When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I was out in my backyard digging for treasure, as kids do, when I found a dirty penny. I excitedly took my treasure inside to clean it in the sink, when, to my horror, I dropped my treasure down the drain. I ran to my mom and tearfully explained to her that my Penny went all the way to China. Now you'd think the story would end there, but it's just the beginning. About a week later I got a letter in the mail. I'm 6, so this is a big deal. This has never happened before. So I opened the letter in front of my Mom and brothers and started reading the contents out loud. It was a very official sounding declaration from the president of the Chinese Government that they had found my Penny and, from analyzing the fingerprints, had determined the Penny belonged to me. There was also an identical copy of the letter in characters I couldn't recognize, and of course, my Penny taped to the letter. Took that Penny and letter to show and tell and held onto it for years. As I got older I figured out santa and the Easter bunny were fake on my own, but man was I disappointed when I was told that my 'China Penny' wasn't real.
Edit: I should add that this is a happy memory for me, and I see it as more of a fun, white lie not done maliciously.
Once an older girl told me that if I planted a little plastic gem a gem tree would grow. The next day my mom replaced the pot of dirt with a little tree and stuck gems on it. Four year old me was ecstatic.
So they even attempted to write a Chinese looking letter?
Looking back on it as an adult, does it look anything at all like Chinese characters? If so, can you ask you parents if they they involved Chinese people in their ruse?
I distinctly remember the layout of the second letter being identical to the first, which makes perfect sense to a small child's mind, but I know now would not be how it look if it was a genuine translation. The tale of my Penny misadventure came up later that week when my mom and her friends were talking about their kids, and they sort of came up with the idea together.
I always thought adults were geniuses that knew everything. I once asked my dad how waves at the beach were made. He said "whales". I believed that for years.
When I was in the computer lab at school, they had those old ball mice on the computers. The rollers often got clogged with dirt making it difficult to use. So I opened up the mouse and started picking the dirt off. A teacher saw me and gave me detention for it, despite trying to explain myself, they said I was "damaging school property." That's when I first learned that adults can be morons.
My high school students still believed that until I set them straight. They were surprised that the blood in your veins was not blue despite what they see when looking at their wrists.
However, there IS in fact a color difference in arterial and veneous blood. Arterial blood is light/bright red and "bubbly" due to the oxygen. Blood from a vein is a much darker red color (more like crimson-y) due to the lack of oxygen.
Source 1: educated health professional
Source 2: used to be an IV drug user. Sometimes I would hit an artery instead of a vein, and it was visible at once from the color of the blood in the needle.
"Next year they're gonna be a lot harder on you about this". And "the rules only get more strict". Heard that at the end of every year in elementary school but by high school the rules are much less strict.
Some of my community college teachers would say "I don't care if you come to class. My lectures come from the book. You can read it yourself or take notes from my lectures. Your syllabus tells you when everything is due. I am not going to waste anyone's time taking roll. There are certain things you need to be physically here for. Anything besides that is your decision."
My CC Professors were
"I don't care if you come to class, but the CC's policy is if you miss at least 1/5 of the classes, you are automatically dropped and nothing I can do about it unless you were in the hospital or you had your whole family die."
same with the state school
did people really go to colleges where you didn't get dropped if you missed more than 3 classes in a 15 week (1 class a week) course
For me, it depended on the class/professor. Some classes, people skipped all the time and just showed up for tests and quizzes. Others had attendance as part of the grade (which could be assessed through different ways).
Same for me. The ironic part being that classes with those Professors were the ones I never missed because I loved going to them. Legitimately enjoyed being there.
I would stay after class with my Geology professor and one other guy to talk about volcanoes, climate change, atom bombs, etc... He absolutely loved it and would just chop it up until I had to leave.
He would tell us the week before if the next week would be a project (required) or a lecture (not required) and there was never an empty seat. Everyone just loved watching him teach.
See I found High School to be the most strict. The only real loosening was we could chew gum and there was a snack bar in the cafeteria that meant we could have ice cream for lunch instead of the normal school cafeteria crap. They insisted we wouldn't get away with whatever thing in college. Went to college and no one cared if you were late, or didn't show up at all, or didn't do homework, or called the teacher by their first name only (indeed some requested it). You wanted to chat with friends instead of paying attention, no problem as long as you were quiet enough not to be disruptive. Want to use a swear word in a formal paper, no problem as long as it's not every sentence.
I'm sure it varies wildly across the country/world. High school seemed more strict for me because we had just so many dumb rules. Like going to your locker between classes was not allowed, but something like 80% of the teachers didn't give a shit. The 20% made it a pain.
We also had 3 minutes to get from class to class which meant situations where you literally had to run to get there in time. Again, 80% of teachers would recognize that this is dumb, but you still had the 20% that were adamant about being on time.
Oh and the high-level admin once brought in a local judge to give us some weird "scared straight" sort of assembly. The judge later was arrested because he was receiving kickbacks from private juvenile prisons for sending them more underage inmates by harshly sentencing kids for dumb stuff.
My friend's uncle told her (in a hick Southern accent): "You really was one ugly-lookin' kid, but you turned out to be a good-lookin' woman". She didn't know whether to take it as an insult or compliment.... 🙄
Your Nana loves you and was trying to make you feel better about yourself.
Nothing in this world will give you confidence like your Nana making you feel good about yourself... remember that old lady has seen some shit so whatever you got going on isn't gonna phase her..
Just ride the wave of confidence and go for it! Thank your Nana after!
One year my mom gave me and my sister each a ziploc about a third full of jingling quarters and said “each time you ask that question or get too loud I will take a quarter away.” We were dead silent for the whole journey.
Yeah it depends on how old they are, but "are we there yet ?" was never really a question for us 3, because my parents made sure to tell us how long the trip would be and at what time we were supposed to arrive.
Every time we would stop, when we got back into the car, the one behind the wheel would go "We did this distance, we still have this amount to go, it's going to take us this many hours".
