Idiot Child-isms, part 1

I've got to wonder if most little kids were as stupidly carefree as I was. I look back on my childhood and reel at the idea that I'm still alive. Not only am I still alive, I am still well liked (sorta). Between the things I did and the things I must have said as a child, I feel like I was in the running to be the first 3rd grader to ever warrant a punch in the nose by an adult.

I don't know what I said exactly, but having spent a great deal of my last ten years around little kids, I am fully aware that they often say what they think and knowing some of the things that I thought when I was their age... my God, how am I still alive?

1) I used to think that anyone wearing sunglasses while walking their dog must be blind.
When I was younger, there was some sort of disconnect between my view of the average person wearing sunglasses and someone walking a dog wearing them. Both my mother and father wore sunglesses regularly (like you know... when it was sunny), but as we didn't have a dog, the juxtaposition of dogs and sunglasses was never forced upon me.

My folks didn't own a car until I was five, so we got used to walking to a lot of places. And when we'd walk the streets of Chicago on nice days, I probably spent a lot of time either pitying people who owned dogs or being scared to death that owning a dog in the first place probably meant you were on your way to goiing blind.

2) I used to think the Beach Boys were all homeless.

This one makes a little more sense if you understand that I grew up in a mid-western metropolis during the 1980's. I knew much of homelessness and next to nothing about the surfer lifestyle except for old Gidget reruns and Beach Boys music. What I saw of homelessness was gnarly unkempt hair, harsh skin, a life of little movement, little motion, seemingly little ambition. No one ever discussed what surfers or beach bimbos did when it was too cold to hang around the sands. Therefore, I never saw Dick Dale in an alleyway wearing three jackets and a wool hat. It never occured to me that the boys from Endless Summer weren't huddled around a trashcan fire in some city park.

Let's face it, beach bums i nthe summer are the same as honest to goodness bum s in the summer. That same gnarly unkempt hair that I saw in Chicago was described by The Sufaris as "an Ocean Doo". Surferes were outside all day getting tanned, hobos are outside all day getting tanned (against their will).

To a five-year-old boy, sitting around is sitting around. No mother is around to haul the bums off to the grocery store with her and no mother is around to take the Beach Boys off to kindergarten; what did I know outside of that?

This was a mistake that could very well have changed the course of my life, had I not wisened up sooner than I did. I held the Beach Boys in very high esteem as a young child. For me to assume they were homeless could have ruined my life had I decided I wanted to be just like The Beach Boys.

3) I used to think God was a Tyrannasaurus Rex.

Alright stick with me here.

When I was little I questioned absolutely nothing. I took in information as it reached me and filed it away without further inquiry. And when I was little everything in my life told me that the King was the highest form of power. Obviously, here in America, the President is the highest form of power, but fairytales and Disney movies don't have presidents they have kings and queens.

So there's that: Kings and Queens were the highest form of being.

Then on top of that, I was fascinated with dinosaurs. It seemed my mother and I would travel to the Field Museum of Natural History once a damn week and we always looked at the old dino bones. What boy wasn't fascinated with dinosaurs? I'm sure there were a few, but I've never met any of them. Anyway, for those of you who shared my fascination with creatures from the jurassic period, I ask you: what was the most common moniker of the 

Tyrannasaurus Rex? 

Correct answer: "The King of the Dinosaurs".

Now, when a five-year-old is faced with "the past" there seems to be a limited amount of information available to them. Stuff happned before we were born, but how much? And when? And who? The five-year-old me understood this:

*dinosaurs are no longer with us
* dinosaurs were here before human beings were.
* dinosaurs ruled the earth.

Okay. So basically, there was a period of time wherein dinosaurs were the alpha and omega of species and that the T-Rex was the leader of all of them. The T-Rex was the boss, the president, the king and queen. But they're not around anymore. We talk about dinosaurs, we hear about them constantly, but we'll never see them. They aren't on earth.
Now hopefully you're putting yourself in my five-year-old shoes and connecting how I might confuse God with a T-Rex. We went to the Field Museum more than we went to church, we saw pictures and visual representations of both, but never a living breathing version of either and both were the be-all-end-all. Period. There was nothing bigger and badder than a Tyrannosaurus Rex and there was nothing bigger and badder than God.

Well, the only way that could happen was if they were one-in-the-same.

So be it. Good for God to make good despite those stubby useless hands.

4) I used to think that rats were male and mice were female.
The details of my sexual education remain, to this day, quite fuzzy. According to my recollections of events long past, I used to think that a mouse was a female version of a rat.

Similar to the bull and cow scenario.

I also remember believing that two mating mice must both be female and were therefore lesbians.
At nine-years-old, how did I know what a lesbian was? I remember watching the Fievel movies and wondering why some of the mice appeared to be male.

Tom and Jerry was also confusing to me.

But then again, those were cartoons. Not real life.

The strangest aspect of this whole portion of my life is that I knew what Lesbianism was before I knew that mice ran in two genders. That, my friends, is a clear-cut case of "putting the cart before the horse". Why I chose to believe my half-cocked theories of gender specific species instead of allowing Timothy the Mouse from Dumbo to prove that male mice existed and that Lesbianism amongst mice was nowhere near as prevalent as my young mind inexplicably believed, is beyond me.

But let's face it, I was a confused youngin'.

I can't wait to grow out of it.