|
Source: (consider it)
|
Thread: Childhood Credulity
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
Recently we were reminiscing with friends about the childhood experience of renouncing belief in Father Christmas.
Also recently, my grand-daughter moved from mere sceptical suspicion of the imaginary words I invented to cheat in games (Scrabble, Boggle, Scattergories) to confident withering and dismissive sarcasm.
And I heard about the parents of a small child who have convinced him that the man in the ice-cream van plays his tune to notify people that he has run out of ice-cream - wonder how long that will last!
Of course, there are some things that kids dismiss instantly, unfortunately - like when you try to tell them they are adopted, and will be sent back if they don't start behaving themselves.
What did you believe when you were young, only to be rudely awakened eventually?
How gullible are, or were, your kids?
(I know the Ship's atheists might want to say something about teaching kids religious material, but even though there is at least room for discussion of how that might ethically be done, it is more a Purgatory topic - so anecdotes only, please!)
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Piglet
Islander
# 11803
|
Posted
I'll be honest - I really can't remember a time when I didn't know that Father Christmas was really Mum and Dad. Of course the bloke in the red suit turned up at school Christmas parties, but I don't ever remember being under any illusions that he wasn't the janitor with a false beard.
When D. taught music in an infant school, he said he had to put in an appearance at the kids' party (as himself); as he had a beard, they tended to think that Father Christmas was him, and if he was there it added to the magic. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
[ 08. January 2016, 15:10: Message edited by: Piglet ]
--------------------
I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
TurquoiseTastic
Fish of a different color
# 8978
|
Posted
I used to believe that I could create Rice Krispies and Coco Pops ex nihilo.
If I was eating a bowl of them, and a bare patch of milk appeared, and I then placed my spoon onto the bare patch and lifted it again, the bare patch would now be filled with Rice Krispies.
I can't remember how long it took me to realise that they were just moving in from the surrounding area. Weeks, if not months, I reckon ![[Hot and Hormonal]](icon_redface.gif)
Posts: 1092 | From: Hants., UK | Registered: Jan 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
|
Posted
I remember looking at a photo of Prince Charles petting a dog, and wondering if the dog would be aware that the guy petting him was a prince.
What makes this interesting is that I WAS old enough to know who Charles was. Not just that he was a prince, but the son of Queen Elizabeth, future king of England, etc.
--------------------
I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Nenya
Shipmate
# 16427
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
like when you try to tell them they are adopted, and will be sent back if they don't start behaving themselves.
I believed everything my mum and dad told me when I was a kid and would have been devastated to hear that - probably in need of therapy! ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
I believed in Father Christmas and the tooth fairy when I was a child and must have just realised the truth without being told. It certainly wasn't a rude awakening. Very different to Mr Nen, who still remembers crying his heart out when told Father Christmas wasn't real. So we told our children the truth from the start, but told them it's a game we play and we did the whole thing, including the mince pie for Santa on Christmas Eve and the carrot for the reindeer.
Although we did tell them other children do believe in Santa, and that's fine and they were not to enlighten them, it did make for one or two entertaining conversations.
My father did try to spin me the yarn about the haggis beasties in Scotland with two of their legs being shorter than the other two because they lived on hillsides, but he couldn't contain the twinkle in his eye when he told me so I rumbled him. ![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
Nen - not as gullible as she looks. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
--------------------
They told me I was delusional. I nearly fell off my unicorn.
Posts: 1289 | Registered: May 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
|
Posted
My grandfather regularly came home to the family gathering on Christmas eve and announced to the six grandchildren, "I'm sorry, but we won't be having Christmas this year. Santa Claus is out there lying dead drunk in the gutter!" After about age 3 you learned to discount everything he said.
Which led to embarrassing problems later in my teens and twenties, as he couldn't say anything the least bit out of the way without facing open skepticism. He told me there was a tram that went up the St. Louis Arch and I laughed. Turns out there is. To be sure, it goes inside the arch, not on the outside, but that was probably a mistake on his part--not outrageous enough to be his usual stock-in-trade.
