the world: money

When I was about 5 or 6, my dad would take the family bowling. and seeing how there's people playing billiards in the bowling allie sometimes.. i was SO interested in that. So, i would walk over to the table and see a shiney dollar sitting on the table (people waiting for they're turn, claiming that they're next). So, i would take the dollar.. and the next one and the next one, until i got like 10 dollars. I walked over to the vending machine, and i would go back to my mom with a whole bunch of candy. my mom immediately freaked out "WHERE'D YOU GET THAT!" asking my dad if he gave me money for that. i simply explained i found the money on the pool table, and bought candy with it. my mom (embarassed as heck) went over and had to re-pay the pool players. Man, i wish life was that easy again =).

I believed (Until I was 11) that gas prices were just what the sign said. Maybe 2, 3 dollars to fill up the tank. Then my parents started to complain about the rising gas prices. I was just like "Oh come on! Its only 3 dollars!". Then they explained the philosophy of "money per gallon..."

I used to believe all the money I put in the bank, I would eventually be able to withdrawl again. Therefore, I put all my special commemorative coins in the coin rolls with my dad thinking that I would get them back again when I was older.

I used to believe that a house didn't cost any money!

I used to believe that when you deposited $$$ in an ATM, there was a network of tunnels that went directly to YOUR bank, no matter where in the country you were in relationship to your bank!!!

When I was little I thought having $1000 or so you were rich and I asked my mom one day "How much money do we have?$333??"She the explained the value of mony to me.

The BIG cheque in the charity show is real!

When I was little I believed there was like a community of leprechaun like people small enough to fit in an ATM literally LIVING in the machine and who's main purpose in life was to hand grown ups the money. Of course I also believed that the ATM machine was an endless supply of money for my Momma!

When I was young I used to believe that grocery store cashiers could give you free money. I reasoned this because I had seen the cashier give my mom "free money" numerous times. One time I wanted a toy at the store and my mom said I couldn't have it because she didn't have any money to buy it with. I told her to just go get money from the cashiers. She then explained to me the concept of change.

I used to believe that insurance was an extremely unfortunate group of people who had to pay when bad things happened to you and do all the paperwork and that you were assigned 3 or 4 people to do so. I was also afraid of getting picked to be one.

Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 70s, you couldn't turn on the television without seeing an ad from used car salesman Cal Worthington, a mildly colorful man whose idiosyncratic tic was including a different wild animal - say, a cheetah - in each ad. Anyway, I loved the guy.

In his ads, he'd abbreviate the prices of his cars, so for an asking price of $1,095, he'd say "ten ninety-five." Wow, I thought, you could get a car for 10 bucks! To me, this meant a) I had enough money in the piggy bank to buy a Ford Mustang even though I was seven-years-old, and b) our family was desperately poor, since Mom and Dad only had two cars worth, at most, 20 dollars.

I used to believe that rich people got rich by that one day they were walking down the sidewalk, and a bunch of bills rained from the sky to make that person rich.

i used to believe that when people used an ATM machine, they could ask for as much money as they wanted; there was no limit. I also believed that the ATM machine made the money inside.

When my dad went to the ATM machine, he used to take out ten or twenty dollars, and I always wondered why he never asked for more money so that we could be rich.

When I was little I used to ask my dad for money. He would usually give me a one dollar bill, but I would ask for change instead. My reasoning was that if you have 5 of something it's more than 1 of something. Therefore, 5 pennies was worth more than 1 dollar. No matter how many times he explained this wasn't true, I just saw him as a stupid adult.

When I was small and first heard about dollar stores I pictured a store where you could buy any money ( $20 bill, $10 bill, a quater, ect.) for a dollar. This makes no sense obviously and made me think adults were extremely stupid.

Whenever I heard my dad telling my mum that he was going to 'withdraw' some money, I used to think that he was going to an art competition to 'draw' a picture of money and if he won he would get the real money. I alway used to ask him if he wanted to borrow my water colors.