When Parents Go Full Blown ‘Crazy Mode’ with Nonsense Warnings

Chasing Dimples with Pencils

My Mom would always tell me to take that look off my face, or it would freeze like that when I was little. I took that as a fact. I really wanted dimples like my friend down the street so I would sit in my room with pencil erasers pushed into my cheeks forever.

Plate vs. Pimple

“Every rice left on your plate would be a new pimple on your face.”

Don’t Judge a Steak by Its Color

“You can’t eat steak that is pink on the inside. That’s how you get sick.” Believed this till I was about 19 until I learned that it pretty much can be as red in the center as you like so long as it’s properly seared…turned out my mom just didn’t like rare steak and felt uncomfortable making it for me and my sister, so she just lied.

Cursive Crisis Averted

I would be unemployable if I didn’t learn cursive handwriting. Parents and teachers made me think that every job interview would have a cursive test in which they would measure the loops on the L’s or something.

Credit: freepik

Forced to Right

I was born left-handed. My pops used to smack the sh*t outta me if I used my left hand, in essence forcing me to be right-handed. I had to constantly remind myself to use the hand with my birthmark to avoid smacks. As an adult, I asked my pops why he forced me to be right-handed, and he gave some tepid response about ‘when you’re left-handed you have a tendency to pull that way when you’re driving exposing you to oncoming traffic’ Sounded like bullsh*t to me, and is confirmed by all the left-hand driver is the world that doesn’t spontaneously drive into oncoming traffic. If anyone has any ideas I’d love to know. For reference, my father is an old-school Vietnamese dude. I feel like it’s a cultural thing, but I was raised American and have no idea.

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Socks and Shadows

Don’t sleep with socks; you’ll become blind.

reddituser

Prawn Wisdom

My dad used to not allow us to eat prawns when were younger because it would make us stupid. Of course, this was a lie, but I think it partly came from this idiom in my language which translates literally into prawn’s brain – which means someone who is stupid. The idiom is derived from the fact that the prawn keeps its fecal matter in its head (??). Hence an old wife’s tale leads to a prawnless life. My friends ended up ridiculing me the first time I ate it because I thought I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t allowed to eat prawns when I was younger.

Breaking the Beat

“Playing drums will never get you anywhere.” Toured the world, had a record deal, met my wife while on tour, still playing professionally well into my 40s.

Clearing the Air

People are going to push you to smoke (cigarettes)!

Everyone I’ve ever met who smokes and offers me a cigarette says the same thing when I tell them I don’t smoke. “Good for you. I wish I didn’t.”

Nitemarephantom

A Hairy Situation

If I used one brand of shampoo and a different brand of conditioner, my hair would fall out. Also when I was five or six, I asked what would happen if you went the opposite way that you turned the turn signal. My mom told me the car would explode and kill us. Not sure why she told me that sh*t.

reddituser

From Pixels to Perfect Vision

“If you sit too close to the TV, you will go blind.” I’ve been working in IT in front of a monitor for 20 years now. I’m 41, and still 20/20.

From Teens to Lifelong Team

When I was ages 13-16, Mom used to say things like “You won’t still be friends with your friends now when you are an adult.” and “Don’t worry about that, you won’t even know those people in ten years.” I’m now 36, and my best friends (it’s a group of like 6 of us) have literally been friends for over 20 years. I am closer to these guys than I am to some family. We are like a brotherhood.

Retro Resumes vs. Digital Dreams

I remember one day a few years ago my mother flipped out on me because she thought I was being lazy looking for a summer job. I had applied online to every major grocery store in my area and was waiting to hear back. She was yelling at me to go in and talk to a manager. I told her it doesn’t work like that anymore. Sure enough just 2 days later I got a call from Walmart telling me to come in for an interview, which I did and ended up getting the job. I remember when working there. I would occasionally see a young kid come over to customer service with a resume in their hand and ask to talk to a manager. They would all get told the same thing: apply online, and we’ll call you.

