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Strange Beliefs of Childhood № 99

My Glamorous Life: late to the pubescence party.

8 comments on Strange Beliefs of Childhood № 99

Between 6th and 7th grade, my friends turned against me. It was as if everyone else had turned cool and teenaged over the summer, while I remained a child.

After years of close friendship and admiration, my pals’ cruel jokes and new meanness not only hurt, they were weird and baffling. To make sense of it all, I concocted the fantasy explanation that my parents must have secretly been paying my friends to be nice to me during the previous years …

… and that they must have somehow run out of cash as I entered seventh grade, causing the other kids, who were no longer on the payroll, to show their true feelings toward me.

What strange things did you believe?

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8 responses to “Strange Beliefs of Childhood № 99”

  1. Steven Garrity Avatar
    Steven Garrity

    A friend who lived across the screen from my house (in eastern Canada) moved away. A family moved in from China. I assumed my friend moved to China, into the new family’s home. I learned years later that they moved to Alberta.

    1. L. Jeffrey Zeldman Avatar
      L. Jeffrey Zeldman

      Your assumption makes sense to me. I might have assumed the same thing in your situation. Thanks for sharing, Steven!

  2. Paul Kent Avatar
    Paul Kent

    6th to 7th was marked by the stress of changing schools. In the UK that’s from Junior to Senior and you couldn’t guarantee your old friends would be in the same class or even the same school. So it was a year of deep strangeness, not knowing who I was anymore. As old friends grew more distant, I dropped out. Then found my way back once I started graphic design college a little later 🙂

    1. L. Jeffrey Zeldman Avatar
      L. Jeffrey Zeldman

      Glad you found your way back in, and cool that it was ℅ design school. Thank you for sharing, Paul!

  3. Fred Avatar
    Fred

    Up until my mid teens I firmly believed I was completely different from everyone else, thinking I didn’t fit in anywhere on the planet. I felt like a solitary alien stranded in a ferocious, cruel, unforgiving world. As I grew and learned there were others like me, joy washed over me in waves! I didn’t have to be around the horrible people, I just had to seek out the “Other”s! To this day I’m thrilled to discover one more of my “tribe”.

  4. Nikki Avatar
    Nikki

    Until I was 33, I had absolutely no idea that pickles were not their own distinct vegetable status. My partner was surprised that he had to break this “it’s just a cucumber” news to me so late in life, but thankfully married me anyway.

  5. Erwin Avatar
    Erwin

    Grew up in Canada in the 60s but we got a lot of U.S. news about the Vietnam War. I didn’t realize that news reporters from different regions often pronounced words differently, so I thought that VietNAHM and VietNAWM were different countries.

  6. Ray Avatar
    Ray

    When I was 3-4 years of age I insisted my father make my peanut butter sandwichs with “peanut butter down bottom, butter up bottom”. Meaning the peanut butter had to go on the bottom slice and the butter on the top slice of bread. I would watch him carefully as he laid out the two slices of bread, put peanut butter on one slice and butter on the other. The critical moment, in my little brain, came when he put the two pieces together. If he placed the sandwich on the plate with the peanut butter on the top slice of bread I was convinced it didn’t taste the same. He would explain that it didn’t matter, but again, in my brain it just wouldn’t taste as good. Needless to say he was, and remains, a great father. He would look at me, smile and say “Peanut butter down bottom, right son?”

    I have NO IDEA where I GOT THE IDEA a peanut butter sandwich tasted better when the peanut butter was on the bottom slice but there you go.

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