When I was little I used to live in an apartment in a bad neighborhood. One time on the news, there was an alert issued for two kids that had been kidnapped and had been driven off in an unverified vehicle.
I guess it kind of scarred me because I started to sleep in bed with my parents, and I put the blanket over my head when I slept, so if any bad guys climbed up to the window, they wouldn't see any kids to kidnap.
I don't believe bad guys will steal me away in the night anymore, and I don't sleep in bed with my parents anymore, but I'm so used to sleeping with the blanket over my head I still do it!
the law
1,024 beliefs in this area
When I was in elementary school, my mom would always complain about the large amount of cops on the roads at the end of the month. She always said that they were "getting their quota in"....I thought she was saying "quarter" and for the longest time I thought cops got paid a quarter for every person they pulled over.
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When I was about 6, I used to believe that Robocop is the best policeman in the world and that he's existing for real.
When I was about six years old, I noticed my dad was driving past a sign that said "Do not pass". I became very upset and was certain the police would arrest my dad because he passed the "Do not pass" sign.
I used to believe when you broke a law, you would get fines if you were under 18 and go to jail if you were 18 or older.
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When I was young, I though burglars wouldn't rob your house if it was raining. They wouldn't want to get wet, would they?
Years ago the little tagd attached to pillows, etc which said "Do not remove under penalty of law" did not include the words "except by consumer. When my older sister wanted my younger siblings and I to do something, the would coerce us by saying that is we didn't do what she wanted, she was going to rip the tag off a pillow and call the police and say we did it
I thought that if you broke a law, you would get a fine if you were under 18, and go to jail if you were over 18.
When I was 5 or 6, I found a syringe somewhere(in our garden I think), and my mom told me not to touch them, because they could be dangerous. Not knowing what drugs were, I thought they contained medicine, and medicine was deadly for us if we weren't sick.
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Until i was about 6, i used to believe that when the police gave you a ticket, it was a ticket to the movies!
When I was little and started crying hystericaly, my parents would tell me to stop or else the police would come.Because of this, I thought of the police as bad people and would be afraid when i saw one.
If we were on vacation and staying in a hotel, I thought it was illegal to eat at the restaurant in another hotel. If we weren't staying in any hotel and just decided to eat out at a hotel restaurant nearby, it was still illegal, but not as bad. on vacation it's like betraying your hotel.
When reentering the lobby of our own hotel, I would hide the kids' menu I'd kept from the other place so the receptionist wouldn't see that I was breaking the law.
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I used to ALWAYS sleep with a comforter tucked in really tight because I believed if someone broke in, they would have a bunch of trouble trying to kidnap me.
When I was about 4 or 5, I was grocery shopping with my Mom, we were at the register putting the groceries on the "conveyor belt" and I noticed that my mom kept grouping the items she put up there in order, like all the frozen juices together, the tin can stuff in a group, the fruit together, the meat all together... I asked her why she was doing that and the CASHIER told me that if we DIDN'T group the foods together like that, the police would come and arrest us --- I believed her of course, and to this day I think about it EVERY SINGLE TIME I put my groceries up on the conveyor (with the items grouped PROPERLY, of course)!
When I was four years old my aunt and uncle stayed at our house while my parents were on a camping trip. One afternoon they were driving my cousin and I who were acting up in the back seat. My uncle turned his head around and told me that he was going to take me to the police station and give me the electric chair. I couldn’t understand why my aunt thought that was funny. Nevertheless, for most of my early childhood I believed every police station had an electric chair.
As I constantly questioned authority when my parents told me that if I didn't buckle my seat belt in the car the police would write us a ticket.
I somehow came to believe that police officers had a device (which looked vaguely familiar to a gameboy) that they used to scan cars and it would tell them if a seat belt was unbuckled.
Until I was 9 I compulsively buckled all seat belts in the car, even when no one was sitting in that seat.
I used to watch Court TV when I was younger, so you can probably already guess what kind of imagination I had. I'd always be afraid when my mom stopped at a gas station and left us in the car to go pay for gas, because I thought that some crazy Einstein-looking guy with a lab coat would break into the car and steal it, taking us with him.
I remember one time (think i was about 5) my mom told me it was illegal to pick California poppies. So some time afterwards when I was on a field-trip at school there was a field with a bunch of California poppies and I was really scared to go near them because I thought if I stepped on one or one went missing (like they count them everyday :) They would d think I did it and I would go to jail
When I was younger I always wanted to be kidnapped because I KNEW that the kidnapper would fall in love and change his mind and we would live happily ever after.
When I was in elementary school, all the buses had a sign posted that said "Bring or use drugs--face expulsion." I thought this sign said "Bring or use drugs--face explosion," I guess because I didn't understand about being kicked out of school. So I thought, probably until I was about 12 and re-read the sign, that if you used drugs, your face would explode.