Conference turris::womannotes-v1

                -{I Survived Growing Up Catholic}-
    
    I spent some time (3-4 years) in Brooklyn living with an aunt and
    uncle after my mother died.  I was 4-5-6-7 years old - and I went
    to Catholic School (this thought should evoke memories in a few
    folks out there).  I used to watch all the people go to Sunday Services
    in the (gasp!) Episcopal Church across the street.  Since I
    had been taught that everyone that was not a Catholic, that went
    to another church would not be saved and died, I never could figure out
    how they all managed to come back out every week.  

    When I was, hmmm, around 5 I'd guess, my older cousin Karen fetched
    me with her to high school one day. I went round with her to all her
    classes, tried hard to learn something in each one, and generally
    provided a lot of innocent amusement to Karen's teachers and
    classmates.  I remember her spanish class was doing adjective/ noun
    drill, and I'll not ever til my dying day forget two of the examples
    used (though in fact I may be garbling the spelling or grammatical
    details): "bueno muchacho" and "mala muchacha".  I can clearly
    remember feeling sad, but resigned, that the language didn't also
    include "buena muchacha" and "malo muchacho". 
    
    (Have *I* ever come a long way, baby! :-) 
    
    						=maggie

    Doesn't *everybody* grow up thinking that dogs are 'boys'
    and cats are 'girls'??
    
    Dale

    When I was about 8 I took great pleasure in making crazy faces which
    generally included crossing my eyes.  Then one day my mother warned
    me that if I did it too often my eyes might get stuck and I would
    forever be cross-eyed.

    Every night after that (for about a year) I lived in fear that I
    would inadvertenly cross my eyes just as I dozed off to sleep and
    was certain I would wake up one morning with my eyes hopelessly
    crossed.
    
    I had a ritual every night: I would look up at the ceiling and make 
    sure my eyes were *perfectly* straight, then I would close them
    *very* slowly, opening them every so often just to make sure I hadn't
    let my eyes move out of position. 
    
    Most nights it took me close to an hour to get to sleep!  
    
    I was always relieved in the morning when I'd wake up to find that I 
    had done such a good job keeping my eyes straight. :^)
    
    
    Jodi-  

        

    
    re: .1  ... Speaking of going to Catholic shool (I went for 12 years)
    
    
    I spent the first 5 or 6 years of school knowing for sure that nuns
    wore long dresses because they didn't have any legs.  Since they
    were so close to God they just floated around.
    

    When I went to mass as a child, I used to think God lived in that
    "funny gold house" that sat up on the alter.  When the priest went
    and opened the door to get the communion waffers, God handed them
    to him.
    
    As a child I always thought that mom and dad were always "old".
    We just humored them by asking questions about their childhood.
    I figured that even if they were children, they still looked
    the same ... old.
    
    For years and years it seems, I really thought God and the angels
    were "upstairs bowling" every time it thundered.  It's funny
    now when I remember how I used to picture it!
    
    I remember a conversation I had with my 6 year old neice and newphew
    (they're 27 days apart in age) about babies when my sister was
    pregnant.  They knew the baby was in mommy's tummy but when I asked
    them how it got there, they both replied that daddy put it there
    (mom obviously had nothing to say about it).  I then asked then
    how he put it there and after some discussion between themselves,
    they decided that he made mommy swallow it.  They thought that 
    maybe he put it in a cheeseburger or something.  Interesting ....
    
    I hope these are helpful
    
    Donna
    

    
    
    After re-reading my last note I just wanted to state that my
    sister did not have a baby in 27 days.  My neice belongs to my
    brother and my newphew is my sister's (and brother-in-law's) 
    handy work.  They like to coordinate the birth of their children.
    I didn't want to play that game! :-)
    
    
    Donna
    

    Wen I was about 3, someone used the term 'colored people' around
    me.  I told my grandmother that I would like to see some colored
    people.  She took me to a more racially mixed area than we lived
    in, and said that there would be 'colored people' there.  I looked,
    and asked here where they were.  I didn't see any colored people,
    they were all brown.  I was expecting blues, green, orange, etc.
    
    I think that 'black' is a better term.  Certainly less confusing
    than 'colored'.
    
    Elizabeth
    

    Ah, yes, when I was young.  I always worried when we visited new
    (to me) people, or old friends in new houses, that they wouldn't
    have toilets.  Since NOONE EVER talked about them, I assumed that
    not everyone needed them.
    
    My grandfather told me that it was monkeys playing that made the
    swells in the river as we motored down and up.
    
    							Ann B.

    	When I was a kid, I used to hear news stories about how "ARMY
    	BEATS NAVY" and other news about the results of the battles between
    	various Armed Forces.
    
    	I used to wonder why our own military forces spent so much time
    	fighting each other.  Didn't it make more sense to wait til there
    	was a war and go to fight the military forces of some other
    	country???  :-)
    
    	Also, I used to think that if I was still in the tub when all
    	the water went out, I'd go down the drain.

    	The earliest memory of my whole life was walking into my parent's
    	room looking for a beach ball that had rolled in there.  My
    	Dad showed me a forced round belly (a trick he knew how to do)
    	and made a sound like a beach ball on it.  He told me that he
    	had eaten my beach ball.  I just walked away (thinking that
    	I had better keep my doll carriage the heck AWAY from Dad --
    	that he would eat anything.)  :-)
    
    							Suzanne... :-)

        When I got my first package of M&M's my great aunt took me out
        to the garden to plant them, since she thought I was too young
        for candy. Funny, they never grew.
        
        On "colored" people: A favorite quote of my mother's was when I
        was very young and saw a black man drive by in a truck (we lived
        in an area with no blacks at all) and called out "Mother! Look
        at the golden man!" in that piercing voice young children have.
        I suspect I'd have been very confused to be told he was black. 
        
        JimB.

	Growing up in the Sixties, I remember seeing war in Vietnam
	all the time in the media. I thought that whenever two nations
	were mad at each other, they'd send their armies over to
	Vietnam to fight it out (sort of like the Super Bowl). After
	all, no one would be dumb enough to fight a war where people
	actually lived, right? (no, I didn't realize people lived in
	Vietnam).
	
	And back to the good ol' "where do babies come from?", my
	Catholic parish had what they called "sex education" classes.
	They said the daddy gives a seed to the mommy, and it combines
	with her egg and grows into a baby. They left out how he gives
	her the seed, though... I thought that when they kissed he
	would cough it up or something like that and she would swallow
	it. (Yuck!)
	
	By the way, what does this topic have to do with WOMANNOTES?
	
	Mike

    Another bathroom "scare"...
    
    My family used to visit my two great aunts every so often.  Their
    toilet was high up on a large bench, with a pull cord for flushing.
    I used to think I was going to be sucked down the drain whenever
    I pulled that cord.  By the way, years later I revealed this secret
    to my cousin and learned that she had felt the same way!         
    
    These stories are great!
    

	When I was about 8 or 9, my mother told me about menstruation, and 
	she told me that women used Kotex pads.  A few weeks later, I heard
	some of my friends talking about tampons.  When I asked my mother 
	what the difference was, she told me that young (single) women used
	Kotex, and that married women used tampons.  Later that week, I was
	at a friend's house, and I saw a box of Kotex in the bathroom.  I ran
	home and told my mother that Mr. and Mrs. Kavanagh weren't really
	married.

    	Justine

    
    
    While veiwing movies at the Saturday Matinee as a child, I assummed
    that people that died in the movies really died.
    
    I also figured out that the producers of the movie recruited those
    that were to die in the film from prison (death row) offering an
    exciting, glorious, celluloid death as opposed to the electric chair.

    I'm smarter now.
    

    
    Until fairly recently, I wouldn't go fishing because I thought
    that if you caught a fish, the fish's family would be left without
    anyone to feed them.  (I'm talking about fish like trout.)  My husband
    told me that fish are not family-oriented and explained that fish
    "relationships" are of the one-night stand variety.  
                                                           
    My Aunt has a large photo of my grandparents when they were quite old. 
    The picture is black and white and sort of has a cloud around them
    and grandma has a corsage on, grandpa has a buttoniere (sp?).  All
    the time I was little I thought that was a picture of my grandparents
    in heaven (because of the cloud) AND that all people who went to
    heaven got to wear flowers!
    
    Anna                                         
    

    
    One of the first few replies mentioned that often people think of
    dogs as boys and cats as girls.  I can add to that -- I had a York-
    shir terrier when I was little.  He never had the opportunity for
    any canine romance and my parents didn't have him neutered.  He
    would frequently try to mate with pillows, bunched-up rugs, piles
    of dirty laundry and any new house-guest's arm (he rested his head
    on their shoulder and looked longingly into their eyes).  Once,
    when he was mating with the dirty laundry, I asked my mom what he
    was doing ( I was about 6 or 7) and my mom's response was "MEN!"
    in a really disgusted tone!  For a few years, you can imagine what
    I thought men (human ones) did in private.  I thought my dog just didn't
    have the good taste to do it privately.

