Crazy things your parents told you

I got new socks today. I put them on without washing (them; I did take a bath earlier.)

My feet feel kind of itchy now -

My Family always said - if it "comes in from Over Seas" - make sure to wash it - because "they" "spray it with something".

Um, Oooo Kaaaaay ~

I can see washing new dishes and most clothes. And absolutely things you may pick out of a garbage dumpster buy at a garage sale or resale shop.

Socks?

Uh oh. Maybe they were right?

And all manner of other crazy ideas they'd lay on me - I'm sure I can think of umpteen moar - just thought of this as these socks do feel itchy and it made me think that other people have had to have some crazy thoughts, urban legends, weird tales, superstitions - laid on them too.

What say you?

I know there were plenty of weird things like that, but I can only think of two right now:

Don't run through the sprinkler. The cold water will give you polio. (I think I'm dating myself here)

Don't read in dim light (or sit too close to the TV). It will ruin your vision.

larious

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Shauna's like a gluten-free Jim Jones for dumb, lifeless middle-aged women. I swear, this bitch could set fire to a orphanage and they would applaud her for bringing them light. ~ Miss Hannigan

My grandmother told me to never wash my hair during a menstrual cycle :crz *blerf* I felt ooky as it was during that time of the month, I wasn't going to go around with a greasy head of hair, too. Also, women were supposed to avoid strenuous activity during that time.

As for clothes - yeah, I wash everything before wearing it. Does stand to reason that starch or some other kind of chemical that will make new clothes look crisp is sprayed on. I have noticed that new clothing is more relaxed once it gets washed or dry cleaned.

Like I would pass up this topic.

I also got the nonsense about reading in dim light and sitting too close to the TV. Here's some of the amusing shit I've heard from my mother:

- Don't put warm food in the refrigerator because it will make you get botulism

- Sugar has 100 calories in a teaspoon. *shows her nutrition facts which state sugar has 15 calories per tablespoon* "Well it's wrong."

- Sweet 'N Low causes cancer (never mind she used it for 30 years, but stopped because a rat died from it)

- Don't talk to ANY stranger because if you do, they'll "take you and rape you." (at age 4, I can't say I knew what "rape" meant). Failed to mention that some strangers - like teachers and store employees - were okay to talk to.

- Don't use bubble bath because you'll get a crotch infection.

- Don't use conditioner because it makes your hair "greasy." My hair was down to my hips as a kid, so you can imagine what a rats nest it was without conditioning.

- If you drive over absolutely anything, it will ruin the car's alignment.

- Don't use your headlights for any reason whatsoever, even in fog.

- If you get on a bus (like a Greyhound) to go anywhere, every single criminal, murderer and rapist within a 100 mile radius will be on the same bus and they will single ME out and murder me in order to steal my luggage and sell it for drug money. (Thankfully she has outgrown this and I've traveled by bus several times in the last few years)

- There's no such thing as driving too slow.

- If I didn't do so hot on a homework assignment or a quiz, it would completely destroy my future to the point that "not even Wal Mart will hire you." Yes, because getting a 75 on a literature quiz means I'm a complete retard.

- Don't use the vacuum cleaner to suck up cat litter in the rug because it will mix with animal hair and ruin the vacuum. Suggested method of cleaning: Sweeping. (Yeah, you have fun sweeping litter out of a rug. I'll be using the vacuum like a normal human being).

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I'm sure there are more - I'll post those when I think of them. As a bonus, here's some of the crazy shit my grandmother used to say (I can see where my mother got her talent from):

- Don't bounce a ball (any kind of ball) off your head or you'll break your brain and vomit blood.

- Cats got disease (never was told what kind of disease, exactly)

- Pixy Stix are poison

- Close the blinds at 5 pm, otherwise all the welfare trash will be peeking in the windows at us.

@Cambion:

I know I've read your posts with these tidbits before, but all in one post, just wow.

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michaela

"A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter." -Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal

Just remembered another one. I liked to drink the last bit of oil and vinegar salad dressing from the bottom of the bowl, and my mom would say:

Don't drink that because the vinegar will thin your blood.