A lot of people can’t grasp it’s not 1992 anymore and you don’t just waltz in and slap a resume on the table and get hired because a manager liked your drive.

Long Hair, Don’t Care

“Don’t grow your hair long! Girls think it’s ugly!”

Stopped listening last year and every girl I know says they like my hair this long (6 inches give or take). It used to look so bad. My mom kept dragging me to great clips where they’d f*ck up my hair for half an hour and then slam a ton of low-quality gel into it. I saw a picture of me last year and cringed at my hair more than the SoundCloud rapper tattoos my friends drew on me with makeup.

reddituser

Press Start to Success

Playing video games will make me a loser, prevent me from getting a girlfriend, and stop me from getting a good job.

I’m happily married, worked in production at a game company for 5 years, and turned those skills into a career I love.

Got the last laugh by flying them to LA to see my office and saw them flabbergasted at what a career in gaming can be.

Tube of Terrors

My older brother told me that if I left the cap off the toothpaste, spiders would lay their eggs inside the tube. It was an effective lie.

Bullied to Beast Mode

I was bullied a LOT as a kid. I was smaller than the others and awkward. I always heard “If someone hits you or tries to beat you up, don’t fight back! This will make them angrier, and you’ll get more hurt. Plus, if the cops get involved, you’ll get arrested!”

So I got my butt kicked on a regular basis for years, usually by the same kids (reporting does less than nothing) until I finally got royally fed up with it in 9th grade and went completely feral on one of the kids when he approached me. Turns out that being straight-up tackled and attacked with teeth and claws is an incredibly effective defense against someone trying to sucker punch you.

Bullying not only from him and his friends stopped (they were terrified of me from then on), I caught much less sh*t from others too, and even made more friends.

Years later, in what I can only assume is an unrelated coincidence, I also became a furry.

Ink and Carry

My dad was one of those people. He was hardcore against anything that wasn’t “normal” in his eyes. Fought me about getting tattoos. But I got them anyway. Was still able to get jobs and have lived a pretty normal life ever since.

When I got my first actual job, I thought “Hey! I’ll be responsible and bring in my own lunch!”. So I bring a shoulder bag (no logos, just plain black) with me on my first day to hold it in (plus other small essentials just in case). He offered me a lift saw this bag, and tried to convince me to leave it at home. When I asked why I would do that he rolled his eyes and said “You’ll just never learn, will you? You’ll stand out!”.

Queue my arrival to work, and everybody is wearing shoulder bags, backpacks, handbags, and briefcases. I didn’t let him off with that one for a solid month.

I can see why tattoos may have been a big deal to him if a bag was seen as a statement maker.

Shooting Down Misconceptions

“Guns are evil, and there’s no reason anyone should have them,” or words to that effect. Amazingly this was said both before and after we moved from the San Jose Bay Area to rural Northern Nevada. You might be able to make that argument in the city, but after learning about what ranchers deal with on a semi-regular basis (coyotes, cougars, snakes, mortally wounded livestock, and so on), I wised up. Guns are a tool, and in some cases a very necessary one, as in life-or-death necessary. I’m not going to get into the finer points of where that line is drawn, but I can tell you that the simple fact that a person owns a gun doesn’t make them evil or dangerous or anything of the sort.

To be fair, this was said by my mother, who had a slew of gun-related tragedies hit one after the other when she was fairly young. She is legit traumatized by guns I think.

Follow Your Passion, Not the Degree

My mom told me that I needed to go to college to get a good job. I am 38 years old, have no degree, and am running my own consulting business making 6 figures. I will always tell my kids that college can help, but it is about experiences and finding what you love to do that matters most.