    This note is the greatest--!  (and yes, I always did think of dogs
    as "boys", and cats as "girls"--aren't they??:-))
    
    I was 4 or 5, and my folks and I were driving by a resort area.
    There were a bunch of those little "efficiency" cottages by the
    side of the road that caught my eye.  I said to my parents,
    "Those houses are too small to be doghouses;  they must be CATHOUSES!"
    My dad nearly drove us off the road..
    
    My grandmother used to read to me before bed whenever I stayed
    overnight there.  She was Irish-Welsh, and liked the old legends
    a lot, so many of the stories she read were about the little people,
    ghosts, leprachauns, and of course, The Banshee.  Well, I had only
    just started reading (about age 6), and had come across the word
    "bantam rooster".  So I got confused between the two and thought
    that the Banshee was some kind of Irish-phantom chicken that screamed
    behind doors at night..so whenever I stayed over, I always checked
    that bedroom door!!
    
    I'm glad I'm not the only one who grew up this way!
    
    Jane
    

    
    i thought the pimento grew in the olive. (i'm embarrassed to tell
    you how old i was when i learned otherwise.) 
    
    also, when i was just making out the details of what sex was about,
    i saw one of those steamy tv shows where the couple kisses
    passionately and goes into the bedroom right before the commercial.
    well, i knew they were gonna make a baby, but wasn't sure of the
    details. so i asked my mom, with a fair amount of disgust, "but
    do they *have* to take their *clothes* off???"
    
    now i like it better that way. 
    
    ;)
    
    jenny

    This one's a little different -- it's a misunderstanding of something
    that my dad used to say. He'd go to the store, come home and say that
    he'd gotten a good price on something: "It cost thirty-two dollars and
    change".  I always heard that as "...thirty-two dollars IN change". I
    never understood why they gave better prices for paying with quarters,
    nickels and dimes...

    

    Every time I went to a department store I was DAMN sure to step
    OVER the crack in the escalator when getting off - I mean I could
    picture it grabbing and devouring my shoes - my legs - the rest
    of me....and nothing would be left but Jody-spaghetti for the next
    patrons to step on.
    
    
    -Jody
    

    My father always used to refer to something as a "mere bag of
    shells". I remember how surprised I was when I took French to
    discover that they had a phrase so similar (a mere bagatelle).
    and I was in my teens before it dawned on me that black people were
    black all over, not just where it showed.
    
    Bonnie

       Wonderful Peeps!!!   Keep it up!    Please!!!

The last note reminded me of an epiphany (the euraka moment) that I 
witnessed ~ 1965.

A new girlfriend, who lived on the white side of town, picked me up at 
my house, on the integrated side of town, to drive me to school.  Driving 
away from my house, she saw a ten year old black boy walking his dog.
She was awed. "I didn't know black people had dogs!"
                          -----

I'd also like to hear about conceptual imagery. For instance, did 
you have an image of your soul?   Here are some I know about:

My soul looked like a Catholic communion wafer, perfectly round and white.

An old acquaintance saw his soul as soft white and shaped like a dog's 
cookie bone.

A friend of a friend thought her freckles were sins showing up on her face.

The writer sent this to me via with permission to post.  Please feel free 
to mail me any misconceptions you don't want to post.    Meigs


When I was 16, the topic in my high school Biology class was
reproduction.  That was the first time any adult actually came
out and said to me that penises enter vaginas.  I thought the
teacher was lying.  I had tried to use tampons, without success.
I figured if I couldn't get a tampon in there, no way a
penis would fit.  Therefore, he must be lying.  I could never
figure out why he would lie about it.

    
    I was scientific about reproduction at age 5. The givens were these: 
    
    The man places a seed in the woman and the baby grows inside a place
    like the tummy. The penis has something to do with it because dad said
    so once. Mom told me our navels are where we started to grow. Then
    there were those "maternity outfits" for when you have the baby...
    
    Environmental effects: Cowboy shows on TV and my dad, who had been
    raised a farmer & planted garden each year.
                                               
    Conclusion: The seed is hard like corn and is fired from the penis
    into the mom's navel, but instead of being shot she grows a baby.
    You don't see the "bullet hole" made by the seed because it's done
    wearing maternity clothes. The other maternity clothes are for when
    you're big. 
    
    BTW: Breasts had nothing to do with it, & for some g_d reason anytime
    you touched them folks whooped. Babys are supposed to eat there but I
    don't belive my sisters because they said _I_ did too & they saw... 

    I've really enjoyed reading these...
    
    
    - My Mom always told us to be careful NOT to swallow seeds, or
    we'd have an orange/cherry/whatever tree growing in our stomachs.
    
    - Would always dodge the cracks on the sidewalks - "Step on a crack,
    break your Mother's back"
    
    - used to say extra prayers every night so I could fall asleep on
    Christmas Eve... (never worked)
    
    - believed the goons on Popeye were out to get me.
    
    Theresa.

    Even though my grandparents were Irish/American, when my mother
    was very young, she was convinced that she was Chinese! Seems that
    someone told her that every fifth child born in the world was Chinese
    and since she was the youngest of five children...
    
    

    Being a preachers' kid.... I really believed my dad when he told
    me that thunder storms were God and the angels playing bowling...
    I just couldn't figure out why they played at night when they were
    "supposed" to be sleeping...
    
    Its cute reading this... my kids all went through the phase of
    "stepping on a crack, and 'breaking' my back...
    
    I think the hardest one that I had had to deal with, was letting
    all my girls watch a PBS documentary on childbirth and conception
    (figured they could probably do a better job at explaining then
    I have done)... well, the show was done extremely well, including
    using red dye (to show semen) to show what happens during sex.... 
    Afterwards, my twelve year old came to me (about 3 hours later), and 
    wanted to know if men could use tampons too... It was quite a shock to 
    find out that she thought the red dye was men having periods!...  Eeeeks,
    did I have some explaining to do (and I have to keep from giggling
    the whole time)...

    
    I think the other misconception (mistake????)... is:
    
    I still don't think my parents ever have sex... I mean, they're
    my parents.... they wouldn't do things like that now would they
    :-)...
    
    Gale

    I could never figure out how the wind could blow across an open
    field without any trees to help it along.

    I'm still convinced it's the ocean I'm hearing when I hold a conch
    shell to my ear...
    
    grins,
    Marge

    I knew cats came in male and female varieties cos we had so many
    of them. 
    
    I did think that radio stations had the actual musicians tromping
    in and out of their studios to play their songs ...
    
    HMM

    When I was very young, my cousins, who were all older than me, told
    me that there were alligators under my bed and that they would eat
    me if I got up during the night ... (This was primarily to keep
    me from bugging them).  I would get into bed and NOT GET OUT FOR
    ANY REASON!!  I even made sure that my hands and feet were all on
    the bed and not hanging over the edge.  That phase lasted a long
    time - about 20 years!!  (Even now I think twice before getting
    out of bed at night!)
    
    The other part of step on a crack - break your mother's back, is
    step on line, break your father's spine.  My father had back problems
    and I thought it was my fault for stepping on a line!
    
    When I was in grade school and first heard of the Nazi atrocities,
    I ran home and asked my mother if it were true - I thought that
    my teacher was lying because people couldn't be that terrible -
    unfortunately, she said it was.  

    re.32
    
    I had a friend who went so far as to insist she heard seals when
    she held shells to her ear.
    
    I tried and tried to hear them, but somehow, I only got surf...
    I thought that after being smacked around by waves so many times
    the sound just *stuck* with them.  How, I couldn't explain.  I just
    know that's what happened.
    
    Stacie

    When I was about 3 yrs. old there was a family down the road who
    had 3 Dobermans.  Most of the time they were kept in a pen, but
    one day I was playing outside and they came racing thru our yard.
     My mother ran out to get me and my brother and then our (smaller,
    friendlier) dog before they ate us up (or whatever Mom thought was
    going to happen).  Later that day my older brother told me that
    I had better sleep that night with my hands under the covers because
    those Dobermans could get lose again and if they did they would
    leap right through my window and eat every one of my fingers off
    my hands.  For a few years after that I wouldn't go to sleep at
    night with my hands outside of the covers.  Even now I don't feel
    really comfortable going to sleep with my hands outside the covers.
     (I have to remind myself that Dobermans eating off peoples fingers
    while they sleep is not a common problem.)
    
