Light, lenses, reflections, and eyes: as a little kid...

[Linna Heartbooger]

Who remembers being a little kid and messing around with one-eye-open one-eye-closed?
Or using a shiny surface to make light 'dance' around on the ceiling?

I still think my favorite was colored Christmas lights - viewed all blurry with my glasses off...
...then viewed normally with my glasses on again...
... then squinting to make their light stretch out to thin lines...
...then normally again.

What were other people's favorite things to mess around with?

[lorin]

Not exactly one eye open and one eye closed but I used to go to this house where all the furniture was Danish Modern. There was a chair like a saucer. I would sit in the chair, cross my legs, close my eyes and imagine I was riding over cities and countries and even into space.

[peter]

Who remembers being a little kid and messing around with one-eye-open one-eye-closed?
Or using a shiny surface to make light 'dance' around on the ceiling?

I still think my favorite was colored Christmas lights - viewed all blurry with my glasses off...
...then viewed normally with my glasses on again...
... then squinting to make their light stretch out to thin lines...
...then normally again.

What were other people's favorite things to mess around with?

Tricky one to answer, that, Lina

[Sorry - couldn't resist that Lina; I used to be fascinated by the side of the road as we were driving along in the car and used to imagine myself running at the same speed as the car, but along side it, but I could only land on branches and posts and fences etc so I had to jump big distances a lot of te time. Odd child as you see ]

[michaelm]

I used to like to shine sunlight off of shiny objects, and loved wearing a watch as a kid as I always had something to shine the light off.

[Linna Heartbooger]

lorin- fun!
Now you have me thinking of kids' stories with a girl using her imagination. (Ramona, Harriet the Spy, one with a girl who rides a magic carpet and has a pet baby kangaroo, and on and on...)

peter-- haha... *facepalm*
Well, that's one way for me for me to learn to check my words for, shall we say... alternative interpretations!

Odd child as you see

Wonder how many people here could say 'story of my life'!

michaelm- neat. And very practical.
People gotta have the right priorities when they accessorize, that's what i say!

[michaelm]

michaelm- neat. And very practical.
People gotta have the right priorities when they accessorize, that's what i say!

I was always being told off for shining it in people's faces then acting as if I knew nothing about it when they looked in my direction...

[Linna Heartbooger]

Bwahaha!
And yet, at the same time... did you want to be sure they knew it was you?

[Vraith]

michaelm- neat. And very practical.
People gotta have the right priorities when they accessorize, that's what i say!

I was always being told off for shining it in people's faces then acting as if I knew nothing about it when they looked in my direction...

Heh...I used to do similar in classes...
I'd put it on noses, on the teachers butt when writing on blackboard, that kind of thing. And I'd try to find things to bounce it off that would prismatize it, spray the colors around.

I also did the squint to make light-lines with my lashes, Linna, a lot.

[aliantha]

I still do the one-eye-then-the-other-eye thing.

[michaelm]

Bwahaha!
And yet, at the same time... did you want to be sure they knew it was you?

I think the longer it went on the funnier I found it so got caught because I was laughing for no apparent reason and was thus unmasked as the culprit...

[Ananda]

Who remembers being a little kid and messing around with one-eye-open one-eye-closed?
Or using a shiny surface to make light 'dance' around on the ceiling?

I still think my favorite was colored Christmas lights - viewed all blurry with my glasses off...
...then viewed normally with my glasses on again...
... then squinting to make their light stretch out to thin lines...
...then normally again.

What were other people's favorite things to mess around with?

When I was 11 or 12, I had a cast bronze moon thingie with a crystal hanging in the middle. I had it hanging in the window of my bedroom. I remember lying on my bed on summer afternoons, listening to music and admiring the many rainbows refracted through it all over my ceiling and walls. It was really wonderful.

[Linna Heartbooger]

Heh...I used to do similar in classes...
I'd put it on noses, on the teachers butt when writing on blackboard, that kind of thing. And I'd try to find things to bounce it off that would prismatize it, spray the colors around.

I have to wonder if you got other classmates of yours laughing "for no apparent reason"!

ali- Good.
When I was a kid, I think I didn't actually believe that the changes could be so drastic, or didn't observe them!

michaelm- yup; I can definitely see that happening.

When I was 11 or 12, I had a cast bronze moon thingie with a crystal hanging in the middle. I had it hanging in the window of my bedroom. I remember lying on my bed on summer afternoons, listening to music and admiring the many rainbows refracted through it all over my ceiling and walls. It was really wonderful.

That does sound really pleasant and peaceful afternoon...
I always loved finding the sun streaming in through cut glass with the prismatic patterns on the carpet.

[deer of the dawn]

I would press on my eyeballs for a few seconds to enjoy the light show when I released them. I know, that's weird.

We used to play with flashlights, making finger puppet monsters to scare each other.... usually ended in a giggle fest.

I still have two faceted lead crystals hanging in the bedroom window and love to watch the rainbows dance.

Oh, and I still love swimming underwater, watching the light refract around my shadow. Very peaceful and hypnotic....

Also, I often look for and see coronae, sundogs, moondogs, parhelic rings, strange color refractions, etc. in the sky that few others seem to notice. I just think it's so cool.

[Rod]

I'm reminded of the battery operated light projector I had as a kid. Sadly I can only remember of one set of movie strips - Disney's Robin Hood - the other two have escaped me. I would often disappear into a dark closet for what seemed like hours on end.

[Cagliostro]

I always liked the eye tricks, such as the double-nailed finger that appeared between your two fingers when you unfocused a bit.
And those Magic Eye things were a lot of fun. That was certainly a fad that seems to have gone away, hasn't it?

Edit: for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, I mean this:



Wow, and this is the cool one:

[I'm Murrin]

Shame on you, Cag. This is a family site.

[aliantha]

The second one --

The first one -- I'm out of practice! It took me far too long to get the image to show in 3D. Then, like a dope, I moved my head for a different perspective and lost it.

[I'm Murrin]

It's never taken me any effort to get magic eyes. Just shift my vision slightly and there it is. Once I have it my eyes just treat it like looking at anything else, just slightly off putting that everything around it is double vision.

[peter]

I'm near blind in one eye and have been so since childhood, so could never get those pictures at all. I always used to feel somehow cheated by this - but now [for some reason] I couldn't care less. Is this improvement .

[michaelm]

I've never been able to see them either, so I have no clue what is in any of them.