Thread: Childhood Credulity Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.


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Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
Recently we were reminiscing with friends about the childhood experience of renouncing belief in Father Christmas.

Also recently, my grand-daughter moved from mere sceptical suspicion of the imaginary words I invented to cheat in games (Scrabble, Boggle, Scattergories) to confident withering and dismissive sarcasm.

And I heard about the parents of a small child who have convinced him that the man in the ice-cream van plays his tune to notify people that he has run out of ice-cream - wonder how long that will last!

Of course, there are some things that kids dismiss instantly, unfortunately - like when you try to tell them they are adopted, and will be sent back if they don't start behaving themselves.

What did you believe when you were young, only to be rudely awakened eventually?

How gullible are, or were, your kids?

(I know the Ship's atheists might want to say something about teaching kids religious material, but even though there is at least room for discussion of how that might ethically be done, it is more a Purgatory topic - so anecdotes only, please!)
 

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Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 
I'll be honest - I really can't remember a time when I didn't know that Father Christmas was really Mum and Dad. Of course the bloke in the red suit turned up at school Christmas parties, but I don't ever remember being under any illusions that he wasn't the janitor with a false beard.

When D. taught music in an infant school, he said he had to put in an appearance at the kids' party (as himself); as he had a beard, they tended to think that Father Christmas was him, and if he was there it added to the magic.

[ 08. January 2016, 15:10: Message edited by: Piglet ]
 

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Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on :
 
I used to believe that I could create Rice Krispies and Coco Pops ex nihilo.

If I was eating a bowl of them, and a bare patch of milk appeared, and I then placed my spoon onto the bare patch and lifted it again, the bare patch would now be filled with Rice Krispies.

I can't remember how long it took me to realise that they were just moving in from the surrounding area. Weeks, if not months, I reckon
 

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Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
I remember looking at a photo of Prince Charles petting a dog, and wondering if the dog would be aware that the guy petting him was a prince.

What makes this interesting is that I WAS old enough to know who Charles was. Not just that he was a prince, but the son of Queen Elizabeth, future king of England, etc.
 

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Posted by Nenya (# 16427) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
like when you try to tell them they are adopted, and will be sent back if they don't start behaving themselves.

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I believed everything my mum and dad told me when I was a kid and would have been devastated to hear that - probably in need of therapy!

I believed in Father Christmas and the tooth fairy when I was a child and must have just realised the truth without being told. It certainly wasn't a rude awakening. Very different to Mr Nen, who still remembers crying his heart out when told Father Christmas wasn't real. So we told our children the truth from the start, but told them it's a game we play and we did the whole thing, including the mince pie for Santa on Christmas Eve and the carrot for the reindeer.

Although we did tell them other children do believe in Santa, and that's fine and they were not to enlighten them, it did make for one or two entertaining conversations.

My father did try to spin me the yarn about the haggis beasties in Scotland with two of their legs being shorter than the other two because they lived on hillsides, but he couldn't contain the twinkle in his eye when he told me so I rumbled him.

Nen - not as gullible as she looks.
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
My grandfather regularly came home to the family gathering on Christmas eve and announced to the six grandchildren, "I'm sorry, but we won't be having Christmas this year. Santa Claus is out there lying dead drunk in the gutter!" After about age 3 you learned to discount everything he said.

Which led to embarrassing problems later in my teens and twenties, as he couldn't say anything the least bit out of the way without facing open skepticism. He told me there was a tram that went up the St. Louis Arch and I laughed. Turns out there is. To be sure, it goes inside the arch, not on the outside, but that was probably a mistake on his part--not outrageous enough to be his usual stock-in-trade.
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
I should probably confess to having inherited his mantle in the family. I tell wee children the most outrageous things (similar to the antelopes that live on mountains having two legs shorter than the others, so they can never turn around). But having vivid memories of how painful some of Granddad's stories could be, I make sure that there's a twinkle in my eye so they catch on pretty soon, and I don't joke about important matters like Santa Claus.
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
I was affronted to be told that reindeer can't fly - because the evidence was there on the Christmas cards.
 

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Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :
 
My fourth grade class (age 9-10) went to the symphony on a field trip. Before launching into the overture from William Tell, the conductor told us to be quiet, as they were making a special "live at the symphony" recording, and didn't want it to be ruined by crowd noise. Naturally, the audience of 9-10 year olds forgot the instruction as soon as the familiar bit started, and erupted into gallops, stomps, claps, and at least one loud shouted "Yeee HAW!" I was always a dutiful instruction follower, so I was horrified, and remained horrified for many years.

