Pickle Catsup
When I was a little kid, I thought ketchup was made out of pickles.
Okay, you can stop snickering now. We used Heinz ketchup (if you ask me, if it's not Heinz, it doesn't taste like ketchup). Anyway, on the Heinz label, underneath where it says "57 Varieties" was a little green pickle. So I thought it was made from pickles. I didn't see any tomatoes on the bottle, okay?!
It's funny the misconceptions we have when we're little kids. When Connie was a little girl and learned "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want..." she wondered why she wouldn't want Him.
People aren't perfect. That's something I finally learned. It was a surprise to me.
My mother was an idealist. She'd ask me to clean my room (which I hated) and it was never clean enough for her. "If you can't do something right, you shouldn't do it at all," she'd tell me. Funny, she never gave me the option of not doing it at all.
She gave me the impression that grown-ups were all experts in their field. If you wanted to be a lawyer, you had to know everything there was about the law. If you wanted to be a doctor, you had to know everything about medicine. Silly me, I believed her.
It was very frustrating to me that I had trouble learning everything there was to know about a subject. It was frustrating to her, too. I didn't measure up to her ideals.
It was a shock to me, as I got older, to discover that doctors didn't know all about medicine, and lawyers didn't know all about the law. In fact, it was rare to find people who were exceptional at what they did. Most people, I learned, knew just enough to get by. I was disillusioned. But it was also something of a relief. I wasn't the only one who knew just enough to get by!
I still strive to be great at what I do, and I I'm always trying to learn better ways to do things, but I've learned that people aren't perfect, and if I'm not perfect at something, that's okay too.
I've spent too many years at war with myself,
The doctor has told me it's no good for my health.
To search for perfection is all very well,
But to look for Heaven is to live here in Hell.
- Sting
Have any childhood misconceptions of your own to share? 
Blog Tag: Chatter
Posted 5/06/2006 12:10:00 AM
L
On 5/06/2006 12:36 AM, 
dkgoodman said...
On 5/06/2006 5:27 AM, Heidi said...
On 5/06/2006 7:34 PM, Candace said...
On 5/06/2006 8:20 PM, Lisa said...
4 Comments:
LOL! After I write a post and publish it to the blog, I always see how it looks in the blog. I just did that. And you know the random quote the blog displays near the top? Here's what it was:
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons,
for you are crunchy and good with ketchup!
ROFL
"if it's not Heinz, it doesn't taste like ketchup"
100% agree! I was at fast food restaurant with the Heinz Bottles on the tables. I'm having fries with the " heinz" and it didn't taste right..Heinz is sweeter so I knew right away they just used a generic Ketchup and filled the bottles. I went to the manager and told him " this is not Heinz Ketchup"..lol
For a way too short-lived period of my childhood, I lived in Colorado. Opening the front door of our house gave an unobstructed view of the Rocky Mountains.
On the weekends, my family and I would sometimes take short outings and explore some of the parks in the Rockies.
On one particular visit to Estes Park, I was told that we were crossing the Continental Divide.
"Wow!," I thought while turning my head in every possible direction imaginable. Well, I looked all around me, I searched the ground, I strained my eyes for some visible gap, but I didn't see anything that looked divided.
For years (more than I would care to admit), I had this misconception that the Continental Divide was a division that you could actually see. Doh!
Live and learn!
Yes, Dave, I can empathize with having an overcritical mother who has unreasonable expectations of those around her, especially her child(ren).
In an effort to break my perfectionistic tendencies, my New Year's resolution, for some time now, has been "Practice imperfection."
Since I did so well with that resolution during the first year that I made it, I did have to modify it for the following year:
"Practice imperfection, but not to the point that your life completely falls apart."
Minor misconception: Presbyterians and Pedestrians were the same thing.
Not so minor: After I grew up, I would continue to live the lifestyle my parents enjoyed, financially speaking.
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