the past: wars

I used to believe for the longest time that World War 3 had already happened. Hopefully my child self is never right.

I used to believe that on a battlefield there was a huge wall separating the two sides. Each side would throw over bombs and grenades. The only contact that they had was one message carrier who traveled through a little door in the wall/

At some celebration commemorating the end of WWII when I was about 4 or 5 we had a street party. I was very proud of my grandfather who had driven tanks in the war, and half way through the dinner I stood on the table and shouted as loud as I could, 'EVERYBODY! My Grandad won the War!'

When I was young we learned in school about how the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan and the kind of horrible suffering it caused. Somehow I missed the facts that A. America (my country) had done the bombing and B. World War II was over. I used to lay awake at night convinced a bomb was going to come through my ceiling and kill me.

I thought when people said World War I or II they were saying "whirr whirr I/II" and I didn't get what it meant

When I first heard about the Cold War, I though it was called that because it snowed all the time during iT.

I used to believe…

not long ago,i used to believe that Cold war was described as cold because it took place in snow

I used to believe that a war was just one single battle that lasted a few hours at the most. I also thought that all wars were pre-arranged and that all of the countries made their own army and fought in a battlefield about the size of a few football fields.

I used to think that when people were talking about the World Wars, they were saying War War I and War War II. I thought the wars were so bad you had to say it twice.

until i was about 10 i believe adolf hitler's first name was "hitler" and that he had no last name because his parents abandoned him

I used to think the "Cold War" was a war where countries tried to freeze each other to win the war.

I used to think that World War I and World War II were "War War I" and "War War II", because I've always had bad hearing and I've only seen it wrote out as WWI & WWII. I actually put "War War I" on a timeline for a project in 6th grade.

In 4th grade we had to read "Number the Stars" (for those who don't know, that's a children's book about how the people of Denmark helped Jews escape the Nazis). Awesome book, except that I became convinced that the Nazis were going to come and get me. This is a bit strange because there is a section in the book where a Jewish little girl is staying with her Christian friends and the family has to convince some Nazi soldiers that she's thier daughter, using the name and baby picture of one of thier real daughters who had died years ago. The dead daughter happened to have dark hair when she was born (and which later turned blonde). The dark-haired baby picture made the soldiers accept that the dark-haired Jewish girl could have been born to the blonde parents. Given that I am a natural blonde myself, and so much was made of blonde hair meaning "not Jewish", I have no idea how I could have believed the Nazis were after me, too.

I was a kid (about 8) during the first Gulf War and one night I over heard my Dad talking to his friend about his boss who was "So Damn Insane", but I misheard "Sadaam Hussein"...so for years after I thought that my dad worked for Sadaam!

I used to think the Civil War was actually the Silver War. So one time in school they were talking 'bout the civil war and i said, " hahahaha your saying the name wrong, its silver not civil!" Then a boy said, "what was the 'silver war' about" in a real snotty way and i said, "They ran out of silver spoons and they were fighting for some more" Everyone thought i was brain dead...

When I was somewhere between 7 and 10 we had to read a book about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan (this was in the 80s, not the 50s). The book was written from the perspective of the Japanese, and we were suppossed to be learning not to be ethnocentric (which is great). However, somehow it escaped me that my own country had dropped the bomb (maybe I'd have been more scared if I'd known we did something like that). I also didn't get it that atomic bombs hadn't been used since WWII. For weeks I'd stare at the ceiling of my bedroom waiting for a bomb to fall through and nuke me.