys to every house and that's how they got in to take your stuff

When I was maybe eight, I remember my parents driving through the sleazier part of our town (the bar district), and I saw lots of signs advertising "NO COVER CHARGE FOR LADIES". I thought this meant that if women didn't wear a shirt, they could go in the bar for free. Wow, did I have a lot to learn!

My older sisters told me that statues in cities were people who froze to death. I could never figure out why they turned stone-colored.

There used to be a store in our neighborhood that sold blinds and drapes for windows. It was called Habitat. My daughter asked me one day if it was a home for blind people.

When I was a child, I thought the double yellow lines in the middle of highways were for motocycles to travel between and cars had to stay to the right or left of "the motorcycle lane". I was completely disgusted with my father when he got too close to that lane, because he was putting the motorcycle drivers in danger. I remember thinking he was a terrible driver.

i used to believe that people who sold their houses and moved were switching with the people who bought them.
i couldn't rationalize the concept of an empty house.

Wherever you walked, you left behind an invisible string, marking your trail. I always tried to avoid tangling up my own strings.

I suppose hearing 'where there's smoke there's fire' led me to believe that there were fires under the street-- why else would there be smoke billowing out of the subway grates? What disturbed me even more was the fact that none of the pedestrians walking right through this smoke seemed to care and just went about their business!

When i was about 8, i remember seeing a sign that said "Brat Roast this weekend" at a church. I thought they'd be roasting disobedient children. It didn't occur to me that "brat" was short for Bratwurst.