Stupid things I thought when I was 6 years old that, upon review, are far more awesome than reality.

This is an incomplete list of time when my imagination would take simple phrases and turn them into something  incorrect but much cooler than they actually were.


Gorilla Warfare

The first time I hear the term "guerrilla warfare", it was regarding was civil war in Central America (Nicaragua, I think). The newscaster actually said something like " The Sandinistas clashed with guerrilla forces outside  Managua as hostilities escalated... ".   As I was still a bit away from covering the American revolution in school, my young mind had no context (or spelling) for the word guerrilla. So what I heard was "Gorilla forces" and I immediately imagined that the fighting was being done by creatures like Monsieur Mallah (pictured below). This idea was bolstered by video footage of gunfire into and returned from the Nicaraguan rainforest, with nary a human in sight.  I was so excited. Planet of the Apes was actually happening!  I remember be so disappointed when my mother explained the truth.

Native produce

My grandfather to rave about native tomatoes and corn.  Of course, too many Johnny Quest & Gilligan's Island reruns combined with an insufficient understanding that "native" also meant "local" (it may have helped if the old man had said "Native Grown", but probably not), caused me to imagine that they was farmed  were farmed by Pacific Islanders living in huts and delivered by dugout.    Now, native grown tomatoes actually do taste much better that the factory farmed tomatoes that appear at grocery stores, so much so that it's not difficult to believe that they are exotic. Since I also had no sense of geography or money at that point, I didn't realize how inconvenient and expensive such produce might be. If I had, I'd have known instantly that my grandmother would never have allowed my grandfather to buy it.

Rocky Horror

I was also under the impression that the Rocky Horror Picture Show starred Sylvester Stallone and couldn't understand why my parents refused to take me to see it when the theater by the Naugatuck Valley Mall was doing a showing at Halloween.   Their argument against it was "The people who go to that are weird. they dress in constumes, and throw things at people in front of the screen."  Needless to say, that line of reasoning was not persuasive to a 7 year old. In fact, my seven year old self was thinking "What the fuck? Why wouldn't I want to see that?"  Well, maybe not phrased quite that way, but the grade school equivalent.  Anyway, how great would it have been to hear Sly belting out "Let's Do The Time Warp Again"?  (I have no idea whether Rocky actually sings in the film, I never did watch it in its entirety).