Sideswipe: December 20: Half-arsed decoration attempt

A half-arsed attempt at Christmas decoration.

More lingering untruths

1. When I was younger and heard Alzheimer's for the first time I spent the better part of my childhood believing it was called "Old Timer's Disease" due to mishearing it. This was reinforced by the fact that typically the elderly get it.

2. I thought that "charity" was just a girl from my school. I wondered why she received so many things, as everyone was always donating to her.

3. My dad told me when he was a kid he farted on a cold day and it was so cold the fart froze into a little blue marble. He took the marble inside and when it melted it made the house stink.

4. I thought the song title Roxanne was actually Rock Sand. I didn't question it until I was 21.

5. When I was a kid, my mother convinced me that she could stop the rain for short periods of time. Turns out that she could only do it when we were in the car and passing under a bridge.

6. That driving with the interior car lights on is illegal. Thanks, Dad. I still look around for cops before I turn it on.

7. My dad had us believe that Seekers vocalist Judith Durham always wore a long dress because she had a wooden leg.

Road to realisation

"My parents convinced me, and I in turn convinced our kids, that the 'bolts' lining the concrete wall on the right as you travel north through Auckland's Spaghetti Junction were actually guns for shooting down airplanes during the war," writes a reader. "They do really look like guns so it wasn't a stretch for my 8-year-old brain, although I figured it out by about 12 years old. I didn't realise how convincing I had been however, till my daughter (21) was travelling north with her boyfriend and his builder mate. She told them about the 'guns' as they passed ... I also had to fess up about the Dargaville river not being clear on the bottom, scarecrows don't eat children, fairies don't live in the world and so on. I am resurrecting all 'truths' for my grandchildren when I have some."

This is a thing that happens when you work in an office full of women.

Date with justice for dent-and-run driver

A reader writes: "Saturday night at 9.45pm we witnessed an unoccupied car being dented by a departing motorist in the Wilsons car park by the cathedral in Hobson St. If the owner would like to contact me via your column, I have the offending car's registration number."

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Got a Sideswipe? Send your pictures, links and anecdotes to Ana at ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz