Things that I believed as a child

One of the greatest things about growing up is the accumulation of knowledge that accompanies the changes that take you from a 10 lb baby who just wants to drink milk and poop to a 200+ lb man who still likes milk as long as its mixed with Lucky Charms, and who still poops. You learn things through observing others, while other knowledge is acquired through direct action. For example telling a woman to keep her hair on does not result in a positive response if that woman is your mother and not drying your hands properly can result in you losing grip on your new purple, dinosaur shaped piggy bank which you inexplicably took to the bathroom for no other reason than the fact you were so enamored with it. I can still remember my levels of distress as I picked up the pieces off the floor.

I think it is funny to look back on the things that you believed as a child but which were totally untrue:

1. I believed that the world was black and white until the 1960s. This made sense because everything on TV from the 60s or earlier was monochrome. I don't know when I learned that this was not the case but I like to imagine a world where color just appeared one day and finally a small percentage of the population were able to be colorblind. Thinking about colors reminds me of the times when I would be deep in thought about whether what I saw as a color was the same as what the next person saw? This has never been answered, regardless of what color you see if you are told it is red will you forever call it red, even if it is blue? This is very confusing for a child, and it still is for a manchild such as myself.

2. I thought that for a man to impregnate a women he had to wee in her. This seems fair because for the first 10-13 years of your life only one fluid is coming out of your man bits. This does bring into question the sex education I received because I clearly knew the act that was taking place I just had no concept of the processes involved. I guess you could say I knew that people liked cupcakes but ignorant of the fact that making them needs flour! (Does that analogy work?)

3. I believed that calculators had to have every answer to every sum manually typed in. Obviously this raised enormous questions about the man hours involved and the knowledge required to correctly input the solutions to really large sums. I guess once I learned of the wonders of computer chips this gap in my knowledge was filled but for a few years I believed that calculator engineers at Casio and T.I. (Texas Instruments not the rapper) were the smartest guys in the world.

Oh the naivety of youth.