childhood impressions
when i was a kid, the main street that i lived off of was this 4 lane road with lots of bright street lights lining both sides of the street. it was slightly uphill and at the peak of the hill, you made a left to turn into my community. for reasons unknown to me (at the time), i always thought that an airport lay further up the road, beyond the top of the hill. i thought this until nearly the end of middle school when i realized that only my friends’ houses were beyond the top of the hill. i couldn’t figure out why i thought an airport was there. maybe it was the bright lights that i thought it was like a runway? maybe it was because the road was quite straight and wide? maybe i was just an idiot!
i didn’t realize until i graduated from college and moved to VA why i thought an airport was up the street from my childhood house. after graduating, i moved back to the area of VA that i lived in until i was 3 years old. i barely remember the house we lived in, let alone the community. but we lived right by dulles airport. you can see the planes taking off and landing quite easily from my old house. the sound can actually be quite loud. most importantly, you literally are right down the street from the airport. there’s no need to take the dulles toll road to the airport; you can take local roads straight to the airport. THAT’s why i thought, when i moved to MD, that the airport was right up the street from where i lived!
i think it’s funny how kids are, on one hand, quite observant and, on the other hand, quite innocent and unaware of the world around them. they can make innocent assumptions that adults would just laugh off. as a 3 year old, i was aware enough to realize how close we were to an airport, but dumb enough to think that all houses must be just down the street from airports. there’s always those TV shows/email forwards of “kids say the darnest things” that show the little things kids notice and the big assumptions they make off of those observations.
i also find it interesting when those childhood impressions of things get shattered. i’m not talking about the moment you realized santa didn’t actually eat those cookies. that’s traumatic. i’m talking about the moment when you realized that it’s ok to eat fruit seeds; the fruit won’t grow in your stomach. (although that’s a bad example. that’s just your parents making up stories to prevent you from eating the seeds.) i remember being quite disappointed to realize that an airport didn’t exist up the street from me. and also quite confused as to why i even thought that.
any good amusing childhood assumptions/impressions of things you used to have? what happened when you figured it out?
February 5th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
hmm, i remember the one where ron told me how i was born. he told me that one time when my mom pooped, she found me in the toilet.
i didn’t really believe him… but i was relieved when i knew for sure.
February 5th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
danny keeps telling me that when i was a kid, i kept saying, “a horse is a dog and a dog is a horse!”
… i have no idea how i came up with that assumption.
February 6th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
I used to think my mom was omniscient–I believed everything she said. But then she started telling me that the bottom of my My Little Pony said “Do not put in water” when it actually said “Made in China”, that the police would come get me if I put my feet on the windshield, and that it wouldn’t hurt if she pulled my loose teeth out.
Apparently when I was in preschool I would have ‘fights’ with my friend Leah. It went something like this:
LEAH: My daddy’s 16.
ME: -My- daddy’s 17!
Um, I was probably just trying to one-up her, but 17? Really?
February 12th, 2007 at 10:56 am
you know what? i think i thought you shouldn’t put my little ponys in water either…