    Also, when I was about 4 or 5 (when movies used to play consecutively)
    I insisted that my mother and I sit thru a movie a 2nd time because
    I wanted to see if it ended differently the next time.  
    
    Another misconception I had when I was very small is that no matter
    how many children you have they all start out as infants and then
    grow up.  So, when people asked me how many children I wanted when
    I grew up I used to say things like, I want 4 kids.  I want a 10
    year old girl, an 8 year old boy, a 5 year old girl and a 2 yr.
    old boy.  It took me awhile to realize that I couldn't have children
    that would stay just those ages forever!
    
    My mother says that when she was very young she thought that men
    had boys and that women had girls.  She was surprised when she learned
    that women have all the babies.  (Personally, I think men having
    the boys would be an excellent idea and much more fair!)
    
    My mother also thought that black people were solid black all the
    way through.
    
    Lorna
    

    I remember driving by a Playboy Club brightly painted and my youngest
    brother saying "Hey look....a fun house!".  We laughed for awhile
    and then said "you're right about that".
    

    
    When I was in grade school, my father and I used to watch Godzilla
    movies almost every Saturday afternoon.  Most of the destruction
    scenes were strangely similar and after abaout my sixth Godzilla
    -vs- whatever, I finally turned around and asked my dad:
    
    "How'd they rebuild Tokyo so fast?"
    
    Carol :-)
    

Saw this yesterday in a story the Chicago Tribune ran on Adult Children of
Alcoholics.

"I was 17 when I learned that some families sit down and eat dinner at the 
same time every night.  At my house, we ate after the cocktail hour, and 
there was no way to predict when the cocktail hour would end."

Also, a coworker just told me this one.  Her friend is attending 
childbirth classes and one of the women in the class believed that after 
she gave birth, she would no longer have a belly button.

    I was a precocious reader and I didn't always understand what some of
    the words meant.  One day I asked my mother what a prostitute was, and she
    told me is was a woman who was paid to sleep with men.  I promptly
    imagined a ward full of men in beds, and this woman handing out
    teddy bears!  Not a bad way to earn a living.
    	S.

    Another one.  When I was little, I knew that the vowels were
    "A, E, I, O, U, and sometimes Y."  I knew how "my" was spelled.
    I worried that sometimes "Y" wouldn't be a vowel, so that "my"
    wouldn't be a word, and I would lose ownership of "my" things.
    
    						Ann B.

    I've always been a person of strange ideas. My childhood 
    misconceptions, however aren't nearly as bizzare as my adult ones....
    
    From childhood :
    * When I asked my mother where I came from, she said "Dr. H. delivered
      you." I assumed that Dr. H. worked for the U.P.S. when he wasn't
      being a doctor.
    * I thought that the purpose of salt was to cool down food that
      was too hot; thus the hotter my food was, the more I would salt
      it.
    From adulthood :
    * I thought the Alps and the Appalachians were the same thing, 
      they just called them the Alps for short.
    * I thought Mount Rushmore was a natural rock formation. 
    * (this is the most bizzarre) I thought that the swans on the 
      Swanboats in Boston were real,live giant swans.
    
                                              Denise
    

In the 5th grade myself and several friends had been convinced that "french"
kissing caused pregnancy. This knowledge was passed on through the whisper
and giggle method. It was never actually mentioned in our sex education class
how "it" actually happened so speculation ran wild. 

To this day I have trouble walking down the street with someone I like and 
not saying "bread and butter" if we passed on different sides of some object
like a sign. liesl

    I used to think that blood was blue until it got outside the body
    when the air hit it, the blood would turn red. Obviously this
    transformation happened very quickly...
    
    If you rub the dust from the wings of a butterfly, onto your shoulders
    you can fly... (my sister used this one to convince me to 'fly'
    off of the roof of our play house.)
    
    
    Angela
    
    

    Isn't oxygen-depleted blood blue until exposed to more oxygen?

    <--(.44,.45)
    
    Yah, I think Helen's right.  Which is (I'm grasping at vague memories
    here) why they do these circulatory models with the arteries in
    red and the veins in blue (or is it the other way around?  Bonniiieee?)

    
    Well, it's a visual aid.  I suppose you could pick any two colors
    you wanted.  It helps all you budding anatomists (that sounds vaguely
    obscene) differentiate vessels which carry blood to the heart (veins)
    from those which carry it from the heart (arteries).
    
    Of course, my anatomy book showed pulmonary arteries as blue and
    pulmonary veins as red (?)  As did the, uh, latex-filled specimens
    we dissected.
    
    *Sigh*  I think oxygenated blood and deoxygenated blood are two
    different colors, but they may be just two different shades of red.
    
    Bonnie?
    DFW

    
    I used to pledge allegiance to Richard Stands. I always wondered
    who he was and how he became so famous.

When he was in the 7th or 8th grade, my blue-eyed brother was told by his
biology teacher that two brown-eyed people could not have a blue-eyed
baby. He came home all upset and blubbering about being adopted. Ma set
him straight, but sometimes I still think he was adopted :-).

Jenna

    Amazing - a *biology* teacher with no notion of paired recessives.
    I hope your mother straightened out the teacher. Sheesh!

To settle the blood color issue:

In Mammals the coloring in the blood is Hemeglobin.  Oxygenated hemeglobin 
is red, Deoxygenated hemeglobin is blue.  If you look carefully at the
veins in your arm, you can see the bluish tint.

Of course, Crustacians have blue blood all the time  (It uses hemocyanin as
the oxygen-binding protein, which is the main coloring in blood)

--David

    When I was a very young girl, I couldn't wait to grow up and "have
    a crack" (read: have cleavage). Every girl gets a crack when she's
    grown up, of course. 
    
    As a Jew, I knew that the religions of the world were: Jewish and
    other. Other meant Christians (kids who went to Christian school
    so nuns could hit them) and blacks. Someone finally told me that there 
    are black Jews in the world, and it took awhile for me to figure out 
    how that could be. 
    
    And, Chinese had eyes that slanted up and Japenese had
    eyes that slanted down and they could swap if they felt like it.
    
    Ignorance is not really bliss. Barbara 
    

    The greatest misconception I had as a child, was that my father
    knew everything, could make anything happen...like when the
    highway was 'wet' about a half a mile ahead of us, he always said
    'the road will be dry when we reach that point'...it always was.
    
    I'm a lot wiser now.
    
    Paula

    
    
    
    RE .51
    
    	I was taught that deoxygenated blood was *rust* colored,
    and oxygenated blood was bright red. The color is due to iron
    which is a building block of hemoglobin. The blue veins you
    see are caused by the way light passes through your skin - much
    the same way the ocean looks blue. 
    

    
    At the risk of creating a huge rathole, I want to point out an alarming
    trend that I've seen developing in this note.  It seems that some
    of us (in revealing past "misconceptions" that we've had) have revealed
    some ideas that I have found to be rather racist.  (Am I the only
    one who has felt this way?)  I'm sure that hasn't been the intent, 
    and I know that the purpose of this note is to describe things that 
    we *used to* believe, but all the same, I've felt some discomfort.  
    
    A request:  if you're adding a "misconception" to the list, and
    you're making mention of a racial or ethnic group of which you are
    *not* a member, before you post the note, imagine a member of that
    group reading what you've written.
         
    Thanks.
    
    In sisterhood,
    
    Justine

re 452.56 by PSYCHE::SULLIVAN >

>some of us (in revealing past "misconceptions" that we've had) have 
>revealed some ideas that I have found to be rather racist.  

None of the conceptions strike me as racist.  They do show what goofy ideas 
we can get about people who look different than our own racial group.  And 
not from an adult source who is saying cruel things, but just from our own 
minds groping with the universe.  

Here are two more racial & sexual 'misconceptions' I know about.

A book I read (ummmm ... Growing Up Black or Women in Slavery?) told about 
a young black girl who lived in terror of whites. She had been told to 
steer clear of whites, especially white men, but had no idea why.  She 
got the message they were incredibly powerful and controlled her fate.  
She developed the idea they were gods, invincible.  Until the day she saw a 
white man brought home from an accident. Bleeding. And she realized whites 
were just people, like herself.  Changed her view of the universe.

And here is one that made me fall off my chair at DEC Bedford, about 1980.
We got on the subject of marriage and divorce.  A fellow, a very likeable guy, 
told us about his first wife.  He said, with stories that proved his point, 
that she was selfish, insecure, demanding, childish, spoiled, and wildly 
illogical.  We were astonished at his stories of the stunts she pulled.

Finally I said, "You must have been surpised, after you got married, to 
find out she was like that."

He said, "Oh, I knew she was like that before we got married."

