time

When I was 6 or so, I had months and years reveresed in my head (ie: 12 years in one month). So when I was told Christmas was 3 months away, I was horrified at the thought that I wouldn't get another gift till I was nine.

My mom told me one day, "No Nintendo for an hour." I was 5at the time and I couldn't read a clock or for that matter understand a clock's simple function. That hour was the longest hour of my life! I was always running back into the kitchen to look at the oven clock. It said 2:01 so I thought that the 1 meant my hour was up so I could play Nintendo now. I bugged my mom about then she had to explain to me, "the 2 is the hour and the 1 is the minute." Oh great now I have the minutes to think about too?!?! I thought my mother was tricking me and that the minutes would move up and down having no effect to the hour indicator.

When I was about 4 or 5, I always kept asking my mother when it was time for me to go to bed:Mommy, when is tomorrow?? And she kept answering that if I go to sleep right away, when I wake up it will be tomorrow. When i woke up the next morning I would always ask: Is now tomorrow??

It made sence then!!!

I used to believe that if a movie shows a character from, say, age of 7 as a child and then later shows him as an adult of, say, age 27 .... the movie-makers had to film him when he was 7, then wait another 20 years for him to grow up and continue filming the rest of the story. And so on.

I used to believe that the guy announcing the time on my old multi-band radio actually sat in front of a microphone and read it out loud every few seconds. I always wondered how he could do it without ever eating, sleeping or going to the bathroom.

Growing up in the Sacramento, California area, it was explained to me that New York was three hours ahead because the sun rose and set earlier there, since they were on the east coast. I knew that San Francisco was a little further west than Sac, so the sun would set a few minutes later there compared to Sac. Therefore, ther must be a few minutes time difference between SF and Sac. For some reason, I thought it was a continual time zone change across the U.S. based on the sun, not broken into time zones like "eastern," "central," "mountain," and "pacific." (Air travel is tough enough as it is, can you imagine if this was the case?)

I used to think that a "New York Minute" was another form of time measurement, like an inch compared to a centemeter. I figured people living in New York had a different clock.

When I asked how long a minute was my mom said "sixty seconds" when I pressed her for more clarification she said "count to a hundred". Can't get the logic. I was very mixed up for a very long time.

When I was a child, I was of the belief that if you pointed a video camera at a tv (creating an infinate loop in the picture) and stood between them, you would be able to travel in time.

I believed until a worryingly late age that there were 3 one O'Clocks in the day, based on what I had heard people say: there was one in the middle of the day, one late at night, and one very early in the morning.

I used to believe that when it was time to "change your clocks" we actually had to go shopping for new clocks rather than just set them forward or backward one hour.l

When I was in kindergarden, I thought that the days of the week were invented by my kindergarden teacher.
It was only in 1st grade at school when I realised that the rest of the world knew about her great invention.

When i was 13 i was going to London for the weekend. When i looked at my planeticket, i saw that the trip took one hour longer from London to Bergen than from Bergen to London. It was a tricky question i finally managed to work out at the end of my journey (with plenty of help from my cousin...)

I remember sobbing on New Year's Eve, 1968.

I just couldn't imagine it not being 1968 any more. It was the first time that it really sank in that once a time has come and gone, it's never coming back.

I've been grappling with that concept ever since.

When I was small, my cousin told me that fat people exploded if they stayed up past midnight, I believed that for a long time, until my aunt & uncle hosted a new year's eve party, I was petrified about a quarter of twelve, I was sure we'd all be witness to my aunt's explosion....needless to say, my father boxed my ears when I tried to warn her to go to bed and why...

I remember worrying (back in the early 70's), how banks were going to handle the new millennium. It really bothered me. I didn't know how they were going to know when to stop making checks with the "19______" on them and start making them with "20______".

I thought the year of my birth (in my case, 1968) was some sort of code you were given when you were born. Whenever I was asked what my birthday was, I would give them the day and month. If they then asked what year, that was my clue to give them my code... 1968.