I used to believe

Writing last nights post about Dom taking things literally reminded me about doing the same when I was young. I also remembered about iusedtobelieve.com.

I Used to Believe is a rich repository of all things naive and wonderful. There's thousands of beliefs and misinterpretations that people have posted to the site. It makes for great reading.

Here's a few of my personal favourites;

• "At one point growing up, I became convinced that the world would end on February 29, 1997. I have no idea how I came by this belief, but there it was: it didn't matter what I did, what I achieved, or how I lived my life, because come February 29, 1997, the whole world would blow up and utterly extinguish all life on earth. I believed this until one day, when I realized that 1997 wasn't going to be a leap year..."

• "I used to believe that my parents relied on me to make the traffic lights green. I would do this by absorbing the green from trees and grass with my eyes and beam it into the traffic lights. If i was given enough time i had a 100% success rate."

• "couldn't understand why no-one had invented a word for something that isn't big but at the same time isn't small so I used to express the concept with the word "little-big" or "big-little". It was a revelation to me when my mother asked me go to the shops for a medium sliced loaf (of bread) and I discovered that someone somewhere had actually solved the problem that was perplexing me at the time."

• "I thought, in kindergarten, in order to read a book you had to read the page then turn it around and wave it back and forth. Little did I know the teacher was just showing us the pictures and it was not required if you were reading to your self."

I could go on all night posting them. Anyway, I added this example of my own personal errant beliefs ages ago;

"I used to believe that satellite TV really was from a satellite, I could never work out how they got all the people into space to make the shows."

And it seems to be quite popular. Perhaps it's in the book that's been published from the site. I think I'll buy it for someone for Christmas this year.