time

I thought there was one enormous clock somewhere in London that controlled time all over the world. Once in a while, it would decide to jump forward an hour, and then everyone had to jump an hour into the future. Similarly, sometimes it would jump backwards and everyone in the world would have to live the last hour all over again.

I was glad it never managed to go further than an hour, as I thought that if it started going backwards, the years would go back 1992, 1991, 1990 and so on, and people would start getting younger until everyone on earth was a baby. And if it went forward, I might have to leave school not knowing enough.

I thought about things too much as a kid.

As a kid, I believed that everyone else was terribly confused about Sunday coming right after Saturday...after all, on the calendar they are so far apart! That made no sense for YEARS.

I used to think that days of the week had colors. Whenever I would hear someone mention a day, I would envision a color. There was a vague sense of shape that went along with each color as well. Sunday was beige and shaped like a pair of eyeglasses. Monday was burnt orange and looked like a cardbord cylinder. Tuesday was translucent yellow -- I don't really remember what shape. Wednesday was a deep red or burgundy. Thursday was a translucent dark blue. Friday was black and had a bumpy texture sort of like the teeth of a comb. Saturday was a translucent teal and shaped like one of the U.S. states, maybe South Carolina or Tennessee. I have no idea what the origin of any of this synethesia was -- probably just the efforts of my developing mind as it struggled to understand such an abstract concept as time, trying to make sense of it all by attempting to create links to the more concrete visual world.

When I was little, I couldn't grasp the concept of "forever' -- as in, living in heaven without end. I imagined a huge wheel in space, endlessly turning... it was very scary to me.

When 'daylight savings' came around every year, I used to get very excited. I thought it was 'A Day LIKE Saving', so if it had been a fabulous day, you could stretch it out an extra hour!

I used to believe that time was suspended inside vacuum sealed packages. This was why their contents didn't age. I thought that we should vacuum seal terminally ill people until medicine figured out how to heal them.

When i was 5 or 6 years old my mother and I were driving to visit my grandparents. This was a 500 mile trip. I was bored and always asking when we would be there and how long til we would be there. My mother told me to try sleeping, if i slept time would go faster. I literally believed this for years to come. When i slept time went faster. The hands on the clock would spin maybe 20-40 % faster than i was awake i estimated

When I was five and a half, my mom bought a new calendar for the upcoming year- 1980. I could read, so I sat down to flip through the pretty pictures on the calendar, but I quickly realized that this calendar held no month of June. Some printing error had taken place, and the calendar went straight from May to July- no June. SInce my birthday is in June, I was devastated and started crying. My mom finally got me to tell her why-- I thought that since there "was no June" that year, I wouldn't have a birthday and would have to stay 5 instead of turning 6! My mom kept the calendar, she still has it!

I used to believe that by re-setting the clock forward for Daylight Savings meant that we'd be ahead by two hours instead. I guess I thought the clock automatically adjusted itself when it was supposed to and that we were tampering by adding another hour.

When i was three or four, i had a friend called Lucy that lived round the corner from me. on the way back from Playgroup, as her parents had taken her home and mine had me, i remember driving past their house and wondering what she was doing now. Thinking it would be far too complex for her to be existsing where i couldn't see her, i convinced myself that once Lucy wasn't with me, time stopped for her. she was in her house, but was doing nothing but standing still. i could go on living and would carry on as normal, but the rest of the world, pah! Talk about egocentric!

Yes, I ALSO used to believe that a quarter past the hour was 25 minutes past the hour. And yes, my rational too was that since a quarter was 25 cents, that a quarter past the hour was 25 minutes.

I used to believe that a dynasty lasted for a thousand years and when my father told me that it was the length of time that a chinese emporor ruled I thought they were really special men to be able to live for so long!

When I was 6 I used to think there was never a future because it's always present and there might not be a future. -(Hey-I was smart.Never thought of it liked that did ya?)

When I was little, my mom and my aunt used to exaggerate when they talked about late we had stayed up, and they would always say, "We stayed up till 5 o'clock in the morning!"

I remember having a really heated argument with a girl in pre-school one day when all the kids were bragging about how late they'd stayed up. "I stayed up till 11!" "I stayed up till 1 o'clock!"

I marched proudly to the center of the circle and declared, "Oh yeah? Well I stayed up till 5--o'clock--in the morning!" I beamed and waited for the shock of the others.

Much to my disappointment, their expressions stayed the same and this girl argued, "Well I stayed up till SIX o'clock in the morning!"

I rolled my eyes. "You can't stay up later than 5 o'clock in the morning."

For some reason I had been led to believe that 5 am was the latest it could possibly get.

I used to believe thats people knew some way of telling time I didnt. When they would say its 15 till always wondered how they knew what hour it was I thought it was just a gift I needed to learn

I used to believe that time travel would one day be possible. I spent years deciding where I would want to get sent back to. Should I do something fun like go to Woodstock, or see Lewis & Martin in Vegas? Or should I try to alter history like try to kill Hitler. Then I decided I would go back to when my mother was younger, and convince her to leave my father.