Childhood misunderstandings

My parents bought stock in Wendy’s once, and told us they “owned part of it now.”

Naturally, we asked “which part?!” My dad pointed to a booth in the corner of the Wendy’s closest to our house. I literally thought that booth was our property until I was a teenager.

 

In third grade, we were asked what real name garnered the nickname "Gay." This was the early 1980s and kids were already turning into sniveling little shits, so there was lots of giggling over "Gay." And then I confidently raised my hand. The teacher called on me.

"Gaylord," I said, because Gaylord Perry was about to or had just won his 300th game and I had lots of his baseball cards and I'm sure his friends called him Gay because his name was Gaylord and Gay would be a shortened form of Gaylord, goddamn, it's hard to be this smart.

The entire class cracked up. The teacher started laughing, that bitch. Everyone laughed and laughed until finally the teacher managed to say "No, Lil' BYH. Not Gaylord. Gayle." Or maybe she meant Gail, which would be ironic b/c that's my aunt's name. I should call her Aunt Gay next time I see her, see what happens.

Anyway, fuck those third grade fuckers.

 

When I was told it was illegal to drink and drive I thought it meant no one in the car could drink anything so as an 8 year old I’d sneak a sip of soda when we were at a red light to not break the law.

 

When I went to Great America, I thought the main drag was an area where people lived. I decided that when I was older I wanted one of the apartments above the candy store and arcade.

 

Perhaps he was talking dirty about the oral sex he'd administer to her later?

 

In Wilt Chamberlain's first autobiography he used the term "cop" to mean "fuck." I overheard my mom and older brother discussing him "copping" people as I entered the room one day and figured "cop" meant "criticize". I was 12.

"Yeah, Wilt copped Gail Goodrich a lot," I said, to their utter confusion/amusement.

 

When I was about 10 or 11, I watched the Hunchback of Notre Dame and got pissed off because there was no football in the movie.

 

When I was a kid, like preschool, we went to this deli that put poppy seeds on its buns. My brother and I knew seeds grew things, so we asked our parents what poppy seeds grew. My dad said "pop."
So, he scraped some off the top of the bun into a napkin and took some home and planted them.
A couple days later, dad came in and got my brother and me. He said "come outside, the pop's grown."
There in the garden, there were like 3 glass bottles of Coke.
Dad said "you can't pick it yet! It's not ripe."
So, we all went back inside.
A few days later, dad got us again.
We went back outside to find 3 2-liter bottles of Coke,
Seeing such ripe fruits of our labor, we picked the bottles of coke and went back inside.
Mom was furious.

 

This is amazing.

 

A few years ago, I had to pull a waiter over to side with me in my persuasion to convince my 14-year-old niece that pickles came from cucumbers. She did not believe me.

I, however, thought until about four months ago that sharks were mammals.

 

When I was little, I thought there were two categories of car: Station wagon and volkswagen. My grandparents’ car had a trunk, so it was a volkswagen.

 

I told this joke to my friend Jenn when we were in sixth grade:

Two druggies were sharing a needle when someone tried to stop them. “Hey, you could get AIDS,” he told them. “It’s OK, one of them said. We’re wearing condoms.”

Jenn rolled her eyes and lost interest. I continued, “Imagine them trying to stick their condoms up their butt.”

Jenn looked back up, with some alarm. “What do you think a condom is?” She asked.

So it was Jenn who taught me the difference between male birth control and female birth control.