--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
|
Posted
I should probably confess to having inherited his mantle in the family. I tell wee children the most outrageous things (similar to the antelopes that live on mountains having two legs shorter than the others, so they can never turn around). But having vivid memories of how painful some of Granddad's stories could be, I make sure that there's a twinkle in my eye so they catch on pretty soon, and I don't joke about important matters like Santa Claus.
--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
|
Posted
I was affronted to be told that reindeer can't fly - because the evidence was there on the Christmas cards.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Og, King of Bashan
Ship's giant Amorite
# 9562
|
Posted
My fourth grade class (age 9-10) went to the symphony on a field trip. Before launching into the overture from William Tell, the conductor told us to be quiet, as they were making a special "live at the symphony" recording, and didn't want it to be ruined by crowd noise. Naturally, the audience of 9-10 year olds forgot the instruction as soon as the familiar bit started, and erupted into gallops, stomps, claps, and at least one loud shouted "Yeee HAW!" I was always a dutiful instruction follower, so I was horrified, and remained horrified for many years.
It was only after I took part in a choral recording that I realized that no one would even think to blow money on a sound engineer to record William Tell in front of a bunch of school kids. I don't know why the conductor even thought it was a good idea to teach kids that classical music must always be boring and serious.
Way to ruin my field trip, jerk.
--------------------
"I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?" ― Walker Percy
Posts: 3259 | From: Denver, Colorado, USA | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Brenda Clough
Shipmate
# 18061
|
Posted
When my daughter was very young we would go to Toys R Us (because the diapers were on sale) and I told her that it was in the nature of a museum -- you could look but not bring the toys home. This worked fine for her, but of course not for her younger brother.
--------------------
Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
Posts: 6378 | From: Washington DC | Registered: Mar 2014
| IP: Logged
|
|
Penny S
Shipmate
# 14768
|
Posted
My great uncle, a JP in his Sussex village, told me that there was a pond down the bottom on one of the lanes that was bottomless. That once, many years ago, two boys had been playing there, and one of them had disappeared below the water, and though they dragged the lake, he was not found. But that years later, a young man turned up at the family home, with an Australian accent, and hugged his mother who greeted him with joy.
I'm not sure if he added the Aussie bit on seeing my distraught reaction, or if it was a long standing part of the narrative, but I believed it for a while.
And then used it at school, as a teacher, with the addition of a cork dangling hat, and some detail about Kalgoorlie gold or Coober Pedy opals to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. And an accent.
[ 08. January 2016, 18:01: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posts: 5833 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
|
Posted
About fifteen miles from where we lived when I was a child there was a large reservoir. To build it two picturesque villages had been flooded. There was a book which deplored this, with photographs of the places that had been lost. The remains were said to be under the waters. Having heard about Noah and the flood, it was some years before it occurred to me that the people in the villages might have been moved out first, rather than simply drowned.
I had never mentioned this to my parents until I was many years into adulthood.
--------------------
Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Cottontail
Shipmate
# 12234
|
Posted
When I was about twelve, a friend and I were amusing ourselves in the park by throwing stones into the lake and trying to hit a small post in the water a little way out. Then I was yelled at by a passing policeman (horrible man), who thought I was throwing stones at the swans!
For years afterwards I worried that I would have to confess to this incident at job interviews, when asked, "Have you ever been in trouble with the police?"
--------------------
"I don't think you ought to read so much theology," said Lord Peter. "It has a brutalizing influence."
Posts: 2377 | From: Scotland | Registered: Jan 2007
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
My great uncle, a JP in his Sussex village, told me that there was a pond down the bottom on one of the lanes that was bottomless.
I used to swim in a flooded brick quarry which we kids believed to be bottomless.
There was said to be a net across it 100 metres down (why 100 mtres?) to catch the body of anyone who drowned, because otherwise it would be irrevocably lost.
These days it has been filled in, and turned into a duckpond in a park - sic tranit gloria mundi!
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Graven Image
Shipmate
# 8755
|
Posted
I overheard older neighbor boy telling my six year old that his father was really Santa to which my son replied, "No he is not he works for Lockheed Aircraft."
