Stupid things I believed when I was a kid

Time to explain The Light Fish and The Pooping Babies!  And other dumb things that I was gullible enough or overimaginative enough to believe in when I was a kid.

1.  My last name was pronounced "Muddle-tin".  I used to be Kate Middleton (yes Wills and I are very happy together and the honeymoon was fantastic... I'm still hearing that hilarious joke from people almost 3 months after the date... and I still laugh and go along with it because I don't like to be mean, even though in my mind I'm strangling that person).  Well, in first grade I learned two things.  A) I learned that my name was not actually Katie, but KATHRYN, and it took me like all of first grade to grasp this concept and then learn how to spell my new name.  Seriously, it was just SO HARD for me (that's what she said), and I remember sitting there writing my name and having to say it out loud to make sure I got it right.  Then I felt like I had put such a huge effort into learning this new name that I started going by Kathryn instead of Katie... and when my teachers would talk about me to my mom she was like "Why the hell do I care about this Kathryn kid?" the first few times.  I dunno, apparently my mom had forgotten my real name too or something.  I don't know if I was a retarded kid or what, but this seems so crazy to me now.  How do you go like 6 years not knowing your name?  Anyway.  B) My last name is apparently pronounced Muddle-tin.  I swear to god my grandmother told me this on one of my weekend visits there.  I was insistant that she was WRONG, but no, she KEPT telling me, "It's Muddletin.  Ask your mother, your name is Kathryn Muddletin."  Now that I have my own youngin and can appreciate the humor of lying to children, this is totally hilarious to me.  But seriously Mommom, I went weeks or MONTHS believing this.  I remember telling all my friends, and asking my teacher if my last name was still spelled the same way.  This seriously blew my little first grade mind.   Mommom -1, Dumbass K-a-t-h-r-y-n Muddletin - 0

2.  I was adopted.  I think my brother and sister may have jokingly told me this a few times too many and I must have really internalized it, because I remember waking up one day and, without any recent prompting, thinking "I'm adopted.  And I'm going to go find my real family."  I packed up my Rainbow Bright shirt and some jean shorts into a bag, and got my Little Foot plush animal and headed for my battery operated corvette, and told my mom all about how I realized her and my dad had adopted me as a baby (and apparently forgotten my name) and that's why I didn't fit in with the rest of the family because I didn't like onions.  Yeah, a distaste for onions was my straw-breaker I guess.  So anyway, my mom told me she would help me go find my real family later if I ate dinner first or something... I forgot about it, but she never did deny or confirm my adoptive status.  I like onions now though, so we must be related.

3. There were fish floating around my room.  They were going to attack me.  Apparently this fantasy of mine was happening while I was still in a crib and in diapers!  Although I don't remember that far back, but I BELIEVE IT.  Because those fish were out to GET ME.  I remember laying in bed terrified (bonus Stupid Thing I Believed: if you lay completely still under your covers, nothing can get you.  NOTHING) because there were these giant 3 foot fish floating around IN my walls.  But they were made of beams of bright orange light, and I could see them THROUGH my walls.  And they were going to KILL me.  OMG!  I'm kinda freaking myself out about this again.  Anyhow, I remember "seeing" them one more time when I was in like middle school, and I think I figured out that it was those little out-of-the-corner-of-your-eye floatybob things that you see at night if you stare at a light - like a lamp or a tv or the hallway light coming under your door - too long, then look into the darkness of the room.  But my crazy person mind turned those floaters into killer fish.  I remember revealing this to my mother manymany years later, at which time she told me that I used to SCREAM in my crib and sometimes throw myself out of it, and I'd scream about fish when she went to me.  Violet and Leela are doomed I tell you.

4. I could teach babies how to poop.  Honestly, I don't even know how to explain this.  It's just so out there, even for me.  When I was a kid, I used to sit on the toilet until my legs went numb, talking to and teaching these invisible babies how to poop.  Why?  I have no. fucking. clue.  I wish I could remember their names, but I know there were lots of them, and they were fully formed babies, I'd say maybe 2-3 years old but fatter and in big cloth diapers, but TINY, like 6 inches tall.  And while I pooped, they sat on the bathroom floor in front of me on their teeny tiny 4 inch toilets, just taking lessons of how to poop.  I disciplined them.  I praised them.  I bribed them with trips outside of the bathroom if they were really good (none of them ever were THANK GOD because I would have been totally embarassed if I had to introduce them to anyone else).  I taught them other things too, like how to swim (picture me as a kid, sitting on the crapper, waving my arms and occasionally pausing to look down and point to the floor and give it instructions to stop holding its nose), and how to use a fork and knife to cut your own food.  Yup.  And as I'm revisiting this, now it's all so clear as to why Violet is scared to death to sit on the potty.  The Pooping Babies must have crawled up and hid inside my womb for all these years and they came out along with Violet and are now haunting her!  DOOMED.

5.  The Acid Monster was real.  I went a whole summer without stepping foot NEAR a pool because I was convinced there was this invisible acid monster that was going to make me disintegrate inside the pool and no one would ever know.  That vacation that year kinda sucked.

6. Jesus is real.  Haha!  Just kidding.  I don't think I ever really believed in Jesus.  (Seriously though, I like my god-fearing friends and family, and I don't think you guys are stupid at all.  But I do get a kick out of a Jeebus joke here and there.)

7. I write the songs that make the whole world sing.  I'm still convinced of this one actually.  You know that "I'm proud to be an A-mur-ican/Where at least I know I'm free" song?  I shit you not, I WROTE THAT.  The music and the lyrics.  ALL ME.  I remember playing it on my little keyboard and singing it to my Doodlebears and asking what they thought.  And then like 15 years later 9/11 happened and they started playing that redneck ass song all over the stupid radio and I was like WTF THEY STOLE MY SONG.  There was some other song I wrote, but of course I can't remember now because the government figured out a way back into my brain to re-erase my memory of it.  I also was responsible for the re-emergence of a few fads.  And Disney owes me big time for Hannah Montana.  Damnit.

8.  My stuffed animals have souls.  I'm pretty sure every kid believed this though.  But I was totally neurotic about giving all my toys and stuffed things equal face time, and I put them ALL in bed with me so that no one would feel left out.  And I still felt sad that some of them felt sad about having to sleep closer to my feet than my head :(

There's some other things, I'm sure.  Actually I think I might add to this list as I remember things so that I always have fresh material for screwing Violet and Leela up.