the past

I was born in 1958 in the US. During the sixties the Vietnam War was on and it affected my life in that I had older cousins and guys from the neighborhood go there to fight. Growing up on the staple of World War II movies and shows, I was fascinated, like every other young boy, by the war. In the evenings we would watch the nightly news and hear stories about the Viet Cong guerrillas fighting the American troops.

My best friend, Frank, and I were scared silly at the thought of armed and organized gorillas swinging through the trees carrying rifles and grenades and launching coordinated attacks against US troops. When we discussed it, is was with a sense of awe and terror that the world contained such animals. Of course, we were very curious as to why we never saw any of them on the news. I think we must have chalked it up to them being up in the trees.

I can't remember how old I was when I finally learned the difference between guerrilla and gorilla, but for a few years at least, I was terrified of apes.

When i was little i always used to hear about the holocaust and the concentration camps. Well i thought that they pinnted your head to these bars and stood you on a metal plat form and then attach wires in to the metal on your head and forcing information you didnt want to hear into your brain until it blew up.

I used to think a war was when about there was about six guys (three on each side) with swords, hitting the opposites sword simultaneously, and whichever side got tired the quickest lost. That really got me into trouble with my grandpa..he was a World War 2 veteran....then again he was also an alcoholic...

I used to think that History was a place and that in the song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" The reindeers were warning him that he would be shot down there. (e.g: "you'll go down in history")

When I was younger, I was totally convinced that the only person who knew everything was George Washington, and that he was still alive. I told my mother that someday I would meet him, and I would ask him how many people knew everything, and he would respond, "Why, just me, of course!" (OBVIOUSLY because he knew everything.)

I used to think that the past was black in white since I saw alot of old films that had no color in them. Made perfect sense.

when i was little i used to think that black and white shows on tv existed in a time before they invented color. i thought everyone was running around in black and white like in the movie pleasantville.

I used to believe that everything was black and white in the old days and everyone looked the same because every picture that I saw of people in the 18th century had the same facial features and hair cuts.I also believed that rocks on mountains were parts from this guy my dad made up called "the rock man".I dont plan on telling my children these things

I used to believe…

while watching the news with my father when i was around 6,the newsman said that "guerillas had shot some soldiers in the war in the african congo".for a long time after i used to believe that the gorilla ape was going around the congo with guns killing people.it was a great relief to finally realise my mix up.

At age five, I believed that the "Watergate" incident of the Nixon presidency was actually a gate that held back water, and that they could find no one to plug the holes, and that the entire nation would flood, ala' the story of the dutch boy and the dike. I was that the president would let so many people become overwhelmed by a flood. Ironic now, considering New Orleans.

When I was four, I had an auntie who liked to scare me by telling me all about world war 1 and 2. She always ended her stories with a "world war 3's just around the corner".
So I used to keep a small suitcase full of my favourite clothes and a bottle of water underneath my bed that in case the war came, i'd be ready.

Who knew that many years later, I'd find my favourite clothes and remember what I did with them. I'd thought I lost them.

I was a kid during Vietnam and kept hearing about a guerilla war. I had no idea what a guerilla was, and a rough idea of war from tuig-of-war, and the card game War.

Then Planet of the Apes came out. I was petrified.

This one came from a friend of mine - he was youngster, sat with his Grandmother. She was showing him a very old photo album full of black and white photo's. He interrupted her and asked with complete sincerity - "Nan, when did the world go from black and white to colour?"

I used to believe that in the days of black and white films, LIFE itself was actually in black and white... and that color movies didn't come around until life evolved enough to produce color!

As a child I thought that black and white movies were black and white because the world was black and white. this, to me, explained why black people were called black people, when all the ones i had seen were actually brown.
i thought this until i was about eleven when i asked my dad if he was excited when color was "invented." at first he assumed I meant just movies, but then i began to ask him things like "how did you know how to pick your favorite ice cream?" actually, he never mentioned it to anybody after he explained. he probably decided that everyone thought i was crazy enough without that.

I was a child in the early 80s and would watch old reruns on nick and nite. Even though some of those shows were running just 20 years earlier, i was convinced that everyone who came out on a black and white show was already dead.