I used to believe that stuffed animals were sentient beings. At one point I remember seeing a giant trash bag of stuffed animals someone was throwing out, crying, and being deeply upset about their abandonment.

Huh. After reading a few more, I remembered that I also used to believe that there would be global nuclear war any day, ignited by some incident between the USSR and the US. Not that far-fetched, really, but I think it's interesting how people even five years younger than me never really developed that strong immediate belief.

Daniel, the world was in black and white back then.

Miko: this reminds me that I used to believe that nuclear bombs were huge, black and round -- just like the bombs in cartoons, except huge. To throw such a bomb, I reasoned, one would need a huge slingshot, or maybe a catapult.

Once, when I was in kindergarten, there was a civil defence exercise. It must have been the last one ever conducted around here (it was in late 1980's). We. the kids, were supposed to be in bed, but somehow everyone knew about the exercise and naturally, we just couldn't stay in bed. At the same time, we were also too frightened to look out the window. Every once in a while someone would take a peek and tell the others what was happening. Of course they were inventing things -- someone claimed to have seen a tank, another one said that it was carrying a bomb. I, too, looked out the window, but only saw people running around near the schoolhouse. Naturally, I was disappointed. Of course, I couldn't let the others know that I hadn't seen anything, so I made up something about people with machine guns.

I used to think "making love" was kissing and "having sex" was, well, having sex. I have no idea where I got that idea or how I finally worked it out.

When I was about 7 or 8, we had to look up lists of words for homework. One of my words was 'infiltrate' and the definition I found was 'To enter secretly with an unfriendly purpose.' Somehow I misread it as 'To enter secretly with an unfriendly porpoise' and I wondered why somebody had made a word for that, as it couldn't be that common.

unfriendly porpoise (from language : spelling)

This is hilarious!

My favorites:

When I was about 4 or 5, I had (and for some reason loved) a children's book about Louis Pasteur, which had illustrations of rabid dogs with white foam all around their mouths. One day, a family friend served me some blueberry pancakes with blueberries for eyes and a whipped cream smile, and I FLIPPED OUT. I cried softly at the table and when everyone asked me what was wrong, I told them that I couldn't eat my pancakes because they had rabies.


I wanted to grow up and become a marine biologist, which seemed to me the perfect combination of studying nature and shooting people.


As a four-year-old with a very large vocabulary, I decided the "Civil War" was the one war where everybody pretended they were nice to everyone else. For example, a soldier would offer the enemy a cigarette, shoot him when he least expected it, and then pretend to be sad about it.

I thought I came from "star people," who I communicated with through the hall light outside my bedroom and believed would return for me someday and take me home. This longing for home is still with me somehow.

I also had a guardian angel named Jenny, who I still talk to sometimes, when I'm lonely or stressed, though I don't believe in such things anymore (atheism saved my sanity, I think). Funny thing, I found out later I had a half-sister named Geraldine who died as a baby many years before I was born; they were going to call her Gerry.

awwwwww miko that's so sweet

I believed that wearing a white sheet killed me temporarily and turned me into an invisible ghost for the duration of the wearing. I dropped my stuffed dog into a white pillow case so that she could be a ghost, too.

Specklet, I had that Louis Pasteur book! Those pics of the rabid dogs always made me worry that my dog was going to get rabies. I remember checking her mouth out every day making sure there wasn't even the slightest bit of foam.

I thought that when the teacher on Romper Room looked in her magic mirror she could really see us watching on TV. I would get so excited when she would say "I see Rachel."

I also thought that my stuffed animals and dolls came to life when I was asleep. (didn't that happen in the movies all the time?)

I thought that movies and TV shows were shot the same way we saw them, beginning to end, breaks for the commercials. I also thought the VJs on MTV were live the way the radio DJs were.

My Auntie told me that when I was a small child, she said look up at the stars, and I told her: Those aren't stars, those are spaceships that ran out of gas.

