science

After watching some TV programme I used
to think that 666 was the devils phone
number. For some strange reason I got a
number unobtainable tone if I dialled it
from my house phone but one day I tried
dialling it from a phone in a hospital and
got an answer. I asked if it was the devil
and they told me it was the cardiac arrest
number. Next minute loads of paramedics came
running into the room thinking that someone
was having a cardiac arrest. I ended up in
lots of trouble for making that call.

When I was about 7 a teacher explained that the whole universe was made up of molecules, which were smaller than a pin head and that there was very little difference between one molecular structure and another. For years I believed that if I had an injection or pricked my skin with a needle then I would distort my molecular structure and turn into a table or something.

When i was like 6 or 7 i was on a family vacation in cape cod and we decided to go on a whale watch. I was on the top deck with a good number of other people. When a whale came into view all the people of course would go to one side. the waves where making the boat dip back and forth. I thought this was caused by all the whale watchers standing on one side. So to avoid capsizing the boat i would run to the other side and try to balance us out. Needles to say i didn't see very many whales on that tour.

I can't remember what Superman film it was, but there is a scene where Superman gets a lump of coal, squeezes it really hard and turns it into a diamond for Lois.

I thought, why don't people get one of those car crushing machines and then fill it with coal, you'd be loaded!

Once when I was much younger I had recieved a helium balloon for my birthday. After playing with it, I popped it. I quickly grabbed a nearby bucket and held the ballon over it waiting for it to leak out. After all, my mom said it was filled with gas.

The phrase, "the line is busy," always made me imagine a lion at a telephone switchboard working frantically trying to connect all the calls going through. Unfortunately at the time that my parents were calling he was just too busy to put their call through.

I believed that when my big brother recored my music tapes I got for christmas, that it would take all the music off my tape, and put it on his, leaving me with a blank tape. Of course I used to get in a strop, and just throw the tapes away when he had finished with them.

When i was about 5, i remember sitting

at home on the telephone to my father

I was eating jam sandwiches at the time

and he told me that i hsould put

little crumbs down the leads so he

could taste it

i used to believe that this was true

every time i was ont the phone to some

one ans was eating something i used to

send crumbs down the telephone line

My dad told me that there was a little guy in the vacuum machine that ate the dirt. I felt so bad for him, trapped in there all alone, that I cut the vacuum bag with scissors. Daddy walked in to find me covered in dirt, searching frantically for the little guy.

When I was a boy living in England I though I could re-charge flshlight batterries by wrapping some wire around a battery and inserting the ends of the coli into a live light socket. When I tried this I was rewarded by a loud bang and shower of sparks which caused me to fall off the step ladder. Later I tried the battery in a flashlight and was happy to see a very dim orange glow on the bulb filament.

When I was little, my family had a stereo system with the speakers standing upright. This is the way it was set up all through my childhood. I used to believe that if the speakers were put on their sides, the music would come out sideways.

I used to wonder why rockets were launched to the moon during the day when the moon was only around at night. Eventually I figured it out -- rockets weren't instantaneous, so by the time they got to the moon it would be night time.

There was another impressive logical leap after this, but I don't remember it. Probably for the best...

i used to think that any time i pressed the 0 on the phone it would dial the operator. so even in the middle of the phone number i would press the 0 as fast as i could so that it wouldnt dial the operator instead.

I used to believe that after you made ice in the freezer, you could put it in the fridge and it would stay frozen. I thought the fridge was cold enough to keep the ice frozen, but not cold enough to actually freeze it.

I beleived as a child that everything that moved had a wind up key and that it was just a matter of finding it. Some years later I began to think that they were only visible when you had your eyes closed and that if you looked for them really quick you might see them before they disappeared

My father (who at near 80 doesn't really qualify as a kid anymore) knows one thing about computers: they can only put out what has been put in in the first place. So he once told me he couldn't understand how the computer programmers could know beforehand what text I would want to write one day.

When we passed a construction site once, where everyone's gone home but the machines are still there, my brothers told me they were still working, the machines just moved really slowly. I believe this for a few years until I saw a crane and bulldozer moving for real, and was blown away.

When I was about 7 or 8, I thought that as I walked along the sidewalk I was stationary and the Earth was turning beneath me. It was a strange little illusion, but even now if I think about it I can still fall into it...