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The most effective lie you were told as a child

Started by hedgehog90, September 20, 2018, 02:38:58 AM

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JesusAndYourBush

#30
Quote from: hedgehog90 on September 20, 2018, 02:38:58 AM
They put dye in the swimming pool that activates when mixed with child urine.

I was told they used to put the dye in the pool but don't any more, which seemed logical because when I peed in the pool nothing happened.

Quote from: icehaven on September 20, 2018, 10:16:17 AM
Our was that the ice cream man only plays the tune when he's run out of ice cream.

My parents called it "the music van" until I learned what it's true purpose was.

Quote from: Utter Shit on September 20, 2018, 11:40:00 AM
Also, this one seems to be going around Facebook at the moment but it's spot on - turning the lights on inside a moving car is illegal. I don't understand why my parents/all parents were so dead set against the lights being on that they would bother to lie.

Yes!  So if we were going somewhere and it's too flippin' dark in the car and you can't see what you're doing.  Car stops at traffic lights.  Driver turns lights on.  Yessss! Finally I can see what I'm doing.  Car starts to move and lights are turned off.  "Turn the lights back on!"  "No, it's not allowed."

olliebean

Quote from: icehaven on September 20, 2018, 11:45:49 AM
There was one about if you cross your eyes or pull a face and something in particular happens while you're doing it you'll get stuck like that forever, was it thunder clapping or a full moon or something?

It was the wind changing.

If you swallow a pip, a tree will grow inside you. I accidentally swallowed an orange pip once and that freaked me the fuck out for a while because of this lie.

Utter Shit

Quote from: JesusAndYourBush on September 20, 2018, 11:59:01 AM
Yes!  So if we were going somewhere and it's too flippin' dark in the car and you can't see what you're doing.  Car stops at traffic lights.  Driver turns lights on.  Yessss! Finally I can see what I'm doing.  Car starts to move and lights are turned off.  "Turn the lights back on!"  "No, it's not allowed."

The thing is, I just don't understand the reasoning. When your parents tell you that you'll go blind if you don't wear your glasses, or the ice cream music is to denote a lack of ice cream, I understand the ruse, I get what they're trying to achieve.

But why would they not want the car light on? I can't imagine it would be because it's annoying, when they're in the front facing forward they wouldn't notice it? Maybe it's because they don't trust themselves to remember to turn the light out and the battery will die? Part of me suspects it's just an unquestioned lie that is passed down and parents in earlier generations actually believed it was illegal.

Neville Chamberlain

It's because having the interior light on while you're driving is fucking annoying and you can't see as well out of the windscreen.

gilbertharding

If the lights are on inside the car, it makes it harder to see out - not so much in the city where there are streetlights, but if it's really dark outside...

In theory you could be prosecuted for driving with obscured vision. In theory.

greenman

Quote from: gilbertharding on September 20, 2018, 11:46:53 AM
That isn't a lie though. Sorry. I mean, test the opposite: will you achieve anything you want to if you don't try and work hard?

If someone had said "You WILL achieve anything you want if only you [etc etc]" that would be a lie.

Perhaps you're just not cut out for achieving anything you want to - or maybe you don't want to achieve anything. That's fine.

In that phase though "could" doesn't imply an uncertainly of result but rather the view that you "could" have achieved the desire result if you'd only tried harder.

kittens

the stuff inside glowsticks tastes absolutely foul. i wish my parents could have found some way to stop me from ever eating any of it.

my dad used to tell me that cats could see invisible creatures called 'bogles' and that's why they sometimes went mental, they were chasing a bogle. other than that i had a refreshingly honest upbringing.

Icehaven

Quote from: olliebean on September 20, 2018, 12:16:56 PM
It was the wind changing.


That was it, I knew it was something more common than thunder.

thenoise

That studying an academic subject at university was the best route to a lucrative and satisfying career.

græskar

That people are poor because they're lazy and/or stupid.
That manual/unskilled labour is the lowest low and the best indication that you've fucked up your life.
That God is watching me at all times and listening to my every thought.
That socialism is a dirty word and the root of all evil.
That being gay is a sin.

I know this sounds dramatic and right-on, but these were all very effective lies and are still hard to root out many years later.

Dex Sawash

Interior lamps were not at all task-focused on older cars. One big bright central lamp that destroyed driver's night vision and lots of glare on windows.


hedgehog90

Quote from: Utter Shit on September 20, 2018, 11:40:00 AM
Also, this one seems to be going around Facebook at the moment but it's spot on - turning the lights on inside a moving car is illegal. I don't understand why my parents/all parents were so dead set against the lights being on that they would bother to lie.

My brother and I were driving somewhere one night recently, I turned the lights on to check an important bit of paper and, somewhat startled, he told me that it was illegal and we could get pulled over, insisted that I turn them off. I'd never heard of this and told him he was an idiot for believing it. Why do they put the lights there if you can't use them while the fucking thing's moving? He couldn't explain himself and switched them off anyway. Using the blindingly bright flash light on my phone was fine though apparently.

