h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I used to think that if you didn't chew thoroughly on any food, you would die of choking - this also regarding mashed potatoes, ice cream and soup...

When I was about six years old I also thought that I could get poisoned by the lemonade my father gave me, because I always saw him take a sip after he poured it in the glass... I thought it was very noble of him, until he told me he did it because he most times filled the glass too full, and had to empty it some so I wouldn't spill

i did something quite stupid a few weeks ago, im still a kid so i it is accepible, you know the lemon cooking juice u use for flavour? well i took some of that and drank, two times, it was so sour, my face went into a spasm and my jaw basicly locked, then i did it again, try it, its really funny to the person watching

Bless!

the other week, I was in a life-drawing class (sketching nude man on a ladder- by this you will gather I do not qualify as a kid) and I carefully shook my bottle of white ink, opened it, then shook it again.

What a delightfully innocent read this thread's backlog has been. A welcome change from a lot of the wrangling and fueding around here lately. Thank you all for making me feel young again.

I seem to recall several counting-of-things and making sure to touch-every-fence-picket or missing-the-cracks-in-pavements obsessions that I have since (in hindsight) associated with the age of early rote learning. Those early years of schooling when you first encounter multiplication tables, musical scales, phonetic spelling exercises etc... It's as if the brain has a racial memory of the process required to assimilate a load of detail in a sequential pattern, and manifes... see I'm no fun, too damn analytical !

But as someone else said, "What's with all this getting to the bottom of the stairs before the flushing stops?" I'd never heard of that one and yet so many hear remember it so well.

Surely if so many of you believed it then it was more than just one child's imagined fear. You all must have learned it, probably from older people, and this indicates it has urban myth or old wives tale qualities about it. Does anyone know the whole story? Can any of you remember the how and why and wherefore of this behavior or what might happen if you didn't vacate the loo quickly. And who told you this story?

It would certainly have the effect of keeping the bathroom relatively clear of malingerers and doddlers. But surely parents wouldn't propogate terror in their offspring just to satisfy their own selfish interests in keeping that room more readily available. Or would they?

~jwf~

I've had a bad experience with the word 'stupid' recently.
I vote to change the thread to 'Silly' things you did...

Quite happy with the change to silly - makes them sound sweeter and more childish anyway

"What a delightfully innocent read this thread's backlog has been. A welcome change from a lot of the wrangling and fueding around here lately. Thank you all for making me feel young again." - and ~jwf~ you're more than welcome. I'm glad we've cheered you up.

Ythika

jwf just beat me to my thank you! Nooo!!!

Well, thank you again - this HAS been a thoroughly enjoyable read...

When I was a kid, I heard my parents talking about a princess that had been sent away to live with people, but was going to be taken back to live in the castle. I got it into my head that I was the princess, and pranced around for the next two weeks wearing my best clothes and every bit of sparkly stuff I could find (not having any jewellery at that age and plus, tinsel always looked better on the head). When no royal family came to take me away, I was disillusioned and stopped prancing, but still wore good clothes on the weekend in case they were sidetracked.

Many years on I was watching a movie....that my parents had obviously been talking about.

jwf, nobody told me about the monster getting me if I didn't get to the bottom of the stairs before the loo had finished flushing. It was something I made up for myself. I didn't really believe it, it was just a 'game' I played.

A propos of going to the loo, when I was very small I believed that if you went to the loo immediately after a meal, all the food would fall out. Don't ask where I got that idea from.

I also believed that 'sunshine' equals 'warmth' and Mum had a lot of trouble getting me to wear a coat one winter day. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, so it had to be warm. Well, I was only 5 at the time.

I never really believed in the "step on a crack, break your mother's back" thing. Again, it was just something we did when I was a kid.

One day in first grade, I had been a little busy and my teacher, Mrs. Woodrome, ignored me when I held up my hand 'cause I had to go. I waved my hand and she told me to put it down.
Nature called with a foghorn and I went in my seat. I held up my hand again and she came over to tell me what for.. but her eyesight was good.

