My childhood beliefs

[beboots]

 I've been thinking a lot lately on my childhood outlook on life. What were things that you believed as a child?

-My mother always tells me the story that when we moved away from Germany to Ottawa when my twin sister and I were three, we were under the impression that Ottawa was on a different planet. And what is a jet plane but a spaceship? (Also: were we that wrong?)

-I didn't understand the difference between "erase" and "wash". I remember once when my little brother scribbled all over a colouring book of mine in permanent marker. When my pink eraser wouldn't work, I filled up the bathroom sink with water and dumped the book in, assuming that the purple and yellow lines would come right off. I was sorely mistaken, and had a dissolved colouring book. I was not happy that this hadn't worked. 

-Cars had personalities, and their headlights were their eyes. I still judge cars this way: if the "eyes" are too big, I think it looks dopey. If a car looks "mean", I don't like it. There are certain vehicles that I simply will never consider buying because on some subliminal level I still think of them as having personalities like this. 

Comments

[feral-shrew.livejournal.com]

Tubman was a freaking badass, SO much yes-- I had to do a project on her in 5th grade, and I turned it into a board game. "Can you get about 20 people up into the North with you." I got to add in all the little details I could find-- I liked that project.

The Huck Finn censoring makes me irritated, but not quite enraged. The rest of the story is so damn good that if people will only read it with "slave" added in all over, fine. People NEED that book, and I think that last section (which annoys about everybody) actually fit really, really well in the original context. Twain wanted you to take a side.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

I want to play that game. >_> You could perhaps make money off of it if you patented it...?

I definitely think, without even having read the book, that yes, there was a point to having all of those "n-words" in there in the first place. Sanitizing the past like that doesn't really help people understand it better. I can see some people thinking "oh, it wasn't THAT bad", reading a version like this. :( Not a good idea.

[feral-shrew.livejournal.com]

The only part I didn't like about Huck Finn is that Jim spends a great portion of the book resembling several stereotypes, but I think Huck's more than worth it-- there's also the fantastic passage where Huck is trying to pose as a girl, and it just isn't working.

[beboots.livejournal.com]

I'm still going to have to read it. At the very least I presume that Jim never says he enjoys being a slave...? D:

[feral-shrew.livejournal.com]

Jim doesn't want to be a slave, and definitely wants to run away, and he helps Huck at several points.

My favorite part of that entire book is Huck's little soliloquy when he decides just what he's going to do about Jim. It redeemed the book for me after all of the "okay, hello stereotype #17."

That's why I could never, ever stand with most Harry Potter characters on house elves. "They like it." "They need to do this." "They'd hate getting paid." All while they're speaking in a terribly stereotypical speech pattern generally associated with not-particularly-intelligent black people. Dobby is a great character, but he can't single-handedly redeem all of the bad, bad things that little kids are taking in.