transport

I used to believe…

when i was little my sister had told me that the toggle on the bottom of the rear view mirror used to tilt the mirror was actually used to make the airbags in the car go off

I used to believe that little elves lived inside the traffic light things,and that they were the reason the color of the light changed.

I used to believe…

You know the Dead End sections of streets? I used to be so afraid of those sections. Usually when I went to one there was the woods, and I think I was scared of the woods when I was little, but it looked scary to me. I used to think a monster would come out from the woods or that the people in the car with me would die.

I used to believe…

When I was younger, I used to be really afraid that my dad was going to get arrested because he was "drinking and driving". I didn't realise that "drinking and driving" didn't include soft drinks ;)

I use to believe that when you reached the end of the road in front of you when you were driving, that that was the end of the world. Somehow we never drove that far.

I distinctly remember being told that the red traffic lights were red because they were flames, and that to turn the light green we had to blow out the fire. And to think of all the time I spent huffing and puffing at the windshield! Never once occurred to me to ask "How will the air I blow get through the windshield to put out the light?"

I used to think that a car's exhaust was what propelled it down the road (much like a jet engine). This was a sound theory for vehicles with dual exhaust, but i was always confused as to what cars with a single tail pipe did not veer to one side.

I used to believe…

The Children Crossing signs in my town had a silhouette of two children walking over the letters XING. I thought there was an actual word xing you pronounced as "zing".
It meant something like reservation or game preserve.

I thought that til I was about twelve.

I used to believe that the "Wrong Way, Go Back" signs on a freeway were put there by 'Bunyips' - mythical Yeti type monsters which are said to reside in Australian billabongs.

I used to believe…

for years i read "turn left any time with care" signs as "turn left any time with car". And i wondered how else you would turn left, it seemed so crazy to me, having signs like that.

I used to believe…

Not mine--

My great grandfather would point out "Watch For Falling Rock" signs along the highway on family road trips. He would tell a brief story about Falling Rock, the missing/wandering Indian and that they were search signs for the public to help find him. My grandma and my three great aunts used to watch for Falling Rock on their road trips. And no one ever fought the whole trip, just silence.

I used to believe…

One day when I was riding with my mother, I asked her what the "Do Not Pass" sign meant. She told me it was for blind people.

I figured that if a blind person was driving, their passenger would have to tell them that they had to stop because of the sign.

I used to believe…

My father once told me that the "Neutral" position on the gearstick of his automatic transmission car would cause the engine to immediately overheat and blow up. It didn't occur to me until I was twelve that this could occur only while going at high speed

I used to think that each traffic light had a control room underneath the street and that city employees monitored the traffic with video cameras, manually changing the lights at arbitrary intervals.

I used to think that when the light turned green, everyone started driving at the exact same time - that you didn't wait for the car in front of you to start moving before you started riving. So when I got older and started noticing that we didn't immediately start driving when the light turned green, I got confused...

I used to think that gasoline was snakes. Since cars had "horse power", and horses were scared of snakes, I thought that there were snakes in the gas tank. The snakes scared the horses, and once the horses were scared, they started running...powering the car.