Ten Things I Completely Misunderstood as a Kid

When you're a little kid, a lot of things go right over your head, both literally and figuratively. Everyone has stories about the things they didn't quite understand as a child. Like finally noticing the dirty jokes in Disney movies. Or the horrifying moment when you realized that hamburgers were actually made of cow. Or realizing that your deceased goldfish did not actually leave to join the circus. So for your holiday reading pleasure, I've put together a (somewhat embarrassing) list of things I completely misunderstood as a kid:

1. During the first Gulf War, I was very concerned about the fate of Louisiana. I was five years old, and the only gulf I was aware of was the Gulf of Mexico.

2. In the fifth grade, I played Erato, supposedly the muse of lyrics, in my class’s  Greek play. I didn’t think about it again until over a decade later, on a trip to a museum, where I learned I had actually played the muse of erotic poetry.  When I was 10 years old.

3. If I had had to write a dictionary definition of God in kindergarten, this is probably what it would have looked like:

God: (noun) the being over America, as described in the Pledge of Allegiance.

4. At the beginning of the first grade, I thought werewolves were a real (and entirely non-magical) species of wolf. So when our teacher asked us to name some animals, I raised my hand and said “werewolf,” just as one might have said “baboon” or “prairie dog.” This (understandably) resulted in peals of laughter from my classmates and teacher, who, to my total confusion, said “Someone’s been reading too many scary stories.” It was my first week at a new school. I didn’t raise my hand again in a science class until the 10^th grade.

5. For a long time I thought a ham was a kind of bird. (This is all the more ridiculous being from Virginia, commonwealth o’ ham.)

6. My babysitter told me that being angry makes your liver turn black and die. This had two results: 1) I drew a lot of pissed-off-looking pigtailed stick figures with giant black blobs in their bellies; and 2) even as an adult, I still find it hard to be angry for any great length of time [without worrying about cirrhosis].

7. I believed that all toys with moveable eyes were secretly alive and controlled by my cousin.

8. I had no concept of time. I have seen a video of my second birthday. When my parents asked me how old I thought my grandfather was (we shared a birthday), my answer was “six.”

9. Trees are part of nature. Paper comes from trees. Throwing paper on the ground is littering. Littering is bad. Conclusion: Once you have taken tree-parts out of nature, they can never go back, or the planet will be destroyed. 

10. One of my earliest memories is of throwing a tantrum at age three over a pair of overalls. I ran around screaming like a Tasmanian devil, before my parents eventually captured me and imprisoned me in the overalls. My thoughts at the time were not exactly clear, but this pretty much sums it up:

Overalls = End of the Universe