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Shauna's like a gluten-free Jim Jones for dumb, lifeless middle-aged women. I swear, this bitch could set fire to a orphanage and they would applaud her for bringing them light. ~ Miss Hannigan

- my dad once told me that men have fewer ribs than women, because God made eve from adam's rib. he also said doctors had confirmed this fact. until this day I still can't believe he believe it.

- apparently, if a guy doesn't pick up a girl in her own house and makes an appointment to meet her somewhere else instead, that makes the girl a slut.

- I think they are right about the damage of sitting too close to the tv. it can cause myopia. however, damage caused by reading with dim lighting is a joke.

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Cambion
"If I didn't do so hot on a homework assignment or a quiz, it would completely destroy my future to the point that "not even Wal Mart will hire you." Yes, because getting a 75 on a literature quiz means I'm a complete retard.

this! I understand very much! apparently I was a lazy retard with no future if I got anything below 90 in grade school. LOL.

My parents didn't tell me andy crazy shit when I was a kid but here's some of the things my grandparents and great aunts/uncles would say:

People who love cold weather have dog blood in them and that's how they're able to tolerate the weather conditions.


Spending a lot of time alone is a gateway to schizophrenia


Take the shed hair out of your combs and brushes and burn it instead of throwing it away. If you throw it out then A) birds will make a nest out of it, or someone could use it to put a hex on you.

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pepper labeija
My parents didn't tell me andy crazy shit when I was a kid but here's some of the things my grandparents and great aunts/uncles would say:

People who love cold weather have dog blood in them and that's how they're able to tolerate the weather conditions.

:::howls with laughter::::: larious

Whaaat? A lot of old folk tales get garbled into factoids, but I couldn't find anything like that on the internet. Did they ever explain just how a human gets dog blood into their makeup - unless there's something werewolfy going on? eyes2

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pepper labeija
Take the shed hair out of your combs and brushes and burn it instead of throwing it away. If you throw it out then A) birds will make a nest out of it, or someone could use it to put a hex on you.

I can see the hex thing. Sounds like an old European tale. And I brush my dogs outside and let their hair get picked up and blown away for the same reason. I swear, there were several mourning doves who honed in on the house when they saw fur wisp off the back porch. They build some big honkin' nests.

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Cambion
- Don't talk to ANY stranger because if you do, they'll "take you and rape you." (at age 4, I can't say I knew what "rape" meant). Failed to mention that some strangers - like teachers and store employees - were okay to talk to.

- If you get on a bus (like a Greyhound) to go anywhere, every single criminal, murderer and rapist within a 100 mile radius will be on the same bus and they will single ME out and murder me in order to steal my luggage and sell it for drug money. (Thankfully she has outgrown this and I've traveled by bus several times in the last few years)

Cambion, I have to wonder if a lot of issues that older women had with sex, passing the dysfunction to their daughters, and so on .... has to do with sexual abuse or rape that they were never able to resolve. I've come to know that women from my grandmother's day (she was born in 1912) - well, things happened to them and there wasn't much they could do but try to move on. In one hysterical outburst, my grandmother admitted that she had been raped. Her father was a compete asshole (according to her .... I often don't know what was true and what was embellished in her mind) and, rather than trying to get justice, threatened the young man and forced him to pay - as in money - for "ruinin' my daughter." My grandmother didn't get any of the money; it was compensation to her father since her value had gone down and she wasn't worth as much to any decent man. According to my grandmother (taking into account the amount of confabulating she did) rape happened and was never discussed, except among young women who suffered the crime. They didn't tell their parents or future husbands because of the shame.

