A couple years back, at the end of the day, I'd usually rush home from elementary school, sit myself down with a packet of fruit snacks and watch cartoons until my father came home and served me dinner. There were several I really enjoyed. Spongebob Squarepants, Fairly Oddparents.....

....but my favorite was always Phineas and Ferb, the Disney animated phenomenon that seemed to be captivating not only kids my age, but those in the nearby junior high and some parents as well. Those two junior gizmo-making machines and the unlikely animal spy were in a category all of it's own. If you even just uttered the names 'Phineas' or 'Ferb' in a random place, there was a good chance some kid would run up to you, beaming because he or she knew what you were talking about.

I cherished that cartoon, and even now I still occaissionally flip to family channel to catch an episode or two. It was the idol of my childhood-no....it WAS my childhood.

But just a couple weeks ago, at a family potluck at my grandmother's house, my cousin told me something that flipped my childhood completely. That Phineas and Ferb had been based off a true tale, one of which was definitely NOT for kids.

Apparently, the outlandish creations in the Fletcher family's backyard were all merely figments of the imagination of a schizophrenic "Candace". They were all hallucinations of things that her brothers were clearly not doing; a day in the sandbox appeared in Candace's eyes as a man-made beach. This is the reason why their mother never believes Candace in the end of the episode. Eventually, "Candace" became so frusterated that she commited suicide in her room. Where the platypus and the whole spy thing came from, I'm not sure, but I'm presuming it's just something to cover up the true story from those who have heard it.