Old Wives tales - or strange things my mom told me growing up.

"You better clean your plate, finish everything. There are children starving in India!" I never quite understood how my eating everything would help those kids. I guess it was more a matter of appreciating that I had food to eat.
 

treeguy64 said:
"You better clean your plate, finish everything. There are children starving in India!" I never quite understood how my eating everything would help those kids. I guess it was more a matter of appreciating that I had food to eat.
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That (often used) one was really stupid. Probably produced lots of overweight kids.
Another one - equally stupid - "If you want dessert, you'll have to clean your plate."
 
The starving children that I was told would relish my dinner plate always hailed from Africa or China. I yearned to counter that I would gladly send it to them, but dared not! Perhaps I could have built up credit for the Chinese food that I now crave...

My mother often made me go about shirtless in the yard as a young child in the summer, claiming that such exposure was “cold insurance” for the winter months. I had at least an average number of colds irregardless, and I guess that parents in the 1950’s were not much concerned about skin cancer... :unsure:
 
my mother use to say eat all your food because the children in other countries are hungry --i would say send it to them---i dont remember any thing after that------
 
Swallowing watermelon seeds causes pregnancy. She didn't know about diverticulitis.

I was told most of the others too. Where did they come from? Was there a book titled "Silly Things To Tell Your Kids To Scare Them Into Doing The Right Thing"
 
I was the only girl among my 11 boy cousins for many years. At dinner, my grandmother would tell us to eat our potatoes, because it would grow hair on our chests. I avoided potatoes like the plague. Didn't want no stinking hairy chest, grandma!
 
treeguy64 said:
"You better clean your plate, finish everything. There are children starving in India!" I never quite understood how my eating everything would help those kids. I guess it was more a matter of appreciating that I had food to eat.
Click to expand...
had a grandfather that would tell me to eat something cuz it would put hair on my chest. as a little girl that was confusing.
 
When I was about five years old, my mother told me never to swallow an orange seed because an orange tree would start to grow inside of me. I had just swallowed a seed while eating an orange when she told me that. A few days later, I felt something growing up just behind one of my lower middle teeth. I knew it was that orange tree and worried for days over it. Lost sleep. Couldn't eat. When my father asked what was wrong, I broke into tears and told him about the orange tree growing inside of me. He looked in my mouth and, of course, it was just an adult tooth that started growing in before the baby tooth had gotten loose. A trip to the dentist solved the problem.
Because of that, I never lied to my son when he was growing up. If he asked the question, he got a true answer.
 

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