When I was five years old, it occured to me that everything I did was being filmed. I did not SUSPECT this, but was utterly certain that it was the truth. I don't know what led to this realization, but it colored all my actions.
I stopped playing for pure fun, and began to think about what my audience (I was sure that the entire world was my audience) would enjoy seeing. I made up elaborate stories that I acted out with Barbies (involving adultery and marijuana...my childhood was different). When walking to my friend Christina's house, I would skip and twirl, sure that the audience would appreciate my pizazz.
When I didn't devote myself to entertaining , I poked around the house, looking for the hidden cameras. I suspected that the bathroom camera was under the sink, behind the toilet paper, and the bedroom camera was in my favorite dolly's head.
My obsession with the existence of RebelTV (that's what I assumed it was called) ended when I got my E-Z Bake Oven. I don't think these things are connected.
When I was nine, I became convinced that my parents were trying to poison me.
Let me explain. I drank a large glass of hot tea, everyday. One day, the sugar tasted strange, and I knew that they were trying to kill me.
"They know I drink hot tea everyday, and they poisoned my sugar. They think they can get away with it."
I threw the sugar away, and walked to the store to buy more.
I lived in fear for two months, and kept a wary eye on my parents. Their behavior was very suspicious to me. Then PBS stopped showing Mystery! everyday, and I became fascinated with William Alexander and counting to 1,000,000. Counting to 1,000,000 left me little time to pursue other endeavors, so I stopped eavesdropping on my parents.
So my question to you is...What completely irrational thing did you believe was the absolute truth, when you were a child? Don't leave me hanging, lest I obsess over my possible insanity.
Monday, November 10, 2008
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3 comments:
As a child my cousin told me that women had pubic hair because it was needed to wipe the baby clean when born and that if women didn't have pubic hair, the baby would die.
At this time I recently sprouted some hair and also recently trimmed it. (Not sure why I would do this at 10, but hey.) I spent many months fearing for the life of my future child and feeling guilty for what I'd done.
When I was around 13, I was convinced the events described in Stephen King's "The Stand" were going to happen exactly as they did in the book. I even fell into a serious depression over it. In the book, the world fell apart in the summer of 1985, just after my high school graduation. I felt severely cheated that I would finally graduate from high school only to be wandering a deserted wasteland a few weeks later. I still dream about it to this day.
When i was 8ish, i heard my mother gossipping with a neighbor about this diet pill a mutual acquaintance of theirs had taken. The diet worked really well, apparently, because the pill actually contained a tapeworm spore. After you lost the desired amount of weight, you were supposed to take another pill, which would kill the tapeworm.
After that, for years, all pills were suspect. I was absolutely convinced that tapeworms were a side effect of taking pills. I became so paranoid about it that i actually developed a difficulty in swallowing larger ones (purely mental, i'm sure, but there it is).
Though i no longer believe this, i still think about tapeworms everytime i have to take a pill.
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