Just some random thoughts. When I was a kid and Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out, I remember discussing it with my friends. We were doing that thing where kids sort of make up a reality through a web of useless lies. The discussion basically involved who had seen which of the following movies: Close Encounters of the First Kind, Close Encounters of the Second Kind, and of course, Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I don’t remembers which of these movies I had supposedly seen at the time, but the truth was I hadn’t seen the one that actually existed.
I also remember discussing Star Wars, which I hadn’t seen, with some friends. We were going around and sharing our favorite character. The other people I think had relatively predictable characters as their favorites, but since I hadn’t seen the movie, rather than say “that’s mine too”, I named the only other “character” I knew… the sand people. However, given it was that kind of discussion, it basically passed as a reasonable answer to a group of my fellow 5 year olds.
And on a slightly different note, you know when parents take the family dog to be put down and they tell the kids they took him to a farm where he could chase rabbits and so forth? Well, I thought there actually were farms that took these dogs in. Even when I was like 35, I would think, “Hmmm… do people really do that? Where exactly are these farms.” I didn’t know anyone who had ever done this. It wasn’t until I saw a movie or TV show mentioning it that I learned what that really meant. And even then for a second I was like, “Now does it always mean that or is there sometimes really a farm?” I suppose someone at least once must have taken a dog to a friend on a farm rather than taking him to the pound. Who knows.