Of course I asked, "Then why did you marry her?"

And he said, looking abashed, but with real honesty, "I thought all women 
were like that."

Turned out, he had spent most of his life in an almost all male universe 
and really believed girls and women were totally separate creatures.  After 
all, they sure looked like different creatures to him.  To this day, I am 
full of respect for his honesty in telling us what his thoughts had been as 
a young man of 20 or 22.  He knew telling us this was risking flames (thus 
the abashed look) but he opted for honesty and certainly widened my sense of 
how men can view, and mis-view, women. 

I grew up Catholic and find the Catholic misconceptions a riot.  I'd love 
to hear more group misconceptions, about how baby Baptists thought priests 
would kidnap them for secret baptism, about how baby Chinese thought white 
people were clumsy, baby Jewish kids though gentiles couldn't read.  

I myself near fainted at age 8 or 9 when a brother told me Mr. Zakowski was
Jewish.  I had assumed the Jewish people were long gone, like the Roman
emperor and the Pharisees.   Is it possible that my goofy assumption could 
be seen as having any particle of anti-Semitism?    Meigs

    Justine, my reaction to the stories that talk about inter-racial
    misconceptions is a sense of mingled dismay and hope:  dismay that we
    could be so ill-taught as children by our parents and society, hope
    that the sacrifices of the civil rights movement will one day result in
    a world where such misconceptions no longer occur.  The stories don't
    seem to me to be racialist in the present tense, but I would be glad to
    have the opinions, by mail if necessary, of our black sisters and
    brothers on the issue. 
    
    The house I used to own in Minnesota had been built in the summer of
    1890, and among the debris in the attic I found a sales brochure for
    Edison phonographic recordings dated November 1906.  There was a
    section in the booklet for "Coon Songs" illustrated with what I'm sure
    must have seemed in 1906 really amusing drawings and descriptions
    of the songs being offered.  Naturally the songs took for granted the
    worst possible stereotypes, and my children were by turns puzzled,
    horrified, and amused that people could ever have been so ignorant.
    
    						=maggie 
     

    
    I was reminded of this particular misconception when my niece said
    the following:  (before my niece, my younger brother said it, and
    before him, *I* said it!)
    
    Walking through one of the local department stores we happened by
    the toy section.  Melissa spied something she wanted in the worst
    way and begged me to buy it for her.
    
    "But, Melissa," I tried to explain, "I don't have any money."
    
    "You don't need money," she assured me.  "You can just write a check
    like grandma does!"
    
    ....Yeah......
    
    Carol  :-)
        
    

    My mother never smoked, drank, or swore.  I guess I associated this
    behavior with the way mothers were supposed to act.  When I was
    about 9 or 10 yrs. old I went over to a friend's house after school.
     A woman was sitting at the kitchen table smoking a cigaret and
    drinking a can of beer.  When we came in she said something to my
    friend in kind of a loud, boisterous voice.  When we went in my
    friend's bedroom I said, Who is SHE?  My friend said, My mother,
    who else?  I was flabbergasted.  I said, She's your MOTHER?  Your
    mother drinks beer and smokes?!!!!  I thought all mothers were prim,
    proper and ladylike.
    
    Lorna
    

    
    When I was very young (about 4) my parents bought a house in a very
    Catholic neighborhood.  The "Holy See" was also the home of the
    Bishop (about two blocks away!)
    
    We were the only protestants for miles around, and I had never seen
    any nuns before.  They petrified me.  I thought they were boogy-men.
    They filled all my concepts of what boogy-men had to look like!
    
    Of course, my reaction to nuns was a clear sign to the neighborhood
    kids that I was a "non-Catholic".  Consequently, everytime I was
    out playing and it rained enough for water to run in the gutters
    down the street, I got "caught" and hauled to the gutter to be
    properly baptized.  I figure I'm a baptized Catholic about a
    thousand times!!!

    On the questions a while back of the color of deoxygenated blood
    - it is indeed still red but a darker more purplish red, rather
    than being blue. If you cut your self you are most likely cutting
    a vein - as they are near to the surface, while arteries are deep
    - and the blood that flows out is indeed red. Veins appear blue
    as they are seen through the skin as was mentioned previously.
    
    And Dave, there is a good reason why the plumonary artery is
    blue on anatomical models, it is carrying *unoxygenated blood*
    from the heart to the lungs, and the *pulmonary vein* is colored
    red because it is carrying oxgenated blood from the lungs to the
    heart to be sent out to the body. That is a very common question
    on Biology tests to see if people are paying attention.
    
    Bonnie
    
    (and sorry to be so long in answering, I am on vacation this week
    :-)  :-)  )

    I thought EVERYBODY knew enough not to sleep with hands or feet
    hanging over the side of the bed.  If you do, the monsters that
    are under your bed at night EAT THEM.  And, did you know that if
    you stay completely under the covers that monsters can't get you?
    
    Did you ever wonder as a kid (or now, like I do) what "getting"
    someone meant, as in "the monster will GET me!"??
    
    :-)
    
    Jane
    

    	RE:  .63
    
    	Well, it's good to know that I'm not the only one who had
    	monsters living under her bed.  :-)
    
    	I wasn't that worried about hanging hands and feet over the
    	side of my bed, but I *did* used to jump into bed from a safe
    	distance (to avoid having my ankles grabbed if I got too close
    	to the bed.)
    
    	If I had to go to the bathroom at night, I'd jump out of bed
    	and back in from the greatest distance I could manage at that
    	hour.
    
    	The monster under *MY* bed had fairly short arms, luckily. :-)
    
    							Suzanne...

    	One other thing is that I used to believe that dreams were
    	*REAL*.  I had a dream when I was 5 that my parents used to allow
    	me to dive off the pier in Honolulu to get the coins tossed
    	by people coming in on the ocean liners.  I was nearly 8 years
    	old before I realized that it hadn't really happened.  (Luckily,
    	I seldom mentioned this experience to anyone, but it wasn't because
    	I didn't believe the dream.  I just assumed that my whole FAMILY
    	knew that I used to dive for coins, so there was no need to
    	bring it up.)  :-)
    
    	When I had my OWN child, it occurred to me that HE (as a toddler)
    	might think that HIS dreams were real, too.
    
    	I also thought it might be amusing to hear about the kinds of
    	dreams that a 2 year old might have, so I explained "dreams"
    	to Ryan and asked him to start telling me about any dreams that
    	he could remember having when he woke up in the morning.
    
    	[I should mention that it took quite a bit of explaining to
    	get the concept of "dreaming" across to a 2 year old.  I finally
    	got through to him when I suggested scenerio's -- "You are out
    	somewhere and doing something, then you open your eyes and you
    	are really just in your bed."  When he finally caught on, his
    	eyes opened wide -- he *HAD* noticed that, and he definitely
    	*DID* think that his dreams were real.]
    
    	The dreams of a 2 or 3 year old child are incredibly entertaining!!
    	Balloons and peanut butter sandwiches loomed large in Ryan's
    	dream life as a toddler.  He started telling me his dreams several
    	times a week, and they were wonderful!!
    
    	Ryan's pre-school teachers got the benefit of his naptime dreams
    	during the day, and they found the experience as delightful
    	as I did.  
    
    	If you can get the idea through to a small child (and it's not
    	easy, believe me,)  I *highly* recommend trying to get a child
    	to tell his or her dreams.  It was one of the most enjoyable
    	parts of Ryan's early childhood for me.
    
    							Suzanne... :-)

    I thought skyscrapers were bulldozers that flew around and pushed
    the clouds out of the sky.
    
    woody

    
    And how many of us got up early to check the tree again on December
    26th to see if Santa had left more goodies?
    
    :-)
    
    Carol
    

    I wonder how many kids have been told that if they dug a deep enough
    hole they would get to China.  I know my brother and I tried digging
    our way to China at least once.
    
    I was also afraid of the hands under the bed grabbing my ankles
    when I got out of bed at night, and it is funny how safe just one
    blanket could make us feel, as though whatever it was that was going
    to "get us" couldn't easily toss away a blanket and get us anyway!
    
    Lorna
    

    I remember being about 3 and telling my mother that when I got bigger
    I would grow up and she would grow down and be a baby.  She tried
    to convince me it wasn't true, but I insisted it was.
    
    (A shrink would have a hey-day with that one!)       
    
    In some ways I wasn't so far off.  I think a lot about her support
    and resources and potential for the next 20 some-odd years.
    
    Holly
    
    

    	RE:  .69
    
    	Holly, when I was a child, I *also* believed that people grew
    	taller all during their young years, and then they grew shorter
    	when they got to their older years.  
    
