Really Mistaken Beliefs

I don't know where it started, or where it came from. It was just there, in my head like a fact I had always known.

I can hum along to any song I had never heard.

Of all the things for one to be capable of, this seems quiet ridiculous.

It wasn’t something I ‘made up’ exactly. That would have required some thought behind it. My efforts were more spent on defending this ridiculous statement.

Why humming? It had nothing to do with an actual ability. I was not a prolific hummer by any means. I didn’t' regularly strut around the house in a top hat swinging a pocket watch. I can't even remember a single instance where I even wanted to hum.

I might have owned a kazoo at one point in time. And I had one of those “make fun stuff out of the things in your home” books. One of the activities was turning a comb with a piece of wax paper into a kazoo. After I created it I remember thinking.

Seriously?

Even at 7.

So my prolific humming wasn’t one born of experience. It was just something I claimed, and for some reason, something I was proud to share.

Perhaps it was me compensating.

It could have been due to the fact that I couldn't really whistle. Not in the traditional sense anyway. I would try and try but it just, it didn't work. I couldn't understand why either. It seemed like a simple two part process.

But as I would learn later in life, over and over again; how simple something is has nothing to do with how good I am at it.

I would do this kind crap whistle, which came as a result of making a Lamaze face and pushing air out between the space in my front teeth.


I'm not sure how many people I told or how often it came up. I do distinctly remember an argument with my sister though that took place in my kitchen.

I had shared my secret ability with my sister and she immediately challenged me.

But how do you know?

I just know.

But how?

I can just do it.

Any song?

Yea I can hum along to any song on the radio.

The discussion then went deeper with my sister trying to use things like "logic" and "reason" which I had no interest in.

In all fairness, I was 7.

The beauty of youth is that you can say completely insane ridiculous things that carry no significance or any bearing on the course of your adult life. Had I known this back then, I would have claimed to be good at far more interesting things than humming.

It was also around the same time that I had developed another mistaken belief. This one I didn’t really share with anybody, I just thought about it a lot. My belief was that, when competing in the Olympics, the possible medals were:

Gold

Silver

Bronze

Copper

I have NO idea where I got this idea.

Maybe I had some kind of inferiority complex and wanting to make sure that I always had the chance for some recognition, I created a recognized 4th place as a possible thing to aspire to/fall back on?

I would revisit this notion as I did underwater somersault contests by myself at hotel pools on family vacations.

I would pretend to be different people in my class from school, going through underwater commentary in my head. I would do as many somersaults as I could without coming up for air, somewhere between three and five usually.

The people I liked or was friends with would do very well getting the silver or sometimes a bronze. People I didn’t like would get a copper or nothing at all.

I always got the gold.

I pretty much knew I wasn’t going to get gold in any real events, so why not one I made up?

It is not exaggeration to say I spent hours doing this.

It still doesn’t explain where the copper came into all of this.

The only place I could have even heard of copper is in a 64 pack of Crayola Crayons with a built in plastic sharpener. Copper was one of the four crayons in the box that had a very distinct metallic sheen to it. So I must have just thought if Crayola deemed it enough to be part of the pack then it must be deemed adequate by the International Olympic Committee.

Not that I knew what that was.

It wasn’t until years later watching, or should I say, actually paying attention to the Olympics that I found myself thinking:

Hey what happened to the copper metal?

I might have brought up this point to my parents, or I might not. There is a good chance I just continued watching the Olympics, observing the athletes compete for far 25% fewer medals than I thought should be available.

I probably just watched the TV as athletes crossed the finish line 4^th, and thought to myself they deserved a medal for their efforts, something to act as a thank you, something they could treat as their swan song.

A swan song I could probably hum along to.