I started thinking back about the things I was told as a child and thought it would be good for a laugh to post some.
When we are children, parents would tell us certain things, all too many of which were lies to get us to behave properly. Other things could be seen as passing on sage wisdom of the ages.
I think the biggest of all things is Santa Claus. Now granted, telling children about a mythical creature that can visit every home in the world in one night, have time to leave presents, and have milk and cookies at each place leaves us open to the realm of magic. (And allowing ourselves to believe in magic allows us to be open to energy healing, like Reiki.)
But I think the worst is to tell a child that if they’re not good, they will only find a lump of coal in their stocking. And in reality, what parent whose child misbehaves on Christmas Eve is going to hide the presents that they spent hundreds of dollars on and give their kid coal? (We did something like this one year as a joke. We left a stocking on our daughter’s door with a lump of coal in it. She really wasn’t amused.)
My mother used to tell me that how the first day of the year went was how the rest of the year would go. (And trust me, kids believe these things.) Can you imagine having a really bad New Years Day? Man it would make you want to pack it in for the rest of the year.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Well that definitely turned out to be true. After all, doctors don’t make house calls any more. You have to go see them.
Speaking of doctors, how many have gone with their parents to get a shot and had the parent tell you “this is going to hurt me more than it is you”? Really? Well, why don’t we get the doctor to jam a needle into you and see which truly hurts more.
During the summer when we would have watermelon, my father would tell me that if I ate any of the seeds, a watermelon would grow in my stomach. In fact, this seems to be one of the all time myths parents tell their kids. I kept wondering why my stomach wasn’t getting bigger and vines were going to come out of my ears.
How about if you play with your privates too much, you’ll go blind. There would always be someone that would come back with “can I do it till I need glasses?”
If you stick out your tongue again, it will be stuck there permanently. How many actually stopped?
Or how about “If you tell me the truth, you won’t get in trouble.” Uhh, that’s because by this point you’re already neck deep in the brown stuff. They just want you to confess to find out the little pieces they’re missing.
Then there’s the old Pinocchio one. The parent will tell the child that their nose will keep growing longer if they tell lies. It made me wonder if I should keep a tape measure on me so I could keep track of it and see how noticeable it was.
And the one I remember most is being told to wear clean underwear in case I was ever in an accident. Well, I really hope that the EMTs that come out in the ambulance and the doctors in the ER are going to be concerned with more than the condition of my underwear. I can see the triage nurse telling the doctors, “The one on the left has six stab wounds. The one in the middle needs treatment for a concussion, and dirty drawers over there has a broken arm.” And in reality, I would think that if one was in a bad enough accident, the first thing they would do would be soil their underwear.
Oh well, parents. Go figure.