I grew up on a dead end street, and there were no kids my age nearby. This was in Barbados, and my grandparents owned a motel (actually rental apartments) on our street. I had a few friends that visited yearly but a lot of summer days I spent either playing with my younger sister or an older cousin when he’d put up with me. Or, I played on my own. I had quite an amazing imagination and could entertain myself for hours.
My swing set was a space ship and I’d visit distant worlds. I had a bionic (6 Million Dollar Man) doll, and a Stretch Armstrong doll that I tried to stretch too far, but could never stretch him enough that he didn’t shrink back to his normal shape. While I played with these toys sometimes, most of my play was in my mind.
For a while I was fascinated by electricity, and this was the focus of my imagination. I remember being told that I would be electrocuted if I got the hair dryer wet and I thought that if I were to drop a hair dryer into the tub I would electrocute the whole world. I actually imagined that I’d put everyone on earth in space ships, and I’d be in the last one to take off. I’d wait until my ship left the ground, then I’d drop a live wire into a tub to watch what happened when the earth got electrocuted. It would be embarrassing to tell you how much I thought about this… if I wasn’t a kid. What does a kid with a big imagination know about electricity?
I also remember seeing a sunken ship from a glass bottom boat. The old wooden boat had a huge steering wheel on it. This made me think that the bigger the boat, the larger the helm wheel needed to be. That’s just the way a kid’s brain operates. I remember seeing a massive cruise ship and asking my dad how big the steering wheel would be on it, thinking it would be bigger than the car we were driving in. I was disappointed when he explained that wasn’t how it works.
That’s the workings of a 7 or 8 year old kid’s imagination. Imagine if I still thought these things… what would you think of me?
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When they came out I had to fact check these two videos, looking for multiple reputable sources to make sure they were not an artificial intelligence created farce.
