the world: places

When I was about 4 years old, we had a globe that had all the countries in different colors to outline their political borders, and it also had a compass that was drawn on the Pacific Ocean next to San Francisco, California. I believed that you could see the different colors and the compass from outer space, or at least from an airplane. When I was five I thought I would finally see the compass because my mom & I flew to the Philippines from San Francisco, and we would be flying over the compass. An hour into the flight, I then had a feeling that the compass didn't exist becuase I kept staring out the airplane window the whole time and I didn't see it.

I'm not sure where this would go, so I'm putting it here. When I was young, my parents bought a little weather measuring kit - you know, the kind with a wind speed guage, weather vane, etc. It came with a poster of various types of clouds, and what sort of weather they signified. Anyway, one picture had a radio tower on the horizon, its top obscured by the extremely low-hanging clouds. In order to call attention to this, the caption ended with the phrase "Note tower in background." As a result, I thought that the tower was named the Note Tower. So, whenever a relative or family friend would return from a trip, and show us a photo of scenery with a radio tower in it somewhere, I would always say "Oh! Did you go see the Note Tower, too?" And nobody ever had a clue what I was talking about.

I used to think that if i looked through small cracks in the ground, I could see my aunt Martha in Australia hanging up the her bra on the washing line. Odd, but true.

I live in Australia and my cousin who is the same age as me lives in Poland. From a very young age i grasped the concept that when it was day here it was night in Poland and vice-versa. In my mind however i believed that our lives worked in perfect unison but in reverse. For example, as i got out of bed, she got into bed. when i ate breakfast, she ate dinner. when i went to school she came home from school etc. The whole idea overwhelmed me but at the same time I remember it gave me a strong feeling of connection to my cousin.

I used to believe that Europe was made up of six separate countries: France, Paris, London, Venice, Switzerland, and Brittany. I have a map that I drew in third grade to prove it.

I sincerely believed that Mexico and Texaco were two states next to each other somewhere "down south".
After seeing an atlas of the US in my granddad's car, I spent my car trips with my nose pressed against the window, desperately watching to see the enormous "IOWA" that must have been painted on someone's field. I could never fully explain to anyone what I meant when I asked them if they'd seen "the BIG IOWA" yet.
Amazingly enough, I am allowed to mingle in the general population.

Once when I was vacationing with my parents in England, they suggested we go to see Greenwich Mean Time. I protested tremendously because I didn't want to go to a place where people were mean to each other. Instead I requested we go to Greenwich Nice Time. Naturally, we stayed entirely away from Greenwich.

When I was younger (don't want to mention exact age out of embarassment), I believed that we lived INSIDE the world. My point of revelation came when I was reading about the Great Flood in the Bible. I told my mom it didn't make sense because Noah and his family would have drowned when the water reached the top. She realized she had a lot of explaining to do!

I used to believe that each country is on its own Earth. Therefore there were more than one Earths. And to travel internationally meant planet-hopping from one Earth to the other.

I was babysitting this girl and her sister, they asked me about the places I have visited. Well I mentioned that I had been to Chicago. The girl looks at me in disgust, and says, "I will never go to Chicago! THEY EAT MONKEYS THERE!"

One of the most hilarious things I have heard from a kid, I really would love to know how she came upon that wonderful notion!

when I was little I loved digging deep holes in the sand at my cottage. My Grandpa used to say "you are going to find China soon". I always pictured that I was going to come accross dinnerware (china plates and cups!) buried in the sand... I never thought he meant I would find China, the country! :)

I used to believe all countries besides the USA were 3rd world countries. When I was 10 years old I'd talk to people from Britain and Canada online and wonder how they had access to the internet.

I'm a military kid, and when I was little, about 6 years old, my dad was going on tour to Yugoslavia. I didn't know where that was, so I asked him, and he said it was north of some other country. I didn't understand "north", or "south" etc. So I looked up into the sky, and asked, "How do you get up there? Is there a road that goes up there?" thinking you had to drive to the sky. He didn't see me looking into the sky, so he said, "yeah, there's a road that goes up there" as if it was a stupid question, lol. Thankfully, I do understand geography now.

When I was still in elementary school, there was this big (permanent) chalk drawing of the United States on the pavement near the playground.

During recess when I was in the 1st and 2nd grade, I repeatedly jumped on the drawing. I believed that if I stepped on our state, a giant foot would fly down from the sky and squash everybody on the playground. I was so confused when it didn't happen. Haha.

When I was younger my dad was in the military and we were stationed in Germany. I knew I was born in the USA and we used to live there, and my parents would talk about living back in the states. Having no understanding of geography, I always thought the moon was the other half of the earth, the half with the United States and airplanes took you back and forth.

My daughter Stella, who is 10 years old, just told me that when she was younger she thought that asking for country's capital city name was equivalent to asking for the country "pet name". That is certainly because - to a kid - the word "Brasilia" sounds like a "pet name" to the word "Brazil" and not the actual name of our capital city. In Brazil we also have a state called "Goiás" whose capital is "Goiânia", another "pet name" in her mind. And then, the funniest of all, was that she then concluded that France's capital would be "Francine".

When I was three my family moved to a place called Black Rabbits. I looked all over the place for those rabbits but I never saw them.

Finally I said something about it in front of my parents and they laughed, and we drove down the lake to the place where the RAPIDS were, and they pointed out the sign that said Black Rapids. (Yes, I could read when I was three.) They explained that rapids were a place where the water in the lake moves fast through a narrow spot, and I got the idea.

Still, for at least a little while, whenever we drove past or boated through the rapids I would imagine that I could see the rabbits swimming in the choppy water.