Re: not my parents, but... (DirtyChurch)
I also remember this sketch so you weren't dreaming. It's very, very weird.
...I didn't believe it though.
(wearer of the bloomers, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 18:01, Reply)

Manuel
My family used to go to a resturaunt fairly often. It was a mexican food resturaunt by the way.

Well, the place employed quite alot of Mexicans.

To get me to be good, my dad told me that there was a guy, named manuel, that pinned back/ cut off childrens ears if they were bad.

I lived in mortal fear.
(hotdogwheel, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 17:40, Reply)

The spinach van
My mother told us the ice-cream van was actually the spinach van....

More disturbingly, she told me that if I ate paper (I used to tear little corners off my books and consume them - no idea why!), that the paper would turn into glass in my stomach and cut me open from the inside out! I used to have nightmares!

I tell my son that the reason I know about all his little schemes, fibs and cons is that I have "Special Mummy Magic". He hasn't figured out that he just has a really guilty face and I can spot a lie a mile off 'cause there probably isn't one I didn't tell myself.
(Peelmytangerines, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 16:57, Reply)

magic eyes
My mum also told me she had a magic eye & could se what was happening behind her back. I did this with my kid & it worked because I could always hear what he was doing.
Then one night we were getting ready to go out, but we hadn'told him a baby sitter was coming & he asked me " You will keep an eye on me with your magic eye while you're out, won't you?"
My child thought I was leaving him. How bad did I feel?
(freddie freeloader, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 16:52, Reply)

'Don't...
...swallow chewing gum! Else it'll wrap round your lungs, then you won't be able to breathe and you will die!
( Yoofaloof 'I like it here, wherever it is...', Tue 20 Jan 2004, 16:51, Reply)

When I was little
I used to piss around after bedtime, playing with toys and stuff, reading, anything to avoid going to sleep. Every time my mother would shout up the stairs and tell me to stop it and go to bed. She told me that all the neighbours on the opposite side of the street were her spies and could see through the curtains. In actual fact I think it was the fact that I was jumping down off the top of my bunk-bed each night that tipped her off.
I wasn't the sharpest tool in the box.
(Sir Harrington Titsmith disgraced himself on, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 15:24, Reply)

the bellybutton thing..
my dad and grandad used to tell me, my bro and my cousins that if you put your finger in your bellybutton your bum fell off too! wow! i thought it was just my family...

also, my grandad has a cleft in his chin and he used to tell me he got it from leaning on the popper of his wallet when he was at the pub. that let the barman know he wanted another drink.

any time i asked my dad a question, after hearing the answer i'd ask how he knew that. he'd reply "i learnt it in daddy school". i believe in daddy school til i was about 9...

this is a bit different, but when my cousin was about 5, he asked his dad where hair comes from. his dad went into a big explanation about hair follicles and pigment and etc. about ten minutes later when he finished, he told my cousin to go and tell his mum what he had learned.
my cousin went to his mum and said "mum, you know that lump on your foot?" pointing to his ankle. "well, that's a squirrel and when you're asleep it brushes it's fur and puts it into a bucket and runs up to your head and pushes the hair through your head. old people have grey hair cuz they have grey squirrels."
my uncle was just like :O ??!
(whatsinaname, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 15:21, Reply)

My mother...
...told me that she was a witch, and that because she had green eyes, she could see around corners. She was actually really convincing, because whenever I was up to something and she was in the next room, she'd shout out "STOP DOING THAT!" and I'd be amazed at her magic eyes. In actual fact, she just used to shout that whenever things went suspiciously quiet. She also knew a single card trick that fooled me for years, also attributed to her green eyes.
(casper the friendly ghost, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 14:43, Reply)

My Dad..
had this friend who didn't have a voice box. When I asked him what had happened my Dad told me that it had been eaten out by Bats!

Bats! for Christs Sake!
(DirtyChurch, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 14:35, Reply)

Not my parents, but ...
I watched this French and Saunders live sketch thing they did, I think it had something to do with Comic Relief - anyways! There was this bit where they talked about how men go to the toilet. They described this metal tube which rose out of the "japs-eye" of the penis etc etc. I believed this for many many years!
Now that I have written it down, I'm not too sure if I was a sketch or that I dreamt it....