If that tale was true, it would explain the crazy attitude my grandmother had toward rape. My sisters and I were never told any twisted tales by my mother, but I heard them from my grandmother, meaning Mom most likely heard them but knew not to repeat them to her daughters. But, blowing situations out of proportion, like your mom - I heard that. My grandmother was absolutely, 100% sure that on my nightly commute to work, my car was going to break down in an isolated spot at the exact time that a rapist was lurking in the area. I was going to be pulled from the car and raped. It was something that was gonna happen, so I just better prepare myself. No matter the logic I used ("Grandma I take care of my car - a breakdown isn't likely"; "Grandma, the only isolated spot is about a block long, there are a number of businesses otherwise where I could get help"; Grandma, I carry a crow bar next to my seat. I'd be sure to flourish it if I felt threatened - not that I would get out of the car if I saw a stranger lurking nearby") I was going to eventually be raped.

I was always in a state of 1/10 pity and 9/10 exasperation with that woman.

It wasn't my mom but instead my mom's (older male) friend who used to always say to me, "Ketchup, it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is to fall in love with a poor man." My parents split when I was 8, so this "famblee friend" allowed mom to continue her country club lifestyle after the divorce and as a result, I got to put up with a lot of insulting shit from him. This included comments about how I should "marry rich", how I should have been earning $60K right out of college (with a BA in social sciences, in 1998 ), how working in a restaurant was "beneath me" (I was a bartender for several years out of college and made good money at it), and other elitist horseshit. He's been dead for ten years but no doubt my life choices would have disappointed him.

Wow

This is some crazy stuff right here!

I actually had to use an old time 'tip' this am. - toilet tank filling - and kept running. Jiggle the handle ~

(yes, it worked. hangs head in shame.)

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Zzelda
Wow

This is some crazy stuff right here!

I actually had to use an old time 'tip' this am. - toilet tank filling - and kept running. Jiggle the handle ~

(yes, it worked. hangs head in shame.)

But that's a sensible tip, because usually if the toilet tank keeps filling the valve hasn't closed properly, and jiggling the handle gives it a chance to settle properly.

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Zzelda
I actually had to use an old time 'tip' this am. - toilet tank filling - and kept running. Jiggle the handle ~

(yes, it worked. hangs head in shame.)

If you pay for water, you probably want to have that checked out.

When we bought our current house, one of the toilets kept doing that. It also had a constant trickle of water going into the bowl. Thinking "meh, that's just a trickle. I'll put it on the punch list (we were doing a lot of remodel work)" we let it slide. A week or so later ::: open water bill::: "GASP! Shiiiit! $95!" (Our 60 day bill was usually 25-30).

We called the water company, thinking there was a major leak somewhere. This is kind of hilarious ---- they brought out a laptop and showed us a graph of water usage. It's a flat line when no water is running, spiking every time you flush or take a shower, even showing the time. I popped Dh when he remarked, in front of the water guy, "damn, how many times a night do you get up and go pee?" But there was also a line showing a constant use of water, over a couple of weeks. It was that damned toilet.

Dh headed right out to Lowes to get all new parts for the toilet.

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Zzelda
Wow

This is some crazy stuff right here!

I'm sure age has much to do with my attitude. I've always tried to use as much common sense as possible in life, but look back on my youth and realize how much energy I expended arguing against the nonsense of other people. Now, my attitude is "yeah, yeah, if you want to believe that crap, have at it. I think you're being ridiculous. I can't change your mind, but if you want me to not get up and leave, you put a stopper on that kind of talk."

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Ketchup
how working in a restaurant was "beneath me" (I was a bartender for several years out of college and made good money at it), and other elitist horseshit. He's been dead for ten years but no doubt my life choices would have disappointed him.

pfffft. Younger Sister is a paralegal, but still bartends on the odd weekend when big crowds sweep in for events or conventions. Since she's done it for a long time, knowing how to deal with people, she makes some nice tips. When there are basketball or football games in town (living in an area with large arenas) she makes more $$ over two nights than she earns in one week as a paralegal.

In the long run, what's important is how well she's been able to support her family. The kind of exposure she's had, dealing with the upper class in legal proceedings, has not given her the ambition to be a social climber.

