Rock salt gives you leprosy (and other juvenile misunderstandings)

Sometimes when children say they don't know something that we think is obvious, they really don't.

Example: I recall as a child once dialing the phone and questioning an adult because the phone number had a 0 in it. I thought any time you dialed 0 on the phone, you made an immediate detour to the operator, no matter where in the number that 0 occurred.

Another: In high school history class, I wasn't able to distinguish Great Britain from England. I thought they were different countries, as they were used interchangeably (but without distinction) in the text book.

And another: At the age of 16, I wasn't able to accurately fit a person by their age into a historical context. At Billy Bob's True Value Hardware (not the real name), where I worked a year, I once asked an older customer in a bomber jacket if he served in WWII. He was very kind and said "No, Vietnam." He was probably in his 30s and the war had ended maybe 3 years before that.

My boss Billy Bob asked me just how old I thought the vet was. I guessed. Billy Bob then shook his head at how dumb I was and said something under his breath that was too condescending to share with customers. He was not a kind man.

I learned in college as part of child language acquisition that children do not fully form chronological awareness until about the age of 18.

I was normal.

One more: When very young, I believed rock salt gave you leprosy. Thank you Mrs Allen, who lived up on Shenk Ave and didn't want neighborhood children playing in the rock salt.

[2012-12-06]

c0

I wish that when I was a child I would have cared as much about sports as the books I was reading, Fact is, I prayed that games would get rained out so I wouldn't have to embarrass myself on the field. Sometimes I got out of it, most of the time I just submitted myself to the agony, like in a game of dodge ball in which you just wait for the jock to pick you off quickly and mercifully so you can take your place on the sidelines.

[2013-04-23]

c0