Oh and then "We're only going for a couple of drinks. We wont be that long...."
(DirtyChurch, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 14:28, Reply)

But a Nig Nog IS a biscuit...txt
the Willersley (sp?) Castle Nig Nog was a recipe in the Methodist Recorder at least 20 years ago. I have scribed it into a cookery book & make them every couple of months.
:)
(Jerubbaal, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 13:59, Reply)

My Dads Friend...
...had lots of money. I once asked him, when I was young at a party in my parents house, what he did for a living. My Dad said that he was a bank manager and everyone in the room laughed in my face. I later found out that he was in fact a bank ROBBER. Funny huh?. However, the joke was on him as he went down for ten years soon after.
(joebennett, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 13:50, Reply)

Bruised Apples
My mum used to tell me that the brown bit on apple where it's been bruised was infact toffee!
(machzero, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 13:43, Reply)

Chicken Livers
My mother and sister loved Chicken Livers, but I depised the awful things (still do). To save cooking two meals - whenever they fancied chicken livers, she used to tell me it was Buffalo Meat. I still didn't like it though and grew up hating Buffalo meat too.
(Crazyshark, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 13:31, Reply)

Maggoty bunny
When I was eight I had a rabbit that lived in a hutch in the back garden. One day I woke up to find the rabbit gone. upon asking my father where "Tufty" had gone, he told me that he had run away to be with the other bunnies. What had actually happened was that the poor little thing had died during the night and my dad had buried him under a secluded nook in the garden before I could wake up and ask awkward questions.

I found out the truth a week later when a fox dug him up and made a tasty meal of his entrails. I still have nightmares.
(roidoid, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 13:03, Reply)

Great Yarmouth Power Station...
before it was demolished, had an impressive chimney a good hundred metres tall. Knowing that my aunt worked there, I asked my father what she did:

"She cleans the chimney".

I believed this until I was about 8, at which point he admitted it was a downright lie and she was actually a secretary.
(mcnelson, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 13:02, Reply)

I had a book called "where do babies come from"...
... and in it, it said somethng along the lines of "in your ovaries are tiny little eggs about the size of these dots ..."

From then on I thought everyone had just 3 eggs (I had 2 bros, that added up), I mentioned it to my mum to confirm it and she nodded and said "yes dear" so I believed it. That was until I found out that when you have your period you're flushing out unused eggs. That put me into a panic cos I thought I was wasting my eggs and would never be able to have babies!
(skinny, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 12:59, Reply)

A friend once told another (more gullible) friend
That the fish (Christian) symbol on the back of cars indicates that the driver is single and looking for lurve... After a couple of weeks she came back to my friend and said that she hasn't seen anyone she likes yet but would keep looking!
(Dairy Air, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 12:24, Reply)

My friend's parents told him
That the ice-cream man rings his chimes to signal that he's run out of ice-cream.
(Tarka_the_Frotter, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 12:10, Reply)

Hulkamania
When I was about 4 years old, my mum and dad said that if I kept crying I'd turn into the incredible hulk. This was to make me stop crying you understand, but obviously I wanted to be the hulk, so I cried even more.
(Fafhrd, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 11:59, Reply)

why?
when I was younger my mother used to tell me that if I played with my belly button my bum would fall off I belived this for years, and even had a dream that my friends sisters bum fell off because she was playing with her belly button. when I was older (i.e last year sometime) I asked her why she used to tell me this, and she replied "its what my dad always told me"

When I was about 6 I noticed there was a random doorway in a alleyway we frequently walked down, I asked her who lived there, she said it was father christmas. I didnt question this as that door obiously led to the north pole.