    	My evidence for this was the fact that most of the very old
    	people I saw at the time all seemed to be taller than me but
    	shorter than my parents (so I decided that they must all be
    	on the way back down to my size.)  :-)
    
    	I think I had also heard adults talk about how elderly people
    	*do* lose some height as they reach their most senior years.
    	I took it a step farthur.

    	(I'm sure that changing nutritional norms also had something
    	to do with the overall differences in average heights among
    	young adults and senior citizens.)  It takes lots and lots
    	of junk food to get tall, after all, and the folks in their
    	senior years didn't have that advantage.  :-)  :-)

    							Suzanne... :-)

    I didn't think I was growing - just that all the grown-ups and objects
    were shrinking.
    
    And I too tried to tell my grandmother that I would grow up and
    she would grow down.
    
    I also thought that men (with the hats they used to wear) were hiding
    something on top of them, where kids couldn't see.  I never did
    figure out where they hid it (whatever) when they sat down or took
    off their hat.
    
    Elizabeth

    Talking about believing your dreams - I *knew* I could fly for
    quite a long time, until I tried to explain it to my mother.
    
    Bonnie

    me too bonnie
    i still do have flying dreams ;-)
    kelly

    	When I was about 10 I got a magnets set for Christmas. My young
    sister kept pestering to play with it too. I told her that if she
    didn't go away I would magnetise the iron in her blood, and
    demonstrated graphically with iron filings what would happen.
    
    	She had nightmares for several nights after, but she did leave
    me alone.

    
    On racial misconceptions...
    
    I come from very Irish Catholic stock. Nevertheless I had an Aunt Betsy
    & Uncle Sherm Rosenfield (Jewish) who were an integral part of my
    childhood, & whom I dearly loved. Uncle Sherm taught me magic tricks,
    played cards with the kids, & they both seemed terribly wise & very
    cosmopolitain (they lived in Chicago & knew all the latest trends & had
    met famous people). I knew they were Jewish & later discovered we were
    not related by blood, but they remain my Aunt & Uncle, & really part of
    the family. 
    
    When I was 11 the term anti-Semetism came up & I was shocked to find
    the many people hated Jews as people. Now in Catholic school we had
    been taught some nasty myths about Jews rejecting Christ, but our
    parish was very Slavic & there were lots of WWII refugees who had axes
    to grind against Jews, so my parents set me straight. What shocked
    me was that non-Catholics hated Jews. In fact lots of people did.
    Then I found a book about Auschwitz! I cried pretty hard that day.
    I knew there was prejudice (I grew up during the Civil Rights movement
    in the 60s) & I knew there was war, but death camps were a new &
    terrible twist. I grew up that day & can honestly say I have never
    been the same since. 
    
    On another form of prejudice....
                                              
    Our very Roman Catholic family moved to the country when I was six,
    into a very Dutch Reform neighborhood. We were branded as "idol
    worshipers" by the family next door and shunned for about a year. Both
    sets of kids were bored stiff & dying to play together so a theological
    peace was achieved (both sides agreed not to evangilize). But for a
    long time thereafter I wondered about those statues...

    
    

    .75 reminded me of another misconception.
    
    As a young child I heard someone say that Jews were "incomplete
    Christians".  (How offensive!)
    
    Since everyone else I knew was at least a nominal Christian,  I kept
    looking for missing body parts when I met Jews.  When someone 
    explained to me that Jewish baby boys are circumcised, I thought I 
    had it figured out.
 
    When someone else explained to me that most baby boys, including
    Christians, were circumcised (this was the 1950s), I was totally 
    confused again.
    
    
    Holly

    How about this one:  whenever I went to a movie as a kid, I always
    thought that, as soon as I got home, I could turn on the TV and
    see the movie again...no matter how many times I tried it, I still
    beleived that the movie I'd gone to see was on TV somewhere.  A
    screen is a screen to a kid!
    
    Jane

    re. previous several
    
    I think what Angela meant about the blue blood was, didn't you ever
    cut yourself as a child and look quickly to see if it was blue,
    right at first?   I always did.
    
    I too, dreamt I could fly, by running with my knees up high.  If
    I did it just right, up I'd go.  It was sooo real, but it never
    worked.
    
    Whenever we wanted ice-cream after dinner, my Dad would tell us,
    You can have it, when the cows come home.  I spent a long time 
    waiting for those silly cows!  
    
    Theresa.

    I wished on the first star I saw every night when I was 14-17 years
    old!  I truly believed the little rhyme "Star light, star bright,
    first star I see tonight. Wish I may, wish I might, have the wish
    I wish tonight" (Little was I to know that Madonna would make this
    rhyme a hit!)  I even do it sometimes now, it couldn't hurt!!
    
   -Linda

    ..gee, I thought EVERYONE wished on the first star!
    
    I still do,
    
    Jane
    
    :-I

    
    
    great stuff!!!!
    funny..and hit home, too!
    
    some of my old misconceptions;
    
    1. used to think that you had to get married and have children
    and buy a house so that your children could get married and have
    children and buy a house so that their children.....

    2. use to think that america was a great country
    The greatest in the world....!
    
    	funny, huh?
    
    3. use to think that you needed certain clothes for different
    occasions.
    
    4. use to think that th egovernment actually cared about the people!
    
    boy, how naive i was...
    

    One of things I remember to be so disappointing to me as a child
    was when I went on the show Boom Town ( Rex Trailer) with the Brownies, 
    at about age five. Before going on the set I really thought Boom       
    Town was a real town.  How disappointed I was to find a town made of 
    cardboard!

When I was little, I couldn't figure out how my parents 'memorized' the way to 
my grandparents houses; they were *so* far away and it took a whole *hour* to
get there.

I had no idea what dentures were.  One day, while walking down the street, my 
grandfather casually took out his teeth!  I kept trying to pull out my upper 
palate for 6 months.  I thought I had to loosen it up or something.

I too thought that there were real musicians at radio stations.

I thought that when I stood really close to the side of a tall building and
looked straight up that the building was indeed falling over.

I thought the street sign 'THICKLY SETTLED' meant that the road ahead was
packed down really hard or something.  I couldn't figure out why they bothered
to put up a sign to tell you this.  I thought all pavement was packed down
really hard.

I didn't know 'FROST HEAVES' had anything to do with the road.  I thought they
were making a statement, something like 'grass grows'.

    One of our little neighbours died in a car accident, and my daughter
    learned about it through another of our neighbours who told her:
    "Jessy is now a little star in the sky, and from up above she sees
    you and waves at you". I found that incredibly stupid, but did not
    want to contradict the lady openly, which means I had to stand for
    several weeks having my daughter waving to numerous stars at bedtime,
    'cause any of them could be Jessy.
    
    This same neighbour also had her husband every Xmas dress up as
    Father Xmas and bring in the presents. One day my daughter came
    home FURIOUS: "Mom, why did you tell me Father Xmas did not exist?"
    "because he doesn't, dear", "Well he does, because Smilka showed
    me a PICTURE of him giving her presents!"
    
    Joana       

    	When I was a kid, we took a trip to New York city and did a
    	lot of sightseeing (including visiting the Empire State
    	Building.)
    
    	My whole family went to the window to see the view of the
    	city, but I stayed in the middle of the observation room.
    	I felt for sure that if every one of us went to the same
    	side of the building to look out, the building would topple
    	over.
    
    						     Suzanne...

    
    When I was little I really thought that flea markets were where
    you bought trained fleas.
    
    It took me the longest time to figure out that "antiques" were what
    I saw and read as "anti ques".
    
    When I was in the first grade I couldn't wait to learn to tell time.
    I knew how to read, I knew how to write.  I figured that telling
    time was the last great hurdle of being totally educated, and there
    wasn't anything else to learn after that.

    Someone mentioned that she thought her folks' car knew the way to
    grandmother's house. I wondered about that, too. I didn't know about
    the little lever to turn on the turn signal, so I figured that the car
    knew when to signal for a turn.

    When I first started being driven to school with other kids on the
    block, I didn't understand why they called it a "car pull". Of course,
    "car pool" is a pretty weird phrase, too.

    Well I remember thinking that the expression "in exalted Deo"
    had something to do with salting something.... and wondered 
    where the salt fit into the servce.

    Bonnie, I remember a similar one from church choir.
    
    We had to sing something which sounded like "in eggshell seas Deo",
    and I kept picturing seas of eggshells.  How surprised I was to
    find that the phrase was written "in Excelsis Deo"!
    
    I had a fight with a teacher once (and got thrown out of class)
    for insisting that "The Little Colonel" was pronounced "The Little
    Colonial".  (We learned phonetics so they shouldn't have blamed
    me!)
    
