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What did you believe?

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The Apple-Picker

22:26 / 15.10.02

I believed that if I jumped off the top of the swingset with an umbrella in hand, I would float down. This never worked, but I concluded that I just wasn't doing it right.

Like many children, I believed that my dad was always right. Finding out that he wasn't always right was not such a drastic thing, and the mistakes were always small. What overwhelmed me was the day when I realized that I could be right, that I could have knowledge my dad didn't have. This happened on the return trip from my grandparents' home after a Christmas dinner. I didn't realize we were lost, and I said in my then whiny and then as now eager-to-please way "We're driving north." "No," Dad said, "we're driving south." I paused, was confused. I looked out the window to my left before asking, "...but... doesn't the sun set in the west?" We turned around.

That was the day that I learned I can have understanding that my dad doesn't have, but that isn't what overwhelmed me. What overwhelmed me was that my dad could make me doubt where the sun set.

The Return Of Rothkoid

22:59 / 15.10.02

I was a morbid little kid. I always believed, after a trip to the Old Dubbo Gaol, that I was going to be hung because of some kind of mistaken identity thing between me and a bushranger. Which only really came second to believing that I was going to become the world's youngest victim of Spontaneous Human Combustion - which, of course, I would foil by rolling around in my blankets, thus cheating death.

Good christ.

01:02 / 16.10.02

Mazarine, what about cottonmouths?
Didn't know what one was at the time. Thank christ. I'd've been wearing foil on my feet or something.

08:58 / 16.10.02

'koid said-Which only really came second to believing that I was going to become the world's youngest victim of Spontaneous Human Combustion.
I didn't know they showed Toksvig in Australia...

The Natural Way

09:20 / 16.10.02

Inspired by Roald Dahl's book, my friends and I (taking time out from pestering my grandad to build us all battlesuits) decided that a number of old ladies in the village were exhibiting some of the hallmarks of witchery. Our suspicions thus aroused, we had to investigate further..... This led to a group of us tailing one old dear for an entire week; taking notes on whether or not she smelled funny, checking for long, talon-like fingernails and paying close attention to her feet... Did she have toes? My friend Chris was obsessed - he actually used to hang around outside her house, peering through windows, etc. One day as he was trailing a foot or so behind her down the High St., she turned on him!

"What are you doing, boy? Who are you? Where do you live? What are you doing?"

The third degree! Chris scarpered. We'd found our witch! We warned everyone we knew and hotfooted it every time we saw her - you couldn't be too careful where these evil bastards were concerned...

13:46 / 16.10.02

I believed that if I got the knack just right, I could breathe water. A day's swim often became a long and painful round of experiments.

17:26 / 16.10.02

I thought that classes in High School and College were, like, ten minutes long, because on TV it always seemed that way.

Once we got an obscene phone call on our answering machine, and for the longest time I called it an "absurd" phone call. Related to that, I had "cunt" mixed up with "cunning".

I thought my grandfather was black.

Murray Hamhandler

17:26 / 16.10.02

I believed that I had an invisible sister named Samantha.

I believed that cars ran on anger, as my dad always seemed angry when he drove and the car accelerated wildly when he got really angry.

My brothers and I believed that we watched our across-the-street neighbor get murdered on the night before we moved away from that particular house. I'm still not terribly convinced that we didn't.

I believed that, in order to dream, you had to float off of your bed (I slept on the top bunk), land on your feet, and walk out your door into the dream. I think a lot of my dreams started with this scenario.

17:30 / 16.10.02

Dogs were boys and cats were girls, and women always wore their hair long... despite the fact that we had a female dog and my mother had short hair. Say what now? I actually drew pictures of my mother with long hair.

17:34 / 16.10.02

Yipes, they keep coming back! I was convinced that I was adopted, because I couldn't remember being born. I also remember staring at a black and white tv and making colors appear. I thought girls had rubber bands instead of penises. A girl showed me hers and it looked like a rubber band.

Tryphena Absent

18:41 / 16.10.02

I used to believe that my mum had the power to become invisible, that two little people lived in the video player and that pebbles were actually giant malteasers (it was quickly destroyed when I tried to eat one).

Ex

11:24 / 17.10.02

I believed (circa age four) that God was a small black child (circa age two). He had a natty silk suit, and his feet dangled from the front of his oversized throne.
I think this derived from the worthy, but confusing attempts of a trendy vicar to persuade us that God wasn't an old white man.

11:41 / 17.10.02

Trijhaos: "When I was about 8, I came to the conclusion that my entire life was a dream and eventually I'd wake up and I'd be four again. (If only this were true)."

