One of my favorite light, quirky reads to recommend to adults is Amy Krause Rosenthal’s delightful Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. Written in encyclopedia format, it gives short explanations for events or people or things that Amy has lived, observed, opined — you name it. And FUNNY! Oh, is it ever funny! I was reading it on an airplane and laughing so loudly that multiple people asked me about it and wrote down the title. If I’d had extra copies with me I’m confident I could have sold them on the spot.
One of my favorite sections of the book is "Exhibit A" under the entry for "Childhood Memories": "Things My Friends Were Confused By As Children." Here are a few of them:
I couldn’t understand the difference between a sound track in a movie, which the actors supposedly could not hear, and if there was a radio on in the movie, which the actors could hear. Music would be playing and I’d say to my mom, "Okay, can they hear that? Okay, now can they hear that?"
Whenever I saw those tiny planes that leave streaks of white in the sky, I thought that it was someone’s job to do that. And that’s what I wanted to do when I grew up; I thought I would revolutionize the field by drawing more creative things in the sky than just straight lines.
Recently I stumbled across a website that is CHOCK FULL of gems like the ones Amy shares in her book. It’s IUsedtoBelieve.com ("the childhood beliefs site"), and it’s pretty much a storage place for childhood stupidity (or "innocence" if you want to be nice about it). I was particularly taken with the section on ice cream trucks — I suppose because I never realized there was so much to be confused about when it came to these particular vehicles, and because I wasn’t giving parents enough cleverness credit. To whit:
I thought the music would play faster or slower depending the speed of the ice cream truck. That’s why the music stopped when the truck stopped.
My mum used to tell me that when the ice cream van came around it played the music to tell children that it was bed time. The van used to go past my house at noon.
I used to belive my Dad when he told me that if the ice-cream van was playing a tune, it meant that it was empty. When I asked about why people were queueing up, he would reply "well, they’re going to be very disappointed". I didn’t get an ice-cream for years.
I thought it would be especially appropriate to share with you some of the things people say they believed about books and/or reading:
I used to think that "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea" was a story about an awful lot of sports being played under the sea, since there were 20,000 leagues there, in the story.
I thought, in kindergarden, in order to read a book you had to read the page then turn it around and wave it back and forth. Little did I know the teacher was just showing us the pictures and it was not required if you were reading to yourself.
When I was little I used to believe that cursive was read in a British accent and print was read in an American accent. I have no idea where this one came from.
My parents had a lot of self-help, how-to, historical, and factual books when I was a kid. I used to think that authors didn’t write stories for adults, and that when I grew up, I’d have to read boring stuff about gardening and wars.
When i was little i overheard my older cousin say that he had to write a letter for english. Well being 4 at the time i thought that he was inventing a letter (as in a letter of the alphabet). i couldnt wait till i was in high school and got to invent my own letter. its name was going to be anzy and look like a spiral.
What about you? If you’ve got any entertaining memories of childhood confusions, do tell!
I’m sure there are many such memories like that in my childhood, but what came to mind when I was reading your post was the fun I had with our daughter and son when they were very young. They believed that cars on the road came from toy cars with water added to them. They believed this because that’s what we told them. 😀 Then things got tricky. They wanted to add water to their own toy cars. We patiently explained that it’s a procedure that has to be done in a complete vaccuum (science lesson) and that there are factories up north where that’s all they do, make big cars from toy cars. Geez, that was fun. Yes, they know the truth now, but it still makes me smile.
When I was little, my grandmother told me that at dinner I had to drink a glass of milk before I could have any Coke because if I drank the Coke first, it would curdle in my stomach. I had no reason to doubt her and I believed that until I was in college!
My “Uncle Curly” always told me that if I ate the crust on my bread my hair would be curly, just like his. It sounded good to me and I never stopped to consider that “Uncle Curly” was actually bald!
Mama always said that if you sprinkled salt on the tail of a bird, you could catch him. When I was small I spent a lot of time chasing birds clutching a saltshaker.
I believed that there was a tiny band of musicians in the glove compartment who created the music on the car radio.