Lies My Parents Told Me

[ciphergoth]

meta asks for stories of lies your parents told you, here:

http://www.livejournal.com/talkread.bml?journal=meta&itemid=119465

I thought this was an interesting question worth propogating!

My parent's weren't the sort to lie, but I've come to realise that a lot of the things my Dad told me that I took on faith were a bit misconcieved. He believed that a stitch from running was the result of ribs rubbing up against each other. It wasn't 'till years later that I got a stitch again and realised that it couldn't possibly be that and it felt much more like a muscle cramp...

Now it's your turn. Tell us about a bizarre or stupid lie your parents told you.

Comments

[rainbowskye.livejournal.com]

When I was at Uni my best friend and I were in the kitchen and I was ferreting around in the cupboard for something to eat while we were cooking. I broke off a couple of bits of cooking chocolate and Gail looked horrified as I started eating it and said 'JULIE! you'll get worms..' I looked at her in a puzzled way and asked why, and she said, 'Well my mum always said that if you ate the cooking chocolate before you melted it it would give you worms..'....
Joolz xx

[kyte.livejournal.com]

You can see why they told us some of these things, can't you?

Only such one I can recall is when I asked what a virgin was, and my Dad looked awkward and told me that it was someone who wasn't married yet...

[adjectivemarcus.livejournal.com]

Drinking orange squash and milk would make you vomit - tried it years later when trying to get out of work early, was quite nice.

[booklectica]

The first time I told my mother I was bisexual, she said 'No, you're not, you're heterosexual' quite firmly. This did not have any lasting effect on my life. :)

They did have a go at claiming Father Christmas existed, and when I caught them filling my stocking they claimed to be Santa's little helpers. (Making them subordinate clauses...)

My dad also made a brave attempt to be the Tooth Fairy and even answered the questionnaire I left out for her one night.

a past conversation. I am 18, my mum 48...

[ajva.livejournal.com]

My Mum: So what do you do with your girlfriend then? (I had just come out to her, she was curious)
Me: Well, all sorts of stuff, like [blah blah blah rough description of some sex stuff...] oh, and not forgetting of course, oral sex.
My Mum (horrified): What! That's Gamahuche! You realise that was the sin for which Gomorrah was destroyed, don't you?
Me (flabbergasted): ...

OTOH, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got from anyone came from my Dad. I must have been pretty young when he told me this too, maybe about 8? He said "Well, of course, you shouldn't lie and blah blah blah and I'm not saying you should etc. BUT!!!! If you do lie - LIE TO THE END!"

Sterling stuff from my Dad the realist. Even just the acknowledgement that it was possible to do such a thing and not be a bad person is an unusual message for a little girl to be taught. :o)

[purplerabbits.livejournal.com]

I think most of the lies my mum told me were religious nonsense, old wives tales or other things that she really believed. Famous examples include:-

• You get piles from sitting on radiators.
  
• You spoil your eyesight by reading in the dark.
  
• Coca cola will dissolve your teeth (ain't happened yet).
  
• If you walk along with your coat over your arm men will think you're a prostitute and proposition you (this when I was 13 and in hideous brown school uniform).
  
• If you tell the secondary school that you've read all the famous five books in your interview they'll think your stupid and won't let you in.
  
• And the most harmful one: "when you get to my age you don't feel happiness any more like children do, you just feel a bit better or a bit worse". For years I thought the symptoms of depression were just ordinary aging.

Oh, and my maternal grandmother told me that if I wore green the fairies would steal me and never let me go home again. I tried it, but it didn't work.

[adjectivemarcus.livejournal.com]

Oh, and of course the eternal "Cracking your knuckles causes arthritis."

Nope.

lies

[sanjibabes.livejournal.com]

Like being told that eating sugar butties would make potatoes grow behind my ears and so I never ate another after feeling the bumps behind my ears.

Or being told on Xmas Eve that Santa had had a crash with an aeroplane and died.

joy.

[zotz]

The only one I remember is my Mum saying that eating the crusts of the toast would make my hair curl. She *knew* I was leaving them because I didn't want curly hair, though, and she said it anyway.

Strange.

[sparklegoth.livejournal.com]

My mother (a woman of medical science) told me that getting lovebites would increase my risk of getting cancer when I was sixteen. She hated me getting lovebites though, said I looked like a woman of ill-repute.

[skx.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this counts .. but there were so many times when my mum would
say "Don't go near the edge, you'll fall in.." - which never happened.

Also, I was taught never to say the word 'r a t s' indoors - which made for some
amusing conversions when I was one the phone to my parents discussing my pet
rats.
(Actually I still find that hard to do; I have to make a conscious effort to
say the word when I'm in my flat - elsewhere I'm fine).

Something else which I've inheritted is the absolute preference for walking in places
by the side-door, and not the front door. The front door being reserved for wakes, and
taking corpses out of. I suspect that's a Yorkshire thing though.

.. Feel morbid now :(

[fire-sermon.livejournal.com]

When I was very little I wanted my parents to take me to the cinema to see Star Wars - I think it was being re-run at the local cinema and some of my friends from school had been to see it and had been playing with their action figures and talking about it a lot. As I was about five and couldn't really read at that point, I was non the wiser when my evil parents took me to see Disney's inferior The Black Hole instead and told me it was in fact Star Wars.

Even at that young age I thought it was a load of dull nonsense and when Empire and Jedi came out, I had no interest at all in seeing it. Only finally when the real Star Wars was on tv one Christmas and I watched it and thinking this was nothing like I remembered, my parents confessed their little lie ...

Eat this....

[volterra.livejournal.com]

"It's just sausages in white sauce...."

*after some poking around: "Mum, I think they forgot to put the filling in."

Whereupon she confesses it was really tripe. Ew!

[furrylemming.livejournal.com]

My favourite ones as a kid were...sitting on cold rocks will give you piles, if you pull a face and the wind changes you'll be stuck that way, picking up toads gives you warts, and you'll get a cold if you go out with wet hair.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

We got the usual food myths designed to make you eat things that are good for you such as 'crusts make your hair curly', 'carrots make you see in the dark' (ever wonder about all those squashed rabbits on the roads?), and 'if you don't eat it we'll have to send it to the starving children in [insert newsworthy famine area here].

My favourites were the lies that my Dad told me just to wind other people up:

Small yappy dogs like Yorkshire terriers etc are 'rats in fur coats'

Those red-and-white striped tents you see at roadworks are where Sunderland United players live.

[winterthing.livejournal.com]

Not exaxctly a lie, but I still remember my mother's response when she found out a boyfriend of mine was bisexual. She just looked at me with utter horror and said "but then he'll have AIDs".

I think she was a bit upset when I burst out laughing.