the world

I heard my parents talking about the upcoming elections in 1976, talking about Carter. Well, in my small world, I thought that Kotter from the tv show Welcome Back, Kotter was running for president.

when I mentioned that (american) football fields looked so much bigger on TV, my dad told me that it was because professional football used 4-foot yards. I believed him until I was 16.. after all, there's a five-quart imperial gallon.

I was told that on the exact opposite side of the world was someone who looked and acted just like me. In fact, my family, my house, and the whole town were replicated and maybe doing the exact same things as we were. It made me wonder quite a bit.

Until about 1982, when I was 12, I thought that Feminism had fixed everything so that there was no more sexism. I was assured by my parents that it didn't matter that I was a girl, I could do anything, because the world was feminist now.

And then when the Equal Rights Amendment didn't pass, imagine my surprise and horror. And then gradually getting to see and experience painful sexism especially after puberty! Moving to Texas sure didn't help.

I also thought some vague hippielike partner to "Feminism", which took place in "The 60s" had fixed racism as well. I don't think I ever heard of the actual civil rights movement until I was at least 12 or 13. Nor did I know of any other feminist movements until maybe late high school.

Once when I was very young, I overheard someone talking about "borrowing $10." It made no sense to me. If you borrow something, then you have to return it, but what was the point of borrowing a ten dollar bill unless you needed to spend it. And once you spent it, how could you give it back. It never occurred to me that you could pay back a debt with a different bill.

When I was about 6 I thought the President got to be President because he was the best human being there was in the whole country and that an election was some kind of beauty contest for men. When the word "Watergate" kept getting mentioned on the TV news I thought it had something to do with a dam (perfectly logical assumption for a 7 year old kid) but when I asked "What's Watergate?" all I got for an answer was " The President told a lie." Somehow I got the notion that if you were President and you told a lie you would have to be killed for the punishment, or sent to jail forever. It took an amazingly long time for me to be completely disabused of this belief; now I take it for granted that the President will always lie because it's what Presidents always do, and what's more, they will always get away with it.

We were Catholic growing up, and I thought everyone was. When I heard that Kennedy was the first and only Catholic President, I just couldn't belive that then-President Reagan was not a Catholic. It freaked me out.

I grew up in the New York City area, where there were at least two teams in each of the major professional sports leagues (MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA). Because the Yankees and Mets in baseball were in different leagues and never played each other during the regular season (and never did until just a couple of years ago), as a little kids just starting to discover sports, I thought that was how all the New York teams in all sports were set up. So the Rangers would never play the Islanders, the Knicks never played the Nets, and the Giants never played the Jets. It just somehow made sense that way, and I was probably around 15 before I realized my error.

I was born in the U.S. in 1940, and WW II was a daily topic in our household. Of course, Germans were the bad guys, and wanted to harm us. On the other hand, Mom was always cleaning, the stated reason was so we would have no germs to make us sick.

It wasn't until I reached the 1st or 2nd grade, after the war, that I finally realized that germs were not Germans, and vice versa.

When I was little my grandpa would always call me "Joshy-Washy from Megatoshi." In high school I remember going through my Freshman year Geography text looking in the Mediterranean Sea for the island of Megatoshi.

I grew up in Washington State, and used to love to sit with my parents' atlas and look at maps of the world. Every different country was colored a different color, and I thought this reflected the dramatic differences one would find in other countries.

When I was about seven, we drove ``across the line'' to British Columbia, in Canada. I was so disappointed to discover that the grass and trees and flowers were exactly the same colors they are on the US side of the border.

Once, when my we were driving across the country, my parents were talking about visiting Wisconsin. I thought they were talking about visiting a woman named Miss Consin. And I wondered if she was a friend of Mrs. Sippi.

My home town in New Zealand was right at the base of 8260ft Mt Egmont; we looked straight out our window at it, and in a straight line the summit was probably only about 15 miles away. I remember always thinking that the whole world was just over the other side of the mountain.

My Dad was a traveling salesman and as a boy he would take me on business trips during summer vacation. In the 1950's freeway system was expanding throughout California and they had markings for the roads that ran along side the freeways. They were marked as "Frontage Rd.". I remember getting on the interstate in L.A. and seeing "Frontage Rd." and then all the way to San Franciso seeing "Frontage Rd.". I thouht "Frontage Rd." was the longest street in California.

The world can be so confusing when you're a kid! When my son, Mark, was 4 years old we were watching a pro football game on the T.V. that his aunt and uncle were attending. I told him to watch closely for aunt Teresa, after a few minutes of intense viewing he turned to me and ask "what number is she?"

When I was very young, I used to believe that there was actually a place called gun point, and could never understand why people were still going there, when the knew they would be shot!

When I was nine we travelled to Germany from California. I knew that Germany was on the other side of the world. Somehow I imagined that everything would be upside down, and that we'd be hanging upside down. Needless to say, I was quite disappointed when we landed in Germany and everything was right-side-up!!

When I was a little kid, my family used to go to a river in Maryland (a state in the USA). Somehow I got it in my head that the river divided the United States from England. I used to squint to see the English people on the other side of the river and thought one day maybe I would swim across and visit Elton John.