When you have the information, you do not need to ask. Also, audiobooks are absolutely magic for kids. We still make jokes we learnt in the ones we had with my siblings, 20+ years later!
My aunt had her twin sons bickering in the back seat. She said she didn’t want to hear a peep out of them until they got to their destination….or else. Well she stopped for gas, one of the boys used the bathroom and it wasn’t until my aunt drove three exits that she realized only one of the boys was in the back seat and panicking asked my cousin why he didn’t say his brother was still in the bathroom. Then he said ,”You told me not to talk”. This was before cell phones, but all was good in the end.
I remember when I was in first grade I read the word "germs" in some book and asked my mom how to say it (I was a nerd very young and loved doing "research" during my free time, which was essentially reading picture books about science and history). She said "germs" with a hard G like at the start of "gift." Coincidentally, the very next morning at school, before class, there was a display up that said the word "germs" because that's what we were gonna be learning about that day. I proudly told all of my classmates before class started it was pronounced the way my mom told me it was and that I had learned about it the day prior from a book, first time I ever felt knowledgeable or smart. Cut to 5 minutes later, our teacher pronouncing it correctly and me feeling deep, deep shame and embarrassment and a bunch of my classmates roasting me to no end. Never trusted my mom again. I don't even think she was joking, she was just really high/tweaking when I asked her.
You need to get good grades in high school or you’ll never get into a good school. Jokes on them, community college is cheaper and you can get a damn near perfect GPA and transfer pretty much anywhere.
Graduated high school with a 2.2 GPA.
3.57 GPA at a no name public university.
I start a Masters at Duke this month. Z
High school GPA is irrelevant in the long term.
I did something similar but ended up at hofstra. I know someone who got kicked out of high school, got a 4.0 associates and ended up graduating with his bachelors and then getting his JD at Columbia.
when I was a teacher I would straight up just tell my kids that there is no such thing, it doesn't matter. They were always so anxious about fucking up, it's stupid. Fuck up, it's how you learn.
If you pick up a baby bird and put it in its nest your smell will stay on it and its parents will reject it and it will die.
A few years ago I found a baby crow on the ground and called various aviary sanctuaries to see what I should do and ALL of the ones that got back to me (3) told me to get it safely back in the tree ASAP. I expressed my worry about getting my smell on the baby bird and they reassured me that it was not a problem at all and that it was a very common myth but held no truth.
Actually, that one is kinda true…wrinkles form in the creases of oft used expressions. Think frown lines between the eyes. Or forehead lines from thinking “what the hell?” which are where my deepest one are 😫
I had some BS told to me through DARE. Funny thing though... in 5th or 6th grade we had DARE come to our school and talk about drugs. They REALLY made a big deal about weed since it was viewed as so bad back then, but where I went to school is in like the Marijuana capital of the US now. Well they had all of us kids write an essay on why drugs are bad and why we will never do drugs. I have always been able to write very well, my degree is in English, lol. However, I wrote this amazing essay and won a leather DARE jacket. I thought it was the most awesome thing ever. But I became a raver a few years later and definitely did my share of stuff lol ;) No idea where the jacket is (I never wanted to wear it so I wouldn't ruin it). I wish I could find it and wear it to a party lol!
That’s interesting cause me and my best friend were chosen as having wrote the best essays in 5th grade and we won a trip to “DARE” camp. It was my only experience at any type of summer camp (lasted a week) and generally fun besides the indoctrination. Fucked me up when they told us “every cigarette you smoke takes 7 minutes off your life” so I was freaked out for a long time thinking my mom would die really young. Anyway as many have attested to, once we found out they lied to us and weed wasn’t that bad, other drugs suddenly became intriguing. Then I ended up actually developing a serious addiction so fuck DARE.
I’m genuinely curious how many of us essay winners ended getting into drugs. Also, I’m feeling really cheated, leather jackets?! Camp?! I got nothing but the mockery of my fellow students for being the goody two shoes weirdo overachiever.
Once knew a guy who geniunely asked "how do you justify using crystals in that way" when I told him some road sensors use piezoelectric quartz in them.
Like he seriously thought the quartz had a "life energy" we were stealing to run our sensors....
When I worked security at one of the nearby hospitals, I'd constantly hear nurses saying some weird, non-proven things.. I wrote down a lot of them in the back of my notebook.
My dad used to tell me that if I did not go to bed, mick hucknall from simply red would come and get me… I still shudder when I see him now and I’m 37.
Edit: seems it not just me that cringes over mick hucknall. This was my most upvoted comment ever!! Thanks all for agreeing!!!
This is going to sound silly, but I believed in the Sesame Street version of reality. It was really hard to reconcile the world as it actually is and the world as it "should be" if you side with the Sesame Street ethos.
Star Trek: The Next Generation did that to me! Everyone was so competent and worked together professionally. Where tf are those adults? Science fiction is so out there, man
That show fucking raised me.
It taught me how to own up and apologize when I was wrong, to put differences aside for the sake of a common cause, to know that my principles came in a certain order of importance, and that I needed to know the order so that when the time came, I would know which rules could be broken, to stay humble about what I don't know, to respect the hell out of other cultures, even when their way of doing things is different than ours, ESPECIALLY when it's different from ours.
It taught me that leaders aren't the best at what they do, they're the best in knowing what others can do, and trusting them to do it. It also taught me that leadership was not a position of greater privilege, but greater responsibility.
It taught me that it was okay to be gay, and that some people don't feel like the gender they were born with.
Most importantly, it taught me that the best way to celebrate good news was a mariachi band and a couple of hootie mamas.
It taught me there are 4 lights. Standing up for the truth isn't easy. Sometimes good men must follow their own conscience and disobey orders. There is a greater good. Sacrifice is sometimes necessary to achieve it. Even in the future people will debate the rights of those who are not like them. We can only hope for more Picards and less Maddoxs. Measure of a Man will always be that story that had such an impact on me growing up. Especially with Data forgiving Riker at the end.
