{"id":512,"date":"2008-02-06T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-06T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/2008\/02\/06\/this-i-believed-or-crazy-kid-brains\/"},"modified":"2008-02-06T08:30:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-06T08:30:00","slug":"this-i-believed-or-crazy-kid-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=512","title":{"rendered":"This I Believed (or Crazy Kid Brains)"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my favorite light, quirky reads to recommend to adults is Amy Krause Rosenthal’s delightful Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

\n

I couldn’t understand the difference between a sound track in a movie, which the actors supposedly could<\/em> not hear, and if there was a radio on in the movie, which the actors<\/em> could hear. Music would be playing and I’d say to my mom,<\/em> "Okay, can they hear that? Okay, now can they hear that?"<\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Recently I stumbled across a website that is CHOCK FULL of gems like the ones Amy shares in her book. It’s IUsedtoBelieve.com<\/a> ("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:<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I thought it would be especially appropriate to share with you some of the things people say they believed about books and\/or reading:<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

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.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What about you? If you’ve got any entertaining memories of childhood confusions, do tell!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}