I thought it might be fun to sit back, relax, and try to recall some of the crazy - or oddly logical - things we used to believe when we were kids. The original idea I had was to talk about words that we thought were real words but actually weren't real words. But then I decided there were probably lots of other odd beliefs we had back then that would be good for a few laughs. I'll give a couple examples from my own childhood, to get things started.
1. When I was little, I thought ascared was an actual word. I was ascared of the dark. I was ascared of the basement. I was ascared of my neighbor Art, who used to spray me with the garden hose when I'd ride my bike past his house. I think I must have been in high school before I realized that ascared is not an actual word.
2. As long as we're talking about my neighbor Art, when I was little I thought the Lord's Prayer was about him. They taught us to say, Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, etc. Well, the only Art I knew was that neighbor that I was ascared of, so I thought this must be about him, and I wondered if he was actually in Heaven when he wasn't next door spraying that hose. Was that where the rain came from? I had no idea that art was actually an archaic form of the verb to be (second-person singular: thou art). Later I decided that it could not be about my neighbor Art, so it must actually be saying, Our Father, Who aren't in Heaven. Aren't was a word I knew, so that might be what we were saying, especially since I was pretty sure my father was not in Heaven, nor likely ever to get there, since he kept losing the car every time he went to the tavern.
3. Which reminds me of another thing I believed: that my father actually hung out with God. I got that idea because when I was very little I would go with my mother to church, and climb what seemed like a hundred stairs, way up into the choir loft, and sit there alone behind four or five ladies, listening to them sing, and I thought we must have climbed all the way up to heaven, because it sounded like I was listening to angels, and the smell of the incense, and the magical language of the priest, not a word of which I understood, because he was talking to God, Who it turned out just happened to be right there behind the altar, in that little golden chamber with the white drapes that was called the tabernacle. God is there in the tabernacle, my mother said, pointing down at it from high up in the choir loft. Well tabernacle was not a word we used around the house very much, but I had heard the word tavern quite a lot, since that's where my father spent so much time losing his car. So I figured that my father, who aren't in heaven, had to be hanging out in that tavernacle place with God - though it looked a bit small for the both of them, so I wasn't really sure.
OK, I hope you got the idea now. So let's hear some of your funny childhood beliefs. No particular rules, but this is meant to be amusing, not tragic, if you get my meaning.