I had to go into the restroom to change and she gave me the overalls from the Halloween scarecrow... straw bits inside and all...and I go to wait in a closet with a half-open door while I waited for my mom to get off work and bring me more clothes.

I was doubly humililiated!

I had recurring and extremely vivid dreams that I could fly. They usually involved me demonstrating the skill for my brothers in my grandmother's den, with the raised brickwork in front of the fireplace as my takeoff point. And it usually took a few tries before I got aloft.

So, naturally, we were there one day, and I told my brothers I could fly, and they doubted me, even though they'd seen me do it on many occasions. The demonstration did not go well, and didn't do anything to silence the critics. I was about 3 or 4 at the time.

On a related note, my 3 year-old niece was talking about some bad dreams, and I'd noticed that she'd had problems with them before. She asked me about mine, and I told her that I have very few bad dreams, that most of mine are very silly or don't make any sense. I told her that if people start giving me trouble in my dreams, I usually just turn around and beat them up.

A few hours later she was watching the ceiling, and she pointed earnestly and asked if any of the people from my dreams were coming downstairs soon. She'd been worrying about it the whole time.

i Pronounced 'hospital' as 'hospital' and I've had pepole say to me "wow I used to do that too", so obviously it's common.

I thought there was an actual solemn man in a suit, with his head in the big, old valve radio, reading the news on the Home Service (his legs fitted comfortably in the sideboard the radio was on).

This, and similar beliefs of children (like the trees causing wind, mentioned above) are actually perfectly logical deductions at that stage of learning about the world.

Grownups, like some who produce scares about food etc using statistics, often continue to get cause and effect the wrong way round. There seems to be some such dubious assumption announced every day!

I could not say 'spooky', it came out as 'scoopy'.

Some 2nd hand egs.: there was a chicken carcass on the workboard, and TheBoy (about 4 @ the time) went past it *very quietly*, then whispered "is it a-bobbyes?" He would also go on about the 'LollyMan', disliked 'Jack and his jacket of many colours', and, upon watching a chalk artist recreate DaVinci's popular fresco, complained 'Not another painting of the Last Dinner.'

More recently (age 13) he was organising to go and see a friend who lives a bit away. It was set for Good Friday. However, he maintained he couldn't go then. We could not figure out why... finally he volunteered a reason. This lad's parents were Irish, and Irish people can't go out on that date cos of the Good Friday Agreement.

tonsil revenge,
I had almost the same thing happen to me in 1st grade. In the middle of a spelling class where we had to put our hands up if we needed help I put my hand up to ask to go to the toilet. The teacher was to slow getting to me and I had to wear clothes from the second hand or lost property basket for the rest of the day. My Mum then embarassed me when I got home by calling out about not recognising me in the strange clothes and wanting to know there and then what had happened.

You have my full sympathy,
Ythika

Now I have to look back and see if I can think of any times I have embarrassed my child...

Someone told me that if you don't wash your hands after going to the loo, you instantly drop dead as soon as you walk out the bathroom door. I believed them!

Someone else told me that the reason why everyone forgets things sometimes is that earwigs crawl in your ears and snack on small portions of your brain when you're asleep. That one frightened me!

That's terrible Ha Ha he he
My sisters told me if I stuck my toes over the edge of the bed crabs would eat them,don't know why I believed them-we lived miles from the beach!!!

When I was really young I believed that adults KNEW (just about everything, anything), that they always did the right thing.....

As a teenager, I took the completely opposite view

Thats normal for teenagers then once you have kid some of what your parents said you find youeself saying and then you go "oh no I'm turning into my mum"..... my worst nightmare is coming true (dad, if you read this I'm just joking)

When I was young, me and my sister would only vegetables if our nextdoor neighbour had grown them. It was amazing the things he apparently grew, which I now know had been no where near his garden.