Posts: 2641 | From: Third planet from the sun. USA | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Piglet
Islander
# 11803
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
... antelopes that live on mountains having two legs shorter than the others ...
Those aren't antelopes, they're haggii.
--------------------
I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
|
Posted
You know the inductive rule that if something has happened once it can happen again.
I was terrified going through Cheddar gorge in case the roof fell in again!
Jengie
--------------------
"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
jacobsen
seeker
# 14998
|
Posted
When I was about seven, my mother mentioned to me that the Queen was flying somewhere - maybe to Australia. I did have a mental picture of HRH sprouting wings for take-off before the reality impinged. Not sure quite how soon that was.
--------------------
But God, holding a candle, looks for all who wander, all who search. - Shifra Alon
Beauty fades, dumb is forever-Judge Judy
The man who made time, made plenty.
Posts: 8040 | From: Æbleskiver country | Registered: Aug 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
tessaB
Shipmate
# 8533
|
Posted
When I was little one of my aunties bought me some premium bonds as a present. A few years later, with no win from them my father suggested that we cash them in and get new ones. His reason was that they pick the winners by throwing all of the bonds into a dry swimming pool, mix them up and pick up one at random. Obviously the older your bond, the more likely it would sink to the bottom, so newer ones would be more likely to win.
It took me years to find out that actually a computer picks them.
Carrying on the tradition, I told my children exactly the same story and was only rumbled when beloved daughter confidently explained to her friend that if she had an old Premium Bond she was less likely to win.
Tell your children very few lies, then they are more likely to believe the ones you do tell.
--------------------
tessaB
eating chocolate to the glory of God
Holiday cottage near Rye
Posts: 1068 | From: U.K. | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Nenya:
My father did try to spin me the yarn about the haggis beasties in Scotland with two of their legs being shorter than the other two because they lived on hillsides, but he couldn't contain the twinkle in his eye when he told me so I rumbled him.
Well, that was obviously made up. Haggii only have three legs.
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Jante
Shipmate
# 9163
|
Posted
As a child living on the Fylde coast I was told that when the sea went out at Fleetwood it was in at Morcambe- therefore when on holiday in Morcambe if the sea was in it must be out in Fleetwood. I was 16 before I realised it was either in in both places or out!
--------------------
My blog http://vicarfactorycalling.blogspot.com/
Posts: 535 | From: deepest derbyshire | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Eigon
Shipmate
# 4917
|
Posted
I remember seeing a woman with dwarfism walking along Blackpool sea front when I was very small - I felt thoroughly vindicated. If she was real, it meant that all the fairy tales about dwarves were real too!
I also enjoyed going on the miniature railway at Blackpool Pleasure Beach, which was driven by a very small man, who was exactly the right size for the train.
--------------------
Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.
Posts: 3710 | From: Hay-on-Wye, town of books | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Urfshyne
Shipmate
# 17834
|
Posted
Occasionally, when the car needed refuelling, my father would have a couple of shots of Redex added. He said that this made the car go faster and, sure enough, it always seemed more lively on leaving the petrol station.
Some years later I realised that he was just putting his foot down harder on the accelerator...
Posts: 98 | From: Maidenhead - lost | Registered: Sep 2013
| IP: Logged
|
|
Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
|
Posted
I believed that women could not have babies until they were married -- that God did something special to them upon marriage to make it possible.
--------------------
"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Piglet
Islander
# 11803
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
I believed that women could not have babies until they were married ...
I'm so glad it wasn't just me!
Long before I knew anything about the human gestation period, I had a vague idea that there was a rule (I don't know whether I thought it was legal or biological) that stated you had to be married for nine months before you could have a baby.
I nearly caused a Very Embarrassing Moment when I was a very small piglet: a cousin who I knew had got married not quite nine months before turned up with a new baby, and I was promptly shushed as I started to propound my theory ...
--------------------
I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
MSHB
Shipmate
# 9228
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
I believed that women could not have babies until they were married -- that God did something special to them upon marriage to make it possible.
I remember as a child wondering: how did a woman's body know that the woman was married?