It was only after I took part in a choral recording that I realized that no one would even think to blow money on a sound engineer to record William Tell in front of a bunch of school kids. I don't know why the conductor even thought it was a good idea to teach kids that classical music must always be boring and serious.

Way to ruin my field trip, jerk.
 

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Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
When my daughter was very young we would go to Toys R Us (because the diapers were on sale) and I told her that it was in the nature of a museum -- you could look but not bring the toys home. This worked fine for her, but of course not for her younger brother.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
My great uncle, a JP in his Sussex village, told me that there was a pond down the bottom on one of the lanes that was bottomless. That once, many years ago, two boys had been playing there, and one of them had disappeared below the water, and though they dragged the lake, he was not found. But that years later, a young man turned up at the family home, with an Australian accent, and hugged his mother who greeted him with joy.
I'm not sure if he added the Aussie bit on seeing my distraught reaction, or if it was a long standing part of the narrative, but I believed it for a while.
And then used it at school, as a teacher, with the addition of a cork dangling hat, and some detail about Kalgoorlie gold or Coober Pedy opals to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. And an accent.

[ 08. January 2016, 18:01: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 

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Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
About fifteen miles from where we lived when I was a child there was a large reservoir. To build it two picturesque villages had been flooded. There was a book which deplored this, with photographs of the places that had been lost. The remains were said to be under the waters. Having heard about Noah and the flood, it was some years before it occurred to me that the people in the villages might have been moved out first, rather than simply drowned.

I had never mentioned this to my parents until I was many years into adulthood.
 

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Posted by Cottontail (# 12234) on :
 
When I was about twelve, a friend and I were amusing ourselves in the park by throwing stones into the lake and trying to hit a small post in the water a little way out. Then I was yelled at by a passing policeman (horrible man), who thought I was throwing stones at the swans!

For years afterwards I worried that I would have to confess to this incident at job interviews, when asked, "Have you ever been in trouble with the police?"
 

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Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Penny S:
My great uncle, a JP in his Sussex village, told me that there was a pond down the bottom on one of the lanes that was bottomless.

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I used to swim in a flooded brick quarry which we kids believed to be bottomless.

There was said to be a net across it 100 metres down (why 100 mtres?) to catch the body of anyone who drowned, because otherwise it would be irrevocably lost.

These days it has been filled in, and turned into a duckpond in a park - sic tranit gloria mundi!
 

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Posted by Graven Image (# 8755) on :
 
I overheard older neighbor boy telling my six year old that his father was really Santa to which my son replied, "No he is not he works for Lockheed Aircraft."
 

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Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
... antelopes that live on mountains having two legs shorter than the others ...

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Those aren't antelopes, they're haggii.
 

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Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on :
 
You know the inductive rule that if something has happened once it can happen again.

I was terrified going through Cheddar gorge in case the roof fell in again!

Jengie
 

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Posted by jacobsen (# 14998) on :
 
When I was about seven, my mother mentioned to me that the Queen was flying somewhere - maybe to Australia. I did have a mental picture of HRH sprouting wings for take-off before the reality impinged. Not sure quite how soon that was.
 

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Posted by tessaB (# 8533) on :
 
When I was little one of my aunties bought me some premium bonds as a present. A few years later, with no win from them my father suggested that we cash them in and get new ones. His reason was that they pick the winners by throwing all of the bonds into a dry swimming pool, mix them up and pick up one at random. Obviously the older your bond, the more likely it would sink to the bottom, so newer ones would be more likely to win.
It took me years to find out that actually a computer picks them.
Carrying on the tradition, I told my children exactly the same story and was only rumbled when beloved daughter confidently explained to her friend that if she had an old Premium Bond she was less likely to win.
Tell your children very few lies, then they are more likely to believe the ones you do tell.
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Nenya:
My father did try to spin me the yarn about the haggis beasties in Scotland with two of their legs being shorter than the other two because they lived on hillsides, but he couldn't contain the twinkle in his eye when he told me so I rumbled him.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
I believed that women could not have babies until they were married ...

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I'm so glad it wasn't just me!