    Holly

    
    re -1
    
    Irene (my SO) used to say the Hail Mary at age 5 with the following
    lines: 
    
    Hey you Mary the Lore with thee
    Bested art though monk women
    & bested is the food of thy womb Jesus
    Hairy apes, mother & God
    play for us sinners  
    now and the tower of death, Hey men
    
    She wondered what the hairy apes had to do with Mary but her
    mother laughed so hard she never got a straight answer.
    

    I could never understand why my Dad had to turn the steering wheel
    (even slightly) when he was driving straight down the street.  I
    thought if he just held it straight except at the corners the
    car would do fine.
    
    grins,
    

    The first time I drove a car in a snowstorm, at 17, I was surprised
    to see the windshield fog up so much that I couldn't see though
    it!  I opened my window and peered around the car with snow hitting
    my face all the way home.
    
    When I got home my father said, "Well, how'd you like driving in
    the snow?"  I said, "Well, it wouldn't have been bad if I could've
    seen out the windshield."  He said, "Why didn't you turn on the
    defrost?"  "Defrost?  What's that Dad?"
    
    Lorna
    

    
    There was one adjective that I could never figure out : ELEMENTO.
    It had to be pretty important, because it singled out the letter
    "P" from all the other letters in the alphabet.  I always wondered
    why "P" was so much more noteworthy than the other letters.
    
    As in the song: "A,B,C,D,E,F,G...H,I,J,K,ELEMENTO P....."
                                                               
    Also, I thought that you got pregnant like you got mumps or chicken
    pox or a cold.  Somehow, you had to be married to get pregnant,
    but I never figured out how the pregnancy germs knew how people
    were married or female.....
    
    I thought heaven was a place with a big, old hutch cabinet filled
    with cans of Calo cat food when I was really little.  Never figured
    out why everyone made such a big deal about a place like that, 
    especially when there were no cats allowed.
    
    this is fun!
    Ann

    My oldest brother told me when I was about 6 that G_d gave people
    babies. This was after I chose him to be the unlucky target for
    my question "Where do babies come from?" To make matters worse I
    asked him the question in front of my other brother. Now, you have
    to realize my oldest brother was only 12 at the time! Anyway I remember
    asking him several times after "How does G_d know just the right
    time to give people babies!!??" Poor Peter!!
    
    Elisabeth

    I too, thought the car knew when to turn because the directional would
    go on everytime before the car would turn.
    
    And I also thought I could fly, my father used to put a belt around
    my waste pretending I was flying, but I thought I could fly with
    out the belt, until I tried that is! BOOM!  I think a lot of children
    think they can fly, my sister was devasted when she bought her son
    a costume with a cape on it, and he said NOW I can jump out my window
    and fly, my sister instantley explained to him that people can't
    fly. I think this a big misconception to young children.  
                           
    

    I can only remember one so far - when I was about 5 I wanted the
    elevator in an office building to stop at the Magazine level - I
    thought that's what it said - it was actually Mezzanine.
    				Steve

    I had always heard that God gave women babies when they got married,
    too!  When I was 6, I could read Reader's Digest without too much trouble.
    One day my grandmother and mother were talking and said something
    about God giving people babies after they get married (for my benefit).  
    
    I looked at them and said, "Well then why does Reader's Digest have
    a story called 'The Plight of the Unwed Mother'?".
    
    I'm surprised we didn't lose my grandmother on the spot!
          
    Holly

    
    Re: .83
    
      Yes, Rex Trailer was a disappointment, but I was more disappointed
    by the fact that he just ran and jumped over the fence and there
    was no horse....
    
                        Mark
    

    When I was six years old and in the first grade, my teacher was
    out sick for a long time (long enough for the substitute teacher
    to have learned all our names - to this day my only measure of the
    length of time for my teachers absence).  This was about the time
    of the Boston strangler.  Having heard of the Boston strangler on
    the radio and knowing that my [single] teacher lived in Boston, 
    I was convinced that he had gotten her and that 'they' didn't want
    to tell us.  When she returned, I was greatly surprised and relieved,
    and felt a sort of 'restoration of faith'.
    
    Mary

    	Yesterday, my 8 year old daughter wanted to know why plugs were
    referred to as "male" or "female". After I had given a graphic
    description, her next question was :-
    
    "Was sex invented before plugs, or after?"

    This is beginning to be quite a collection! Fun!
    
    As a 4-year old I believed that babies cried because their parents
    bit them (of course my parents never did anything like it so I don't
    know how I ever got the idea).
    
    I found out how wrong this was while playing with a little friend.
    I was the mother and she was the baby... Her mother wouldn't let
    us play for months. 
    
    A couple of years later my parents wanted me to take preschool English
    lessons. I was really looking forward to it because I thought they
    would be held in the movie theater (that's the only place English
    was heard - I saw all the Tarzan movie, dad translated) I was extremely
    dissapointed to find that the lessons were held in a classroom.
    
    Ann
          

    I used to think that "white people" were that way because they were
    born before they were done, thats why they would lay in the sun
    with oil all over their bodies trying to finish cooking.
    
    I was also told that catholics were to be pitied because the couldn't
    pray directly to God but had to go through a saint, we protestants
    were the chosen ones and god would communicate directly with us.
    

    I used to think brick houses wouldn't burn down.
    
    

    doesn't every little kid think that when you close your
    eyes, no one can see you....
    
    I used to think that I had two mothers that looked exactly
    alike, one was good and one was bad.  When my mother was
    being nice to me the good mother was the one I saw and
    the bad mother existed in another dimension (yes, I was a
    sci fi buff at an early age).  When my mother yelled at me,
    what had really happened was my good mother was whisked into
    the other dimension and the bad mother took her place in
    this dimension.  It took me quite a while to figure out
    that people could be BOTH good and bad.  

 From VNS (Vogon News Service) 18-Sep-1987:

> A New York woman was killed when an escalator failed, the bottom step
> opened and she was sucked into the mechanism. [In Britain it is mandatory
> to have emergency stop buttons at the bottom and top].

I used to think this was one of my unreasonable fears about escalators.
How will I ever make it through the Christmas shopping season now?  

...Karen

   
    A story my mom and dad always tell is about they way kids used to
    pronounce the name "Arthur Godfrey". A cousin visited us once and got
    real excited when Arthur Godfrey was on TV and started yelling
    "Oppy Goppy! Oppy Goppy!". He was about 5 years old. My sister became
    very indignant at this gross mispronounciation. She being *6* years
    old felt that it was her place to correct her *younger* cousin.
    In a very proud manner she said,
    
    "Why do you keep calling him Oppy Goppy? His name is Arffy Garffy!!"
    
    Paul

    When I was in 1st Grade the big story going around was that you
    should never swallow your chewing gum because it would stick your
    lungs together.
    
    When I lost my first tooth, I thought I had done something wrong;
    I fell down and smacked my chin while playing, and then, lo and
    behold this tooth started getting loose!  I lived for two weeks
    in silent fear and resigned despair and finally ate the tooth by
    accident in a mouthful of Cheerios.  My grandmother was the first
    to notice my gap, and delightedly called my mom's attention to it.
    I was stunned; you mean it wasn't my fault?  I'm not going to die?
    I'm not going to be punished?  This is _normal_?  (Learning about
    sex was nothing compared to this!)
    
    But the best story I have is about my younger brother, who was shown
    at age 4 how to milk our neighbor's cow.  Fascinated he squeezed
    each udder and got a stream of milk from each one, whereupon he
    hollered over at my mother "Mom, look, this cow has four penises!"
    
    I did not exactly believe in a closet monster or an under-the-bed
    monster, but I did believe there was something in the mirror at
    night.  I would actually crawl into the bathroom to avoid the gaze
    of whatever frightful creature lurked there.  I wasn't sure what
    it was but I was sure it was real.
    
    Marcia
    

    Marcia,
    
    The story about your younger brother was great!  It reminded me
    of one my mother told me.  Seems she and her sisters decided to
    "milk" her grandfather's prize bull!  And he was P****d!  Her
    grandfather, I mean; she never did tell me what the bull thought
    of it ;-)
    
    Rita
    

    "Swallowed gum makes your lungs stick together" reminded me of the
    fear that if I swallowed any kind of fruit seed, it would sprout
    inside of me and start growing.  I also thought that goldenrod caused
    hayfever, so whenever I walked by the field of goldenrod on the way 
    to my grandmother's house after school, I held my breath...
    
