transport

I used to believe…

The State Bump

When we were kids, we went on lots of car trips. Whenever we crossed a state line, Dad would say "here comes the state bump!" This was the little bump in the highway caused by the fact that each state's highway contruction crews' work never quite joined up perfectly. And he was right--within a couple of yards of the "Welcome to..." sign there was always a little bump.

Of course, there's a little bump every couple of yards on practically every highway in the world. But it sounded so plausible!

The hilarious part is that my sister believed this until she was in her TWENTIES!

I saw a charter bus with green-tinted windows go by. I assumed that all the people in the bus were sick and were being transported to a hospital. I distinctly remember feeling sorry for a girl about my age on the bus who was blowing a huge bubble, thinking she was going to die.

I used to believe…

My evil babysitter Patti left me in her car (a green Vega, of course) so she could go shopping. Before she left, she told me not to touch what I later learned to be an emergency brake, because if I did, the car would blow up. It seemed perfectly logical that there would be a lever to pull to make a car blow up, since I had seen so many cars blow up on TV. To this day, I can't use the emergency brake without feeling a twinge of trepidation.

I used to believe…

Sloppy Science Category: When I was quite young (It probably lasted until I was 6!), I noticed that if I leaned on the bumper of a car, the whole vehicle would bounce up & down. Conclusion: I was stronger than a car. I actually believed that, if faced with a car bearing down on me, I could simply reach out with my hand and stop it. No superhuman strength --- it just seemed logical, given that I could make a supposedly heavy car bounce. Thank God I never tested my theory! Fortunately, Mom & Dad watched a TV series called "UFO" that contained an episode in which a child is struck & killed by a car. LOTS of blood, too. I found it to be a sobering revelation.

I was abouot 6 when I asked my mother if the car ran out of gas right when we got to the gas station. She must not have heard me because she said Yes. I believed this until I was about 10 when I mentioned it to my friends. They laughed so hard and teased me about it for years!

I used to believe…

We didn't have a car when I was little, so most of what I knew about traffic signs came from what I saw in my suburb. When I was lucky enough to go somewhere in the country with a relative, etc., I couldn't understand why they kept breaking the law by passing all the "DO NOT PASS" signs...

I used to believe…

My parents and I often went on little road trips when I was younger and I didn't fully understand how cars worked. For some odd reason I believed that the roads were like giant conveyor belts and the cars just sat on them. The cars that passed us were just on faster belts. I have no clue why I thought that...

I spent years believing that little men lived under roads controlling the traffic lights, after I asked my Dad when I was four years old "How do they know when the cars are coming?" This belief also applied to Zebra and Pelican crossings...

I used to believe…

My dad told me when I was about 7 or so that the sign indicating a median is ahead (looks like a shoe imprint with an arrow going around the right of it) meant that there were pedestrians trying to cross the street ahead, and you had to drive real fast to avoid them.

i used to believe that little mice dressed up in business suits and operated traffic lights. every morning they would climb up the wire and sit down at the console to work all of the traffic lights. i also thought they carried briefcases.

I used to believe that pizza delivery cars/trucks were manufactured with that little light-up pyramid on top of the car advertising the restaurant. They would simply order the number of cars they wanted from the pizza-delivery car company.

To explain the diversity of the vehicles, I had reasoned that they must make so many red Fords for Pizza Hut, so many green Toyotas for Domino's, and so on.

I used to believe…

Until I was about 9 or 10, I used to believe that the "no outlet" signs (designating a dead end street) meant that the houses there had no electricity (no outlets)!

I used to believe…

My youngest daughter was a precocious reader. She learned to read various road signs long before she went off to kindergarten.

Every day I would drive the other children to school across the Lake Washington Floating Bridge, my youngest would read aloud all the road signs. There used to be a sign in the middle of the bridge that said "draw bridge.'' For a long long time she was convinced that this was an exhortation, and that she was supposed to bring along a pencil and tablet so she could stop and draw the bridge.

I used to believe…

When I was young and we would go on trips, I would feel sorry for the people in the cars going the opposite direction as us because I thought they were coming back from vacation!

I used to believe…

When I was around 5 years old, I remember visiting my grandparents in a big city. I had never seen traffic lights before and I believed that a person lived under the road and shone differents coloured torches through tubes.
I've been digging up heaps of roads but I still haven't found the traffic light people: They're too fast!

I used to believe…

When my children were little we would be driving along and go over streps in the road ( you know the ones that keep you from falling asleep ) I would tell them that they were wake-up bumps. About 14 years later my 17 year old daughter and i were talking about them and she thought they were makeup bumps, she never could figure out why they were called that.

I convinced my sister that stop signs with white lines around them were optional....you could stop-if you want. She believed until she happened to notice that ALL stop signs had white lines around them

I used to think that the clinker and gravel you see between the rails and sleepers on the railway line was actually the "remains" of people having used the lavatories on the trains.