Long before I knew anything about the human gestation period, I had a vague idea that there was a rule (I don't know whether I thought it was legal or biological) that stated you had to be married for nine months before you could have a baby.

I nearly caused a Very Embarrassing Moment when I was a very small piglet: a cousin who I knew had got married not quite nine months before turned up with a new baby, and I was promptly shushed as I started to propound my theory ...
 

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Posted by MSHB (# 9228) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
I believed that women could not have babies until they were married -- that God did something special to them upon marriage to make it possible.

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I remember as a child wondering: how did a woman's body know that the woman was married?

It just didn't make sense to me. As far as I could see, babies just spontaneously started happening after a woman got married, and the biology of how her change in legal status triggered a change in fertility simply eluded me.
 

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Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :
 
I remember hearing the "facts of life" from some friends at a fifth grade slumber party. One fact was that people moaned and groaned during sex (one girl listened in on her parents) and I concluded it must be painful. So I wasn't exactly sure why people did it, but I figured that it was an unpleasant necessity for having babies.

[ 10. January 2016, 06:12: Message edited by: Lyda*Rose ]
 

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Posted by Mili (# 3254) on :
 
I was a bit confused about marriage and babies too. One day I got confused and thought people had to get married every time they wanted to have a baby - so not just once, but before each child. Then I realised my parents had only been married once. I was wondering out loud so mum soon explained it again.

My parents told us the truth about Santa etc. when we asked and I don't remember believing in any of them and was scared of men dressed as Santa. We knew not to tell other kids, though we nearly got in trouble when we told the girl next door (who we thought was too old to still believe) that the hairy fairy came to our house and really confused her! We knew it was dad who brought the money so our tooth fairy was the hairy fairy.

However once when my mum was on fruit duty at my older sister's kinder there was a Chinese dragon performance (or maybe lion dancing but three year old me thought it was a dragon). I truly believed it was a real dragon, not men in a costume. The kinder teacher gave us food to feed the 'dragon', but it was imaginary food. I had always been taught not to pretend to feed our pet dog and then take the food away or pretend to give her food out of an empty hand, as it was cruel. So I felt so bad for ages afterwards for cruelly teasing the dragon this way. I believed it had escaped a war from overseas and come to Australia for safety with the men doing the performance too which made it even worse to tease it in my mind.

Otherwise I started gullible but was made sceptical by my older sister who loved to tease and trick me. She convinced me our monkey puppet could really eat lollies/sweets. That the branch on a tree in our yard had fallen off and been glued back on. And always tried to scare me by lying face down in the bath and pretending to be drowned or jumping off ledges and pretending she'd fallen off a cliff. She tried the cliff one again when we were a bit older and recently told me that she was upset when I wasn't at all concerned for her. I reminded her she had played similar tricks before so I didn't believe she was dead at a cliff base that last time. She only remembers the hurt of me not caring she was 'dead'!
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
I remember overhearing my mother say, after the birth of my younger brother, that it had taken two doctors and two nurses to deliver him. I imagined them bringing him from the hospital, sat two abreast in the back of the ambulance with baby brother in a basket on the floor between them. But where did the hospital get the babies? One had to assume some sort of arrangement with God.

That was when I was eight. By ten, I had worked my way through the article on Disorders of Pregnancy in Chambers Encyclopedia, so that when class bad boy Billy asked me if I knew what 'womb' meant? I was able to snap back that it was pronounced 'woom' and it was where you were before you were born.

[ 10. January 2016, 07:53: Message edited by: Firenze ]
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
I was brought up in South Africa near Johannesburg. We had lots of animals. My two guinea pigs were in the kind of run which was open at the bottom and you could move it to new grass.

One night it must have been over a dip and the guinea pigs escaped never to be seen again.

My parents told me they had gone on holiday to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) our nearest seaside.

I STILL believe them!
 

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Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by MSHB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
I believed that women could not have babies until they were married -- that God did something special to them upon marriage to make it possible.

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I remember as a child wondering: how did a woman's body know that the woman was married?

It just didn't make sense to me. As far as I could see, babies just spontaneously started happening after a woman got married, and the biology of how her change in legal status triggered a change in fertility simply eluded me.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
I believed that women could not have babies until they were married -- that God did something special to them upon marriage to make it possible.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Boogie:
I was brought up in South Africa near Johannesburg. We had lots of animals. My two guinea pigs were in the kind of run which was open at the bottom and you could move it to new grass.

