re: Weird Things You Misunderstood (Took Literally) as a Kid

I was in 5th grade when they put all the boys in my class in one room, and all the girls in another and talked about puberty and what was going to happen to us. I remember we spent most of the day talking about what was happening to us boys, and then the last hour was like "hey, while you boys are going to go through what we just talked about, here's a quick explanation of what the girls are going to go through".

I did a pretty good job at remembering the concepts, and I picked up a few vocabulary words, but I didn't really remember which vocabulary words went with which concepts.

Fast forward a few weeks: My mom, my aunt, my mom's friend, and myself are in the car heading to the mall. My mom makes a reference to needing some monthly supplies. A light bulb went off in my head and I remembered what we talked about in puberty training! So, wanting to sound smart, I yelled out "Mommy, are you ejaculating?"

Not me, but my younger brother and sister. My dad got fired for drinking on the job. When he called home to tell my mom he got fired and he lost his company car and needed her to come pick him up, my mom told us all he was fired. My siblings though he caught on fire.

In elementary school, circa early 80's, the teachers paycheck would get delivered by courier to the office. The secretary would come on and announce, "the eagle has landed teachers, the eagle has landed". From kindergarten until at least 2nd grade I would look outside for the gotdamn eagle.

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Once I asked my mom if they had color when they were kids. She said they didn't get a color TV until she was older. I told her I didn't mean color TV...I meant color in general. She was dumbfounded....as she should have been. 

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So you watched pleasentville?

Something like that. That movie came out way after I asked her. I guess it was from me seeing black and white TV shows and not being very smart when I was a kid.

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phrases you overheard as a child that your little brain just could not make proper sense of,

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The whole "body and blood of Christ" thing threw me for a loop for a while. I thought that I was surrounded by very nice and well-behaved cannibals and vampires for a few years there.

I had a relative who called football games professionally, and he was talking about the "secondary" receiver. I figured if there were more than two on the field, they were "thirdary" "fourthary" and so one.

My dad's shop burnt down when I was a kid.

He ran to the back to try to save what he could. Mom told me "your daddy is crushed. (Meaning emotionally.)


Poor choice of words mom.

I didn't know the N word was offensive. I asked my mom why don't we shop at that grocery store, she proceeds to tell me that when I was little sitting in the shopping cart, I turned to the guy bagging the groceries and said "Hi Mr. Nig..." I also figured out why grandpaw was babysitting us anymore.

I thought Goodwill was a guy. One dude named Will who helps poor people.