    Hmm.  I just remembered another one.  My brother is quite a bit
    older than me (12 years) and I remember a dinner time conversation
    he was having with my mother and older sister (she's 11 years older
    than me) about shepherds and their sheep.  Maybe it wasn't a
    conversation, maybe he just told an off-color joke, but it involved 
    sexual intercourse between man and beast.  I knew how puppies were
    made, and babies, too, I guess, but not knowing that it was impossible
    to reproduce between man and ewe, I wondered what the offspring would
    be like: would it look like a sheep, but be able to talk?  Would it 
    look like a person but only bleat?  Would it look a little like both, 
    with maybe hair like wool or a bahh-bahh laugh?  I was really disturbed
    by these thoughts...
    
    CQ

    
    When I was in grammar school they tested our eyesight every year.
    Unfortunately, they never explained that this was a test that it
    was okay to fail...
    
    I'd fail the test at the normal distance, they'd move me closer,
    I'd pass, then they'd move me back again and I'd pass at the original
    distance (golly gee, that series of letters was easy to memorize).
    I thought it was like all the other tests we took in first and second
    grade.
    
    No one tumbled to my advanced nearsightedness until I was 8.  One
    Sunday in church I asked my mother "What time is it?", she said "Look
    at the clock", I replied "What clock?"
    
    By the way, how many of you nearsighted folk were surprised the
    first time you realized that the leaves at the top the tree were
    all separate?

    re .111
    
    Geez, you too!  They used to march us down to the nurses office
    in groups to take hearing and eyesight tests.  For the hearing tests
    the nurse put earphones on about 8 kids at a time, then made beeps
    on the machine that controlled the earphones.  You were supposed
    to raise your hand whenever you heard a sound.  When you are in
    first or second grade you'd better believe that you don't want to
    be the only one not raising your hand, even if you didn't hear
    anything.
    
    I also thought that the eyesight charts were a test of skill.  Two
    or three people would take the test ahead of me, so I had it memorized
    by the time it was my turn, even though I could only read the first
    two lines (the real huge letters).   I didn't find out that people
    were actually supposed to see the blackboard clearly until the girl
    in front of me got glasses in the 4th grade.  I tried them on, and
    voila!  I could actually see the pretty picture the teacher had
    drawn on the board, and all the separate little chalk marks.  I
    was amazed.  The teacher saw me try them on and told me to take
    them off since I would ruin my eyes.  I wasn't one to argue, but
    that night I told my mom that I needed glasses.  She passed it off
    as me just wanting a pair like Carol, but I pestered her and pestered
    her until she took me to the eye doctor.  The eye doctor used a
    different chart than my school and there was no one reading it off
    ahead of me so I "flunked" miserably.  When I got the pair of glasses
    and first went outside I couldn't believe that you could actually
    see the separate leaves on the trees.  I was swinging my head around
    this way and that trying to take it all in, what a difference!

    			Barbara b.    

    re .111 and .112
    Me also! I still remember getting my first pair of glasses in
    about 4th or 5th grade and being absolutely fascinated by looking
    at all the details of the branches and leaves on the tops of
    the trees.
    
    Bonnie

re last few and vision problems:

My eyes are really strange.  My left eye is VERY nearsighted (if they didn't
make the top line an E all the time, I couldn't read it!) and my right eye
is a tiny bit farsighted.  So, I can see "fine" without glasses (even
passed the MA driver's eye test 2 weeks ago, since they test both eyes at
once) but what's depth perception?  I think I finally realized why I couldn't
deal with a frisbee coming right at me!  I recently got one contact lens
(hadn't been wearing my glasses for a long time) and am still closing my
right eye to "play" with my vision.

And now, back to the topic of misconceptions:

When I was in elementary school, I used to think there were just 2 religions:
most people were Jewish and there were relatively few Catholics.  A direct
extrapolation from my school and neighborhood (in Brooklyn, NY).  Boy was I
surprised when we moved and there were 2-3 Jewish children in the school!!

And my favorite:  I used to think your "half birthday" was in the month that
your brother or sister's birthday was in.  I have one sister with an April
birthday, and mine's in October, so we know where that comes from!  I could
never figure out how it worked if you had more than one sibling!!

Jill

    
    Well, I'll tell you, the fascination with the separate leaves held
    true for me when I was 18!  My nearsightedness came on very slowly,
    I think -- I don't remember having any problems with my sight as
    a kid -- and I realised I needed glasses the day I saw my sister-in-law
    walking down the street towards me, and though I knew it was her,
    because of her peculiar gait, and her tall, thin body, I could _not_ 
    focus on her face.  Individual blades of grass where fascinating, too!
                                            
    CQ

    
    I just remembered something else... this didn't happen to me, but to 
    my ex-husband, who is deaf.  When he was a kid, he watched some
    amount of TV.  Ya know how they made those old monster-movies, where
    the monster was a lizard enlarged x times?  He saw those movies
    and thought that all lizards would grow into monsters, if you didn't 
    kill them first, so he used to patrol around with a 2x4, killing the 
    little ones that scurried around his childhood home in the south.  
    
    Also, he used to watch Mr.Ed, and it wasn't till he was in school that 
    a teacher told him that horses couldn't really talk.  He had no one to 
    answer his questions and tell him what was what.  It really made me sad
    to hear it...
                                                              
    CQ

    As a child I thought women got pregnant by going number 1
    in the same toilet as a man who hadn't flushed, so I always
    flushed before I went.
    
    I thought that bands were playing in the radio stations and
    what we heard on the radio was live.  I couldn't figure out
    how they changed so fast.
    
    I thought the "Chipmunks" were real singing squirrels.
    
    My Lords prayer went "Our Father, who arts in heaven, halloween
    be thy name...........".  My vision of god was a painting pumpkin.
    
    I thought relatives younger than me were cousins and older than
    me were aunts, uncles, and grandparents.
    
    I thought clouds were soft, and quiet....until I flew in my first
    plain ride through one.
    
    My worst nighttime fear was that I could not hang any of my arms or legs
    over the side of the bed because there was someone with a knife
    circling under my bed constantly.
                  
                                        Don't laugh too hard! :^)
                                                - Sue
    

                                     O--O    

4th grade, I remember the eye doctor and nurse exchanging Looks after she 
said "read the first letter" and I asked "where?".

And I felt totally DUMB compared to all the seafarers and ancient
astronomers who plotted the paths of the stars.  I could never have done
that!  Heck, I couldn't tell one from another.  I spent my first night with 
glasses laying on a hillside, open mouthed, staring at Individual Stars. Wow.

Never did homework from grade 2 thru 4.  It was written on the board, as
visible to me as the Great Wall of China.  Can't imagine what my teachers
thought. 

        I've felt kinda left out in this note 'cause either I have
        a terrible memory or I had few if any delusions as a kid
        (or at least few that I have since lost).
        
        However, at 36 as I walk in to work on a criss clear day, I
        still admire the fine detail of the individual leaves and
        branches at the tops of trees. In 6th grade I used to get
        headaches all the time from the eyestrain of reading the black
        board. Eventually, I answered "But you didn't write anything"
        or somethig similar when asked to read the board.
        
        A few years later I learned a valuable lesson: Don't buy your
        first pair of bifocals from someone whose office is at the top
        of the stairs. It hurts when the stairs leap out of your way. 
        
        Back to the mythconceptions...
        
        JimB.

    I used to think babies were made when a man and woman kissed...god
    knows where I got that idea from!
    
    Uh, I didn't know I was shortsighted until I joined DEC (woops!).
    My first eye test since school. I struggled to read more than four
    lines. The first time I wore them, I wandered down the high street
    in the evening. All those signs I could read! Gollee! People's faces
    were in focus...what a revelation.
    
    So now I get comments like, "C'mon Pete, stop being vain and wear
    your glasses!" when I go to lunch and try to spot people.
    
    Pete.

    I still do this.  In referring to places that I will travel, from
    a Mass. perspective, you drive UP to New Hampshire and you drive
    DOWN to Connecticut.  And when I lived in Milford and my sister
    lived in Marlboro, she would say, "why don't you come on down" and
    I would say, "no, up".  How silly.
    
    I also thought the same thing about swallowing seeds (watermelon).
     But, I was different: I showed off by swallowing them.  My mother
    used to get angry at me for that.  Guess who had the last laugh
    when I swallowed a very large peach stone?  I was not a happy camper.
                                             
    My mother told a small fib EVERY time she went to clip my sister's
    and my fingernails and toe nails. She said, "we use them in pea
    soup".  You can laugh because that is such a stupid reason, yet,
    I believed her.  
    
    Were any of you excited about the solar eclipse and when your mother
    and father told you not to look at the sun, you did anyways?
    
    Cathy

	RE: north being up
	
	I lived in Rochester N.Y. where the Genesee River flowed north
	towards Lake Ontario.  I'll never forget the time in 3rd grade
	when one of my classmates told the teacher that it was impossible
	for the river to flow up like that.

