Stupid stuff you thought about as a child

[DeeBye]

Like most children, I used to watch Mr. Rogers Neighbourhood.

I loved it when they followed Trolley and travelled to the "Land of Make Believe". I never understood it as the "Land of Make Believe", though. For some reason, I always thought Mr. Rogers said "Land of Maple Leaf".

This confused the hell out of me. I equated the "Land of Maple Leaf" to Canada, and I noticed a distinct dissimilarity between the Canada I saw outside my house to the "Land of Maple Leaf" portrayed on Mr. Rogers.

[Griselda]

My parents watched Star Trek when I was growing up. When the ship would take a hit, the crew would put their heads down and brace themselves. I asked my dad why they were doing that, and he told me that they had all died and the come back to life. I think what he really meant was, "shut up, I'm trying to watch this." But, the idea that the Enterprise crew had multiple lives generated about a thousand more questions, none of which were answered because I was quickly shooed out of the room.

So, I spent a lot of time wondering about the mechanics of immortality among Star Trek characters until I figured it out.

-Griselda

[yangman]

Back when I was in ESL class, my teacher once told us about the Christmas tradition of kissing under the mistletoe. Being the English newbie that I was, I misheard "mistletoe" as "Ms. Otto". So, untill I realized that "Ms. Otto" was actually a shrub about a week later, I had in my head this image of a woman, dressed in green and red, hanging above doorways, and couples passing under her would have to kiss.

Thank goodness for captioned pictures. :D

[TaiDaishar]

When I was a kid I was always amazed by the arrows in the traffic lights, I wondered how in hell they always knew in which direction we're about to drive... :D

[ShadowHM]

Ok...

I had stupid confusions as a child too. B)

But this one comes from one of my kids: Listening to some country gospel music (compilation from the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - Will The Circle Be Unbroken) one day on the way to the cottage, small son pipes up from the back seat:

"I want to find that place, Mum"
"What place?"
"The one in the song."
"Huh? You want to find the Little Mountain Church House?"
"Oh Yes ! That's where they found their life's corner store. I want one too!"

Yep, it did sound good to a kid who had just learned that a Loonie* would not buy a lot of candy at the corner store. But.....imagine if you had your own corner store !

And I had to be the adult and bust his bubble to explain that it was a life's cornerstone that the man found, and then his little eyes started glazing over when I tried to explain why that would be a Good Thing™. :(



* A Loonie is a Canadian one dollar coin

[Archon_Wing]

After seeing an old black and white movie, I figured that color had been only a recent invention, and I asked older people what it felt like to live in a b&w world. :P

[blondebomber]

Ok this is something that I am still teased about by my family even though I am an adult and it was a long time ago lol.

I was only a kid and asked my mother if she had concrete when she was a kid :D I have never seen my mother laugh so hard

They won't let me live that one down.

[WarLocke]

When I was young, I always wondered why noone could toss a ball past the third freaking cup on that Bozo the Clown show.

Also, I used to think that Vanilla Ice song went "Ice ice, baby, chicken and gravy..." I still don't know the lyrics, but I doubt those are correct. :P

[TaMeOlta]

When I was little I was always saddened by the sign "Slow Children at play" :( but then when I got older I saw a sign that made me feel better "Slow Men at work" :D

[NiteFox]

My mother told me on one flight to Spain that when you flushed the toilet on the plane, it just dumps it out onto whatever the plane is flying over. That's why you couldn't go to the toilet when flying over land.

It took me a while to twig onto the truth, the simple honest truth that parents are evil.

God help my kids when I have 'em.

[Life]

Well isn't this just a darling little thread. I was amused reading all the responses so far.

My own daughter intrigued me to no end for a while. When she was very young, around 2 or 3, when ever we went for a drive in town she would be looking out the window and merrily and repeatedly saying " p no park". I couldn't figure out what the heck she was talking about for the longest time until she finally said "there daddy on the sign look ....." of course she was referring to the no parking sign. The ones you see with the circle around the p with a slash running diagnoally through it. We laughed a lot at that one.


Life

[Sir_Die_alot]

For the longest time when I recited the pledge of allegiance, I pledged to be invisible. I'm sure many Americans share this one. (For you non US people the word that confused me was "indivisible")

Another one is a lot of cities use street naming systems using the alphabet. Not knowing this I remember once being confused by "A street". I thought this was the most unhelpful road sign I ever saw. :P

[Zarathustra]

Everyone knows the alphabet song. One day as a child I asked my mother to show me what the letter "elemeno" looks like.

[Cryptic]

Once while driving through Wisconsin, I asked my dad why there were no deer zinging across the road. He seemed a bit puzzled, and said, we may see some, but they usually just stand in the ditch; we'll slow down if they run in front of us.

He started laughing pretty hard the next time we passed a Deer Xing sign that night, though. He laughed at me all night! Oh the humiliation!
;)

[Tal]

Everyone knows the alphabet song.  One day as a child I asked my mother to show me what the letter "elemeno" looks like.

My daughter last weekend asked me to do that. :D

[Doc]

I don't know if this will be tragic or funny... Hrm

I was raised, pretty much from day one, in Southern whorehouses and honkeytonks.

For a while, as a child, I thought every man dropped his trousers and began sexual activity with a woman as a form of greeting, perhaps like a hand shake. I thought it was perfectly normal.

In a more normal stretch, when I was very very small I remember being utterly terrified of cherries. I was afraid they would explode and blow my face to smithereens if I bit one. All because some drunken arsehole threw something called a "cherry bomb" at me for kicks and giggles. For a long time, the very sight of a cherry, especially those marchino extra bright red cherries that you put on sundaes and drinks would send me into a total panic state. The brighter the red, the more I am dead I would say to my self. To this day I still feel slightly uneasy around cherries for some reason, even though I know for certain that they are not going to explode.

[Vandiablo]

I've heard some say that they'd raise revenue by lowering taxes. HAW HAW HAW what a riot... well it MIGHT have been funny, except our state is now suffering because of that philosophy and blah blah blah

Anyway, when I was a very young'un, I was often on long car trips with my family. (Long, meaning my family drove from Panama to Michigan when I was 3 or so. ) Well, my family was all about teaching me about the fact that fire can hurt you, so when they would see something burning they'd say "Hot! Burn baby!". Generally the only flames we'd see were on old-style road "flashing" warnings -- these things were bomb-shaped containers of sterno that were lit on fire so you could see them at night. This was before batteries were cheap. So we'd see these lit up bomb things, and to me as a very young person (under 4) they kinda looked like they were alive, so naturally the name for them was Hot Burn Babies. (I didn't realize that it was "Hot! Burn baby!" until I was an adult and my mother was telling the story.)

The other thing, I was about 6... One time, on the highway, I asked my dad to go faster, then faster. He did, then didn't. I said I wanted to go 100 miles an hour. He said the car wouldn't go that fast. I asked him why the car couldn't go as fast as a horse. He said, huh??? The source was: my schoolyard playground abutted a horse farm, and a teacher once warned us not to go near the fence because those horses could come running by "at a hundred miles an hour!" My family still LOOOOVES to tell that one.

Then there was some stupid thing with the v vs. V key in Diablo, but I was in my 30's by then. Thecla can tell the whole story.

Also, when I first saw the "Dark Wanderer" in Act III, I thought some cheater had invaded my private game!

Oh, yeah, this too. When I was younger, I expected women to be rational, wages to be commensurate with performance, and life to be fair! I was so stupid!!

-V

[Doc]

Women rational? :lol: Who was silly enough to think that?

I have learned with age that women are delightfully fickle. And I doubt any woman reading this will have a rational response... Gotta run. :ph34r: