I heard something the other day that made me think of when I was a kid \u2014 boy was I gullible. I guess I wasn\u2019t that much different than other kids\u2026. when we were young, we all believed a lot of crazy things \u2014 that\u2019s what kids do, and it\u2019s part of growing up.\u00a0
Now that I\u2019m an adult (in years, at least) it\u2019s hard not to laugh at some of the things I actually believed when I was young.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My mom told me lots of times that if I crossed my eyes long enough, they\u2019d stay that way forever. I suppose that was my mom\u2019s attempt to make me stop crossing my eyes. Whenever I was upset, or crying, or just making a funny face, I\u2019d usually get the same warning from her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was a little kid, I think I believed that stepping on a crack could literally break my mother\u2019s back. I\u2019m not sure what this rhyme was based on, but I remember consciously avoiding cracks in the sidewalk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember when we went somewhere at night, looking out the back window of the car seeing the moon, and it seemed to be following us \u2014 I always wondered how the moon knew when we were going someplace and it never occurred to me that the moon was \u201cfollowing\u201d anyone else. I thought it was just following out car\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When our son David was very small, a clip of an old TV show \u2014 American Bandstand, or something like that came on TV and of course it was in black & white, not color. Claire made some remark like, \u201cwell that was us.\u201d David\u2019s eyes got really big and he said \u201cyou guys were black and white?\u201d It was really funny at the time, but when you think about it, all the old pictures we have of older people like grandparents or great-grandparents, are black and white photos. I guess the only logical assumption for a kid is that these people lived in a world that was completely black and white.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Television didn\u2019t come into being until I was about 8 or 9 years old, but as I\u2019ve mentioned before, we had the first television in Maysville and almost immediately after we got it, my mother started telling me that if I sat too close to the screen, it would ruin my eyes. Even though I was maybe old enough to know better, I believed it. I suspect that parents probably still tell their kids the same thing today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was little, the street in front of our house wasn\u2019t paved and when it rained it had a lot of \u201cmud holes\u201d with standing water that attracted toads\/frogs. Of course, being a little kid, I used to catch them \u2014 I\u2019m not sure what I did with them but it\u2019s one of the things little kids do. Anyhow, my grandmother was adamant that if you touched a toad, you\u2019d get warts. I don\u2019t know of anyone that ever developed warts from an exposure to toads. Once again, I at least partially bought into this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I was a kid I was told to never swallow chewing gum. I think my mom told me that if I swallowed gum, it would stay in my body for seven years \u2014 or at least for a long time. Another fallacy I bought into \u2014 I never swallowed my gum. Actually I don\u2019t swallow gum even today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Something that was drilled into me when I was young and I still hear today is that reading in dim light will damage your eyes. I even catch myself asking Claire sometime if she need more light. Of course this isn\u2019t true, but it\u2019s another bit of mis-information I grew up believing for some amount of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was never a big fan of carrots, but my mother swore that if I ate them, my eyesight would improve. When I was little I was convinced that I\u2019d go blind or at least have to wear \u201ccoke-bottle\u201d glasses because I didn\u2019t like carrots.
Actually, there\u2019s a story behind how the rumor of carrots improving eyesight got started, and it;s pretty interesting:
It all began during World War II\u2026. Royal Air Force fighter ace John Cunningham became the first person to shoot down an enemy plane (using automatic targeting) in the dead of night. British officials credited the pilot\u2019s success to eating carrots in order to fool the Germans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well since I\u2019ve already gotten off the subject a bit, this seems like a good place to stop. I think the bottom line is that kids are suckers \u2014 I mean that in a good way. At least most of them grow out of it\u2026.
\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I heard something the other day that made me think of when I was a kid \u2014 boy was I gullible. I guess I wasn\u2019t that much different than other kids\u2026. when we were young, we all believed a lot … Continue reading