It just didn't make sense to me. As far as I could see, babies just spontaneously started happening after a woman got married, and the biology of how her change in legal status triggered a change in fertility simply eluded me.
--------------------
MSHB: Member of the Shire Hobbit Brigade
Posts: 1522 | From: Dharawal Country | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lyda*Rose
Ship's broken porthole
# 4544
|
Posted
I remember hearing the "facts of life" from some friends at a fifth grade slumber party. One fact was that people moaned and groaned during sex (one girl listened in on her parents) and I concluded it must be painful. So I wasn't exactly sure why people did it, but I figured that it was an unpleasant necessity for having babies. ![[Frown]](frown.gif)
[ 10. January 2016, 06:12: Message edited by: Lyda*Rose ]
--------------------
"Dear God, whose name I do not know - thank you for my life. I forgot how BIG... thank you. Thank you for my life." ~from Joe Vs the Volcano
Posts: 21377 | From: CA | Registered: May 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Mili
Shipmate
# 3254
|
Posted
I was a bit confused about marriage and babies too. One day I got confused and thought people had to get married every time they wanted to have a baby - so not just once, but before each child. Then I realised my parents had only been married once. I was wondering out loud so mum soon explained it again.
My parents told us the truth about Santa etc. when we asked and I don't remember believing in any of them and was scared of men dressed as Santa. We knew not to tell other kids, though we nearly got in trouble when we told the girl next door (who we thought was too old to still believe) that the hairy fairy came to our house and really confused her! We knew it was dad who brought the money so our tooth fairy was the hairy fairy.
However once when my mum was on fruit duty at my older sister's kinder there was a Chinese dragon performance (or maybe lion dancing but three year old me thought it was a dragon). I truly believed it was a real dragon, not men in a costume. The kinder teacher gave us food to feed the 'dragon', but it was imaginary food. I had always been taught not to pretend to feed our pet dog and then take the food away or pretend to give her food out of an empty hand, as it was cruel. So I felt so bad for ages afterwards for cruelly teasing the dragon this way. I believed it had escaped a war from overseas and come to Australia for safety with the men doing the performance too which made it even worse to tease it in my mind.
Otherwise I started gullible but was made sceptical by my older sister who loved to tease and trick me. She convinced me our monkey puppet could really eat lollies/sweets. That the branch on a tree in our yard had fallen off and been glued back on. And always tried to scare me by lying face down in the bath and pretending to be drowned or jumping off ledges and pretending she'd fallen off a cliff. She tried the cliff one again when we were a bit older and recently told me that she was upset when I wasn't at all concerned for her. I reminded her she had played similar tricks before so I didn't believe she was dead at a cliff base that last time. She only remembers the hurt of me not caring she was 'dead'!
Posts: 1015 | From: Melbourne, Australia | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
|
|
Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
|
Posted
I remember overhearing my mother say, after the birth of my younger brother, that it had taken two doctors and two nurses to deliver him. I imagined them bringing him from the hospital, sat two abreast in the back of the ambulance with baby brother in a basket on the floor between them. But where did the hospital get the babies? One had to assume some sort of arrangement with God.
That was when I was eight. By ten, I had worked my way through the article on Disorders of Pregnancy in Chambers Encyclopedia, so that when class bad boy Billy asked me if I knew what 'womb' meant? I was able to snap back that it was pronounced 'woom' and it was where you were before you were born.
[ 10. January 2016, 07:53: Message edited by: Firenze ]
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
|
Posted
I was brought up in South Africa near Johannesburg. We had lots of animals. My two guinea pigs were in the kind of run which was open at the bottom and you could move it to new grass.
One night it must have been over a dip and the guinea pigs escaped never to be seen again.
My parents told me they had gone on holiday to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) our nearest seaside.
I STILL believe them!
--------------------
Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MSHB:
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
I believed that women could not have babies until they were married -- that God did something special to them upon marriage to make it possible.
I remember as a child wondering: how did a woman's body know that the woman was married?
It just didn't make sense to me. As far as I could see, babies just spontaneously started happening after a woman got married, and the biology of how her change in legal status triggered a change in fertility simply eluded me.
