What were you told - and believed - as a child

I was told thunder was caused by clouds banging together.

My mother told me that thunder was the clouds banging together. I told my daughter the same thing when she was about three years old. To her embarrassment when she was seventeen she mentioned this to a boyfriend as she still believed it. She was furious with me when she arrived home.

Ditto the thunder and the apple pips. My grandad also told me that farm animals that lived on hillsides had two long legs on one side and two short legs on the other to stop them falling over,

If I made a face, the wind would change and my face would stay like that.

SueD that really made me laugh .

I was told that if I swallowed chewing/bubble gum it would wrap itself round my insides and strangle my blood supply. And that if the wind changed when I was pulling an angry face, then it would stay that way forever. Then there was the one about eating the crusts of bread, especially if they were black, to make my hair go curly (it was straight as a die!)
I also had the apple pip and thunder stories .

I asked my dad how the light worked in the bathroom. He told me that the cord was attached to a man's leg. This man lived in the attic and whenever we pulled the cord he lit a candle and put it through a hole in the bathroom lampshade! For years I wouldn't get up to go to the loo during the night because I didn't want to wake the man up!

Just after the war, when oranges were a novelty to us children, my uncle gave us one. But he said not to eat the pith as it was poisonous. It took my sister and I ages to eat it, and for years we were very wary of oranges.

If you have hiccups it means someone is thinking about you. If you think of everyone you know, the hiccups will stop when you reach the person thinking about you. I tell my DGC this.

Not quite the same but one April 2nd I went to school and told everyone about the Panorama programme that showed spaghetti growing on trees. Was anyone else fooled?

I too was warned about the consequences of swallowing bubble or chewing gum. Part of me still believes it ? My sister and I used to play with an older girl in our road and she gave us all sorts of dire warnings one of which was not to swim too close to the plug hole in the local swimming pool. When we asked why she told us that she knew of a child who had been in the pool and got sucked out to sea!

My mother told me that a knight in shining armour would marry me and I would live happily ever after, and I believed it.

I told my son that chewing gum myth. Can't think why! One day I saw the expression on his face. I said"you've swallowed it haven't you" he replied "only once"

Some of these are priceless! Yes I was told the chewing gum one and the one about making faces. Love the one about the farm animals on a hill Another was if you had a sore spot on your tongue it was because you had been telling lies.

Babies were found under bushes- I never did find one there.

If you had Castleford, social services would have been round fast.

Thunder was giants moving furniture. Take hair grips out as they could attract lightning. My DM never used mushroom stalks so I also threw them away until I used a soup recipe. We couldn't have apple crumble as it was very hard to make (??!!). Shop windows were the devil tempting me to spend my money (grain of truth there maybe!). I shouldn't lean out of windows (OK!) because one's head is heavier than one's body (WHAT??)
On the plus side when I was 6 and asked about Father Christmas DM said that anyone who gave anyone else a Christmas present was Father Christmas. I like that but shared the truth about FC with other children in the road prompting complaints from their mothers ...
I was glad I wasn't a boy as I didn't like the idea of having to go to work and being responsible for a wife and family. Sympathy for DF really, I wish I'd told him, he worked so hard without the appreciation he deserved.

Don't bite off sewing cotton as any bits accidentally swallowed would wind around your heart with fatal results. I think something similar would happen with chewing gum. Sitting on a doorstep would cause piles.

Catholic children are fed nonsense all the time it goes with the territory, and I imagine it was worse 50 or so years ago when I was imbued with all manner of crap. However,for me a stand out utterance and which I have always remembered, was when my class were being prepared for holy communion and being put through our paces so we would be familiar with what was expectd on the day. We were practising swallowing un blessed hosts which we were told represented the body of Jesus Christ, as such we were told not to bite into the host in any way otherwise we would be biting off Jesus' legs. In retrospect, and as I got a little older I did find that concept hilarious. I think the nun who was responsible for this particular piece of buffoonery could have reined herself in a bit, at age 7, I not only believed what she said but found it very alarming.

On the other hand my father told us at an early age there was no such person as Father Christmas which left me quite upset, I think it was because he didn't want us believing in another omni present being other than God I feel I've had to make up for this by going along with the FC nonsense with my own children and of late my grandchildren. It doesn't last long sadly until reality eventually dawns on them.

My sister had two Catholic friends at school. Twin sisters, they both had badly protruding front teeth. My sister , aged 6, thought that was what made them Catholic

We were told the host thing too, Terri. Apple pips apparently cause appendicitis! I still try not to swallow them. If I didn't stop that laughing, I'd soon be laughing on the other side of my face. Still can't work that one out. Oh the spaghetti harvest was a good one. I think I'd actually left school, can't remember exactly, but I believed it. Well the only spaghetti I'd come across was orange and came out of a tin.

Apple pips do contain cyanide, though...

Yes, I was taken in by a lot of these Another was that if I threw eggshells away without crushing them, witches would sail off in them and sink ships. I still can't throw away a shell without smashing it!

My daughter was puzzled (and said so) when an English girl at Art School said she'd done Irish dancing classes. I'd told her only Irish people were allowed to go to them, after I'd seen the price of those sticky out frocks. I thought she'd have figured out the white lie before she was 20!

Funnygran my mother went as far as to make up a poem. Which she recited to me walking past a grassy 'lump' in the park she told me was a grave! Not sure, after so many years (she died when I was 8) I've got it word perfect, but it went something like....

Here I lie cold in my grave,
Because I did not behave,
I should've listened to my Mum,
And did not swallow my bubble gum!

And people wonder why I'm a little strange!

Whatever happened to 'if you swallow that, I won't buy you anymore'!

picking your nose would push your eyeballs out!

Men's hair couldn't grow long. I believed it until I saw the hermit who lived up the road!

Eating crusts makes your hair curl. Mine was only slightly wavy until recently, when it acquired quite a natural curl! (Always ate my crusts).