When I was a kid I believed the Castro Convertible sofabed company was owned by
Fidel Castro. I thought it was a fine example of the American way that we let him operate in our country, even if we disliked his politics – the same way a Russian family was allowed to live next door to us, even though America hated the Russians. The Castro jingle, which seemed to pat the Soviets on the back in the time of the Cuban missile crisis, may have had something to do with it:
Who was the first to conquer space?
It's incontrovertible
That the first to conquer living space
Is a Castro Convertible!
I later realized that some would argue the US "conquered" space by progressing faster than the Russians in developing technology to land on the Moon. In fact, when I heard a TV commentator refer to the Cold War space rivalry as "the race to the Moon" I thought it was a literal race that was planned for when the technology was ready. I remember telling my mother that the park at the end of our street, situated on a cliff overlooking Long Island Sound, would be a great place to watch the rockets flying neck and neck, and once actually mistook two planes flying at night over the area as that very event.
And on an unrelated note:
When l was a kid my mum took me to see my first ever film, the Disney classic One Hundred and One Dalmatians.
That was my second film! My first was the Hammer version of The Mummy with Christopher Lee in the title role, which I referred to as the Boo-Boo Man, because of the bandages. I naturally thought he was the hero, and came up with a convoluted answer to how he survived after the end of the film.
EDIT: I guess I should explain that my parents took a two-year-old to a Hammer horror movie because my older cousin convinced them it was a historical film about Egypt!