Tuesday, February 07, 2006

My Own Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

I am currently reading “Enclyclopedia of an Ordinary Life” by Amy Krouse Rosenthal; a book that came highly recommended from my dear friend Erin. It’s a strange read as it doesn’t follow the typical flow of traditional memoirs, instead follows the format of the common encyclopedia!

I have been reading the book for about 2 days now and each night I mark a few pages that have sparked interest with me, mostly interest in blog ideas. You know, just something new to write about, instead of my everyday life (as exciting as that is sometimes).

Last night, as I read through the “C” section, I came across an entry that she titled “Childhood Memories” in which she, in chronological order, went through the major happenings of her childhood. Some of them are funny…okay most of them are hilarious and one in particular struck me as highly interesting and got me thinking about my own life! Therefore, I decided to blog about it.

Amy writes about “Things That Have Confused Me For Much Longer Than They Should Have”. In this entry she describes a number of thoughts that confused her as a child. My favorite was when she asks, “Why would terrorists take credit for bombings…why would they want to admit that?” With that, I began to compile my own list. And it goes a little something like this.

Things That Have Confused Christi For Much Longer Than They Should Have

How was Jenny ever going to get married when she was an only child? I was convinced for the longest time that every family had one boy and one girl and that was the person that you would marry someday.


Why didn’t the cops ever catch the bad guys right away on Unsolved Mysteries, instead of just video taping them? I didn’t understand the concept of reenactment. I honestly thought what I was watching was real.

Why did the girl in the song take a piece of meat with her everytime she went away? I later found out that the song was titled “Every Time You Go Away, You Take a Piece of ME With You”.

How come nobody ever saw me on TV, and how come I never saw anybody I ever knew either? It took me a while to realize that TV was FAKE, and that those weren’t real people living out their every day lives. I would honestly walk around during the day trying to look my best and be as interesting as I possibly could thinking that someone somewhere was watching me on their TV at that very moment. Yes, even then I had an ego on me =)

When I was full, I thought that meant I could open my mouth and see my food filled up to the top of my mouth.


So that's my list! I could probably come up with a million more, but for space purposes we'll just go with those. You get the idea of how I thought as a small child =)

Do any of you have any every day occurances or thoughts that were just way too confusing for you as a child?

7 comments:

Amanda said...

Thank you SO MUCH for making my day a bit lighter - you are too funny for words sometimes! I love, love, loved your list of things that you thought as a child. It's so fun to go back and really think about just how funny we all are as kids!

Great post!

Anonymous said...

Glad you're enjoying the book!

I have two off the top of my head:

1. Every time we drove past Burlington Memorial Hospital, I looked at it and thought, "I bet there's a baby being born right now." I thought a baby must be being born in there somewhere at every second, that's how big it seemed to me.

2. Ok, this one is embarrassing. Up until maybe a year ago, I always read "Contents Under Pressure" on cans of shaving cream or whatever as "contents" being a verb, like this can with "content" under press. I always wondered what the heck that meant. I only recently realized that it means that what's INSIDE the can is under pressure. I'll always register it wrong at first though, since I have for SO LONG!

If I think of more, I'll come back. But I agree, good post. =)

How come you changed your blog colors?

Anonymous said...

Dude, typos in that comment. Let me rephrase that sentence....

"... like this can will "content" under pressure."

You knew what I meant, right?

Anonymous said...

That is funny Christi! I can't think of anything right now but working with kids I hear crazy things everyday especially because kids think they know everything!!!
heather

Anonymous said...

I'll have to think on this one! Funny!
Came by from Michele's, but always enjoy stopping by!

Anonymous said...

I just thought of another. It doesn't fit exactly but it's still funny.

I distinctly remember me and Amanda being in my living room looking at the lyrics in a new Janet Jackson CD (the one where her hubby has his hands over her breasts) - one song had the word "sensuality" in it and we looked at each other knowingly and agreed that they must have printed sesuality instead of "sexuality" just in case little kids were looking at the lyrics. We were maybe 10. Maybe.

Amanda said...

Ok, I thought of one just this morning. When people say, "I could live on mac and cheese" for example, I thought that meant that they wanted to actually live on a pile of mac and cheese and that when they got hungry, they'd just reach down and take a big bite.

And Erin, I TOTALLY remember that too. We thought we were just so damn smart.