The Scented Slumber

When I couldn’t sleep, my mother would give me a sleeping potion. A dab on the nose, sniff it, and I would fall asleep. Once, when I was about 16 or 17 I couldn’t sleep, so I asked my mom if she could give me some of that stuff she did when I was a kid… “It was perfume you idiot”

elguapo_frank

Parental Masterminds

When my brother, sister, and I were little, we played a game where every time my mom or dad would yell STATUE (usually at a moment when we were being particularly rowdy), we’d all freeze in place. The first person to crack lost the game. We loved the sh*t out of that game – I think one time, we were locked in an epic statue battle for close to an hour.

It took me until I was about 14 to figure out this was an extremely clever way to make children shut up. When I was a camp counselor, I’d use it on my kids all the time. Genius, Mom and Dad. Genius.

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Misguided Milk Beliefs

My parents told me that chocolate milk came from brown cows. I had no reason not to believe them.

When I was 5, a teacher rhetorically asked the class if chocolate milk came from brown cows. Everyone screamed out at the same time:

Class: “NooOooooOOOoo!”

Me: “Yes!”

Turns out, my parents are liars.

reddituser

Buckling Up for Speed

My mom told me the wheels of a car couldn’t move until every seatbelt had been buckled. That there was literally a mechanism preventing the wheels from rotating till everyone buckled.

I believed this for 24 years. You bet I’ll tell my children the same thing.

theomega23

Mac & Cheese Memories

When I was a kid, my mother would occasionally make mac & cheese. I thought I was an awesome little chef & wanted to help with everything when in reality I was just getting in the way. It made her nervous what with the boiling water and all. So she would give me the cheese packet, not the powdery kind, the gross but oh-so-delicious cheese goo & tell me it needed “mixing”. I would sit on a stool in the kitchen for like 10 minutes poking at this little bag of cheese to ‘mix’ it up. I did this last summer when I was making it for myself (I’m 20) & my mother saw it when she passed through the kitchen & busted out laughing. I was just sitting on the stool, diligently kneading cheese. I felt like a bit of a moron when she explained her laughter. You’d think I would have noticed that it wasn’t on the directions.

thanatopsislight

The Power of the Beard

Shave your beard before interviewing for a job. I have NEVER been hired after interviewing with a bare face. I have NEVER failed to be hired after interviewing with a beard. 2008 through 2011 would have been a great deal easier if I hadn’t followed their advice.

Tree Turtle Deception

You know the knots on trees? My parents told my younger brother and me they were “tree turtles.” Essentially the flying red turtles from Mario games. We were young, and our dad worked as an arborist so we assumed it was real. They used to freak us out when we’d go in the forest or go on a hike saying “Oh look, one has hatched over here” One day culminated in my little brother running out of the woods screaming and crying because he thought he heard one coming.

The turtles were supposedly aggressive and would bite you. Our dad had a big scar on his arm from a chainsaw accident, and he would tell us it was from a tree turtle attack while working. The f*cked up part about all this is eventually they figured they should stop f*cking with us like this since my brother was getting so scared, but they never told us. So when I was about 14-15 years old, it just popped into my head one day, one of those things your brain randomly plucks from years and years ago.

“Hey…wait a sec…there’s no such thing as tree turtles!” Thanks parents.

shun-16

Behaved out of Fear

When going over to someone’s house for dinner: My mom and dad would tell me and my sister “These people really don’t like kids. They used to have kids, and they hated them.”

My sister and I were angels. We were always complimented with how well-behaved we were. We were just really terrified. I’m not sure of what, but we behaved.

Years later my sister asked why so many people don’t like kids, and it made me think of how if nobody liked kids the population would shrink.

I’m telling the same bullsh*t to my kids. If I survived so will they.

Earmuffing Calico

My mother told us that the cat hated the sound of the vacuum and it hurt poor Calico’s ears. So when she would start the vacuum my brother and I would race the cat to our bedroom and cover her with blankets so she wouldn’t have to hear that horrible noise. Poor cat loved us enough to never scratch us. Mom got us to clear out while she got the vacuuming done.

We lived on a freaking farm miles from the nearest person, and the cat spent most of her time outside safely. It never occurred to us to just open the door.