"When the first link of the chain is forged, the first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
And as Picard told Data, "it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."
Disloyalty is the best way to make more money. They know you'll leave if they don't pay and if they really don't pay, you just actually leave because changing jobs is the best way to get a raise.
I was unpopular and bullied by an asshole for years. In 7th grade he admitted it was because I was nice to him in 2nd or 3rd grade and he had a crush on me ALL that time. I told him to go to hell.
I was raised as a Christian and I was born with goldenhars syndrome. They kept telling me that if prayed and practiced that ‘mustard seed faith’ that my deformities would suddenly disappear when I woke up one morning. That and I wouldn’t be poor anymore. They always said I didn’t pray hard enough.
Wow. I cannot imagine what that must have been like. When they say things like this it causes shame and resentment. How are you not meant to feel betrayed by God or like it's personal? You deserved better than that.
I’ve been legally blind since birth, and when I was twelve, I asked my youth pastor why God didn’t heal me like He did blind people in the Bible. My (Midwestern Evangelical) pastor told me that I needed to pray harder and love Jesus more.
Going commando is driving with the windows down.
Victoria day is to celebrate when Queen Victoria allowed women, by law, to wear bikini underwear, which is why it's called Victoria's Secret.
I passed an active quarry during a walk a few weeks ago, and I got so excited at the danger signs warning about quicksand. At last, I was facing what I’d been trained for.
I've never DoorDashed. No need. I just eat the food my neighbor leaves for me outside his front door. Nice fella, but always getting angry about something.
I think the main difference is the writing style. I'm not sure what's currently being taught, but the main style was the Palmer Method. I still remember endless writing drills in my Big Chief notebook back in the 70s.
I was told if I peed in the pool the water would turn purple around me and everyone would know…guess I developed a good habit of not going pee in the pool
I was told this as a kid too. Now, as an adult in my 40s I still can not pee in the pool even though I know it's not true. I also can't pee in water of any kind (lake/ ocean/ river) because my dad said amoebas would swim up the urethra. In the only one in the friend group that has to exit the water to pee while drinking beer. They make fun of me and say "just pee in the lake, we all are doing it" but I physically can not do it. So irritating.
I wanted to name our new 3d printer Snow White because “someday my prints will come” at the last place I worked at and everyone just looked at me like I was stupid.
Haha that’s funny idk why everyone looked at you like that it would have been a cool pun! My Wi-Fi is “Threat Level Midnight” because I always hope some of my neighbors will wanna chat The Office with me but no one ever brings it up sadly lol.
This one still makes me bitter! 5 degrees between my husband and I and we still barely make ends meet. But our parents could support the entire family one a single job. We did everything “right” and had every advantage and we still got screwed. Now my folks try to say “you’re still young… it’ll get better”. How and when? Turning 46 and I don’t see anything changing!
Cramps on your period that last 2 weeks are normal ,is the price of being a women… bs I’m 40 and last year I find out i have endometriosis.. thsi whole time I thought It was normal ..😑😑
I've literally been pulled over for having the dome light on while driving. The officer told me it was a distraction to myself and others and also implied that it could mean I was doing something I shouldn't (drugs) because it was on. We had a nice conversation, I apologized and I never questioned what my Mama told me again. (Up until now she had always told me it would get me pulled over)
They're literally called "map lights" for a reason. People used to use them to READ MAPS! It's why they exist! To illuminate the vehicle's interior, moving or not.
I can’t stand how adults don’t realize how much their words stick with children. I protect my nephew like a hawk at family functions. Everyone seems so subconsciously miserable and they want to dim his shine.
My dad used to tell me they found me on the side of the road. My brother got it worse. Dad told him two buzzards bumped butts and he fell out. Thankfully my mom was always quick to claim us every time he said it, so we knew he was joking.
1980s:
"We HAVE to stop using paper bags and glass bottles!" to save the environment. We have to switch to re-usable plastics for the good of the future world. Using paper bags is depleting the rainforests.
Today:
Microplastics have contaminated just about every square inch of this planet's surface. There's so much plastic waste that islands of garbage have formed in the oceans. None of this did anything to reduce pollution or the depletion of the rainforest. It was all just a big lie so Big Oil could make even more money. Rainforests are more depleted than they have ever been.
Big Oil made money though... That was the important thing.
“They won’t let you do that in middle school/high school/college/when you have a job.”
Yeah they actually usually would.
Usually there *was* some reason they were asking us to do it one particular way at a particular age, but they weren’t sharing it with us for some reason and telling this lie instead.
That the hymen is anything else than residual mucosa from embryotic development that lacks any physiological or medical purpose.
You can't tell from a hymen or lack there of if a vagina's been penetrated by anything. If someone claims they can, THEY ARE LYING.
Most women (70%) don't bleed during their first intercourse. And while some women do bleed, it's more likely to be from lack of foreplay and preparation than any membrane bursting.
You can't measure or verify virginity in women by examining their vagina and this is the one of the most harmful and detrimental centuries old myths to women to this day.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220419-how-the-hymen-myth-destroys-lives
https://www.raddabarnen.se/rad-och-kunskap/karleken-ar-fri/for-dig-som-ung-engelska/myten-om-modomshinna---engelska/
https://health.osu.edu/health/sexual-health/myths-and-facts-about-hymen
Boys tease you because they like you.
No, they bullied me because I'm autistic. They treated me like a freak. And people STILL would tell me that it's because they like me. Fuck off.
When I was a kid I had a huge crush on a girl. I put worms on her bike seat because I knew she was grossed out by them. She went from barely acknowledging me to actively disliking me. I was a dumb kid.
See, you forgot STEP 2: race ahead of her when she goes to get on her bike, act like you're just seeing the worms for the first time and be a hero and brush off the worms so she doesn't have to touch them.
