Question of the Day - Tuesday, January 4

[cassiopea]

Greetings! Happy first Tuesday of the year!!!! Woot woot!

Have your parents, guardians or grandparents etc ever told you any little or big lies/fibs when you were a child?




For example; When I was a tot my grandmother would tell me my nose would grow long like an elephant if I kept wiping it with my hand Even when she caught me from a distance doing it she would make gestures mimicking that of an elephant which would get me to stop. Suffice to say it worked, helped with my manners and became big on using tissues. Thankfully didn't develop a trunk either for that matter

 

[susanm9006]

More of a superstition than a lie but my mother told us if you opened an umbrella indoors a family member would die.

 

[MoochNNoodles]

I told DD I could tell when she lied because there would be a thing on her forehead. I think I said a star. Most little kids will cover their foreheads so you can’t see it. I also told her she couldn’t turn 5 if she still had a pacifier. And I told DS he couldn’t turn 4 if he didn’t learn to use the potty. Both worked. Zero regrets!

I don’t remember any white lies except Santa/Easter Bunny/Tooth Fairy ones. My older cousin though! She had me convinced not only that a watermelon would grow in my stomach if I ate the seeds; but that clovers would grow from my knees if I fell in the grass wearing shorts. I remember the nightmares of pulling and pulling never ending clovers from my knees. And being surrounded by plants like a jungle grew up around my bed. It left me with a pretty significant phobia for a long time. I’m ok with most things now and enjoy gardening. But I still prefer my skin covered and I don’t like plants/leaves in my face. Especially big leafy ones or viney ones. My cousin’s MIL has one of those massive floor to ceiling height tropical plants and their back entry door pushes it when you come in so it swings back at you. Not a fan. I tried to play it off when we went over there years ago because explaining that your like 20 and scared of plants because your older cousin used to torture you with them is fun.

 

[Tik cat's mum]

Oh yes too much sugar would give me worms, they knew when I was lying and there was a lion that lived on beacon fell. Stopped me rotting my teeth, telling lies and wandering too far on days out in the woods.

 

[vince]

They told me that I'd wet the bed if I played with matches (so I stuck a bobby pin in the electric outlet instead). They ran that line on me about sugar giving me worms, too.

 

[Kat0121]

When I was little I went to the store with my grandparents. I took one of those Lotto forms that you use when you want to pick your own numbers. You fill it out, hand it to the clerk and they print the ticket that you pay for. The form I took was worthless. My grandma saw it when we got home and said that the police were coming to arrest me. Not five minutes later I hear sirens blaring. I hid under the bed. She kept telling me, "See! I told you they were coming." They obviously didn't but I was terrified.

 

[aliceneko]

I was always told that if I lied my nose would grow like Pinocchio!

 

[Lari]

My dad used to tease that if I ate bread crust or toast I don't remember, I'd get a hairy chest. I didn't want that so I didn't eat it for years.

We'd always been told my maternal grandparents met because my grandpa was sitting behind my grandma in a movie theater and threw popcorn at her. Based on his personality, it seemed legit. We all found out many years later they met in a more straightforward way. It was pretty disappointing!

 

[Elphaba09]

They told me that I'd wet the bed if I played with matches

My parents told us that one, too! They also said that if you ate while sitting on the toilet (Who would do this!?) that you were eating with the devil.

My grandmother would tell us that if we thought bad things the Impa Shilup, a soul-eating spirit or shadow person, would get us. She believed it would, so it was not as if she was trying to scare us. To scare us into telling the truth, though, she would tell us she had a special medicine that could tell who was lying and who was not. She said the person in question had to repeat what they said while holding the tip of their pointer finger from our dominant hand on the tip of their tongue. If the person lied and then put their finger in the medicine, their finger would turn colors from the lie. She demonstrated it once. I do not recall the lie she said, but her finger turned colors. I asked her to tell the truth and do it, but she said she could not because she was already marked a liar. I was 11/12 when I figured out her medicine was iodine. She had just poured some into a different container so we would not see what it was.

 

[minish]

Not me, but my mom did to my brother. Around age 6, He was having nightmares afraid of alien invasion. She (thought) she solved the problem by telling him we were aliens, whole family. 20 years later, he confronted her. It turns out, next few years, he was devastated that we weren't human and couldn't tell a soul!

 

[vince]

Oh, I forgot one: They told me that if I kept on sucking my thumb, I'd end up with buck teeth!

 

[Margot Lane]

Dad told my sister that if she ate her entire artichoke (which she hated) there was a penny in the middle.

 

[debbila]

My mom told us if we ate burnt toast it would make our hair curly. Grandma told us if we were bad a mean, ugly man named Hunky Sam would take us and put us in his sack and we'd never see our family again. Talk about scared straight!

 

[neely]

My father used to tell us if we didn't brush our teeth within 30 minutes after we ate we would get a cavity. No wonder I have such bad dental phobia!

 

[strider rose]

i dont really remember much from that time frame .... stroke brain

 

[Willowy]

They told me that I'd wet the bed if I played with matches

My parents told us that one, too!

That's so weird, especially that it seems to have been a common thing. What's the possible connection?

Oh, I forgot one: They told me that if I kept on sucking my thumb, I'd end up with buck teeth!

I DID have buckteeth, and every adult told me it was because I sucked my thumb. But I never did suck my thumb, not even as a baby. Didn't use a paci either, or a bottle past the normal age. Drove me crazy.


I don't remember my mom telling me stuff like that. To her credit, she wanted to be better than her parents so she tried not to lie outright or make things up. Plus I was a wildly suspicious and analytical kid. So it was probably easier to tell the truth than to answer 17 thousand questions about how crust is related to hair curliness or something like that, lol.

She tried the ol' "oh we can't go to the park because it closes at 5pm" kind of stuff but you better believe that if I ever saw someone at the park at 6pm I'd have some difficult questions so she probably ended up regretting that .

 

[Mia6]

Santa, Tooth Fairy

 

[Maria Bayote]

When I was a kid I was always told that if I accidentally ate a seed a tree would grow inside my stomach.

If I didn't sleep after lunch I would never grow taller.

And that all liars go to hell.

I did all of them.

 

[muffy]

My father used to tell us if we didn't brush our teeth within 30 minutes after we ate we would get a cavity. No wonder I have such bad dental phobia!

I used to worry about my little sister. I would tell her if she didn't brush her teeth every night before she when to bed she would get a cavity and have to go to the dentist and get that big needle. I don't know if it worked but she still has her teeth.

To keep us out of the woods my mother would tell us that king kong lived there. It didn't work. We would go in the woods looking for him.