I Used To Believe newsletter: September 2010
Hi,
School is hard enough without trying to work out what flavour stationery to use or how furniture fits into algebra. We have a great solution to the old metric vs. imperial conundrum - make up your own units!
Have fun,
Mat.
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When I was younger probably around the time I was 5 to 7 years old, when my family and I went to the mall my two older brothers told me the mannequins were people who didn't pay their credit card debt to the stores and were killed and filled with concrete to pay for their debt. I used to worry every time my parents bought something.
Jean_Rain
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I used to believe that the devices that we used extensively would get tired, which is why we needed to turn them off. One day, it struck me that the same devices that get "tired" should also be thirsty. So, I started quenching the thirst of the inanimate objects I valued, with coke, which included the telephone in the living room, my portable cassette player, my game console, and a couple of remote controlled cars (as well as several action figures.) My mother stopped me just in time before I moved on to "help" the living room TV.
They're Still Thirsty
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my grandpa always told me his big white moustache was 2 mice ! and i believed him and one day when i was about 5 i caught him trimming it and i screamed ''THINK OF THE MICE!'' and ran away crying , and he had to calmly explain that he was giving them a little haircut !
Anon
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My grandma loves telling this story: When my dad was six or seven years old, he was playing with a friend in the backyard. At one point, his friend said to him, "Your mother has big breasts." My dad gave him a very confused look and responded with, "Only chickens have breasts."
A. Nonymous
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I couldn't understand how a record got to number one in the charts and believed that the Queen chose it, my husband still makes fun of me and does impressions of the queen announcing that Showaddywaddy were going to be number one today!
Rochelle Peachey
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I used to believe the handicapped parking spaces (with the painted wheelchair) were for people to park their wheelchairs while they went in shopping. I didn't think about how they'd actually walk without it though.
Anon
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I used to believe that when you fax something, the machine crumbled up the paper and sent it through the telephone wires and when the other machine received it, the machine ironed it out. But that didn't explain why the person still had the original sheet! I couldn't figure that part out.
M
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Growing up, I knew there was some BIG secret that adults kept from kids. I convinced myself that this secret was how they could drive without ever blinking. Driving seemed like such a big responsibility I did not think you could afford to stop looking at the road for an instant or you'd die. I even watched my parents when they drove and somehow I never saw them blink. I thought this was the great secret of the universe and couldn't wait to find out how they did it.
Joel
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Around age 5 or so, I used to be deathly afraid to walk to the bathroom at night, for fear of monsters. I thought that monsters came out at night, and would be prowling around the house, just waiting for some unsuspecting victim. I would put on a scary monster mask and dark cape, left-over props from Halloween, thinking that if I looked like a monster too, they wouldn't attack me. I would just be another monster using the bathroom! I remember being scared to death, peeing, hoping that my disguise was working... lol
MFish
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The first time my family bought a car with power windows my dad told me if I clap the windows will roll down or back up: magic windows!
Alison
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In order to discourage us from wanting to buy ice-cream, my aunt told my cousins and me that the ice-cream man wanted to kidnap us. So, every time we heard the ice-cream truck, we'd run inside and hide.
flowers
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Blackadder does not ride a 'Pitch Black Steed' but in fact rides a 'Black Jetski' I dunno, I was a child. I was probably too busy shoving lego up my nose to listen to the lyrics correctly.
Anon
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I use to believe that if you stepped on a spider, it would pee, then it would lose its eyes, then it would explode, so every time I stepped on a spider I would run away.
Luciano
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When I was in the early grades, my teacher told us to bring manila folders to school the next day. I thought she said vanilla folders, so I went home and told my mother than I needed to bring a vanilla folder to school. She had never heard of them, of course, and, after calling several stores asking for vanilla folders (because I insisted that that was what the teacher said), and getting no satisfaction, she finally called the teacher (much to my mortification), and was informed, after the teacher quit laughing, of the correct kind of folder, we had to go into the next town to get them, because my mother was too embarrassed to go to a local store and admit her mistake. I still sometimes make the mistake of calling them vanilla folders.
Dave
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When we had a nationality-day coming up at school, I asked dad where we were from. He said I was half Scottish and half Finnish. We had visited our grandparents (from my mother's side) in Scotland before, but I didn't remember hearing about Finland before. Our last name is Finn so I figured it was somehow connected to Finland, and soon decided, my family has their very own country! I don't remember how long I believed this, but I just remembered it, when we were watching a movie where a woman announced she was the princess of Finland. I was a weird kid.
The Princess of Finland
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When my mom tried to explain "times tables" in math, I couldn't understand what an actual table had to do with anything. Math went downhill from there!
Anon
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I used to think that if I mixed my ice cream around until it was liquid and then baked it, it would turn into a cake.
Judy
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My friends and I used to believe that if you planted a rock, it would grow a rock tree.
Anon
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When I was younger I thought that the abbreviation lbs, stood for "illables". I then told people that I weighed some number of illables. It wasn't until middle school that my mom told me illables wasn't a word and it actually stood for pounds.
Rachel
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When I was about 7 and had just lost a tooth, a friend broke the news to me that my mother was the tooth fairy. I thought she meant my mother was the tooth fairy for everybody! I was in complete awe and asked her where she kept all the teeth.
Anon
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