	...Karen

    I was told if I put a pussy willow branch in the closet kittens
    would be born from the furry flowers.
    
    I tried and tried and tried and it didn't work....I must have done
    something wrong...I will try again next spring.

        For those of you who may have been confused by us New Englanders
        and our references to "down east", and Maine being "down" from
        Massachusetts, the following explanation may be in order.
        
        It is pretty common to refer to the direction that a river flows
        or a wind blows as "down". Louisiana is "down river" from Ohio,
        say. Well, the early New Engalnders were fisherman and dependant
        on fishing and shipping for their trade, so they just naturally
        thought in nautical terms, and relative to one of the largest
        river in the world--the Gulf Stream--Maine is down and east from
        the rest of Massachusetts and New England (remembering all the
        time that Maine was a part of Massachusetts for nearly half its
        history). 
        
        So whereas Maine would appear to be "up north" to those of us
        who look at modern maps, to our New Engalnd ancestors it's
        "down" and "east". Wasn't that simple and obvious? 
        
        Actually, the above is all a foul lie. we really use weird
        phrases like "down east" for the same reason that we never put
        street signs marking our main streets--its to confuse all you
        foreigners and recent arrivals. 

    I have been waiting and waiting for something from my childhood
    to hit me that I could share with you folks as my misconception.
    Yesterday I remembered:
    
    My grandmother and her sister used to sing songs with me all of
    the time.  One day I was visiting this great aunt at her home in
    Missouri (I lived in California), and I requested that we sing that
    song we always sang.  
    
    "Which song?" they asked.  
    "The one about the nail in the head", I replied.
    
    They could not imagine what I was talking about.
    
    We used to sing "You are my Sunshine", and the second verse went
    like this:
    
    "The other night, dear, as I lay sleeping, I dreamed I held you
    in my arms.
    When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken, and I hung my head and I cried."

    I didn't know what hanging one's head was, but I figured it was
    like you hung a coat: on a nail.  :-)
    
                   Carol

    OH yes, eye tests in school.
    
    I too thought that they were tests of skill.  Gee, it was easy to
    memorize those letters :^).
    
    Until I was in 6th grade, I got in line first.  I couldn't fake
    it then, and read the top 2 lines of the chart.  Then my parents
    took me to an optometrists at a department store, who either the
    tester or the shop did a bad job of fitting me with glasses, which
    did not make things any better for me.  I didn't realize that there
    was a problem until the next year - when they took me to a teaching
    hospital, and got the glasses made right.  Gee, I could see the
    stars, and the trees, and the lines in my hands (I had far-sighted
    astigmatism).  It was truly amazing.  I never realized that you
    were supposed to see the writing on the board, or the writing in
    books clearly - I thought they had cleverly made it as small as
    people could *possibly* see it just to save paper.
    
    You'd think that school nurses would know as much about child
    psychology as those who read this file, and take the children in
    *one* at a time, so they wouldn't treat it as a test of skill, like
    their other tests.
    
    Elizabeth

    I don't think I ever did pass an eye test at school, even after
    I got glasses - their machine that you had to look into didn't do
    a very good job for very near-sighted people.  I remember one year
    at summer camp trying on a friend's glasses, and being really surprised
    that I could see the indidivual leaves at the tops of the trees
    - I knew they were up there (it was a nature camp, after all!),
    but I didn't realize anyone could see them.  So of course the counselor
    said to give Joan back her glasses before they ruined my eyes. 
    Anyhow, I got my own glasses soon after, and what an improvement!
    I especially remember the French teacher in my grade school using
    a feltboard - a fuzzy board where she could stick velcro-backed
    tiny figures of "le grandpere", "le chat", etc. - none of which
    I could make out at all.  I used to go up and look at the feltboard
    after class so I could see what the things looked like so that I
    could identify them by color from my own seat (always in the back
    corner of the room, since we were always arranged by height - not
    the right spot for tall nearsighted kids) -- luckily they were mostly
    different enough that you could do this.  That way, I could also
    find out that the brown blob that Madame Soutense called "le chien"
    was a little figure of a floppy-eared dog, maybe two inches high
    (I wonder how many of the kids who weren't nearsighted could see
    these tiny objects well enough to actually see that this thing was
    supposed to be a dog?  They were pretty little!).  No, I was NEVER
    EVER going to admit that I couldn't see the things...little kids
    don't like to be singled out, because it causes the other kids to
    tease them (most children have no tact!).

    Re people getting glasses, my brother finally got glasses in 7th
    grade.  I can remember him looking in the mirror and being dismayed
    and saying, "I didn't know I had this many pimples!"  He had a terrible
    acne problem as a teenager, but he didn't know about it til he got
    glasses, poor kid.  I can also remember him saying, "Everything
    outside looks so clear and distinct!"  I never realized before how
    many other kids this happened to.
    
    Lorna
    

< Note 452.125 by CSC32::JOHNS "Yes, I *am* pregnant :-)" >

	Carol, your personal name reminds of a rule my girlfriends and I
	made up after asking someone who WASN'T pregnant if they were.


	NEVER mention pregnancy until you're sure it's not just extra
	weight - that's one mistake I won't make again. liesl

    Just heard one from a new acquaintance.
    
    Her neice grew up in Oklahoma, where she often visited the water
    slide park that included wave pools.  She came to Boston to visit
    relatives at seven, and she and her cousins went to the ocean beach.
     After a few hours of playing in the ocean surf, she came back to
    her aunt and said "This is wonderful! What time do they turn off
    the waves?"
                                          Meigs 

    I just heard a new one, too, from a DC friend.  She said that when
    she was about 8 her mother was pregnant and was on prenatal vitamins. 
    One day before the birth her grandmother came to visit and reached up
    into the cupboard to get a vitamin.  My friend very gravely informed
    grandma that she shouldn't take THOSE pills, that if she did then
    she would have a baby.
    
    When that baby was born she was named Betsy.  When Betsy was little
    she went to church and everybody stood up to sing.  Of course, so
    did Betsy, in her high voice, sing the only song she knew...
    "Davy, Davy Crockett..."
                                Carol

    My son's nickname is AC (from his initials). When he was very
    little he thought AC was a generic term for a child. Didn't
    everyone have their own AC, he once asked.
    
    		Alfred

    While visiting my family a few weeks ago, I gave my 5 year old nephew
    a kiss on the lips.  He went running to my sister (his Mother)
    screaming,  "Oh, no...I don't want to have a baby".
    

    
    When I was about four years old, I got the measles.  I was all covered
    with red dots.  My mother told me I couldn't play with the other
    children in the neighborhood because I had germs.
    
    When all the red spots were gone, she declared me germ-free and
    said I could play with my friends again.
    
    When the neighborhood children came over, I warned them.  I told
    them if they saw any little red dots on my toys, they shouldn't touch
    them.  Those little red spots were germs, and *I* didn't have them
    any more, so they must have gone *somewhere* :-)
    
    Rita
    

    My ten year old daughter was reading the label on her amoxicillan
    this morning and interpreted the no refill to mean no relief so
    she asked me why she was bothering to take the stuff.

I was very stubborn when I got my first glasses.  I took the eye test, but
nobody bothered to inform me how much you were *supposed* to read.  I was just
told "You need glasses".  Like any redblooded American child, I promptly said,
"No I don't". 

Then I went to get my glasses in a mall.  I didn't have any memory of not being
able to see like with glasses on, so when I put the glasses on, and could see,
and then took the glasses off, and couldn't see, I had a big fit, and told
everyone that the glasses had ruined my eyes.

I guess I must have heard that if you wear someone elses glasses, you ill ruin
your eyes, eh? 

Jim.

    For New Englanders:  When I was little I was always afraid when
    we were going to Cape Cod.  I was convinced we had to drive over
    the TOP of the bridges.  Why else was all that tall metal stuff
    there?
    
    My husband is pretty silly, and is filling our two children with
    misconceptions.  Once he told them that when a cucumber gets
    pregnant it becomes a watermelon.  He also told them that the
    little boat being towed behind bigger boats is the "money boat".
    It costs so much to have a boat that the people have to drag
    the extra money with them.  For years the children stood at the
    side of the Cape Cod canal straining to see the money inside.
    
    Then last night, we were singing Oh, Susanna when my daughter was
    surprised that he had a banjo on his knee.  She had thought it
    was a bandaid on his knee.
        

An older brother used to soak in the tub for hours at a time.  One day, 
he came home from work, sore as heck, and said he had a carbuncle on 
his tailbone.  

My little brother was astonished, and ran around the neighborhood 
telling everyone his big brother had spent too long sitting in the 
bathtub and now had barnacles.
                      
  Meigs