Sound of Sirens, Silence of Saints

My sisters and I would stop all the noise when we saw a police officer. Mom said we needed to be quiet or he would take us away. In cars, at school, in a hospital, anytime I saw a cop, I became a saint.

Getting my first ticket was interesting.

A Pinch of Truth

When I was a kid, I loved scrambled eggs but hated pepper. Let’s face it, scrambled eggs taste better with pepper in them, so my parents always put pepper in everyone’s eggs. When I would ask what the black flakes in my eggs were, my parents would say, “Just flakes coming off of the pan.” (Apparently, crusty pan flakes are OK but pepper isn’t.) I believed them until I was about 9.

Breath-Taking Prank

My mom told me when I was a wee thing that I had to hold my breath when we drove by cemeteries because “it was disrespectful to breathe when others couldn’t.” The last part I knew was bullsh*t, but I still held my breath when I went by cemeteries. 2 weeks ago, she told me that she only made me do that because it was funny.

reddituser

Anesthetic Negotiations

When I was a little kid and needed my tonsils taken out, I got scented anesthetic. It was allegedly bubblegum. I took one whiff of it and refused to keep the mask on. The anesthesiologist was extremely patient. He’d tell me I’d get ice cream after, and he put the mask on my stuffed cat and said, “Look, she likes it.” I gave him a withering look and pointed out it was just a stuffed animal and couldn’t actually smell it. The poor guy just sighed and said, “I’ll make a bargain with you. If you keep the mask on for ten seconds and you still don’t like it, you don’t have to wear it. We’ll get you something else. Sounds fair? Okay. Ready? One … two … ”

reddituser

Carrot Brilliance

My parents told me that carrots were good for my eyes (true) and that the more I ate at dinner, the shinier my eyes got. I’d eat and eat, and they’d get up and put sunglasses on because of how bright my eyes were, in order to get me to finish my carrots.

Trench Mouth Terror

We had an old porcelain claw foot bathtub with a narrow faucet. We figured out early how to push on the water and make a water fountain. Clearly, Mom didn’t want us making a mess with the water, but for some reason told us that we would “get trench mouth” if we drank the water from the bathtub. To this day, I will not drink any water from the bathroom. I was probably 20 when my roommate asked me why I always went downstairs for toothbrushing water, and I told her I didn’t want trench mouth. She stared at me until the lightbulb went off. D*mmit, Mom. Hahaha!

Brother’s Eternal Style

Not me, but my brother used to listen to EVERYTHING my mom said and pay attention to how she did things. When she was teaching us how to dress, she taught us to tuck in our shirts (even t-shirts) and wear our jeans mid-waist. I wore my clothes like this WAY too long, but eventually figured out that none of my friends wore their clothes like this and now I dress like a normal person. My brother, however, is 30 years old and STILL dresses like mom taught him.

Late-Night Guardian

When I was about three or four, I got into this terrible habit where I couldn’t fall asleep at night unless my mother was in the room. My poor mother spent countless nights sitting in a chair in my room until I fell asleep. For the first few weeks, if I ever woke up in the night and saw she wasn’t there, apparently I would come into her room and bother her until she came back into my room. After the first few months of doing this, every time I woke up in the night, I looked over to the chair by the door and saw that she was sitting there, waiting for me to fall asleep.

This went on for about SEVEN YEARS. Eventually, I guess I just grew out of it. One day when I was about ten I was cleaning out my closet, and this scarecrow fell out of the back of my closet and DRESSED IN MY MOTHERS CLOTHES. Apparently, my mom waited for me to fall asleep, planted this scarecrow in her chair, and went to bed. She did this every night for years, and my simple-minded child self never suspected a thing.

Illumii

The Icy Web of Deceit

When I was a kid, my mom used to tell me the ice cream shop was closed from September through April. We would drive past it during the “off” months (not often) and see people inside. She said that was the family that owned the shop and they were cleaning and prepping for next season. My little cousin asked for ice cream the other day, and I told her they were probably closed for the season already. She looked at me like I was stupid. I am.