One night it must have been over a dip and the guinea pigs escaped never to be seen again.

My parents told me they had gone on holiday to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) our nearest seaside.

I STILL believe them!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:
My Dad told me that this sign meant 'no flying motorcycles' and I believed him ...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:
My Dad told me that this sign meant 'no flying motorcycles' and I believed him ...

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quote:

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Originally posted by Rowen:
My sister convinced her kids that the van, with the music, driving though the suburbs, in the summer, was the broccoli-delivery van ...

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I'm not sure that doesn't count as child-abuse ...
 

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Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
And then of course their were the medical insights, such as the fact that if you swallowed the seeds from fruit, they got caught in your appendix - or possibly rooted and sprouted in your stomach.
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
According to my mother, you must never put chewing gum in your mouth because if you swallow it will stick your insides together and you will DIE. Also, you mustn't put a hot water bottle on your back or your bones will melt.

Actually, I think she probably believed these things - along with the unspecified doom that would befall if you washed your hair during menses.
 

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Posted by Lothlorien (# 4927) on :
 
I remember similar restrictions from my mother. Going to bed with wet hair was a big no-no. Sitting on concrete steps would guve you a chill in the kidneys.

However I remembered something I used to believe as a child. Mum had radio on in the morning as we got ready for school. I can remenber wondering how singers, bands etc were accommodated in the studios every day, let alone the ones which had to come regularly from Britain or the States.

I had no experience then of recording or even of vinyl records or similar.
 

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Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :
 
One of the cast-iron beliefs of my childhood, subscribed to by adults and children alike, was that if you went swimming less than half an hour after eating, YOU WOULD GET A CRAMP AND DROWN!

Twenty-nine minutes = death, thirty-one minutes = life.

In a breathtaking, seemingly overnight, onslaught of natational modernism, this tenet was dropped and ignored with no fatal results, and rocked my faith to its foundations.
 

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Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Lothlorien:
I remember similar restrictions from my mother. Going to bed with wet hair was a big no-no. Sitting on concrete steps would guve you a chill in the kidneys. ....

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quote:

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Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
One of the cast-iron beliefs of my childhood, subscribed to by adults and children alike, was that if you went swimming less than half an hour after eating, YOU WOULD GET A CRAMP AND DROWN!

Twenty-nine minutes = death, thirty-one minutes = life.

In a breathtaking, seemingly overnight, onslaught of natational modernism, this tenet was dropped and ignored with no fatal results, and rocked my faith to its foundations.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lothlorien:
Mum had radio on in the morning as we got ready for school. I can remenber wondering how singers, bands etc were accommodated in the studios every day.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Stetson:

That same teacher also told us that female shoplfiters would sometimes pretend to be pregnant, in order to stash stolen goods under their shirts.

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It has to be said that during the war my aunt smuggled curtain fabric from the Irish Republic to the North with the assistance of her old maternity dress. My mother, meanwhile, had nylons pinned by the toes hanging down inside the lining of her coat. And everybody had tea, butter, sugar etc tucked into the legs of their directoire knickers.
 

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Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :
 
I managed to convince my brother who is 2 yeas older than me, that he was adopted. I said that if he asked mum she would just lie to him. We were both in our 50s when he told mum that he had believed it for some years. She was horrified.

Huia, evil genius

[ 11. January 2016, 17:45: Message edited by: Huia ]
 

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Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
My daughter assured her little brother that vegetables were poisonous.
 

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Posted by Gracious rebel (# 3523) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by MSHB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
I believed that women could not have babies until they were married -- that God did something special to them upon marriage to make it possible.

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I remember as a child wondering: how did a woman's body know that the woman was married?

It just didn't make sense to me. As far as I could see, babies just spontaneously started happening after a woman got married, and the biology of how her change in legal status triggered a change in fertility simply eluded me.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
My daughter assured her little brother that vegetables were poisonous.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Huia:
I managed to convince my brother who is 2 yeas older than me, that he was adopted. I said that if he asked mum she would just lie to him. We were both in our 50s when he told mum that he had believed it for some years. She was horrified.

Huia, evil genius

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quote:

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Originally posted by Firenze:
And everybody had tea, butter, sugar etc tucked into the legs of their directoire knickers.

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quote:

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Originally posted by The Phantom Flan Flinger:

quote:

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Originally posted by Firenze:
And everybody had tea, butter, sugar etc tucked into the legs of their directoire knickers.

