Kids are so funny. Their grid of reality is not as firm and defined as we sometimes assume. I remember when I was about five, my mom played a record of my dad's college choir while he was away on a trip. When my mom told me that daddy was singing those songs, I though she meant literally. I crouched down by the large speakers, thinking he had to be somewhere inside them, and tried to talk to him. I listened as hard as I could for his answer, for his voice, but I couldn't hear him. Maybe he hadn't heard me. I started shouting. My mom found me and told me daddy wasn't really inside the speakers; his voice had been recorded so that we could play him over again and again. I thought that was a cruel trick; copy someone's voice in order to pretended they were there. I was very disappointed.

My dad told me a very similar story from his own childhood. While at church one day, his parents told him that the pastor's voice came out of the speakers. Somehow my dad got the idea that the pastor actually came out of the speakers. It seemed logical to him, since pastors were like God, that they actually appeared for the Sunday service and disappeared afterwards; so the speakers must be the way he came and went. Since the speakers at this church were man-sized, it is not hard to imagine how a child could think like this. It wasn't until much later, when my dad saw the pastor tying his shoe after the service, that he realized the pastor wasn't super-human (FYI: super-humans don't tie their shoes). That got him thinking that maybe pastors don't disappear every Sunday... maybe they don't come out of speakers at all.

In a way, I wish I still retained all my childhood perspectives on reality (along side the correct views, of course). It would be jolly good fun to laugh at myself.