10 things we believed as children ***WARNING***

*** WARNING: this post contains explicit and scatological material ***

Kirlian photograph of a Coleus leaf (Wikimedia Commons)

These are things we snickered and grimaced at when we were 10-12 years old, which would have been Vernondale Elementary School in Erie, PA, and Bethel Christian School, also in Erie, back when it was at 737 East 26th Street. I can remember distinctly who said these and where we were standing, which means nothing to you but shows how indelible memories are.

(John Tushak and Steve Schloss at Vernondale Elementary were very skilled at relating the latest grossness in 6th grade. They were both very athletic and I really admired them. By the time we got to McDowell High School, they were wearing lettered varsity jackets and were moving with a different crowd, and I admired them still.

Me and brother Tom and Peanut Smith and Choo Choo (on account of he wore a striped engineer's cap) enjoyed talking about parapsychological matters at Bethel Christian School since our brains were being wired to contain such things. I enjoyed those stories most of all; they filled all the nooks and crannies that form between theologies when you're a young maturing Baptist.)

And here we go...

1

Frank Zappa and Alice Cooper were performing together and had a gross-out contest. Zappa emptied his bowels on stage. Not to be outdone, Alice passed a glass around the audience and asked everyone to spit in it, then he drank it.

Figures carved in Val Camonica, Italy that suggest modern astronauts.

2

Scottish rocker Rod Stewart was taken to the hospital to have his stomach pumped after ingesting copious amounts of semen.

3

The two female leads of Heart were lesbian sister lovers.

4

Some priest at some church on some occasion spilled communion wine and when it hit the floor it was real blood.[1]

5

Disembodied white hands strangled a Baptist minister who was confronting demons in Africa.

6

Drums are satanic because they disrupt the natural rhythm of the heart and are used in African countries to conjure spirits.

7

Kiss and Van Halen were the same band.

8

Ancient astronauts built the pyramids and carved the Peruvian glyphs.

9

All living things, including plants, have a life aura, perhaps even a soul, as revealed through Kirlian photography.

P&G logo 1930-1990 (Wikimedia Commons)

10

Procter & Gamble was run by the Church of Satan, as is clearly obvious in their logo used 1930-1990.

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That's all I can think of right now. Probably enough stomach-churning nostalgia for one day.

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I read a lot of science literature at this time. I wanted to be an astronomer. These are some of the popular notions and images from the same period in which we listened raptly to stories of Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster:

• Neutrinos were still a theory and as yet undetected; subterranean vats were being constructed to begin the search.
• "Catastrophism" and meteoric extinctions were considered bad science (because they echoed biblical catastrophic explanations like the Noahic Flood).
• There was no such thing yet as dark matter, or dark energy.
• The universe was forever expanding and would someday cool to near 0° Kelvin.
• Nichelle Nichols (Uhura on Star Trek) was making public service announcements for the space shuttle program; the shuttle Enterprise was being tested atop a Boeing 747.
• Light pollution was a big deal for amateur astronomers. It still is, but other bigger deals have eclipsed it.

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[1]

Believe or or not, just a I was writing this, I happened to hear a minister on the radio discussing the Miracle of Lanciano >, which is likely the source of the story I heard as young teen. What are the odds?

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