I Used to Believe... pt 2

Here’s a second set of three misconceptions I believed in as a small child. Find part one posted about two years ago here: https://theprose.com/post/222429/i-used-to-believe

You grew a beard by eating strawberries.

The little seeds on the outside of this red berry looked like stubble to me. It didn’t help that the person I most often saw eat strawberries was Dad, and he would have stubble by evening. I concluded that as he ate, those seeds pushed through the skin of his chin and throat.

It seemed like an unpleasant experience. I also didn’t particularly care for the taste of strawberries at the time, and this belief hardly encouraged this little girl to eat them. I really did fear that I would grow a beard.

A dog’s back should be called its front, and its tummy should be called its back.

This one is more a of a linguistic quirk than anything else. I knew anatomy-wise what a spine and stomach were and where they were located on a dog’s body. However, I didn’t agree that the words “front” and “back” should be synonymous with those body parts.

See, when you think of someone, what features come to mind? When they interact with you, what part of them usually faces you? This is what I defined as their front. Sure, their spine and rump and the backs of their knees are still a part of them, but if you were going to describe them to someone else, is that really where you’d start? This secondary, less notably identifying side is the back. Same thing for a book. You might recognize it from the back, but where do they put the title?

Now think of a dog. When you interact with a dog, what do you see more of? If one was lost and you needed to describe it, would you really start with the spots on its belly? Therefore, the tummy is secondary. It is the back cover of the book.

Perhaps this concept is found in some language I have yet to encounter. If anybody knows, please tell me.

I also want to point out how bold it was of me, being a child barely taller than a cocker spaniel mix, to think that my insistence on saying things incorrectly would change the English language. I also insisted that scissors should start with Z because we didn’t have enough words that did.

The trombone and french horn were the same instrument…just coiled up sometimes.

My father played the trombone, so I knew what it looked like both in and out of the case. However, there was a recording in which the camera panned across the orchestra, and trombones appeared in the background for about a millisecond. At this point, Dad never failed to point at the screen and excitedly say, “There are the trombones. That’s what Daddy plays,” and of course, I got just as excited with him.

Yet, I didn’t see the trombones barely in frame. I saw the french horns that were the focal point of the shot. That was what I believed Dad pointed out, but that wasn’t what his trombone looked like. I reasoned that this coiled up instrument would never fit in a trombone’s case. Therefore, the trombone shape must only be the default form of this instrument used for storage and some note positions. The slide moved in and out, why not the rest of it? Surely, it could. I had seen it all coiled up in the video, after all. I could never get it to do so, though.

Bit of a side note, but Dad’s trombone is also silver, and I rarely see that.