MechE37

Lost World Beneath the Grass

When we were maybe in 3rd or 4th grade (man, kids are gullible). One day, my friend and I had our parents bring us lunch from a fast food place. As a kid, this is the kind of thing you brag about for days. Well, we were usually the first ones out playing in the field, but, considering we had to wait for our food, we ended up devoting the entire lunch period to eating. Everyone asked us where we were when we got back and what did we do?

We conjured up a story about how we have an underground play area below the grass field where we have everything from swimming pools to bike ramps to a game room with billiards and arcade machines. Pretty much everything a kid could conceivably enjoy would be in this area. When they asked if they could see it, we told them that the only way to get in was to pull the one blade of grass in the field that wouldn’t break when you yanked on it, but instead would pull open a door to the area. Whoever could find it could join us in Funland. We just lolled it off until the next day when, after eating our lunches, we strolled onto the field and saw maybe a dozen kids frantically plucking every blade of grass as they worked their way from one corner of the field systematically. They never got very far along.

It’s a shame really. It’s starting to get lonely down there by myself nowadays.

Steering My Way to Success

“Don’t drive for a living. You’ll hate it”

That was the warning my dad always gave me, he’s an HGV driver. For him it was a “this is the only thing I’m qualified to do” kind of job so any time I brought up the idea of going the same route, he warned me off. The thing is to me it was the coolest thing. I mean, it’s what my dad does, and growing up he was my hero, and I got to be around massive trucks. It was amazing to me. I think because driving has been the family game for a few generations on his side of the family, he wanted more for me. My great-grandad was a bus driver, my grandad was an HGV and bus driver, and as said my dad is an HGV driver.

Well push came to shove, and I became a bus driver earlier this year frankly I couldn’t be happier with what I do, granted the work/life balance is hard to manage while on the spare sheet and the early shifts can be brutal, but for the first time in the 10 years of working, I’m not living cheque to cheque.

I must say though, for all his warnings and saying I shouldn’t do it I’ve never seen him look as proud as he did when I handed him my PCV test sheet.

The Brownie Betrayal

So growing up my mom always told me and my sister that we couldn’t eat fresh out of the oven cookies or brownies because it would give us raging diarrhea. I ended up going to a sleepover where we made brownies, and when they were ready everyone went to dig in, but I tried to stop them with the same warning. They all looked at me in stunned silence. Then one of my friends picked up a brownie ate it, and said “Dude your mom lied to you .”

Later I told my mom about this incident, and she just busted out laughing at me.

Cranberry Sauce Magic

Growing up, my siblings and I were picky eaters, and my parents had a hard time convincing us to eat stuff. In reality, if it was something we hadn’t tried before, we really just picked up on how much they wanted us to try something, and just assumed it tasted like sh*t (we were usually right).

So my parents decided that come Thanksgiving they would act like everything they made was just the best and give no clue on if it would be icky or not. During this, my mom convinced everyone that the cranberry sauce was dessert, and we could only put it on our plate if we finished everything else.

Well, like every kid, we really wanted dessert so we did what we were told, and then lapped up the cranberry sauce like it was ice cream on a summer’s day.

It wasn’t until I was a teenager at my boyfriend’s Thanksgiving that I picked up on the fact that most people don’t consider cranberry sauce dessert. I have to say though, I still love it to this day (thanks, Mom & Dad).

reddituser

Dumped Dreams

When I was a kid, we lived in a rural area that didn’t have garbage service, so we had to load our garbage in our car and drive it to the dump ourselves. One day, while with my dad I noticed a bunch of school buses and asked him why they were parked there.

“Oh, that’s Dump School” was my dad’s sage reply.

“What’s Dump School?”

“That’s where kids go to learn about the Dump and how it works.”