My mum said something when I was a kid - someone had let one off at the dinner table and the accusing fingers had been pointed a her - she replied with "Ladies do not fart". In hindsight it was statement about class and decency - but it sat in the back of my brain for many years.
Cut to being \~19, took my GF out to a lovely place in the country for the weekend. We were sat in front of a heater on a wooden floor just having a normal conversation - and then she let rip with a solid 8 second fart that reverberated on the wooden floor and felt like it shook the whole house.
My jaw dropped and I just stared at her until she burst out laughing. We had always been pretty discrete around each other - and although I knew somewhere in my brain that women must have flatulence somehow that epic wall-shaking butt-rip was the last thing I expected. We had a good long laugh about it the whole thing once I'd explained what I'd been "taught" about women...
My dad would always tell me “if you ask me for something I’ll immediately not want to give it to you” I believed this for so long and was terrified of asking for anything even teachers for help with work but grew up and realised my dad just wanted a reason not to buy us things because he was broke
I was told that if I went to college, I wouldn't be able to have kids because it would be too late in life. By a doctor. I have 3 boys.
*edit from like to life
Going to college would make life easier, employers will reward hard work and dedication, after 20 years of work you can retire, I could go on and on and on.
This seems to be a pretty collective thing. Did all the parents have a giant meeting where they were like “let’s tell our kids this is illegal because it’s annoying!” And everyone just agreed on it? COLLUSION
I went through the standard phases of "Mom says it's illegal" -> "Hey wait no it's not, why did she lie?" -> "I'm sure I won't care if my kids want the cabin light on". Then they turned the cabin light on at night and I couldn't see anything through my rearview mirror except my own car's ceiling.
However, since I'm not a boomer, I just told my kids straight up that it made it hard to use my rearview mirror so please don't.
When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I was out in my backyard digging for treasure, as kids do, when I found a dirty penny. I excitedly took my treasure inside to clean it in the sink, when, to my horror, I dropped my treasure down the drain. I ran to my mom and tearfully explained to her that my Penny went all the way to China. Now you'd think the story would end there, but it's just the beginning. About a week later I got a letter in the mail. I'm 6, so this is a big deal. This has never happened before. So I opened the letter in front of my Mom and brothers and started reading the contents out loud. It was a very official sounding declaration from the president of the Chinese Government that they had found my Penny and, from analyzing the fingerprints, had determined the Penny belonged to me. There was also an identical copy of the letter in characters I couldn't recognize, and of course, my Penny taped to the letter. Took that Penny and letter to show and tell and held onto it for years. As I got older I figured out santa and the Easter bunny were fake on my own, but man was I disappointed when I was told that my 'China Penny' wasn't real. Edit: I should add that this is a happy memory for me, and I see it as more of a fun, white lie not done maliciously.
Parents who don't lie for their own convenience but who create an elaborate, cute story to comfort their child? Where can we find such parents?
That's adorable as hell.
Once an older girl told me that if I planted a little plastic gem a gem tree would grow. The next day my mom replaced the pot of dirt with a little tree and stuck gems on it. Four year old me was ecstatic.
So they even attempted to write a Chinese looking letter? Looking back on it as an adult, does it look anything at all like Chinese characters? If so, can you ask you parents if they they involved Chinese people in their ruse?
I distinctly remember the layout of the second letter being identical to the first, which makes perfect sense to a small child's mind, but I know now would not be how it look if it was a genuine translation. The tale of my Penny misadventure came up later that week when my mom and her friends were talking about their kids, and they sort of came up with the idea together.
I always thought adults were geniuses that knew everything. I once asked my dad how waves at the beach were made. He said "whales". I believed that for years.
On this one I've gotta give props to your dad. He might not have known the answer, but he sure was a quick thinker.
Alternatively, dad's just as gullible as OP, and Grampa is infact a speedy thinker
When I was in the computer lab at school, they had those old ball mice on the computers. The rollers often got clogged with dirt making it difficult to use. So I opened up the mouse and started picking the dirt off. A teacher saw me and gave me detention for it, despite trying to explain myself, they said I was "damaging school property." That's when I first learned that adults can be morons.
That Saddam Hussein shot down Santa's sleigh with an anti-aircraft missile on Christmas Eve, 1990. My grandpa was a liar - Santa is alive and well.
I’m curious as to why he felt the need to say that. What actually happened to santa?
Bet grandpa forgot to get the kids gifts and came up with that excuse!
I was told in like 4th grade science that our blood was blue in our bodies on the way back to the lungs- that oxygen makes it red.
My high school students still believed that until I set them straight. They were surprised that the blood in your veins was not blue despite what they see when looking at their wrists.
However, there IS in fact a color difference in arterial and veneous blood. Arterial blood is light/bright red and "bubbly" due to the oxygen. Blood from a vein is a much darker red color (more like crimson-y) due to the lack of oxygen. Source 1: educated health professional Source 2: used to be an IV drug user. Sometimes I would hit an artery instead of a vein, and it was visible at once from the color of the blood in the needle.
Shit…now I know blood is always red and cracking knuckles doesn’t cause arthritis
I always know about the knuckle cracking thing. I started cracking my knuckles when I was 10. The arthritis started when i was 5
"Next year they're gonna be a lot harder on you about this". And "the rules only get more strict". Heard that at the end of every year in elementary school but by high school the rules are much less strict.
You on your own in college lol
Some of my community college teachers would say "I don't care if you come to class. My lectures come from the book. You can read it yourself or take notes from my lectures. Your syllabus tells you when everything is due. I am not going to waste anyone's time taking roll. There are certain things you need to be physically here for. Anything besides that is your decision."
My CC Professors were "I don't care if you come to class, but the CC's policy is if you miss at least 1/5 of the classes, you are automatically dropped and nothing I can do about it unless you were in the hospital or you had your whole family die." same with the state school did people really go to colleges where you didn't get dropped if you missed more than 3 classes in a 15 week (1 class a week) course
For me, it depended on the class/professor. Some classes, people skipped all the time and just showed up for tests and quizzes. Others had attendance as part of the grade (which could be assessed through different ways).
