Maybe it was the shingles, maybe it was the medication, but when I was off work and sleeping 14-16 hours per day, a strange thing happened. I started getting vivid flashbacks to childhood but not about things that happened to me, they were flashbacks to things I believed when I was a kid. It was an interesting trip down memory lane to say the least! When I look back now, some could be considered creative, some may be funny or perhaps you might think some were just plain weird. I will let you decide!
And it didn’t just happen in one flashback, it was like a portal opened and I was getting memory after memory of the world according to André, from many many moons ago. Enjoy the walk down memory lane with me, but please watch your step!
Here they are, 10 things I believed as a kid, in no particular order.
1 – From a very young age, I had no problem in telling the difference between the actual TV show and the commercials, however the line between real life and TV fiction was a little blurry for me. Given how young I was when they originally aired, it wasn’t surprising that the magic in “Bewitched” and “I Dream of Jeannie” was very real to me.. for a good while.
2 – Still on the topic of fiction vs. real life, a few years later when the “Six Million Dollar Man” and “Bionic Woman” came along I recall asking my mother if they lent Lindsay Wagner the bionic parts and that she had to give them back when the show went on vacation at the end of each season. The fact that I knew how TV seasons worked but couldn’t figure out that bionics were special effects is a bit of a mystery.
3 – We have Serena (from “Bewitched”) to blame for my believing that statues contained people. Specifically… Season 7, episode #5, an episode called “Darren on a Pedestal”. Check it out!
4 – My maternal grandmother looked a bit like Queen Elizabeth back in the day. I vividly recall being very very young, seeing Queen Elizabeth on TV and pointing and saying “Grand Maman”. My grandmother got such a kick out of that!
5 – I remember being so confused because I liked the TV show “Lost In Space” around the same time as the first man walked on the moon. I couldn’t wrap my head around all the commotion at NASA, when seemingly space exploration like that had already happened.
6 – If you have read my blog, you probably know that I grew up a huge fan of the Price is Right. Given the fact that car prices of the early 1970’s always fit in 4 digits on their game boards, it did not take long for me to figure out how to count up to 9,999. But I was stuck after that. I honestly could not figure out what came next. One Sunday dinner at my grandparents’ place, I asked my uncle (who is just a few years older than me) what came after 9,999. He confirmed for me it was 10,000. I remember just saying “Oh!” followed by a long pause as I quietly took in my “Eureka!” moment. After that, the sky was the limit when it came to counting! I felt like the smartest guy in the world!
7 – I can’t remember which cooking show we watched often enough for it to be a vivid memory, perhaps it was the “Galloping Gourmet”, but I was intrigued with his double oven. After preparing the ingredients, he would place the dish he just prepared in the upper oven and, without waiting, would pull out the finished dish, piping hot, out of the bottom oven. I recall often wondering how that magic oven worked, whether the dish just quickly fell into the bottom and cooked along the way. It was simply amazing. For the record, the last range I bought has a double oven… I am still trying to replicate that trick 😉
8 – After a very basic Grade 1 or Grade 2 anatomy lesson we were told to draw a picture of the human body. I don’t know why I got so detail-oriented about this, but I recall that the stomach in my picture was subdivided into several teeny tiny compartments, each containing the names of the different types of food we eat.
9 – When it came to religion class, let’s just say, some of the concepts didn’t quite translate for me. For example, after our lesson on the Apostles going out and spreading the Gospel throughout the world, we were asked to draw a picture of what we thought that looked like. I asked to see a globe. I drew a picture of 12 little people walking on twelve different paths with a name of a destination at the end of it, as taken from the globe. So I had the Apostles going to Los Angeles, Hawaii, Paris, New York, etc.
10 – Also from the Catholic file, in the resurrection of Jesus, he rose from the dead, right? I remember taking that quite literally and pulling aside my teacher after a lesson and asking what he died from the second time he passed away.
Yet somehow, despite my misinterpretations and strange perspective on the world in my formative years, I still turned out OK!.. or at least that explains my unique perspective on things! 🙂
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Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André
It's the Journey 