Somewhat in the same vicinity, as a kid I thought that VD(as it was then called) was caused by having sex before you were married.
After a while, of course, I started to wonder how your body knows that you're married, at which point I concluded that it must not be singlehood per se that causes the disease, but rather having sex when you're too young. I bounced this idea off a friend of mine, and he agreed it sounded credible. This was in late elementary or junior high.
Posts: 6574 | From: back and forth between bible belts | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged
|
|
Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
I believed that women could not have babies until they were married -- that God did something special to them upon marriage to make it possible.
You mean that isn't true? Or that it isn't caused by dancing?
--------------------
Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
L'organist
Shipmate
# 17338
|
Posted
A friend's twin nephews believed that only girls came singly, boys came in pairs. The shock when they discovered a single boy baby really didn't have a doppelgänger was huge.
--------------------
Rara temporum felicitate ubi sentire quae velis et quae sentias dicere licet
Posts: 4950 | From: somewhere in England... | Registered: Sep 2012
| IP: Logged
|
|
Hail Mary
Apprentice
# 18531
|
Posted
When adults asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I replied, "A kangaroo", and would practice for hours hopping up and down the sidewalk in front of our house, with my arms bent. It was so disappointing to find out I had to remain human. I blame Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.
--------------------
My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world. ~ Jack Layton
Posts: 35 | From: Canada | Registered: Jan 2016
| IP: Logged
|
|
Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
I was brought up in South Africa near Johannesburg. We had lots of animals. My two guinea pigs were in the kind of run which was open at the bottom and you could move it to new grass.
One night it must have been over a dip and the guinea pigs escaped never to be seen again.
My parents told me they had gone on holiday to Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) our nearest seaside.
I STILL believe them!
But had you taught them Portuguese? Without being able to ask the way, they might have got very lost.
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Landlubber
Shipmate
# 11055
|
Posted
It seems I have always been a landlubber, ignorant about the sea and what lives in it. At the age of about eight, I saw a fisherman with a catch of some flat fish. I asked my mother what they were and immediately she answered "kippers". It took years to understand why the family laughed when I said I had seen someone fishing for kippers.
kippers, for anyone else who has never met one
--------------------
They that go down to the sea in ships … reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man
Posts: 383 | From: On dry land | Registered: Feb 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
|
Posted
You do realise, of course, that flounder can be caught by tramping with your feet on the sand in which it hides. It comes to the surface and you can then catch it.
Strange but TRUE!
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Ricardus
Shipmate
# 8757
|
Posted
My Dad told me that this sign meant 'no flying motorcycles' and I believed him ...
I have a friend who as a child was convinced he had unearthly psychic powers because if he held a pencil vertically in front of his face, and then brought it closer and closer to his nose, there would come a point where he was able to see through the pencil.
Apparently this ability genuinely scared him and he never spoke about it to anyone ...
--------------------
Then the dog ran before, and coming as if he had brought the news, shewed his joy by his fawning and wagging his tail. -- Tobit 11:9 (Douai-Rheims)
Posts: 7247 | From: Liverpool, UK | Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
My Dad told me that this sign meant 'no flying motorcycles' and I believed him ...
He had more success than I have had in trying to persuade children and others that Pedestrians Cross Here is a warning against grumpy local walkers, or that the silhouette of a falling figure with his/her arms in the air, posted near dangerous coastal cliff edges, is in fact a ban on practising pentecostalism in the vicinity.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Rowen
Shipmate
# 1194
|
Posted
My sister convinced her kids that the van, with the music, driving though the suburbs, in the summer, was the broccoli-delivery van.
They would run inside when it came to their street.
No broccoli delivery for them!
--------------------
"May I live this day… compassionate of heart" (John O’Donoghue)...
Posts: 4897 | From: Somewhere cold in Victoria, Australia | Registered: Aug 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ricardus:
My Dad told me that this sign meant 'no flying motorcycles' and I believed him ...
Dang, I just looked at that and interpreted it that way right now, at age never-mind. Actually I took it to mean "Don't try Evil Knievel stunts on your bike over people's cars," but basically the same thing.
