1

“That it was illegal to EVER have the dome light on in the car while driving.”

2

“Mom told me that if I didn’t take a bath, I’d get a Russian disease called ‘Ratchakokoff.’ I shared that with the teacher and other kids in second grade.”

3

“‘If you swallow a seed, it’ll grow in your body.’ That’s the best scam that was ever told to me.”

4

“I was told every time you pick your nose, the nostril gets stretched a little bigger. If you pick your nose too many times, it’ll take over your entire face.”

5

“My third-grade teacher told us that grammar rules were decided by a bunch of old people in Washington sitting around the ‘Oval Table.’ My family still makes fun of me for believing it.”

6

“I saw seagulls sitting on top of the spinning KFC bucket outside the store and asked why they were up there. She said the store spreads bird seed up there and they fall through a trap door into the bucket, and the employees come out and get them every night to make chicken for the next day.

I’m not 100% convinced there isn’t some air of truth to this.”

7

“That my attendance, behavior, and grades in school would be part of my ‘permanent record’ and impact my life forever.”“No one has ever asked me about any of that since I finished school. No employer has ever asked anything about any grade at any level of my education.”

8

“This is pretty niche, but when I was young my parents told me if I didn’t return library books and DVDs on time it would go on my credit rating and I wouldn’t be able to buy a house. (Weird thing to say to a kid, I know).”

“As an adult, when I was applying for a mortgage, my mortgage broker was talking about checking my credit history and asked if there was anything she should know about. I told her back in high school I lost a library book and to this day haven’t returned it.

So embarrassing.”

9

“I was told that my parents made illegal cat food with a machine in one of our bathrooms…I was almost 18 when I discovered it was in fact moonshine.”

10

“The Boston Fourth of July celebration has a mini fireworks show during the 1812 overture that happens an hour or two before the real fireworks.”

“My parents had me convinced that was THE fireworks show for my entire childhood and I didn’t find out I was getting sent to bed early until my 20s.”

11

 “Maybe not embarrassing, but my uncle told me carrots cure hiccups when I was tiny. Placebo effect, maybe? I believed it until last year. Never had a reason to question it. Funny stuff!”

12

“When we lived in San Francisco, my dad told me that there was a fog machine.”

“Every night, the fog machine would turn on, and you know it’s on because you’d hear the loud ‘toot toot’ and soon after, the fog would roll in.

That’s just weather. That’s what San Francisco is like. There’s fog. The toots, yeah that’s the ships coming in. I was waaaay older than I needed to be when I really thought about that.”

13

“‘If you keep making that face, it’ll get stuck like that forever.'”

“For years, I was genuinely afraid to cross my eyes or make weird expressions for too long, thinking I’d end up permanently looking like a cartoon character.”

14

“I was told that the alligators living in the sewers of NYC sometimes rose up through the grates on the sidewalk and snatched little kids away.”

15

“When I was 4 and my Mother told me that Christmas Eve was the longest day of the year. She had me convinced it was a 25-hour day. It wasn’t until middle school when I was giving a presentation on ‘the longest day of the year’ that I learned Christmas Eve is a 24-hour day.”

16

“My mother would jokingly pronounce ‘abnormal’ as ‘abby-normal’ in reference to Young Frankenstein. I pronounced the word that way for about 15 years.”

17

“‘Fish won’t bite unless you stop talking.’ I guess my dad just wanted peace and quiet, lol. I understood it more as I got older.”