Quote from: Utter Shit on September 20, 2018, 11:40:00 AM
ALSO ALSO, my mum used to tell me that if I didn't wear my glasses I would eventually go blind, and I took this to be true until into my twenties. Not that I thought I would definitely go blind, but that it was a genuine, if unlikely, possibility. Never once questioned it, until well into adulthood.

One of my friends came to school one day wearing glasses and he told me if he wore them long enough it would cure his bad eyesight. His mum told him that apparently. He was 10 or 11 and considered the cleverest in our year.
I quickly set him straight, told him his eyes were irreversibly fucked and that his condition would only get worse and worse. No cure. A lifelong, degenerative, debilitating handicap. Another classmate concurred.
Probably ruined his day...
..
..
..
(LOL)

Chollis

Sitting too close to the television and/or watching too much television would make your eyes go square

Fisher Goes Berserk

My dad told me that Kenneth Williams' distinctive voice was the result of an injury he sustained during the war. I've never been able to find any evidence of this, and my dad now denies any knowledge of having said it, but I remember him saying it quite clearly.

I can understand parents lying to children to keep them safe and healthy, but I'm certain that sometimes they just do it just to fuck with us. Thanks, dad.

Brundle-Fly

When really naughty, I was often threatened with being sent off to boarding school like the one from Tom Brown's Schooldays and that John Mills Tales Of The Unexpected episode, Galloping Foxley. As if my folks could've afforded that. And had a TARDIS.

greenman

Quote from: Satchmo Distel on September 20, 2018, 01:15:37 PM
Swallowing chewing gum will kill you

That made it seem far cooler, dicing with spearmint death.

Icehaven

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on September 20, 2018, 02:36:51 PM
When really naughty, I was often threatened with being sent off to boarding school like the one from Tom Brown's Schooldays and that John Mills Tales Of The Unexpected episode, Galloping Foxley. As if my folks could've afforded that. And had a TARDIS.

I used to devour the Malory Towers, Trebizon and Worst Witch books and I longed to go to boarding school. I suppose it was a very effective lie that Enid Blyton, Anne Digby and Jill Murphy were telling me in that I believed that was what it would really be like (although I'll let Murphy off a bit seeing as she was writing about a witch school so probably not expecting to be taken as gospel.) (And JK Rowling kind of ripped her off quite spectacularly.)

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Chollis on September 20, 2018, 01:42:13 PM
Sitting too close to the television and/or watching too much television would make your eyes go square

I was thinking of that one whilst reading through the thread. And what's wrong with having square eyes, anyway? Might even be an improvement for all we know.

You can't go swimming after you've just eaten and have to wait an hour turned out to be a lie. I think my parents genuinely believed it to be the case as they abided by it was well, but it turned out to be nonsense.

When I was about fourteen my Mum tried to claim that I didn't need deodorant, and there was nothing wrong with my natural smell, but after about an hour of begging I finally managed to get her to buy me some.

Replies From View

"If you sit on a chair that has been farted on, tiny tiny insects will burrow through the seat of your trousers and into your buttocks, and they never go away."

To be fair, that's one I made up as a child but soon everyone at my school believed it.

dallasman

A friend told me that the laugh on "Woodpecker From Space" was the real voice of one of the guys in Video Kids. I found this so intriguing, I adapted the lie by checking the names of the composers, and picking one of them as the woodpecker guy for when I told my classmates. The only other lies I ever acted on, were ones I told other people (or myself). For instance, my mates and I all agreed that we'd probably seen a UFO, and that I pretty much did a full 360 headspin when we were breakdancing in the garden that time. The crying baby we heard in the old abandoned farmhouse, couldn't possibly have been a cat, because they sound slightly different. Leaving us with "murdered baby ghost" as the only plausible, nay, the only possible explanation.

dallasman

Also, it was, if not claimed outright, then heavily implied by our authorities that not drinking cow's milk every day would leave you unprepared for the physical world; with bones like dry spaghetti and all kinds of vitamin deficiencies. You'd eventually fall over and break. That's socialism for you, Corbyn lovers. Keep the idealized picture postcard small, local farming industry going on a diet of heavy subsidies and price fixing, and milk the rest of the people's pay checks to pay for it twice over: Once with their taxes and again at the breakfast table, where mom and pop gulp a pint each with their morning gruel to sustain them through their factory shifts, and the younglings have theirs with muesli so they'll stay alert in class. When my dad's work mates came round to watch the football, we hid our rasins in the broom cupboard, because they were American.

The thing about your eyes going square if you sat too close to the TV was never anything but a joke, but it was widely accepted as detrimental to your eyesight. I've since been led to believe these were all lies and/or misconceptions, though I still drink milk because I like it, and probably a little bit because it still feels like I need it somehow.

bigfatheart

I don't have a middle name. When I asked my Dad why not, he told me that everyone with a middle name was religious, and that if I wanted a middle name I would have to become a Christian (I'm sure he specifically said Catholic), and he justified that by saying "That's why they call middle names 'Christian names'".

