Things I Thought I Knew

Yes, this is me approximately nineteen years ago. Apart from the sickening feeling in my stomach that arises when I consider that fact there there was a point in my life that I can say was more than nineteen years ago, this is I think quite a sweet image.

That is until I think of all the completely insane things I believed as a child. I blame my mother partially for this, since she let me read far too many stories as well as watching some pretty tripped out fairy tale videos. (I honestly think that the makers of children's television must be totally tripped. Have you seen In the Night Garden? I rest my case.)

Anyway, here are some of the things that a considerably smaller, impossible as that may same, me once held as verbatim, believed necessary or somehow grasped far too young.

1) The troll from the Billy Goats Gruff did not in fact live under a bridge. Instead, he lurked somewhere in my back garden and will attack me when he thinks I was alone. One such time would be when I was in the bathroom, as this backs onto the garden. The solution to this then was for me to talk to inanimate objects in the bathroom, such as the sink, toilet and bath to cunningly trick him into thinking I wasn't on my own and therefore prevent him from eating me.

2) Wee Willie Winkie was not in fact a kind little fellow that was going to come send me to sleep, but an evil creature possibly in allegiance with David Bowie's character from Labyrinth. Instead of slipping comfortably to sleep, I hid under my bed clothes with my eyes pressed shut praying that he wouldn't steal me.

3) That before being born, my younger sister had used her psychic fetus powers to find out that not only did I love Thomas the Tank Engine, but that I lacked a Percy toy. She had then gone to the special fetus shop, purchased it for me, and brought it with when she came out of my mother. (The stalk/cabbage patch story was useless on me since I spotted the umbilical cord). I was baffled for quite sometime as to how she managed to do all this, especially when I learned how babies were really made.

As I got older, I started to move away from these weird and wonderful accusations and somehow managed to learn some startling vocabulary. For example, when my Dad had to have our dog put down when I was five, I failed to grasp why this had to be done. Instead I told him I hated him and he was an evil murderer. Around this age I also once told a school dinner lady that her attempting to force me to eat food I didn't like made her a Nazi- which I had thus far understood as someone that made people do things they didn't want to.

My finest hour though, I believe, was aged 10, when I informed my Head Teacher that I would not sing the hymn she has insisted that we all learnt. When she demanded that I did, I told her that on the census I was not listed as Christian and therefore she could not make me sing a Christian song. Our school, I insisted, was not a religious school and it was against the law for her to make me sing about a God I didn't believe in.

It turns out I had overheard a conversation between my parents about what we should be listed as on the census, and the rather over zealous Christianity of the new head teacher. After I then remembered my mothers pin number, my parents stopped having important conversations while I was in earshot.

Clearly in moments of difficulty or dilema, I should begin to challenge my no nonsense ten year old former self. She suffers no fools, yo.