Now, I don’t know why but to my young brain this sounded AWESOME! And I wanted to go to Dump School in the worst way. I bugged my dad about it all the way home until he promised that he would bring me. The next week, we went to the dump, and I was so excited. As we drove in, my dad started talking about something random. He masterfully kept me completely distracted the entire time, and I only remembered about the school on the way out.

“Next week” he promised. “Next week.”

Every week we went was like this. He would promise to drop me off and always distracted me. And I never doubted the existence of Dump School – after all, why else would all those buses be there? And my whole family was in on it. They were always talking about how awesome Dump School was. Finally, about 2 years later, my dad decided it was time to tell me that Dump School doesn’t exist. I was crushed. Not only was this awesome place not real, but I also learned that my dad would lie to me for his own amusement. And of course, he got company and help doing a boring task so it was a win-win for him.

A Slice of Beauty

My Japanese grandmother told me I’d grow up to be pretty if I rubbed my face with a watermelon rind after I ate it. Maybe there’s some skin food in watermelon, but I’m pretty sure she just wanted to get a laugh from watching her granddaughters rubbing sticky rinds all over their faces.

Bread Jumps

My roommate was baking bread and started jumping up and down and clapping about how excited she was for her bread. I panicked and grabbed her by the arm, hushing her and telling her she couldn’t jump when bread was in the oven, or it’d fall. It turns out my mom, aunt, and other family members actually believe it, and my dad didn’t tell my mom it wasn’t true so I would be quiet every once in a while. Apparently, my grandmother told it to her kids when they were young, and I finally broke the cycle.

reddituser

Sugar, Lies, and the Taste of Truth

When I was 5 or so, I had a bad habit of eating sugar from the sugar bowl. I would hide away under the kitchen table with it and just eat spoonfuls. My mom told me eating raw sugar would give me worms. Fast forward to two years ago, I was 21 and at my aunt’s house, and my cousin had a bag of vanilla-flavored sugar. I very sagely warned him not to eat too much as he would get worms. My aunt looked at me like I was an idiot (which I guess I was) and asked what I thought candy was made of. Needless to say, I fact-check everything that lying mother of mine has told me since.

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Strikes of Imagination

I was very terrified of thunderstorms for a while. My parents ended up telling me that thunder was angels bowling. Every time a thunderstorm would come along, I would look up at the clouds trying to figure out where the angels were.

reddituser

Junk Food Jinx

My childhood stupidity got me manipulated many times, but I got to manipulate my cousin who would NOT eat anything but junk food and cereal. I was tired of fighting with him to get him to eat a healthy meal while I was babysitting him one night, so I asked him if he wanted to be big and strong like his 22-year-old brother and he immediately shook his head yes. He was a very small 3-year-old, and he was obsessed with being big, so I told him that every time he ate junk food or cereal for lunch or dinner, it would make him shrink and shrink and shrink until he disappeared. But every time he ate the food that was made for him, it would make his muscles bigger. He hasn’t asked for cookies and cereal for dinner for 3 years since that night.

Hands at Risk

When I was little, my mom told me that if I didn’t thoroughly wash my hands before bed, the KuKui would smell all the food I’d eaten that day and come in the night to eat my hands off.

One night I’d had enough of the excessive scrubbing and declared that I believed she was a liar and there was no such thing as Kukuis.

We fought, and then she backed down and told me “Fine. Have it your way, but you’ll be sorry” She then sent me off to bed with my ice cream doll turned out the lights, and let me go to bed feeling triumphant.

I woke up sometime in the night to find the hands missing off my doll and IMMEDIATELY freaked out and started screaming hysterically etc.