I thought there was a control room in my stomach full of scientists in white coats and big machines with whirling tapes. I figured the food came down my throat on one of those conveyor belt things you sometimes see under the sidewalks in NYC, and somehow or other I decided it was all neatly crated up, and the scientists decided where it would go, you know, like bread crusts are good for curly hair, so they went to my head, and carrots are good for night vision and so on.

I also thought there were little people inside of the tv and the radio.

I believed that the elevator would not run unless everyone faced forward. And that if you sat on a bench at the bus stop you had to get on the bus.

At one point around age 7 I was very freaked out by the idea of guts (as in internal organs). I believed I did not have guts, though everyone else probably did. I was kind of solidly smooth all the way through, like a caramel.

GOML: I used to think that too! It used to perplex me at how fast they could change costumes. I also used to wonder at how many of them were in the TV or if there were just a few and instead they had masks for all the different faces they would need.

I also used to think that babies came out of women's calves. I have no idea how I came up with that.

Those little black seeds in bananas? They can get you pregnant, you know...

Ha! awesome.

I firmly believed that women only got their period once, and that meant you were having a baby. (why not the subsequent times, if you had more kids? I have no idea).

I didn't think that there were little people in the television, but I did think that the shows were all acted live, and was always amazed that they never made any mistakes.

I thought that the VCR could fast forward regular tv and wondered why anybody watched the commercials.

Oh yeah, and I didn't realise that cheques were regular money, and remember having a screaming fit when my mother wouldn't "just write a check" and buy me something.

I thought that the VCR could fast forward regular tv and wondered why anybody watched the commercials.

gaspode, my daughter thinks that, and now it's actually true! Anytime we're watching something live, she is perplexed at why I can't skip commercials. "Daddy, do TiVo!"

remember having a screaming fit when my mother wouldn't "just write a check"

When I asked for stuff, my parents would say "What do you think, I have a money machine?" Now that there are money machines, it must be terribly hard for little kids to understand that you can't always just go push a few buttons and get some more cash.

I was behind a man making a deposit with his child at the ATM, the little girl got to put the envelope in the slot and take the receipt. She took the receipt and then she looked at her dad really funny and said: but, daddy, why didn't any money come out?

I understood the mechanics of sex at a very young age, but I assumed that people did it standing up, in the bathroom, for procreation. I didn't figure out that people did it recreationally -- or that it had anything to do with the social conventions of flirting, kissing, etc. -- until years later.

In fact, I didn't figure it out at all. The process seemed so elaborate and deliberate that the idea of an accidental pregnancy made no sense at all. So I asked my mom. She explained that sometimes you just want to have sex with someone, whether you intend to have a kid or not, and it was sort of like wanting to run up and hug Grandma when she comes to visit.

tangerine: Grandma's in for quite a surprise. ; )

On a trip when I was about 5 or 6, we stopped by the side of the road to look at some moose about 40 or 50 yards away, eating grass in a meadow. Another traveler offered the use of his binoculars to my family to get a better look. I put them up to my eyes and was convinced that not only could I see them chewing, I could also hear them.

On that same trip, at some steak house with red-flocked wallpaper near Apsen or Vail (I'm not sure) my father ordered a duck flambé dish. The waiter announced "There goes Donald!" as he lit the fire and the flames lept to the ceiling. I burst into tears and was inconsolable and had to be taken out of the restaurant.

Wow, I submitted something there ages ago. The internet is a strange place.

I used to believe that, since God could see and hear everything we did, that must've meant he had eyes and ears all over his body. I thought he must have lived in intense agony, since he had to step on the eyes and ears on his feet, and sit on the ones on his posterior, and chew on the ones in his mouth. A disturbing image to recall...

I was another one who believed that my stuffed animals were alive and had feelings. I was inconsolable one night when I'd left my favorite lion outside at my friends' house. To this day, when buying stuffed animals (even as gifts for other people), I pick one by it's "face".