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Didn't the butter melt?

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It was alledgedly one of the devices of the Customs to have the heating turned up in railway carriages as they neared the Border...

[ 12. January 2016, 11:39: Message edited by: Firenze ]
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Have I mentioned the meteorites targeting a South Coast resort before?
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
I've heard of "friendly bombs" falling on Slough, but never of "friendly meteorites" falling on Bognor Regis. Or Hastings.
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Ah, then I'll risk the story - I was told by local children that thunderbolts could be found in the Warren, east of Folkestone, in large quantities. There has been a confusion between thunderbolts and meteorites (irons, I suppose). (There was a tale, later, that a haystack in Kent had been ignited by lightning, and that afterwards the farmer found a thunderbolt in the debris. No idea what he found - there was no picture.)

I spent one evening gazing out of my bedroom window, which looked towards the Warren, hoping to see some land. Which, of course, I didn't. So I decided I had been misinformed. Which, of course, I had. Though not in the way I thought.

It turned out, much later, that there was another confusion between "thunderbolts" and something else. The Chalk contains nodules of either pyrite or marcasite - there is argument about this, but both are iron sulphide - heavy and iron rich balls with an attractive heft. (The knobbly ones have struck me as rather like a natural version of the carved soapstone balls found in and around Orkney.) And there's lots of the things around the Warren.

But I remember that evening, staring for what seemed like ages, hoping to see a meteorite land!
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 
Could have been nasty if you had seen one!
 

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :
 
Actually, I have seen one, shooting north over the A2 towards Erith, it appeared. In fact, it went on over the North Sea and landed in Greenland - though it has not, to date, been found. But it looked very low and as if it was about to land nearby!
I have to own up that it was the connection between this and Chelyabinsk that has led to my buying a dashcam, and not anything to do with driving.
 

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Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :
 
I saw this on a school trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York many, many years ago. I can't tell you how many sleepless nights I lay awake certain that I was going to be hit by one.

That wasn't a case of childhood credulity (just childhood terror!), but the other thing that caused many scary, sleepless nights was when someone in my class said the earth was going to crash into the sun. I was expecting it to happen in the immediate future, probably that very night.


 

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Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
(I may have related this story elsewhere on the Ship. I have a vague memory of posting it somewhere.)

A story about childhood credulity, but not my own. Though I don't exactly come off looking too good...

When I was around nine or so, going through that stage where you're contemptuous of younger children for being credulous and liking "babyish" things, I came across a little event at the downtown library's theatre room, in which a young woman was entertaining a bunch of kids by impersonating a spider. She was speaking to the kids with her head throuh a wooden board, with the spider's body painted around her head.

Well, I wasn't going to let this type of infantile stupidity stand unchallenged, believe you me. So I sauntered into the theatre during the Q & A session, and after pointing out that there are many different types of spiders, asked her what type of spider she was. She replied, in the friendliest tone possible, "Well, I'm any type of spider you want me to be."

"That makes a lot of sense!" huffed I, and stormed out.

I can tell you I felt VERY grown-up after that.

[ 13. January 2016, 04:49: Message edited by: Stetson ]
 

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Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Penny S:
There has been a confusion between thunderbolts and meteorites (irons, I suppose).

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quote:

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Originally posted by Pigwidgeon:
Someone in my class said the earth was going to crash into the sun. I was expecting it to happen in the immediate future, probably that very night.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Penny S:
There has been a confusion between thunderbolts and meteorites (irons, I suppose).

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I thought referring to meteoric iron as 'thunderbolt iron' was fairly traditional? In a folkloric sort of way.

I'm sure I've read that in an authentic peer-reviewed fantasy novel anyway.

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Yes, but it's still confusion, even if folkloric. (They peer review fantasy novels? Really?)

I did wonder about that farmer (as an adult) - if it should happen that a meteorite should arrive during a thunderstorm, I would imagine that it is not impossible, perhaps even likely, that lightning should follow its path down.

[ 13. January 2016, 09:33: Message edited by: Penny S ]
 

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Posted by The Intrepid Mrs S (# 17002) on :
 
When my children were Very Young, I convinced them that our telly could only get BBC 1 and 2! It was magic - not only did I avoid 'The A Team' and other such trash, No Christmas Toy Adverts!