When my mom came in I ran straight to her and cried out what was going on. She wrapped her arms around me and said “This is why you need to wash your hands before bed. he mistook your doll for you, but next time you might not be so lucky”

There was nothing sinister in her voice at any moment, just sweet worried mom’s voice. I had a hand washing problem for YEARS because of this. The hotter the water and the harder the scrub, the safer.

reddituser

Poking Hot Dogs and Pranking Parents

Me and my sister hated hot dogs when we were little. So we would just sit at the table and poke it hoping it would disappear or the cat would eat it. My parents told us to eat, or else the hot dog police would show up. Me and my sister would start getting scared and attempting to eat it. My dad would get up from the table saying he had to go upstairs to the bathroom. Somehow he would manage to climb from the balcony onto the porch. He would then go to the front door and knock really loud yelling “Hot dog police! Hot dog police!”. Me and my sister would get so scared and start crying, trying to eat our hot dogs. Such awful memories. Haha.

Cavity-Proof and Cockroach-Free

My Mom told us…

“If you don’t brush your teeth cockroaches will crawl into your mouth while you sleep and eat the leftover sugar on your teeth.”

Well it worked, I always brushed my teeth, but I also didn’t sleep as a kid because I thought bugs were going to crawl into my mouth. Seriously f*cked me up.

Indecently I’m 32 now, and I’ve never had a cavity.

Breakfast Becomes a Financial Crisis

When I was a stubborn 6-year-old, I wouldn’t eat my breakfast. My parents went out and bought a dozen different brands of cereal, trying to find something I’d like. The latest thing they’d brought home was cornflakes.

I told them I didn’t want any cornflakes. In their frustration, they tried to make them appealing to me by substituting the milk in the cereal for apple juice. I adamantly refused to eat it, so they dyed the apple juice green. Many minutes later, I still hadn’t eaten the cereal, which had degenerated into some corny green mush, due to sogginess.

My parents then staged a conversation about how the cereal wasn’t green enough, and how they would need to grind up more of their money to make it greener. Now we weren’t the wealthiest family, so when I heard I was wasting money, I started crying. I ate the green, soggy mess, crying the whole time and dripping green dye everywhere.

This must be why printer ink is so expensive.

Priceless Pastry

My dad used to tell me that if I finished my doughnut before we got to the checkout at the grocery store, it was free. Never thought twice about it until I was in college and went grocery shopping with my roommate. I was casually eating my doughnut and noticed her staring at me. “What? it’s free if you… OH,” my dad was awesome.

The Nighttime Toy Caper

When my siblings and I were little, my mom would tell us about the Toy Fairies. They would come at night and take whatever toys were left on the floor. They were short enough to get under the bed, but not tall enough to reach the shelves, so if our toys were put away, they would be safe. My parents used to go so far as to point sadly at the paper in the morning (before we could read) and shake their heads in dismay as they would tell us about a family on the next block over who had gotten hit by the Toy Fairies.

Breathe Easy, My Children

I told all three of my children that they were terribly allergic to cigarette smoke. The choking and gasping and coughing and carrying on that emanated from all of them individually when exposed, however briefly, to second-hand smoke warmed my manipulative heart. They are now 33, 28, and 19. The youngest still doesn’t know. None of them smoke.

Something’s Fishy

When I was younger, my family owned this happy little tank of two beta fish. Of course, there was a barrier between the two fish, had there not been the two would have killed each other. So one day, I noticed my pretty red fish floating at the top of the tank. I ran to my dad, crying that my fish was sick. He told me that he would take it to the fish doctor. A week later, my dad took us to the “fish doctor” and told us to pick out a fish that looked identical to our older one, since the “doctor” didn’t put the names of the owners on the fish tank. He did this more than once. This fooled me up until the summer of my sophomore year of high school. I noticed that my goldfish of about two years was swimming funny, so I told my dad to take him to the fish doctor. My dad burst out laughing and told me that the fish doctor didn’t exist. Whoops!

Dr_Octadoctapus

The Candy That Wasn’t

My mom used to tell me that raisins were candy. So any time we would be at the grocery store, she would pick up the mini boxes of “candy” show it to me, and say I can have one immediately after shopping if I kept a bubble in my mouth and stayed by her side the entire time. This prevented me from running around like a wild banshee in the store and begging for candy at the checkout since I was getting “candy” anyway.

That must be why I hate raisins…