This isn’t a story about myself, but one of my sister. She no longer remembers it happening, but since it has been loosely stuck in my memory for the past twenty-odd years now, I’m going to post about how she used to be stupid.

In the mid-eighties our grandfather purchased a big dish satellite for his television. Cable television was still rare in our parts, so when we would go over to his place and literally have hundreds of channels to browse though, it was a real source of amazement.

Now, unlike the modern satellite dishes that stay in place locked onto a single satellite, the old fashion big dishes had to rotate around and lock onto different satellites out in the sky as the channels on the receiver were changed. It wasn’t uncommon to change the channel and have to wait a minute or two before the dish would find the proper satellite and the show would appear. The best part of this process for my brothers and I, was that we could look out the window and watch the dish rotate around while it would aim itself with different satellites.

When we would go to my grandparents, I always wanted to use the satellite. Partially because there were so many channels to explore that I didn’t get at home, and partially because I liked watching the huge metal dish move around at my bidding. For some reason though, anytime I wanted to change the channel while we were at our grandparents, my older sister would get angry and forbid me from changing the channel more that a few times. I never knew exactly what I was doing wrong that I’d get yelled at for wanting to change the channel more than two or three times, but since she was older, I never really questioned it to much.

The memory of being scolded for attempting to change the channel always stuck in my head though. Over the years it would come back to me, and I could never quite figure out why she would deny me the right to change the channel. This memory would come and go pretty frequently in my head for about the next twenty years. Then one fateful year at an annual holiday family get together, the following came out of her mouth.

“I remember when I was a kid and I used to be scared that if we changed the channel on the satellite at grandpa’s house too much, that the dish would unscrew from the post and fall to the ground. Then grandpa would have been mad at us.”

My torment was finally over. I didn’t do anything wrong by wanting to change the channel. She just used to be stupid.

Whitney Writes:

I don’t know why, but when I was little my dad decided to tell me that I shouldn’t look directly into a microwave because I would turn into a monster if I did. I pictured turning into some furry creature with googly eyes and big teeth, and it freaked me out. I always walked away when I cooked something in the microwave. I’m twenty-two now and even though I know my dad was making it up, I still won’t look directly into a microwave when it’s running.