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Scott Margolis
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3/31/19
www.SandhillsWeekendDental.com
first saw white men journeying to meet them,
the natives thought the visitors’ oxen were the
white men’s women. Why? Because the white
guys’ oxen were carrying the group’s packages
and supplies. I also read that when some native
Americans first saw a man on a horse, they
thought the man and horse were one creature,
not separate beings.
My late friend Billy Pike said he, as a child,
thought Jesus was a woman because Jesus was
depicted in paintings as wearing a dress (robe).
“What about Jesus’ beard?” I asked. “I don’t
know,” Pike said. “That part didn’t register with me.”
Steve Gibson of Vass, NC, used to recite this
childhood prayer: “Now I lay me down to sleep;
I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die
before I wake, I pray the Lord
my soul to take.” Gibson
heard the phrase “If I should
die” as “If Isha die.” He
says that for a long time he
thought “Isha” was a woman
and if she died before he
woke, the Lord would take
his soul. Have mercy!
Lee Duncan, a Greer,
SC native and former
organist/choirmaster at First Baptist Church in
Laurinburg, NC, says he, as a child, prayed that
same prayer before bedtime but recited it this
way: “Now I lay me down to sleep; I pray the Lord
my soul to keep. ‘Afashadye’ before I wake, I pray
the Lord my soul to take.” He explains, “I thought
‘afashadye’ was a big, adult Biblical word I had
not learned but would learn when I got older. I
was about seven when I went to my neighbor’s
house and saw that prayer on a plaque on her
wall. There I saw the words ‘If I should die.’ I
couldn’t believe I had said it incorrectly all that
time and was disappointed that ‘afashadye’ was
not a real word, because I thought it was the
neatest word I knew at the time.”
Marlene Dean, a Union Pines High School
graduate, says she thought brown cows gave
chocolate milk and white cows gave plain milk.
Darlene Smith recalls that at age six she
thought all people were filled with nothing but
air. “When I got mad at my mom, I told her I was
going to stick a pin in myself and let all the air
out!” she says.
Margo Green says, “When I first started
watching TV, I thought all those little people,
cars, horses, etc. were stored somewhere in that
TV set and would come out to perform just for
us.” Another person said he thought he could
communicate with people on TV by putting his
mouth on the TV speaker and talking.
Julie Tillotson, a former art student of mine,
says she used to think if she spoke with an accent
that she was speaking in a foreign language.
Duck Stewart says he once thought “the man
is head of the house.” Theresa Harvey replied
to his remark, “It’s true that a man is head of
the house, but my daddy added, ‘The wife is
the neck!’” Margo Green added, “The man may
be considered the head of the house and the
woman may be considered the neck, but the
woman is also the HEART of the home.”
Sarah McIntyre says her grandpa’s neighbor
always wore Osh Kosh overalls and his name was
Oscar Collins. “I must have been 8 or 10 before I
found out Osh Kosh was not his name,” she says.
Marti Thompson says, “A friend of mine from
Georgia thought ‘barbed wire’ was ‘bob wire’
until she was in college at UGA.” Sarah McIntyre
replied to that comment, “All Southerners think
that! LOL.”
Christina Rose Bayones, a former Moore
County, NC resident, says,
“When I was 11, and we were
getting ready to leave NC to
move to Oklahoma, I thought
Ft. Sill would look like and
be like the old-timey forts
I saw in books and movies,
complete with tumbleweeds!
The tumbleweeds were the
only part I was right about.”
Ann McTaggart says, “I
used to think when a dog was ‘put to sleep’ that
they would wake up better and younger.”
Hope Barbare says, “I thought bales of hay in
the field that were wrapped in white plastic were
big marshmallows.” She adds that when her
daughter was about four years old, she looked
at some of Hope’s black-and-white childhood
pictures. The child later asked, “Mama, when
you were little and looked around did you see
colors or just black and white?” A good many
children seem to think the world was black-andwhite
“back in the day” because they see old TV
shows and photos.
Barry Coggins recollects, “I thought a
lightening bolt was a real bolt and went looking
for the one that put a hole in our kitchen sink.”
Theresa Harvey says, “I thought the bedroom
furniture for clothes was called ‘Chester
drawers,’ instead of ‘chest of drawers.’ Theresa
added, “I was 16 before I learned you couldn’t
get pregnant from French kissing, but don’t let
anyone else know that. I know I can trust you!”
Holly Mulligan says, “As a child, I thought the
masked man with Tonto was the ‘Long’ Ranger,
and I couldn’t understand how Abraham in the
Bible lived before Jesus but ended up in our
country as President.”
Martha Brown says, “I couldn’t figure out how
Jesus did all he did from Christmas till Easter in
the same year.”
Rena Hamrick says, “I remember my Nana
fussing about spilling sugar and dripping popsicles
or cookie crumbs. She said, ‘It makes ants.’ If Nana
said it, we kids believe it: ‘Sugar makes ants.’”
Roger Smith says, “I remember being about 3
or 4 years old and my mom asked me if I wanted
an ice cream sandwich. I believed she was gonna
put some ice cream between 2 pieces of bread.”
Patricia Bullard says, “I thought a nickel had
more value than a dime because it was bigger.”
Steve Campbell says, “I would hang upside
down on my swing set, and Mama would tell me,
‘You better quit doing that or your liver will turn
upside down and kill you.’”
Don Brown says, “I asked my daughter, Julie,
one morning on the way to school, if they ever
sang in class. She said, ‘Sometimes.’ I asked
what they sang. She replied, ‘My country is a
Tree, Sweet land of liberty.’”
Sandra Shuford says, “My son wanted me
to stop banking with BB&T because they were
a ‘bank with an attitude.’ That was a ‘teachable
moment’ for sure!”
Steve Wilson says, “As a kid, I used to think I
could turn off the TV and come back hours later
and it would pick up where it left off. I was way
ahead of my time.”
Sandra Henry says, “Almost 30 years ago, my
5-year-old daughter asked me if butter came
from butterflies and if candles were made with
earwax.”
Myra Gillespie says, “My parents and I were
driving to the beach for vacation. There was a
‘deer crossing’ sign on the side of the highway. I
asked my parents, ‘How do the deer know to cross
there?’ Daddy, with his nutty sense of humor, told
me, ‘They learned that in deer school.’”
In gathering comments for this article, I
thought about my early impression of North
Carolina. I was eight before I realized the
Mason-Dixon Line was not drawn between
North Carolina and South Carolina. I figured
North Carolina was part of the “North” during
the American Civil War. Why else would they
call it “North” Carolina? I grew up in SC and was
41 years old before textile work sent me and my
family to NC. I first lived in Kernersville and
worked for Karastan Carpet and then lived over
28 years in Southern Pines, working for Gulistan
Carpet Company in Aberdeen until it closed in
2013. In Jan. 2018, my wife and I moved back
to Greenville County, SC. As a child, I thought
SC folk were nicer than NC folk, but that was a
very childish misperception. There are nice and
wonderful people in both states. ☐
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I ‘wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
from The New England Primer
No. 133 The Pinehurst Gazette, Inc. p.7
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