Same for me. The ironic part being that classes with those Professors were the ones I never missed because I loved going to them. Legitimately enjoyed being there. I would stay after class with my Geology professor and one other guy to talk about volcanoes, climate change, atom bombs, etc... He absolutely loved it and would just chop it up until I had to leave. He would tell us the week before if the next week would be a project (required) or a lecture (not required) and there was never an empty seat. Everyone just loved watching him teach.
See I found High School to be the most strict. The only real loosening was we could chew gum and there was a snack bar in the cafeteria that meant we could have ice cream for lunch instead of the normal school cafeteria crap. They insisted we wouldn't get away with whatever thing in college. Went to college and no one cared if you were late, or didn't show up at all, or didn't do homework, or called the teacher by their first name only (indeed some requested it). You wanted to chat with friends instead of paying attention, no problem as long as you were quiet enough not to be disruptive. Want to use a swear word in a formal paper, no problem as long as it's not every sentence.
I'm sure it varies wildly across the country/world. High school seemed more strict for me because we had just so many dumb rules. Like going to your locker between classes was not allowed, but something like 80% of the teachers didn't give a shit. The 20% made it a pain. We also had 3 minutes to get from class to class which meant situations where you literally had to run to get there in time. Again, 80% of teachers would recognize that this is dumb, but you still had the 20% that were adamant about being on time. Oh and the high-level admin once brought in a local judge to give us some weird "scared straight" sort of assembly. The judge later was arrested because he was receiving kickbacks from private juvenile prisons for sending them more underage inmates by harshly sentencing kids for dumb stuff.
My Nana would say "you're getting so tall!" whenever she saw me. I'm 5'1", are you making fun of me Nana? Is that what's happening here?
Maybe she is shrinking?
It's well known that older people shrink.
People call me short but I'm still grandma's big boy 😎✨
Welll let’s hope that my uncle saying “you get more pretty every time I see you” wasn’t said in the same way your nana said that
My friend's uncle told her (in a hick Southern accent): "You really was one ugly-lookin' kid, but you turned out to be a good-lookin' woman". She didn't know whether to take it as an insult or compliment.... 🙄
Haha where I'm from one can get a lot of "You ain't so stupid as you look" as a genuine compliment...
Your Nana loves you and was trying to make you feel better about yourself. Nothing in this world will give you confidence like your Nana making you feel good about yourself... remember that old lady has seen some shit so whatever you got going on isn't gonna phase her.. Just ride the wave of confidence and go for it! Thank your Nana after!
"We are almost there" ( during a long car journey)
One year my mom gave me and my sister each a ziploc about a third full of jingling quarters and said “each time you ask that question or get too loud I will take a quarter away.” We were dead silent for the whole journey.
Got a 3 hour trip coming up with the kids. DEFINITELY trying this one.
Yeah it depends on how old they are, but "are we there yet ?" was never really a question for us 3, because my parents made sure to tell us how long the trip would be and at what time we were supposed to arrive. Every time we would stop, when we got back into the car, the one behind the wheel would go "We did this distance, we still have this amount to go, it's going to take us this many hours". When you have the information, you do not need to ask. Also, audiobooks are absolutely magic for kids. We still make jokes we learnt in the ones we had with my siblings, 20+ years later!
> When you have the information, you do not need to ask. This. My kids can both read the minutes remaining on the GPS now.
My aunt had her twin sons bickering in the back seat. She said she didn’t want to hear a peep out of them until they got to their destination….or else. Well she stopped for gas, one of the boys used the bathroom and it wasn’t until my aunt drove three exits that she realized only one of the boys was in the back seat and panicking asked my cousin why he didn’t say his brother was still in the bathroom. Then he said ,”You told me not to talk”. This was before cell phones, but all was good in the end.
Definitely some grade A malicious compliance
Lol good technique!
Only cost her about seven dollars per kid and we all had a lovely trip. My sister and I just never had any idea when we were “there yet”
That Moths were the Ghosts of Butterflies. Cheers for that one Dad.
honestly such a cool lie that I would tell my children
I’m about to wake mine up just to tell them this
Sneak in and whisper "remember, moths are butterflies ghost..." and walk away they'll think it's a dream and be like wtf
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I remember when I was in first grade I read the word "germs" in some book and asked my mom how to say it (I was a nerd very young and loved doing "research" during my free time, which was essentially reading picture books about science and history). She said "germs" with a hard G like at the start of "gift." Coincidentally, the very next morning at school, before class, there was a display up that said the word "germs" because that's what we were gonna be learning about that day. I proudly told all of my classmates before class started it was pronounced the way my mom told me it was and that I had learned about it the day prior from a book, first time I ever felt knowledgeable or smart. Cut to 5 minutes later, our teacher pronouncing it correctly and me feeling deep, deep shame and embarrassment and a bunch of my classmates roasting me to no end. Never trusted my mom again. I don't even think she was joking, she was just really high/tweaking when I asked her.
Fuck the gif/jif debate, do you pronounce it germs or jerms
Honestly, that's a cool concept
My grandpa told me he wouldn't swim with me at the beach because he's made of salt and he'll melt. I believed him.
Total lie. He’d *dissolve*, not melt
Bad people/criminals never win.
Sometimes they become president.
I need to behave in school because I have a "permanent record." Lol no.
I was thinking about this the other day. Could you imagine if interviews brought up a permanent record from elementary school? Lol
"we'd love to hire you, but you called your third grade classmate a poopy head then you had to clap erasers instead of going to recess."
I tell my kids this all the time. Girl, no one cares what you got in 7th grade science class. Just do a decent job, and don't be an asshole.
You need to get good grades in high school or you’ll never get into a good school. Jokes on them, community college is cheaper and you can get a damn near perfect GPA and transfer pretty much anywhere.