I also used to have to open my christmas presents in my parents room, as I was scared of father chrismas coming into my room at night. I personally think its rather sencible not to want a random old man sneaking onto my room via the chimney when I was fast asleep in the middle of the night. I think my perents got fed up of me going into their room at 5.00 in the morning every chrismas so they just told me that it was all a big lie and that they put the presents in my room themself. This led me back to wondering who really did live through that doorway in the allyway.
(anon., Tue 20 Jan 2004, 11:21, Reply)

Insurance scam
Reading caldini's story just reminded me, we had been moving house on a rainy day and when the removal van arrived at our new place we found that the roof had been leaking and soaked our sofa and a lot of other bits and pieces.

The removal guy was very apologetic and had said that he would vouch for anything we needed to replace on insurance. My dad being the crafty bugger that he is decided that a new television was in order, despite the fact that it seemed untouched by the downpour - and to make it more convincing he'd given it a tap with a hammer, cracking the screen.

All was well and good and my parents had taken Polaroids of all the ruined items, ready to send off to the insurance company. Luckily, I asked to see them just before they went in the envelope and they all looked good in the photos, no problems at all - except for the large sledgehammer resting against the side of the cracked television. My dad the criminal mastermind.
( Dogtanian, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 10:31, Reply)

Cow Painting
I've just remembered another one, my Sisters Kids all believed that my Dad painted cows for a living, and that he travelled all around the country to do so.

We used to go past fields of friesians and the car would erupt with "Grandad! There's a field you haven't finished yet!"
(Catchag "You know!....For Kids!", Tue 20 Jan 2004, 10:16, Reply)

Bed warmer
My Dad has always had an evil sense of humour, especially when it comes to tormenting gullable kids. We were staying in a hotel in Cambridge when I was about 10, and at the breakfast table, I was looking around at the antique tat that adorned the walls.

I pointed to what a thought was a very long handled banjo, without strings, hanging over the fireplace. It was infact a bed-warmer, but my dad in a proud and informative voice told me that it was used for scooping your balls off the bottom of a hot bath, if you had been sat in the water for too long, and that I wouldn't quite understand yet.

I can remember my Mother crying at the table after he told me that, and my Dad doing the same for a few years to come when I announced "Look Dad, there's a ball scoop" at antique fairs and pubs.
(Catchag "You know!....For Kids!", Tue 20 Jan 2004, 10:14, Reply)

Lies my father told me...
My father practised OBS/GYN and was often called to the hospital to deliver babies and do other "lady" type operations. The calls from the hospital often came at dinnertime and we kids often heard the conversations. After many times hearing these initials, I finally asked my father, "Dad, what's a DNC?" My father thought for a moment and quickly replied, "That's stands for Dusting 'n' Cleaning."
(Bonz, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 9:19, Reply)

Don't worry kids the car is just melting.....
We have a sorta large family we have 5 kids so we had a van to drive around in. We always for some reason put my lil bro who was about 4 in the back in his booster seat. One day we were going over loose shingle and it was hitting the back of the car. when my lil brother asked dad what that noise was dad stated that the car was melting and that the person at the back was going to be the first person to fall on the road and be squished by an on coming car. Everytime after that all 5 kids believeing dad everytime we went over loose shingle we ran to the frount of the van. my lil brother who was stuck in his booster used to scream whenever we went over it. now he still at 13 dont like the thought of loose shingle.

what parent would tell there child that?
(breakersbiggestfan, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 9:11, Reply)

Mugwart paste................
hahahahahahaha!

Sorry!
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 8:57, Reply)

chocolate
My parents told me chocolate was mugwart paste when I was a youngster. Bloody fuckers, I believed it for a long time.
(arren, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 5:45, Reply)

Family Gang ups
At our traditional family christmas lunches, dad and my 4 uncles would make sure us kids didn't eat all the nice food. Especially strawberries.

One uncle would start by saying "Strawberries give you freckles!" Then the next would jump in and say "Yeah they turn you into little strawberries!". But, of course, it was safe for them because they had taken medicine to make them immune to the deadly strawberry poison.

I was 7 before I learnt the truth, and 10 before I ate another strawberry

Bastards!
(Bunny bum, Tue 20 Jan 2004, 2:35, Reply)