Did you ever think something when you were younger and then, when you got to be a little older, find out it wasn’t that way at all?

For example, when I was in first grade, I used to think that children in the third grade were practically grownups! But then when I got to be in the third grade, I didn’t feel grown-up at all. But then I thought the sixth-graders were really old!

For some reason it’s fun to tell other people about your "used-to-thinks." I’ve been collecting "used to thinks" for quite a few years now — some of them are my own, some of them my children told me, and some of them other children told me. Here are some of the "used-to-thinks" I have collected. I wonder whether you used to think any of these things?

I used to think that we lived on the inside of the world ball, not on the outside.

I used to think that when you shut off the TV the program would stop, and then, when you turned it on again, it would begin right where it was when you stopped it.

I used to think you grew bigger on your birthday.

I used to think that when people said that Christmas was just around the corner, the people around the corner were having Christmas.

I used to think that when there were double lines down the middle of the highway, motorcycles were supposed to go in the space between them.

I used to think that ladies who wore high heels had heels on their feet that went down inside their shoes.

I used to think that after you’ve gotten as old as you are going to get, you begin to get younger again. When someone told me how old they were, I wondered whether they were on their way to older or younger.

Children are not the only ones who have "used-to-thinks." Almost every day, now that I have grown up, I find out something that makes something that I thought I knew into a "used-to-think." (Share some grown-up "used-to-thinks" of your own.)

Do any of you have "used-to-thinks?" (Pause while others in the group share their "used-to-thinks.")

But it isn’t just grownups and children who have "used-to-thinks." All the people who are alive together at one time think certain things that people living after them find out aren’t true at all.

The people who lived in Greece several thousand years ago used to think that it was the trees shaking that made the wind blow.

People used to think that tomatoes were poisonous.

The people who lived when my grandmother did used to think that it was positively dangerous to go as fast as fifteen miles an hour. They used to think that there never could be a flying machine — it would fall out of the air.

People used to think that we would never, never get to the moon, or to Mars, or away from our earth at all.

I guess that as long as there are people in the world there will be "used-to-thinks," because there is always going to be more to find out, and there are always going to be new things to find out about what we think we already know. Sometimes, as we get older, we understand things that we couldn’t have understood before — just because we have grown some and have had more experiences. Every time you find yourself with a new "used-to-think," you ought to feel pretty good, because it means you’ve learned something that you didn’t know before.