Misconceptions

Clarifying misconceptions, the subject of recent posts, is both an individual and a societal journey. According to my father, I was sitting in my high chair, less than a year old, gazing out the window with eyes bulging, aflame with excitement and wonder. It alarmed my mother, who wondered what was wrong with me. Father calmly explained to her: "look outside. Its raining. He's never seen rain before."

When I was about 5, it was raining again, and as I watched it hit the street, driveway, and sidewalk, the thought suddenly occured to me that the rain might melt the concrete. My older sister assured me that it would in fact not.

About a year later, I was six years ld, and it was 1961. My dad sat engrossed in the TV. I asked him what he was watching, and he told me that it was baseball, a game called the World Series, between the Yankees and the Reds. I asked him who he was rooting for, and he said "The Reds". I hate the Yankees."

My mother gave me the same answer, rooting for somebody called "Reds", hating somebody called "Yankees". So did our next door neighbors in all directions: root for Reds, hate Yankees.

I concluded that everbody felt the same way. Everybody in my world, everybody in the whole world. 

Poor Yankees. everybody hated them.They had no chance at all.

I have always tended to root for the underdog, and to me, that's what the Yankeees were. And to this day I root for the Yankees, only because of a childhood misconception. I'm a natural Cubs fan, but, alas, its too late..

misconceptions can change our lives forever.......