I still believe this! It's true. It must be!

I belived what they told me in church, that I was sinful. What an awful thing to tell a kid.

11:53 / 17.10.02

I grew up in Manchester, and when I came to London was teribly disappointed that when you look down at the tube tracks, they're not coloured in (snap, Didactic).

I was convinced that our Rabbi was god; he was a santa-claus type with a white beard and everything. After I stopped thinking he was god, i thought god looked exactly like him.

I thought you could tell god stuff like you could tell a teacher; like when my Mum bought non-kosher food.

Was utterly convinced that my parents had adopted me, and had never mentioned it, and that some where-are-they-now actor called Simon Gipps-Kent was my real brother who would come and take me away from all this. That.

15:49 / 17.10.02

I believed that if I, or anyone else, put my finger in my belly button and pushed long enough, my legs would fall off. Never figured out how long it would take though, so it could be true!

When I was 5, my sister and her equally sadistic friend, asked their Ouiji board when I would die. It said "6". I lived in fear until I turned 7.

Due to a particular recurring nightmare, I believed that Michael Landon (from Little House on the Prairie) was really a shape-shifting, green lizard man with endles rows of teeth. That guy freaked me out.

16:29 / 17.10.02

That animals could really talk and would do so only when people weren't around.

That bumblebees were soft and fluffy like rabbits...then I tried to pet one...

When I was about 5 I found a dead horseshoe crab on the beach and was convinced it was an alien lifeform.

That witches flew around in thunderstorms waiting to grab people off the street.

That clowns were the most evil things in the world.

That if you saw a painting where the eyes followed you around the room, it meant that painting would come to life.

That the rock band Kiss were the coolest thing in the world (strange in light of the clown phobia, now that I think about it).

19:15 / 17.10.02

I believed that I was really meant to be famous and it was just a manner of time before I became a cute rockstar child actor and was hanging out with Gary Coleman and would be best friends with all the girls from "The Facts of Life." I used to tell my kindergarten teacher that I was actually on a TV show and it was coming out ANYDAY!! (o egomania and parents who let you watch too much television).

I believed that all of The Beatles were my friends. And if I could just meet Donna Summer (and the girls from Facts of Life), THEY would be my friends, TOO.

I believed that people speaking other languages were actually just speaking gibberish, so if I spoke gibberish I would also be speaking a foreign language, so sometimes I would do that to practice. I remember being fascinated by a spanish-speaking family sitting next to ours once and wondering how the hell they could understand each other.

I believed that children born out of wedlock was not a big deal, it was just that their Moms were like the Virgin Mary in the Nativity story. But not all Moms were like that.

I believed that my cabbage patch doll could actually come to life and kill me in my sleep. I didn't want to tell my parents, because I'd begged and begged for a cabbage patch doll, so I discreetly hid it in the garage (where it was far, far away from me).

I believed that if I laughed hard enough and in the right way, I'd end up floating to the ceiling like they do in "Mary Poppins." Now I know they were just stoned.

I believed if I looked hard enough, eventually I'd find a wardrobe that led to a different land that would bring me back to about the same time I'd gone through the wardrobe, a la "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe." Actually, I still sometimes look, just in case.

I believed that the door to my playroom, if I forgot to turn the light off before bed, was actually a Doorway To Hell that would suck me into it if I didn't remember to shut off the lights and shut the door before bed.

I also believed that ghosts and demons lived at the bottom of the stairs of our basement and the ground floor, and they would stretch their ghostly arms and pull me into a creepy ghosty world if I didn't outrun them by dashing up the stairs as quickly as possible.

All I can think of for now.

19:45 / 17.10.02

I used to believe if you dug far enough you could reach china.
I used to believe there was a tribe of indians(led by a chief Redfeather and Chief Burntfoot) that lived ontop of the hill in front of my grandfathers farm and if I went up the hill they would scalp me. I blame a very malicious brother and cousin for that one.
I used to belive that yo could get caught on the escalator and follow the steps under the floor to a strange sewer-like area of the world.

23:53 / 17.10.02

That before a man put on his underwear, that he would have to roll up his penis like a pair of socks. In fact I believed this until I was fifteen or so.

That eggs would hatch if I put them under my bed and "kept them warm." I called my mother a murderer for throwing them away and remember feeling horrified at her vile lack of any human feeling.

That I could psychically communicate with animals. I have a few photos of myself staring intently into the eyes of the neighbor's dog.

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