Lent

The question posed by @JenAshleyWright on Twitter is simple enough: "What's the weirdest thing you remember misunderstanding as a kid?"

@JenAshleyWright got the ball rolling:

• I thought adultery meant "pretending to be an adult."

Other answers have been posted. Sometimes multiple ones from the same person. @sarahlyall responds:

• I thought that candidates won large numbers of boats on Election Day.
• When I heard cars backfiring somewhere in the NYC streets outside my window, I thought the Russians were firing cannons at us.

@mariadkins92 responds;

• I thought watergate was an actual gate. like a dam that holds back water.

If I read this right, there have been 5,900 replies to the March 7th question, waaaaay more than I'll read, and waaaaay more than I'll write here. But of course you're welcome to dig in for yourself.

As for myself, my response surrounded a sacrifice. I think I was perhaps seven and all my friends were busy telling everyone what they were giving up for Lent. School was usually offered as the first choice, but I don't think anyone was really allowed to give up school for 40 days. I don't remember kids disappearing from 2nd Grade for a Lenten sabbatical.

Other than that, I quite honest;y can't remember what my friends gave up for Lent that year. I do remember that like other kids I did chew gum. Wrigley's Doublemint. Not spearmint.

A pack cost a nickel and I distinctly remember where on the block I was when I announced I was giving up gum for Lent. I think me and whomever has just come back from the candy store when I told them I was giving gum up for Lent. No one seemed impressed with the extent of that sacrifice. I do remember that I equated it with saving a nickel. How I earned that nickel I have no idea. Maybe I had a candy allowance.

I'd like to say that the saved nickel put me on a path to being a rival to Warren Buffet, but that's not true. I probably just bought an extra box of Canada mints. Wintergreens were my favorite.

What I didn't realize at the time was that my friends were Catholic, and they were supposed to give up something for Lent. I didn't understand that the sacrifice had a termination date. At Easter, Lent was over, and you could go back to having/doing whatever it was you gave up for Lent.

Thus, aside from not being Catholic and not understanding that being Greek Orthodox didn't require you to give something up for Lent, I didn't realize that giving something up for Lent only meant that you did it for the duration of Lent, not forever.

I never chewed gum past the age of seven.


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