About two days ago, the topic of childhood misconceptions knocked on my dorm room door once again. The topic snuck into the room and we began conversing about our own experiences as children. Today, I am going to share a couple of those with you.
3. Binder Clips and Football Shoulders
Okay, first off, binder clips. Now, these bobbers never had much of a purpose to me besides looking like tiny purses that couldn’t hold much. As I got older, they became torture tools used against me by my sister. And what did they call them? Binder clips. I’d never seen them used on binders, therefore, they were irrelevant to their name in my perspective. Then one day in second grade, I watched as Mrs. Brown, rounded belly and all, bent over to grab a box of those clips. She then proceeded to gather papers from the printer, clipping them together then turning them opposite ways. Portrait, landscape. Portrait, landscape.
That was that was when I realized their purpose. Still, I did not understand their name. That is until a few days ago that my roommate, Madison, offered one to me.
“Um, I’m good.”
She put the clip in her hand down.
“I never actually understood why those were called binder clips,” I admitted.
“Oh. It think it’s just because paper clips hold small amounts compared to how much a binder clip holds, hence binder clip.”
My mind had been blown.
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“Touchdown!” the football-announcer-guy half screamed into the microphone that wired into the speakers just behind my left shoulder. I looked at it, my shoulder. Then, I looked back at the field. All of the football players were different in sizes and shapes. The one thing, besides uniforms, that stuck out was their broad shoulders. Why were they so big?
I looked back at my puny shoulder. In all it’s bony glory, it still did not compare to the swollen uniformity of theirs.
Were they full of fat? No, it had to be muscle. I mean, you’d think it’d be muscle. What if they were all muscle on the inside with a sheath of fat surrounding? If so, then do they jiggle like the bump of Mrs. Brown’s stomach?
I imagine a football player, so caught up in the excitement of winning, tearing off his shirt and waving it around like the American flag, his enormous shoulders flexing at the raise of his arm.
This thought made me shiver. Poor football players and their ugly shoulders.
I remember being shocked when I learned that football players wore shoulder pads.
I really like this series! It’s full of tiny mistakes and childhood wonder. It’s almost better to never know the truth. Great job!