--------------------
Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Piglet
Islander
# 11803
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Rowen:
My sister convinced her kids that the van, with the music, driving though the suburbs, in the summer, was the broccoli-delivery van ...
I'm not sure that doesn't count as child-abuse ...
--------------------
I may not be on an island any more, but I'm still an islander.
alto n a soprano who can read music
Posts: 20272 | From: Fredericton, NB, on a rather larger piece of rock | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
And then of course their were the medical insights, such as the fact that if you swallowed the seeds from fruit, they got caught in your appendix - or possibly rooted and sprouted in your stomach.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
|
Posted
According to my mother, you must never put chewing gum in your mouth because if you swallow it will stick your insides together and you will DIE. Also, you mustn't put a hot water bottle on your back or your bones will melt.
Actually, I think she probably believed these things - along with the unspecified doom that would befall if you washed your hair during menses.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lothlorien
Ship's Grandma
# 4927
|
Posted
I remember similar restrictions from my mother. Going to bed with wet hair was a big no-no. Sitting on concrete steps would guve you a chill in the kidneys.
However I remembered something I used to believe as a child. Mum had radio on in the morning as we got ready for school. I can remenber wondering how singers, bands etc were accommodated in the studios every day, let alone the ones which had to come regularly from Britain or the States.
I had no experience then of recording or even of vinyl records or similar.
--------------------
Buy a bale. Help our Aussie rural communities and farmers. Another great cause needing support The High Country Patrol.
Posts: 9745 | From: girt by sea | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Kaplan Corday
Shipmate
# 16119
|
Posted
One of the cast-iron beliefs of my childhood, subscribed to by adults and children alike, was that if you went swimming less than half an hour after eating, YOU WOULD GET A CRAMP AND DROWN!
Twenty-nine minutes = death, thirty-one minutes = life.
In a breathtaking, seemingly overnight, onslaught of natational modernism, this tenet was dropped and ignored with no fatal results, and rocked my faith to its foundations.
Posts: 3355 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged
|
|
Enoch
Shipmate
# 14322
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lothlorien:
I remember similar restrictions from my mother. Going to bed with wet hair was a big no-no. Sitting on concrete steps would guve you a chill in the kidneys. ....
And sitting on a radiator would give you piles.
--------------------
Brexit wrexit - Sir Graham Watson
Posts: 7610 | From: Bristol UK(was European Green Capital 2015, now Ljubljana) | Registered: Nov 2008
| IP: Logged
|
|
Lothlorien
Ship's Grandma
# 4927
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
One of the cast-iron beliefs of my childhood, subscribed to by adults and children alike, was that if you went swimming less than half an hour after eating, YOU WOULD GET A CRAMP AND DROWN!
Twenty-nine minutes = death, thirty-one minutes = life.
In a breathtaking, seemingly overnight, onslaught of natational modernism, this tenet was dropped and ignored with no fatal results, and rocked my faith to its foundations.
We had to lie down for an hour after lunch every day of our three weeks christmas beach holiday.
--------------------
Buy a bale. Help our Aussie rural communities and farmers. Another great cause needing support The High Country Patrol.
Posts: 9745 | From: girt by sea | Registered: Aug 2003
| IP: Logged
|
|
Amanda B. Reckondwythe
Dressed for Church
# 5521
|
Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Lothlorien:
Mum had radio on in the morning as we got ready for school. I can remenber wondering how singers, bands etc were accommodated in the studios every day.
The old Lone Ranger TV episodes had a sound track featuring full symphony orchestra. My sister believed that the orchestra played from a stagecoach that followed behind the action off camera.
--------------------
"I take prayer too seriously to use it as an excuse for avoiding work and responsibility." -- The Revd Martin Luther King Jr.
Posts: 10542 | From: The Great Southwest | Registered: Feb 2004
| IP: Logged
|
|
Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
|
Posted
When I was small I had a model of a certain Navy ship. One day I read in the paper that the real" one was going to be scrapped. I was sure that someone would come round and ask for my model, so it could be scrapped too.
Posts: 9750 | From: The other side of the Severn | Registered: Sep 2009
| IP: Logged
|
|
Printer-friendly view