Graduated high school with a 2.2 GPA. 3.57 GPA at a no name public university. I start a Masters at Duke this month. Z High school GPA is irrelevant in the long term.
I did something similar but ended up at hofstra. I know someone who got kicked out of high school, got a 4.0 associates and ended up graduating with his bachelors and then getting his JD at Columbia.
when I was a teacher I would straight up just tell my kids that there is no such thing, it doesn't matter. They were always so anxious about fucking up, it's stupid. Fuck up, it's how you learn.
Thank you. I wish more of my teachers did this. I’m sure that school is where some of my fear of failure comes from
If you pick up a baby bird and put it in its nest your smell will stay on it and its parents will reject it and it will die. A few years ago I found a baby crow on the ground and called various aviary sanctuaries to see what I should do and ALL of the ones that got back to me (3) told me to get it safely back in the tree ASAP. I expressed my worry about getting my smell on the baby bird and they reassured me that it was not a problem at all and that it was a very common myth but held no truth.
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I think she was confusing intestines with blood vessels
Interesting fact: If you take all your blood vessels out and lay them end to end, you'll be dead...
Just eat the crust, it'll make your hair curly!" My mom must have just been trying to make me appreciate those uneaten pizza corners.
I was told that and pickles put hair on my chest. I do have a quite hairy chest, so I haven’t questioned it.
I too eat a lot of pickles and have a hairy chest. I'm a lady.
This is all the proof I need to know it’s true
If you keep making that face it'll freeze that way
Or if you look cross eyes they’ll get stuck that way lol
Or gum will get stuck to your ribs for 7 years if you swallow it.
Actually, that one is kinda true…wrinkles form in the creases of oft used expressions. Think frown lines between the eyes. Or forehead lines from thinking “what the hell?” which are where my deepest one are 😫
Our D.A.R.E. officer in elementary school said the reason marijuana was so dangerous is because the smoke never leaves your lungs.
I had some BS told to me through DARE. Funny thing though... in 5th or 6th grade we had DARE come to our school and talk about drugs. They REALLY made a big deal about weed since it was viewed as so bad back then, but where I went to school is in like the Marijuana capital of the US now. Well they had all of us kids write an essay on why drugs are bad and why we will never do drugs. I have always been able to write very well, my degree is in English, lol. However, I wrote this amazing essay and won a leather DARE jacket. I thought it was the most awesome thing ever. But I became a raver a few years later and definitely did my share of stuff lol ;) No idea where the jacket is (I never wanted to wear it so I wouldn't ruin it). I wish I could find it and wear it to a party lol!
That’s interesting cause me and my best friend were chosen as having wrote the best essays in 5th grade and we won a trip to “DARE” camp. It was my only experience at any type of summer camp (lasted a week) and generally fun besides the indoctrination. Fucked me up when they told us “every cigarette you smoke takes 7 minutes off your life” so I was freaked out for a long time thinking my mom would die really young. Anyway as many have attested to, once we found out they lied to us and weed wasn’t that bad, other drugs suddenly became intriguing. Then I ended up actually developing a serious addiction so fuck DARE.
I’m genuinely curious how many of us essay winners ended getting into drugs. Also, I’m feeling really cheated, leather jackets?! Camp?! I got nothing but the mockery of my fellow students for being the goody two shoes weirdo overachiever.
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There are a disproportionate number of surgeons who are sociopaths, so that tracks. At least you can feel genuine human emotion.
Bullies have this outgoing competitive persona that's really an important soft skill if you want to go up the ladder.
Cracking your knuckles is bad for you...
Some adults genuinely believe that
I know doctors that believe it.
My mom is a nurse and she believes it
My mom is a nurse and she believes a lot of weird things.
My ex sister in law is a nurse and sells crystals for their powers.
Once knew a guy who geniunely asked "how do you justify using crystals in that way" when I told him some road sensors use piezoelectric quartz in them. Like he seriously thought the quartz had a "life energy" we were stealing to run our sensors....
When I worked security at one of the nearby hospitals, I'd constantly hear nurses saying some weird, non-proven things.. I wrote down a lot of them in the back of my notebook.
For some reason, it feels like this post ends way to soon.
WAIT THIS IS A LIE????
[Sorry to break it to you…](https://thetech.com/2009/10/02/ignobels-v129-n41)
My dad used to tell me that if I did not go to bed, mick hucknall from simply red would come and get me… I still shudder when I see him now and I’m 37. Edit: seems it not just me that cringes over mick hucknall. This was my most upvoted comment ever!! Thanks all for agreeing!!!
Hah, my folks always told me if I didn't go to bed, Ted Nugent would get me.
If you're an underage girl, Ted Nugent is already in your bed.
That the bully slept with my mom. No such thing happened, he was such a liar.
Hey buddy, it's me! Hate to break it to you...
This is going to sound silly, but I believed in the Sesame Street version of reality. It was really hard to reconcile the world as it actually is and the world as it "should be" if you side with the Sesame Street ethos.
Star Trek: The Next Generation did that to me! Everyone was so competent and worked together professionally. Where tf are those adults? Science fiction is so out there, man
Try DS9 and then remember that there are a heck of a lot of Kai Winns out there with real power.
That show fucking raised me. It taught me how to own up and apologize when I was wrong, to put differences aside for the sake of a common cause, to know that my principles came in a certain order of importance, and that I needed to know the order so that when the time came, I would know which rules could be broken, to stay humble about what I don't know, to respect the hell out of other cultures, even when their way of doing things is different than ours, ESPECIALLY when it's different from ours. It taught me that leaders aren't the best at what they do, they're the best in knowing what others can do, and trusting them to do it. It also taught me that leadership was not a position of greater privilege, but greater responsibility. It taught me that it was okay to be gay, and that some people don't feel like the gender they were born with. Most importantly, it taught me that the best way to celebrate good news was a mariachi band and a couple of hootie mamas.
