I was thinking about my Mom’s a Liar essay and the things I was told as a child, often in an off-hand, humorous manner, that I absolutely believed and still, to this day, have a hard time shaking off.
I’m not talking about Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny here. I mean stuff like this:
“Your leg will get stuck there!” My mom said this to me, probably as a joke, as I was trying to put my foot behind my head one day. I believed her immediately and could never shake the worry even when I saw other people successfully get their feet from behind their head. Perhaps one day, one of my biggest regrets will be that I never put my foot behind my head when I was flexible enough to do it.
“If you sneeze with your eyes open, your eyeballs will fly out of the sockets.” I’m not even sure where I heard this one, but I’m still paranoid about it. Actually, maybe this one IS true? I don’t think I’ll test it.
“Sometimes people accidentally swallow their tongues when they sleep.” My brother said this to me when I was four years old, after we watched an episode of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not featuring a tongue-swallowing man. Sometimes I am still overcome with a moment of panic as I lay in bed at night that I might accidentally swallow my tongue as I sleep.
Got any of your own to share?
My favorite was always “If you keep making that face, it’ll freeze that way.” Not sure I really believed it, but my mom said it a lot. I thought she was really clever until I realized a lot of other parents said that one too!
I’m thinking and thinking, and can’t come up with anything like that. I had 4 older siblings to torment me with misinformation. The things my mother taught me that I now consider to be outrageous, are things she still believes.