I used to believe
The radio show this morning pointed out a site on the web called i used to believe. It’s a collection of things adults used to believe as kids.
When I was a kid, I used to believe that if you had the same dream three times that it would come true. This was scary to me because I had a recurring nightmare. While the dream didn’t start out the same everytime, the middle and ending parts were always the same. Here’s one version I remember:
The dream starts with me and a few kids in the back seat of a car. Our hands are tied, and we are stopped at a railroad track. Our kidnappers have just checked on a kid they had left on the railroad tracks [I think I may have watched too much Dudley Do-Right as a kid]. Then they got back in the car, and drove us back to their house.
The house just happened to be my parents house, but somehow I knew that my parents had moved or been kicked out, and while they missed me, they didn’t suspect that I was being held at their house. The kidnappers let us out in the fenced-in front yard to play along with the other kids they had kidnapped — there must have been a dozen kids total.
While we were playing in the yard, I decided to make an escape. I crawled over the fence near a stand of trees, so the kidnappers wouldn’t see me. Then I started running down the block, stopping at every house asking for help. When I reached the house of my brother’s best friend, I noticed that the kidnappers were coming down the street. They, too, were knocking on every door to see if anyone had seen me.
Dave, my brother’s best friend, answered the door, but wouldn’t let me in. His mother came to the door, too, but she wasn’t going to let me in either. Finally, when the kidnappers were getting close, they did let me into the house. But they had already seen me. When they arrived at the door, though, the Incredible Hulk came crashing through the front wall and saved me.
Now, I’m not sure I actually believed that the last part of the dream would happen….but I was worried about being kidnapped.