I love my mom dearly, but she had this fixation with hiding money all over the house. Each little stash was not a lot of cash, say maybe $10 or so, but anytime she had some extra money she would squirrel it away in places like the arm protectors of her old sofa, or in the hem of a dress in her closet or at the top of a medicine cabinet in our guest bathroom. The big problem was she would forget where she put the money, so it was like an easter egg hunt when dad or I would uncover one of her hiding places. We would hand her the money and she would go off and hide it somewhere else. When she sold the house and moved into an senior citizen community, we spent four whole days looking all over her house and found a total of almost $2,000. To this day I don't know why she did it, but she once explained it was something that a lot of people of her generation did when the bank failures hit in the Depression.

Oh the quirks some people have.

My mother would often tell me that if I didn't pray, I would fail tests at school. I could study all I wanted, as hard as I wanted, but it would all be down the shitter if I didn't ask Dog to let me pass. I never did, and I -you guessed it!- still passed!

My moo gave me tons of bad advice about all sorts of things. Not crazy old superstitions, just plain crappy advice. There were also the things she did not say but obviously thought. One thing which stands out was her not wanting me to work at all during the school year in high school and college. She said my focus should be on my schoolwork. She thought I just had to get good grades and when I graduated college employers would be beating a path to my door. Of course I found out this was not true.

Dorisan,your comment about rape and sexual abuse was quite interesting. Mom never came right out and said sex is dirty and bad, but she clearly thought this. But oddly her mother seemed a little less inhibited than her. Mom also seems to dislike men. Well, she dislikes people in general but men even more than women. Maybe she simply hated her father more than her mother, or maybe there is something else involved.

I have been told that if you dream about shit, someone in the family would die. If a male dreamed of doo doo, then a female in the family would die. And if a female dreamed of doo, a male in the family would die.

Oh, here's one I forgot that I still hear:

"Don't scratch/pick at your face. People will think you have infantigo."

Not "impetigo." Infantigo. I'm still not sure what exactly that it or what it has to do with the occasional blemish mark on my face. Apparently, infantigo is characterized by scars/scabs on any area of the body. I also heard about it when I used to scratch my legs bloody because they were so dry.

@Ondinette, mine was the same way about working while in school. I wasn't allowed to have a job in high school and was told not to work in college. I was to focus on school and only school so, in my mother's words, "You can get good grades and get a $100,000 gravy job." Trying to explain to her that there is no such thing as a six-figure gravy job in any art field falls on deaf ears because she has a severe case of I'm Always Right Syndrome.

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pepper labeija
My parents didn't tell me andy crazy shit when I was a kid but here's some of the things my grandparents and great aunts/uncles would say:

People who love cold weather have dog blood in them and that's how they're able to tolerate the weather conditions.


Spending a lot of time alone is a gateway to schizophrenia


Take the shed hair out of your combs and brushes and burn it instead of throwing it away. If you throw it out then A) birds will make a nest out of it, or someone could use it to put a hex on you.

By that logic, I'm part dog and have schizophrenia! Great to know!


I'm sure my parents have told me crazy/stupid shit before but I'm not remembering.
The only thing I can recall is my mother telling me that popping my knuckles will give me arthritis.
Because the endless amount of typing and writing I do a day is totally safe. No, even after I explain this is a myth to her she still gives me this shit.

“I don’t have pet peeves, I have major, psychotic fucking hatreds.”
— George Carlin

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frenzy
The only thing I can recall is my mother telling me that popping my knuckles will give me arthritis.

My mother told me that one as well.
She also threatened me with charm school if I didn't act more "ladylike."

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Ketchup
It wasn't my mom but instead my mom's (older male) friend who used to always say to me, "Ketchup, it's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is to fall in love with a poor man."

Except that nowadays, rich men very often rightly expect women to earn their OWN money. If a man doesn't expect that, he will likely expect his wife to be a "happy housewife" - or at least a submissive wife.

On top of that, what if the the rich man doesn't want to marry HER?

My parents never told me anything stupid. They were very big on the common sense and intelligence fronts.

However, my friend's mom told me that if I sat on cold concrete, I'd get hemorrhoids. I didn't quite understand how that worked.

It's your hell; you rot in it!