That was 30 years ago at least, I'm sure it would never work now, sadly.

Mrs. S, always a good liar
 

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Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Penny S:
(They peer review fantasy novels? Really?)

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quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Penny S:
(They peer review fantasy novels? Really?)

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Sorry, I was trying to be humorously self-deprecating about the weakness of my sources.

That said, I once saw a TEFL course which advertised 'peer-reviewed exercises' as a positive feature. What it meant was students marking each other's work instead of the teacher. By the same logic, a book by (say) Jasper Fforde with an endorsement by Terry Pratchett on the back has also been peer-reviewed.

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Also sorry. Obviously needed an appropriate emoticon, perhaps
to convey use of arched tone of voice.
 

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Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :
 
Just to clarify your digressions, there are peer-reviewed awards in the genre. The Nebula Awards are managed by the Science-Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America -- the membership votes on the awards every year. The World Fantasy Awards are a juried award, and in theory the jury is fantasy writers. The other major award, the Hugo, is voted on by the membership of the World Science Fiction Convention every year, so they are not exactly peers, just rabid readers.
 

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Posted by Piglet (# 11803) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by The Intrepid Mrs S:
When my children were Very Young, I convinced them that our telly could only get BBC 1 and 2 ...

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BBC2? They didn't know they were living! When I was Very Young, we could only get BBC1 and ITV.

Shoe-box on t'M1, anybody?
 

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Posted by basso (# 4228) on :
 
Many (many!) years ago, the car toll on the Golden Gate Bridge was 25 cents. In those days, there were lanes fitted with a hopper -- the driver would chuck a quarter into the hopper on the way through.

Of course, somebody (I don´t think it was me!) asked what would happen if we tried to go through without tossing in the quarter. My dad answered that there was a little man equipped with a machine gun, who would rise from the hopper and open fire.

I never believed him (never bought into Santa Claus either), but I´ve thought since that that is a stupid sort of tale to tell children. It made enough of an impression on me that I haven´t ever forgotten it.
 

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Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Piglet:
When I was Very Young, we could only get BBC1 and ITV.

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When I was very young, it wasn't even called BBC1 as there was no BBC2. It was either the BBC or "the other side".

Does anyone else remember the BBC2 kangaroo?
 

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Posted by Firenze (# 619) on :
 
When I was young it was the Home Service, the Light or the Third.
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
I convinced my younger brother that "sibling" was a rude word. I could insult him by calling him a sibling, without attracting the wrath of my parents.

It must be hereditary. My son told his little sister that she was a glottal stop. Not knowing what a glottalstop was, she accepted his assertion that she was one. He then got me to confirm that I didn't like glottal stops. Cue much weeping and wailing from little sister.
 

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Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :
 
Have you seen the novel where one kid scares another by calling him a "transubstantiationalist?" He tells him it's a hoodoo word...

I confess that when my toddler came home from preschool calling everyone "stupid," I took him aside and with a very serious face said, "You're not pronouncing that right. Say it this way: 'spaghetti'."
 

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Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :
 
Here's a conversation I recall from the early 80s, with an elementary-age girl who was a friend of my sister's, and had been to an Ozzy Osbourne concert shortly before. This was the era when Ozzy was getting alot of mileage out of his over-the-top stage antics.

ME: So, did Ozzy do anything really crazy on stage?

GIRL: Yeah, he hung a dwarf.

ME: Really?

GIRL: Yeah.

ME: You mean, it was a guy dressed up as a dwarf, and he pretended to hang him, right?

GIRL: No, no. He really hung a dwarf.

Suffice to say, if you're young enough to think that dwarfs are real and a rock musician could murder one with impunity in front of thousands of people, you're probably too young to go to a rock concert.
 

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Posted by Moo (# 107) on :
 
When I was a child in the 1930s, we had a state-of-the-art radio which had been given to my parents as a wedding gift. It was an Atwater Kent which stood about four feet high. It was mostly made of wood, with fabric over the place where the speaker was.

In time, a hole developed in the fabric. My brothers and I were convinced that there were real people inside the radio, and we used to push peanuts through the hole to feed 'the man in the radio'.

Moo
 

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Posted by crunt (# 1321) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

I confess that when my toddler came home from preschool calling everyone "stupid," I took him aside and with a very serious face said, "You're not pronouncing that right. Say it this way: 'spaghetti'."

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