So the Internet took an interest in my childhood the other day.
As of late I’ve been a huge fan of Reddit, something I know John has mentioned time and again as being one of the best things on the Internet.
The other day I stumbled upon a thread wherein people were listing misunderstandings of their childhood, as in how they thought things worked before being old enough to understand how anything really worked.
One guy said he thought you could get drunk by drinking any liquid in excess, so he wouldn’t drink more than two cups of orange juice in a day or something.
As you could imagine, there were countless things about misunderstanding the physical act of love…
More after the jump.
Sucker. I’m not going to mention any thing about sex. Perv.
Anyway, I posted about balloons.
Specifically, when I was a kid, I got really upset when I lost a balloon at a birthday party. For whatever reason, this one instance (surely it had happened before, and would again later in life) really set me off, and I was inconsolable.
I’m not sure how they swung the conversation, but somehow my dad convinced me that it would be ok if I just became an astronaut. See, if I worked hard and became an astronaut when I grew up, I could fly to outer space and BRING BACK ALL THE LOST BALLOONS EVER, because they were out there waiting to be collected.
For years, this is what I understood to be the truth about what happens to balloons kids let go. They fly to space, get stuck there, and someone has to go get them. I desperately wanted that job.
So I mentioned this in the Reddit thread. I said sometimes I envisioned myself retrieving balloons by hand in a space walk, and sometimes I saw myself piloting a space shuttle and getting them with a giant claw that came out of the ship. Either way, I’d drag them all back to Earth in a giant net I towed behind my ship.
People loved this idea. They were enamored. This comment got the single most “karma” (read: upvotes) I have ever gotten. I typically get 1-2 points per comment, 1 of which you get simply for posting. This comment got 58 points. People said it was beautiful, that they wanted it on t-shirts, yadda yadda yadda.
Then, someone drew it. How great is that?
I’m sorry for such a me-centric post, but come on: how awesome is the Internet when talented strangers artistically depict shit from your childhood brain? Reddit, man. Upvoted.
Comments
Pretty fucking awesome. That’s how awesome the internet is.
Also, Sammy’s a liar. He DID mention something about sex: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/buaog/as_a_kid_i_always_figured_if_the_house_caught_on/c0olb61
But yes, here’s Sam’s original post — complete with Reddit nerds correcting him on the actual definition of “geosynchronous orbit:” http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/buaog/as_a_kid_i_always_figured_if_the_house_caught_on/c0olahi
Lastly, this is now my wallpaper.
How great is it that Sammy’s gonna see that his thread has four replies, only to then realize that it was al just me bullshitting?
….Gotcha, bitch!
The guy was wrong about geosynchronous orbit. What he corrected me for was actually geostationary orbit, which I did not mean. Also, I said “like,” not “is.”
i’ll throw a non-John comment your way, Sammy. i think you should keep living your dream. maybe Doctor Who will give you an obscure nod and a balloon will float past the TARDIS one day. you would win forever.
That’s an awesome story and drawing (definitely going into my folder of random desktop backgrounds!)
It’s nice that your dad gave you that story, the television taught me that lost balloons killed dolphins. Imagine seeing all of those balloons released at the start of NASCAR races, it was like a multi-colored genocide.
Wow, Matt. Quoted.
See here’s where your wrong. When I think of the internet I don’t think of the childhood whimsy and shared tales, and creative interpretations of ones youthful folly. I think of self important douchebags correcting you about geosynchronous orbit and then a completely unrelated subject turning into a debate on that.
That’s the internet to me. Mostly because that’s how I choose to use it.
Good god, this dream of being the spacewalking balloon-snatcher is one of the most charming and adorable things ever. It completely stripped away all feelings of cynicism, like when I see the Muppets.
When I was little, I used to daydream all the time about being a drifter. I’d spend hours thinking of how I’d hitchhike to dusty southern towns during the cold winters, how I’d hide weapons on my body when I slept under highway overpasses, the ways the bitter sheriff would try to run me out of his one horse town, my attempt to slink alongside railcars, the days I earned a few bucks by doing odd jobs around a creepy farm.
Yes, I watched First Blood a lot as a kid. Why do you ask?
Sammy, this gives me a whole new perspective on you! It’s almost like seeing Darth Vader redeemed at the end of Jedi…
That’s not to say that you’re a genocidal cyborg hell bent on wiping out your own people, but…nevermind.
I don’t have anything that directly fits the subject at hand (although I’m sure there were some things, I’m just too old to remember them).
But for some reason I spent quite a few of my formative years believing that Elvis Presley sang the song “Baracuda”.
It’s driving me nuts cause I know I had plenty of misconceptions like these but, for the life of me, I can’t remember a single damn one of them.
Oh! I remember getting into Jimi Hendrix when I was, I dunno, 9 or 10, and being totally into it and my friend’s dad telling me that he was dead. I was devastated.
This is the true power of the Internet. And yes, Sammy, it’s totally awesome that your meager response lead to such greatness.
Sammy, you are wonderful. There should be more Sammy-centric Scrabbled posts.
And I used to think that when someone was killed in a movie, the actor was really killed. My mom did not do a good job of explaining the ending of Gorillas in the Mist. I had no idea how Sigourney Weaver kept making movies after she had been killed.
Ah yes, I have lots of these.
In the car, my brother convinced me that people in different states looked noticeably different. “Heidi, look…that’s what a North Carolinian looks like. Look! That’s what a New Yorker looks like. And that guy, that’s what a Virginian looks like.”
I thought clouds stayed in the same shape but moved around. So once I asked my brother where the “Garfield cloud” went.
I also thought women got pregnant just by men being on top of them.
And I thought when women got their period, it was just a big, puffy circle that dropped out of their bodies. Not realizing I had just seen an unflushed, fully expanded tampon in a bathroom.
I thought there was a monster under my bed that couldn’t reach the center of my mattress. So I’d always sleep in the middle and line my sides with my stuffed animals as “decoys.” I slept with my hair tucked next to me so the monster couldn’t grab it and yank me under.
My uncle once told me that birds would try to steal pieces of my braids so I should try to keep my head covered when in wide open spaces, like corn fields.
Heidi, those are great! I used to think that people made AIDS when they had sex and was so upset when I heard that married people didn’t always use condoms.
when my niece, who’s now 16, was really young, she asked when my birthday was and i told her november 30.
she asked when my best friend theresa’s birthday was, and i told her september 3. so samantha, my niece, said, “so theresa is older than you because her birthday is before yours.”
she didn’t quite understand that people were born in different years. looking back on it, that’s not childhood innocence. that’s just plain stupidity.
When I was younger, I knew that girls didn’t have penises, but I couldn’t figure out where they peed from. I assumed that girls peed from their butts.
Way to kill a thread Jeff.
At least I’m good for something!
I have not said this for a while but the only comment here I actually laughed at (not out loud) was from the other old man.
Memories, unless they relate to music or sex, are for pussies.