transport

I used to believe that the stop lights had little mice who ran up and down them to flip the light switches from Red to green, green to yellow, ect. Imagine how hard they had to work in school zones with flashing lights.

I remember believing that clouds where the exhaust fumes from airplanes.

I was 18 when I moved to New York City from Nebraska. I was standing at a corner in Mid-Town, waiting for the light to change, when I noticed a sign above -- "No Standing". I thought, my god, I can't even stand here!!!! Took me a while to figure out that "no standing" meant that cars could not sit there and idle while waiting, not that I could not stand there. I was most amused at myself when I finally figured it out.

I used to believe…

When I was little, my dad would tell me that he was psychic and he knew when red lights would change green, and he would do it with amazing accuracy. It was years before I realized he was just looking at when the other lights in the intersection turned red.

I used to believe…

Once, before I stopped believing everything my father told me, my brothers and I were riding in the backseat of our new car. I had never seen shoulder-strap adjusters before (elastic-held clips for pulling seatbelts away from smaller people's necks) and had begun to fiddle with them when my father cried out, "Son! Don't touch that!" With conviction in his voice inspired by his insatiable desire to make a fool out of his eldest, he continued, "That is the ejection seat cord! If you pull on that, the rear windshield will blow out and rockets will fire the seat out of the car. It is only to be used in case of an accident. Do you understand?" I felt as if I'd almost put my hand into a shark's mouth. Pale-faced, I asked, "Is there a parachute?"
"Of course there is," he sternly replied. "You need to be able to float down away from the accident. Now don't mess with them anymore, they're very sensitive."
As any kid would do, I then bragged to my friends and my friends' parents about our 'ejection seat' that my dad had told me about. Somehow those good parents kept straight faces and my friends were either clueless enough to believe me or thoughtful enough to let that one slip by. Some eleven years later and it might as well have happened yesterday. Sheesh.

I used to believe…

Here was how I imagined traffic lights worked:

Pressure-sensitive plates were placed directly beneath the asphalt on all the roads. When too many cars drove over them, indicating that traffic was getting too heavy on a particular road and wildly rushing cars were more likely to crash into each other, the light turned red to stop all the cars and make their drivers calm down. Then the cars on the other road, their drivers nicely calmed down, could proceed until they, too, became disorderly and the pressure plates told the light to change.

I came up with this hypothesis all on my own. When I asked my dad if this was how traffic lights worked, he, trying to keep his focus on the road, just said "Sure, hon." So I believed this for quite some time. ;P

I used to think that there wes another set of brakes in the passenger seat of a car, just incase the person sitting on that side sow something that we were about to hit that the driver didn't. That was why little kids couldn't sit in the front.
Boy, did I get a big surprise when I turned twelve.

I used to believe…

My dad told me that the government took his handprint as an outline for the red "stop" hand that came up when crossin the street. I'd always stop and tell my friends, "Look! That's my Dad's hand!"

I used to believe…

Some of my friends and neighbours and I were on vacation in New Jersey, and as we were walking down the road to the beach, my friend ever so kindly pointed out that there were midgets who lived in the posts holding the lights up.

I, being the gullible "Pokemon Master", believed her. She then went on to explain how the midgets changed the colour of the lights when there were a lot of people waiting. However, if the midget saw someone they disliked, they would make them wait for a very, VERY long time. And the midgets didn't only live in the poles holding up traffic lights, but the streetlights lining the road as well.

....It's quite pathetic that I believed that, really.

I used to believe…

My Grandpa told me to never fall asleep in a car because I'd die from the carbon monoxide. While this could be true with a massive degree of CM poisoning, he made it soudn like just falling asleep would kill me!

I used to believe…

When I was fairly young, I had seen parts of a few movies involving commercial airplane crashes on television. This gave me the impression that most planes crashed. I was quite frightened when I found out my grandfather would be flying overseas!

I used to think that traffic lights were controlled by some dude in a building nearby that flipped a switch so that the lights would turn red or green. No matter where I went, I would look around and wonder where that dude could be hiding.

I used to believe that there were little guys that sat in little tiny labs underneath each and every stop light that changed and coordinated the stop lights. I can't remember if I finally just realized it wasn't that or if I asked my dad w/o letting on that I actually didn't know.

I used to believe…

Everytime I rode with my parents in their car as a kid, I'd always hate stopping at traffic lights; I used to believe that traffic lights were actually operated by little traffic gnomes who decided when the lights would change to red, green, or yellow based on whether the driver was good or bad, or whether or not they were in a particularly good mood. Waiting at a red light for a long while made me hate those gnomes quite a bit.

i used to think cars with white light drove on one side of the road and cras with red light drove on the other. Until i asked my dad about it while we where in the car and he told me to look behind us....

i never knew when i was a kid that it was my parents who turned the blinker on in the car--i thought the car magically knew where you were going and the blinker was telling your parents how to get there. one day i asked my dad how the car knew where he was going and he told me he was just turning it on.