— As a kid I thought the "Kukuruznik" (crop-duster plane) carried corn. For some reason I thought the proverb went "Patience and labor will grind everything to labOr," I have no idea why.
— I thought the clouds in the sky were smoke from the sun. And that whatever the weather was outside, it was the same everywhere on Earth.
— My grandma used to tell me fairy tales, and the villain was always some mythical "Khabibulin" (for some reason I pictured him as my aunt's husband, no idea why ), and I was so surprised when I found out it's actually a pretty common surname!
— The Northern POISONOUS Ocean — it frightened and unsettled me. I was scared of military blocs — NATO, SEATO, and CENTO — but I thought SEATO was the most dangerous one. Tshombe was terrifying — dark, menacing, holding a bomb with a fuse in his hand, jabbing it under Africa, while he himself dangled on strings, manipulated from above by a fearsome, enormous Uncle Sam. When they told me the fairy tale about Emelya and how he rode on his stove — I pictured him sitting astride a gas cooker.
— Also, for a long time I had a rather inaccurate sense of how long a meter was. I understood perfectly well what a meter was (it's what you measure length in, and all that), but the "meter" in my head, as it turned out later, was about 4 times the size of a "real" one.
— And I was absolutely certain that America and England were right next to each other, somewhere "across the sea" from us — geography was just a complete mess in my head… Also, there was this song about "A Stork on the Roof," and it seemed to me that the woman was singing about an "omelet"… why — I still have no idea…
— I thought "the arms race" was a racing car =)) One night I heard on TV that the USA was going to start a nuclear war. Naturally I got scared and spent the whole night thinking about what to do =)))
— More about corn — in kindergarten (and a bit older) we used to call fluffy cats with a sort of bluish coat "corn cats" for some reason, and they smelled different from ordinary cats too. I was also puzzled (also in kindergarten) that a guinea pig was called a "sea pig" but couldn't really swim and kept trying to get out of the water (I was trying to teach it to swim in one of those iron shoe-washing boxes by the kindergarten entrance) — it annoyed me and I used to throw it against the brick wall (I was pretty cruel back then — I didn't understand that animals feel pain too, but once I did, that was it — now it's the complete opposite, I can't bring myself to lay a hand on them). Also at the pioneer (con)centration camp, two boys (not me) would tie a towel around a third boy's neck, pull it tight, and wait until he started losing consciousness — they called it "giving anesthesia."
— For a long time I thought that in Dolina's song "Little Ice Floe," she was carrying it into some bushes. "…I will take you in my palms, Carry you to my own bushes…"
— Once I heard on TV that "the Democrats won the elections in the United States" and I was very happy — I thought, now America will become proper. I also couldn't understand why they just wouldn't go ahead and make a revolution in America, since life there was supposed to be so bad. I also thought that when a movie was showing on TV, the actors performed it live every single time. Like a live broadcast.
— For a long time I thought that iodine, brilliant green, and alcohol made wounds sting because the germs were dying and took one last bite on their way out. My parents had drilled this into me, and I was only able to disprove it by carefully studying an encyclopedic dictionary.
— I also took my first lessons in "political science" very much to heart — about Grandpa Lenin and the evil capitalists. When that worldview collapsed, I was left with a deep, bitter resentment toward the Sovok.
— I was certain that Brezhnev couldn't die — because people only die from illness, in war, or in car accidents — and he would be cured. And that the letters we wrote to Reagan — he actually read them. Boy, I remember writing him one, something about peace — but in a very free-form style. And that Khaidari, who fasted for peace, was genuinely cool, and that Americans weren't bad people, since they had someone like Khaidari and the girl who folded paper doves (I don't remember her name). (Cranes? Sadako Sasaki?)
— In the Musketeers' song, "Merci Beaucoup" was completely baffling. My buddies and I in kindergarten decided it meant "meat in the side." Because they had swords, you know — wounds and all that.
— In the same song, in the chorus, the words "to the beauty and the goblet" I heard as the beauty's name. The beauty Ikupka. A very mysterious character to me.
— I remember at kindergarten they told me that Gagarin flew into space, got out of the spacecraft there, and the rope he was tied to snapped and he crashed…
— One of my favorite shows from childhood: "Klubkino's Journey."
— "Squinting with a spruce eye" — you can't drop words from a Boyarsky song.
— Mom, why is it that when we say "schastlivo" (goodbye/happily), some kind of berry appears at the end? — Huh? What berry? — Well, some kind of plum ("sliva")!
— At age three I drew a "Rafik" minibus (those little Riga-made minibuses that used to run around — "Rafiks") and proudly wrote on the side: "Grafik" (Schedule).
— The old woman made of serviceberry.
Based on ixbt.kosta: Who remembers their childhood misconceptions (+ funny childhood stories)?
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