It took me until I was about 15 to realise that the latter bit was bollocks, and it wasn't until I went to university and met a devout Christian with no middle name that it dawned on me that there was absolutely no correlation between religion and middle names.

Attila

Quote from: Small Man Big Horse on September 20, 2018, 06:52:05 PM
When I was about fourteen my Mum tried to claim that I didn't need deodorant, and there was nothing wrong with my natural smell, but after about an hour of begging I finally managed to get her to buy me some.

Ugh, I got that from my mother at about the same age as well -- that only dirty people wore it because they were too lazy to take baths, and, why, she and my dad didn't, etc. Couple years later, she calls me to one side to have a 'quiet talk' to tell me that she, my dad, and my sister-in-law were all concerned that I had 'body odour issues' and that she wanted me to be more conscientious about this and take pride in my appearance and upkeep -- because my friends probably wouldn't tell me.

Thanks, mom -- no worries there, because the kids at school had been making fun of me for several years at that point.

Where on earth do some of these attitudes/beliefs come from??

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: Attila on September 22, 2018, 12:10:58 AM
Ugh, I got that from my mother at about the same age as well -- that only dirty people wore it because they were too lazy to take baths, and, why, she and my dad didn't, etc. Couple years later, she calls me to one side to have a 'quiet talk' to tell me that she, my dad, and my sister-in-law were all concerned that I had 'body odour issues' and that she wanted me to be more conscientious about this and take pride in my appearance and upkeep -- because my friends probably wouldn't tell me.

Thanks, mom -- no worries there, because the kids at school had been making fun of me for several years at that point.

Where on earth do some of these attitudes/beliefs come from??

My dad told me not to wash my hair for weeks on end so I could slick it back with natural oils. Fine pops,  but it was 1985 not 1954.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Attila on September 22, 2018, 12:10:58 AM
Ugh, I got that from my mother at about the same age as well -- that only dirty people wore it because they were too lazy to take baths, and, why, she and my dad didn't, etc. Couple years later, she calls me to one side to have a 'quiet talk' to tell me that she, my dad, and my sister-in-law were all concerned that I had 'body odour issues' and that she wanted me to be more conscientious about this and take pride in my appearance and upkeep -- because my friends probably wouldn't tell me.

Thanks, mom -- no worries there, because the kids at school had been making fun of me for several years at that point.

Where on earth do some of these attitudes/beliefs come from??

Most of mine came from her weird Hungarian mother who had all manner of crazy views and ideas.

AsparagusTrevor

Quote from: Captain Z on September 20, 2018, 11:43:49 AM
My mum, to get out of buying me one, told me that her brother (my uncle) had once bitten into a glowstick and his whole head started glowing purple and he had to go to hospital. To this day she swears that she never told me this untrue story.

I once did bite into a glowstick while drunk and thought it was hilarious that I looked like a dying Predator. However it turns out whatever the fuck that stuff is, it burns. I got blotchy red patches which turned to itchy blisters where the glowjuice had been. I didn't get any near my penis so I can't say what effect it has on the head although I would imagine 'purple and glowing' wouldn't be far off.

NurseNugent

Quote from: Attila on September 22, 2018, 12:10:58 AM
Ugh, I got that from my mother at about the same age as well -- that only dirty people wore it because they were too lazy to take baths, and, why, she and my dad didn't, etc. Couple years later, she calls me to one side to have a 'quiet talk' to tell me that she, my dad, and my sister-in-law were all concerned that I had 'body odour issues' and that she wanted me to be more conscientious about this and take pride in my appearance and upkeep -- because my friends probably wouldn't tell me.

Thanks, mom -- no worries there, because the kids at school had been making fun of me for several years at that point.

Where on earth do some of these attitudes/beliefs come from??

I had a similar thing with my mum. Whenever I tried to bring u deodorant with her she's start going crazy and telling me how vaginal douches were really bad for you and so was sleeping in your knickers , when I said that I meant underarm deodorant she would say that I didn't need it because I was slim and deodorant was only for fatties who couldn't reach to wash under their arms.

Another thing she used to say which sort of backfired was that I would end u with false teeth at the age of twenty five if I drank fizzy drinks and ate sweets. I used to get bullied terribly because of my tombstone teeth so the idea of being able to false  ones was hugely desirable and I would sneakily eat sweets and drink fizzy  drinks when she wasn't around.

manticore

Quote from: Chollis on September 20, 2018, 01:42:13 PM
Sitting too close to the television and/or watching too much television would make your eyes go square

I grew up with b/w television, and one day my sister said that her teacher had told her that if you watched it too much you would lose the ability to see colour. So for a long time I would regularly look away from the TV to look at colourful things to save myself from an eternally monochrome existence.

Seagullsim

My mum told me that drug pushers would put little bits of heroin (it was the time of Zammo, and 'Just Say No') into McDonalds & Wimpy straws, so that children would get addicted.

Even though it's unlikely (and probably a massive waste of a junkie's supplies), I still look down the straw before I put it into my drink.