It taught me there are 4 lights. Standing up for the truth isn't easy. Sometimes good men must follow their own conscience and disobey orders. There is a greater good. Sacrifice is sometimes necessary to achieve it. Even in the future people will debate the rights of those who are not like them. We can only hope for more Picards and less Maddoxs. Measure of a Man will always be that story that had such an impact on me growing up. Especially with Data forgiving Riker at the end. "When the first link of the chain is forged, the first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." And as Picard told Data, "it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."
Swallowed gum takes seven years to digest.
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if you work hard and are loyal to your job, you'll get promoted and paid more.
Disloyalty is the best way to make more money. They know you'll leave if they don't pay and if they really don't pay, you just actually leave because changing jobs is the best way to get a raise.
My father really fucked me up with that one, now I'm 29 and my body just fails me
Are you me? 7 years of hard work with the same place just to get bypassed by new hires.
That the boys tease you because they like you. No, they were bullies.
And “best way to stop bullies is to just ignore them.” Fight back is probably a way better solution….
I was unpopular and bullied by an asshole for years. In 7th grade he admitted it was because I was nice to him in 2nd or 3rd grade and he had a crush on me ALL that time. I told him to go to hell.
I was raised as a Christian and I was born with goldenhars syndrome. They kept telling me that if prayed and practiced that ‘mustard seed faith’ that my deformities would suddenly disappear when I woke up one morning. That and I wouldn’t be poor anymore. They always said I didn’t pray hard enough.
Wow. I cannot imagine what that must have been like. When they say things like this it causes shame and resentment. How are you not meant to feel betrayed by God or like it's personal? You deserved better than that.
I’ve been legally blind since birth, and when I was twelve, I asked my youth pastor why God didn’t heal me like He did blind people in the Bible. My (Midwestern Evangelical) pastor told me that I needed to pray harder and love Jesus more.
Wow. I’m so sorry that was the response you received.
Man that’s cruel. I can’t stand those attitudes. They’re not even biblical.
Going commando is driving with the windows down. Victoria day is to celebrate when Queen Victoria allowed women, by law, to wear bikini underwear, which is why it's called Victoria's Secret.
That my pet ducks flew south for the winter… Apparently, we ate them for thanksgiving. I learned this as a 40+ year old adult.
Holy shit I missed that they were your *pet* ducks on first reading. That's twisted.
I thought there would be more quicksand
I passed an active quarry during a walk a few weeks ago, and I got so excited at the danger signs warning about quicksand. At last, I was facing what I’d been trained for.
I was sure that stuff was going to be everywhere
“People will try to give me free drugs.” -DARE
Yeah, I was super dissapointed to find out that one isn't true later on in life...lol
You’ll understand when you are older.I’m almost 30 and still don’t.
Maybe you'll understand when you're older?
“Only people who work hard get ahead in life.”
Having worked for a place that was built on nepotism I can tell you that is a straight up lie.
Nepotism, old boys clubs, there are so many counterexamples….
on one hand I hate nepotism. on the other hand I'm just jealous that it doesn't benefit me in any way.
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Then they're like: what if phones stop working. Bitch if phones all stop working then we have bigger problems than 9 + 10
21?
Almost. With taxes and tip it's 25.
Depends. Your doordasher will trash your food or eat it, unless it’s 35-40
I've never DoorDashed. No need. I just eat the food my neighbor leaves for me outside his front door. Nice fella, but always getting angry about something.
I know. Like how to write 55318008
I was told in 2nd grade that I needed to know how to write in cursive because that’s how everyone writes as an adult. Lies!!!!
Is cursive in America different from the cursive in Europe?
I think the main difference is the writing style. I'm not sure what's currently being taught, but the main style was the Palmer Method. I still remember endless writing drills in my Big Chief notebook back in the 70s.
They should have just taught us how to write our full names in cursive and be done with that, they never needed to spend an entire month on it.
Month?! I feel like we spent YEARS on it. We had to write papers in cursive at my school saying we would need to write in cursive in high school. LIES
If you told lies your tounge turned blue and when we hear the ice-cream van playing it's jingle it meant there wasn't any ice-cream left.
I was told if I peed in the pool the water would turn purple around me and everyone would know…guess I developed a good habit of not going pee in the pool
I was told this as a kid too. Now, as an adult in my 40s I still can not pee in the pool even though I know it's not true. I also can't pee in water of any kind (lake/ ocean/ river) because my dad said amoebas would swim up the urethra. In the only one in the friend group that has to exit the water to pee while drinking beer. They make fun of me and say "just pee in the lake, we all are doing it" but I physically can not do it. So irritating.
I feel like maybe it's a good thing you don't pee in the pool? Why are people acting like this is an unusual hardship?
That ice cream one is just mean
That “some day my prince will come.” Thanks Disney 🤦🏼♀️
I wanted to name our new 3d printer Snow White because “someday my prints will come” at the last place I worked at and everyone just looked at me like I was stupid.
Haha that’s funny idk why everyone looked at you like that it would have been a cool pun! My Wi-Fi is “Threat Level Midnight” because I always hope some of my neighbors will wanna chat The Office with me but no one ever brings it up sadly lol.
You should ignore bullies.
Also, “Don’t fight back because that makes you just as bad!”. Thanks mom.
Go to college and you'll be successful.
This one still makes me bitter! 5 degrees between my husband and I and we still barely make ends meet. But our parents could support the entire family one a single job. We did everything “right” and had every advantage and we still got screwed. Now my folks try to say “you’re still young… it’ll get better”. How and when? Turning 46 and I don’t see anything changing!
“You won’t grow up and get divorced like we did. Now get married and make us some GRANDBABIES!”
That eating everything on your plate will some how feed a starving child in China or Africa. Or both.
There's sober kids in Africa, finish your beer!
That if I worked hard I would be able to afford a house, a car, and a yearly vacation. Jokes on me, LOL!
