Silly Things We Believed as Children

I'll never forget dorm life and learning, then teaching (thru the bathroom door) how to use tampons!  Absolutely hilarious!!! And with mirrors!

We were a nursing class and I don't think 5 out or our 55 freshmen knew that we had a urethra!  (1961)
Anatomy class and then clinical efforts for catherization were a hoot! 

I know exactly where that monster under the bed came from.  My oldest brother (and sort of sitter) loved to watch Rod Serling's, The Twilight Zone. 

They had a show where this lady brought home a voodoo doll from a vacation.  The chain around his neck fell off and he came to life.  He wreaked all kinds of terror, to include stabbing the woman's hand that was hanging down while sleeping. When she jumped up, he stabbed her ankles with his little spear from under the bed.  It totally terrified me and to this day if I wake with my arm hanging over the bed, I remember it. Childhood terrors...

I believed that my mother grew up at the North Pole. Every Christmas when we would go to the local Ben Franklin store, the same Santa would be there. He wasn't the usual Santa that sat in a chair waiting for the children to come and whisper in his ear what they wanted for Christmas. He wore a set of original harness jingle bells (like Polar Express) and walked around the store. He told the Christmas story out of Luke and at appropriate times in the story would jingle the bells to puncutate the story. He would emphazise that everyone was like Santa, as long as he had the spirit of love and giving of himself, Santa would never go away. He would ask if we had been good and listened to our parents and teachers and give us miniature candy canes. My mom would ask how Mrs Clause and the elves were doing. He would reply that they were doing fine and ask about my grandparents. Later in years I realized that he did actually live at the next farm to my grandparents and his boys were the same age as my mother. When we moved to a neighboring town the year I was in the 3rd grade, I thought that 'my santa' wouldn't find us, but to my amazement, we found him in another Ben Franklin store in the new town.

Sheila

We used to trade our nickels for our little brothers' dimes, telling him the larger coin was worth more. heheheheheh 

Deja vu can be explained by saying that a part of your brain has already begun to process the information you are just beginning to notice, or see. It is just milliseconds, but seems an eternity to those of us who experience it. Very weird.

barbe, explain this episode of Deja vu. When I was still living in Ohio (family not planning on moving), I dreamed that I was in a new school building (our school house was built in the 40's) and I didn't recognize anyone around me but I was talking to them. Fast forward about 6 months, my family had moved to North Carolina and as I was sitting in my science class (new building less than 10 yrs old), I 'remembered' being there before, a new building and classroom and people around me that I didn't know but was talking to them.

Sheila

Sheila, co-incidence, esp and deja vu are all intertwined. Do-do-do-do (that's the Twilight Zone theme, by the way)

I was really upset when we got our first color TV.  I was probably 4 or 5 at the time.  My favorite TV show was Timmie & Lassie, and it was in black & white, so I just knew that I couldn't watch it anymore--I cried for a long time because I really didn't think that you could watch a show that was black & white on a color TV.

 Things under the bed........I always thought that there was a burglar hiding under the bed and would grab me if I got up in the night to go to the bathroom, or he had a VERY big knife and if I moved too much, could stab us through the mattess.  (I had to share a bed with my older sister and she would also tell me that there were invisible snapping turtle heads at the bottom of the bed and if my feet or legs got on HER side of the bed, they would eat my feet off!)  

Gracie,

The same thing happened to me when we got our first color tv! My favorite show was "Hazel" and I was so upset I wouldn't be able to watch it once we got the color tv.  Imagine how thrilled I was when my mom turned the tv on for the first time and there was my favorite maid, Hazel!

What about eating vegetables would make your hair curly?  

badboob...I was told it was eating the crusts of our sandwiches that would make our hair curly. I liked the crust so it wasn't an issue with me, but as I got older, I didn't want my wavy hair (stick straight was "in"), so I thought if I stopped eating the crusts my hair would go straight.

Oh boy....thumb sucking!! My grandpa used to tell me that if I kept sucking my thumb, it would fall off. He would qualify the statement by holding up his hand and showing me his own finger that stopped at the first knuckle. It scared me to death! I never knew he'd lost that finger in a railroad accident until I was an adult! Then, imagine my horror when my husband's great-uncle told my son the same thing...he was missing a finger too. 

Well, I ate lots of vegetables and crusts were my favorite part of the bread and--you guessed it--stick straight hair that even a perm won't curl! I was so disappointed when my hair started growing in after chemo and finding that it's STILL straight....geesh, I though some curls would be only fair!

My brothers had me believing that our gerbils could talk. My oldest brother would hold one up to his ear and say, 'Yep, uh huh...oh, I know!, " etc....I tried to get one to talk to me and all it did was bite the fire out of my ear!  So much for talking rodents...

((((HUGS)))
Diane

gracie73 - Your thingy under the bed was much nastier than mine!!  I know I'll be thinking of that knife  and snapping turtle heads when I jump into bed tonight!!

badboobs - was a thumbsucker, too.  My mother put a bandaid on my thumb when I was tiny, and the darned thing came off, of course, and just about choked me to death!!

It wasn't until second grade, when my best friend's thumb nail fell off on her desk did I quit!  I can still hear the "click" it made when it hit her desk.

NancyD - I had (and still have) very curly hair!  Everytime someone reminded me to eat my crusts, I would feel like whacking them!!  Like you, I thought my hair should straighten out if I didn't eat them.  Only an iron and ironing board ever straightened this hair out!

bkc - I love the big bandaids!!  When my older son was a baby, he crawled into my bedroom and emerged  in the living room with a tampon in each fist and one in his mouth, to my complete mortification, as our priest was visiting!

And, I was one whose mother warned against the use of tampons before marriage!  Geesh.  I rode those giant bananas for years just in case!

Laughing at the tampon stories!  My little brother found mine one day.  I was going upstairs and he was hiding around the landing and when I came into his "sight", I heard him shout "Torpedo one", "Torpedo two", then a tampon went flying by my head.  (He had figured out how to 'shoot' it with the applicator).