I was googling why robins have red breasts and it turns out it has nothing to do with what my parents taught me when I was very little. They told me it had something to do with an increase in blood pressure to keep them warm during Winter - hence the reason they are always on Christmas cards etc and you don't see them in Summer because they're breasts aren't red in warmer months. I've just realised via google they were full of crap. What did your parents or teachers tell you when you were little, that you somehow believed well into your should-have-known-better years?
I always thought that if you put a buttercup under your neck and your skin shone yellow, you liked butter. Of course that isn't true. My sister always believed my dad when he said the smoke coming out of factories was how they made new clouds. And I suppose a lot of people said that I should never break the rules of writing, but that was probably because they wanted me to know all the rules before I broke them.
I must have had great parents if they didn't know, they didn't make anything up they just headed for the encyclopedia set.
Mine a pretty culture specific. Latinos will recognize these: Taking a bath when you are sick will surely kill you. Bats will entangle themselves in women's hair if they don't have it "done up" at night. Rats will pee on uneaten food so that other rats can't have any because rats are spiteful. Going out in the very early hours will cause "la serena" to get you. Hanging two-liter bottles filled with water at the cookout will scare the flies away.
Yeah, standard response in our house was "Look it up!". Of course, there were a lot of "wives' tales" around, but everybody believed those! I'm fascinated by the robin story though - up here we only see robins in the spring/summer and our Christmas cards have cardinals, not robins...
My parents, at one time, had me convinced that if I ate enough strawberries/raspberries/watermelon I would turn pink.
Not all my life, breaking the rules slightly, but I was told at a very young age that Robbin Hood was buried in a wood near my parent's house and I believed it for about a year.
That the authorities only wants what is best for us, and that Cannabis is a deadly drug. (Ironic considering my parents drink several bottles of wine a week)
My parents never taught me anything. I'm surprised I survived this long. Is that better than being BSed? I don't know.
I hope you're joking because this is really sad I'm surprised no one's mentioned Santa yet lol. Santa isn't really a Chinese thing so I never believed in it myself. As for myself, let's see... 1. you sneeze because you're cold (although it is true that my dad actually does sneeze when the room is too hot lol) 2. if you played enough sports when you're young and still growing, you'll be tall (one of my science teachers actually agreed with this though, and my medic friend told me it could be true cus it stimulates the muscles. But anyway, I was laughed at by all my friends when I mentioned this) 3. you'll get a headache if you sleep with your hair wet (I actually never believed this, but my mum believed this so fervently we got into a really nasty fight over this once when I was a teen) 4. Oh yeah, that there's no point keeping up with my Chinese language... 5. Art and writing are a brilliant and lovely hobby, but a waste of time otherwise. I should definitely pursue it, but only as a hobby, of course. (in their defence, they've always been encouraging - they just realise how hard it would be for me to live on making art, and wanted me to have a stable life)
Does it count if you never believed them? My dad tried to tell me the long hair on my male friend was dirty, the Commies were inspiring us to protest the Vietnam War, and SE Asia would fall like dominoes if we didn't fight the communists.
When I was a kid of about ten or so, I saw pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was in his competitive bodybuilding days. I asked my mom for a weight set, because I wanted to be a bodybuilder, too. She told me that lifting weights while I was still growing would stunt my growth. This turns out to be a common misconception. It's too bad I didn't fight harder for it, because it's the only sport I ever expressed any interest in, and I didn't pursue it as an adult. I'm in lousy shape to this day. Arrgh.
If you're about to choke on a fishbone, eat rye bread. If you have a stomach flu, drink orange soda. No one needs meds for psychological problems. You tough it out and go chop wood. If you make faces and the wind changes, that expression's gonna stick on your face. If you sit in a hole in the ice, you're gonna get a urinal tract infection (I'm not convinced just cold causes that). There must be other stuff, but I can't remember them right now. It was pretty usual to tell stories in our household. Some absolutely horrible, like my dad said he's got AIDS on his knee when I asked what was wrong with it (he had gotten hit by an ice hockey puck) or when I noticed my big brother had a weird bump on his elbow, he said it was cancer even though his elbows were just weird that way. I didn't realize until later that these were all mean lies >:/
-you should always be nice to people -you should eat lots of potatos (this was my grandma on my mom's side, her cure for every problem in the world) -don't lick a knife -don't eat with a knife -don't play with a knife -put more than two pieces of candy or whatever in your mouth at any one time and you'll choke -people who listen to/play metal, are all heroin junkies and rapists who'd sell their own grandmothers for a fix (yup, playing in a metal-ish band nowadays and I'm still not a heroin junkie, rapist, or a granny pimp) -metal/punk concerts are the equivalent of hell on Earth -like with KaTrian's folks, nobody needs shrinks/psychologists or anti-depressants: just get a grip and think happy thoughts -only sailors and human trash have tattoos and piercings (yea, I have tattoos now) There's plenty more but can't think of any at the moment. Oh, and then there was all that crap about not testing your limits as a kid: don't drink too much, don't try drugs, don't smoke, don't stay up too late, don't go into strange places with strange people to do strange things (the last one has been particularly rewarding considering writing material) etc. etc. Like dear William Blake said: "the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." Still looking for that palace though... Edit: oh yeah, these: -"hard" combat sports (like muay thai, kick boxing, boxing etc) will get you injured more than "traditional" martial arts like karate, kung fu etc. I've met several guys who went from karate to MMA and said the amount of injuries they sustained dropped noticeably because the training methods are a bit easier on the body even though the sport has a bid of a bad reputation -combat sports are for dumb people whereas traditional martial arts have a spiritual side
First, I've got to say, Look at Minstrel! Bumped up to the orange! Excellent to see that. Onto the subject, I can't think of anything specific my parents told me, but I do recall my grandmother telling me that if I continued picking at the skin around my nails that no boy would ever date me.
That the pale inner leaves of a lettuce are the most nutritious, and therefore you must eat them. Only recently asked my mum about it and she said "what? Oh no that's rubbish." @_@ Also I'm pretty sure my mum once told us that: - if you eat apple pips you'll grow a tree in your stomach - If you eat lots of spinach you'll turn into Popeye (I'm not sure if this was meant to encourage or discourage us) - If you eat cheese before you go to bed, you'll have nightmares