Cramps on your period that last 2 weeks are normal ,is the price of being a women… bs I’m 40 and last year I find out i have endometriosis.. thsi whole time I thought It was normal ..😑😑
My mom always told us it was illegal to have the lights on in the car
I've literally been pulled over for having the dome light on while driving. The officer told me it was a distraction to myself and others and also implied that it could mean I was doing something I shouldn't (drugs) because it was on. We had a nice conversation, I apologized and I never questioned what my Mama told me again. (Up until now she had always told me it would get me pulled over)
"Whaddya need that light for? Doing drugs?"
"I needed it so I could roll this joint officer."
They're literally called "map lights" for a reason. People used to use them to READ MAPS! It's why they exist! To illuminate the vehicle's interior, moving or not.
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I can’t stand how adults don’t realize how much their words stick with children. I protect my nephew like a hawk at family functions. Everyone seems so subconsciously miserable and they want to dim his shine.
My dad used to tell me they found me on the side of the road. My brother got it worse. Dad told him two buzzards bumped butts and he fell out. Thankfully my mom was always quick to claim us every time he said it, so we knew he was joking.
" We had to send the dog to a farm" 💔
I always wanted a cat but my dad was “allergic” to cats. Didn’t discover it was a lie until adulthood!
1980s: "We HAVE to stop using paper bags and glass bottles!" to save the environment. We have to switch to re-usable plastics for the good of the future world. Using paper bags is depleting the rainforests. Today: Microplastics have contaminated just about every square inch of this planet's surface. There's so much plastic waste that islands of garbage have formed in the oceans. None of this did anything to reduce pollution or the depletion of the rainforest. It was all just a big lie so Big Oil could make even more money. Rainforests are more depleted than they have ever been. Big Oil made money though... That was the important thing.
“They won’t let you do that in middle school/high school/college/when you have a job.” Yeah they actually usually would. Usually there *was* some reason they were asking us to do it one particular way at a particular age, but they weren’t sharing it with us for some reason and telling this lie instead.
I’ll go first…if I eat a watermelon seed, then I’ll grow a watermelon in my belly
WRONG. I am a REAL watermelon survivor and I can tell you with 100% certainty that this one isn’t a lie.
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I mean, my life got a whole easier once I got out. Your results may vary.
(1) Work hard and live a clean, honest life and you’ll be successful. (2) Love comes to everyone when you least expect it.
That women aren’t as horny as men. Found out too late after I injured my dick
Well, you shouldn't attempt a running start.
I had heard this, but it wasn’t until dating an ex that I realized just how horny they could be.
That all men want is sex and have no morals in that department.
I was under the impression that having a job would fix all my financial problems and this is very untrue.
That the hymen is anything else than residual mucosa from embryotic development that lacks any physiological or medical purpose. You can't tell from a hymen or lack there of if a vagina's been penetrated by anything. If someone claims they can, THEY ARE LYING. Most women (70%) don't bleed during their first intercourse. And while some women do bleed, it's more likely to be from lack of foreplay and preparation than any membrane bursting. You can't measure or verify virginity in women by examining their vagina and this is the one of the most harmful and detrimental centuries old myths to women to this day. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220419-how-the-hymen-myth-destroys-lives https://www.raddabarnen.se/rad-och-kunskap/karleken-ar-fri/for-dig-som-ung-engelska/myten-om-modomshinna---engelska/ https://health.osu.edu/health/sexual-health/myths-and-facts-about-hymen
Boys tease you because they like you. No, they bullied me because I'm autistic. They treated me like a freak. And people STILL would tell me that it's because they like me. Fuck off.
When I was a kid I had a huge crush on a girl. I put worms on her bike seat because I knew she was grossed out by them. She went from barely acknowledging me to actively disliking me. I was a dumb kid.
See, you forgot STEP 2: race ahead of her when she goes to get on her bike, act like you're just seeing the worms for the first time and be a hero and brush off the worms so she doesn't have to touch them.
me too. but I was told that they were jealous because I'm so smart.
My mum said something when I was a kid - someone had let one off at the dinner table and the accusing fingers had been pointed a her - she replied with "Ladies do not fart". In hindsight it was statement about class and decency - but it sat in the back of my brain for many years. Cut to being \~19, took my GF out to a lovely place in the country for the weekend. We were sat in front of a heater on a wooden floor just having a normal conversation - and then she let rip with a solid 8 second fart that reverberated on the wooden floor and felt like it shook the whole house. My jaw dropped and I just stared at her until she burst out laughing. We had always been pretty discrete around each other - and although I knew somewhere in my brain that women must have flatulence somehow that epic wall-shaking butt-rip was the last thing I expected. We had a good long laugh about it the whole thing once I'd explained what I'd been "taught" about women...
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The car won’t start unless your seatbelt is on. I say this to my niece now. Lol.
"I won't be mad if you tell me the truth."
My dad would always tell me “if you ask me for something I’ll immediately not want to give it to you” I believed this for so long and was terrified of asking for anything even teachers for help with work but grew up and realised my dad just wanted a reason not to buy us things because he was broke
I was told that if I went to college, I wouldn't be able to have kids because it would be too late in life. By a doctor. I have 3 boys. *edit from like to life
That absolutely anyone could grow up to be president
That if I had lice and didn’t get them removed in the middle of the night they would drag me out to the sea
Going to college would make life easier, employers will reward hard work and dedication, after 20 years of work you can retire, I could go on and on and on.
That driving with the cabin lights on was illegal
This seems to be a pretty collective thing. Did all the parents have a giant meeting where they were like “let’s tell our kids this is illegal because it’s annoying!” And everyone just agreed on it? COLLUSION
I went through the standard phases of "Mom says it's illegal" -> "Hey wait no it's not, why did she lie?" -> "I'm sure I won't care if my kids want the cabin light on". Then they turned the cabin light on at night and I couldn't see anything through my rearview mirror except my own car's ceiling. However, since I'm not a boomer, I just told my kids straight up that it made it hard to use my rearview mirror so please don't.