When we were younger, we looked at our parents like they were all-knowing sages, imparting wisdom on the world around us. They were insightful, they were powerful, they were allowed to use the microwave without permission. As we blindly nodded along to their know-hows, we didn’t “know how” full of sh*t they really were!
Let’s unpack a few of the biggest myths, nay, LIES that were shoved down our Sunny D coated throats growing up:
"You can't have the inside car light on at night."
Remember this load of crap? How they made us think turning on the dome light for a quick second while we looked for our tamagotchi on the floor would result in a 50-car pileup? Like the police had some sort of Inside Car Light Task Force (ICLTF) that would descend from helicopters onto the roof of the vehicle. Guess what, MOM AND DAD: it's not illegal! It's just, like, a little unsafe. You had us sweating over possible jail time because we flipped the light on to see our etch-a-sketches? You're the real criminals.
"If you swallow gum, it stays in your stomach for seven years."
And they wonder why we have health anxiety. They literally told us that if we accidentally swallowed our gum (a perfectly reasonable mistake to make, by the way!), then our stomach would hang onto it for SEVEN YEARS. Can you imagine still having gum in your intestines that you accidentally swallowed watching the 2018 South Korea Winter Olympics? And doctors are just chill with that? Like they know how to perform open heart surgery but not help you digest Bazooka Joe faster? This was just another lie perpetuated by Big Parent. Chew on that!
"If you cross your eyes, they'll get stuck like that."
From the fun-ruiners that brought you "if you sit too close to the TV, you’ll go blind," comes "don't cross your eyes, they'll get stuck!" As if our ocular muscles would just decide to revolt against us and permanently lock our vision into a state of perpetual nose-seeing. Well guess what? No one has ever gotten “stuck” from doing this. It was all a ruse, a conspiracy, a BETRAYAL from our creators! Go ahead and cross your eyes all you want, traumatized young adults reading this.
“You have to wait an hour after eating before swimming.”
What was the logic for this one? Did we even bother to ask? If one dared to jump into the pool immediately after lunch, would they just, like, sink to the bottom because of the heavy burger inside them? Would their intestines pull them into some deep-sea digestion vortex? It was pure fiction, like Goosebumps or Hey Arnold. Just for that, we're going to go eat some spaghetti and jump in a lake. Try to stop us!
These myths were so deeply embedded in our childhoods, many of us still second-guess if we'll catch a cold from going outside with wet hair, or if our morning coffee is stunting our growth. It was all propaganda (yeah, that's right!) meant to stifle our fun. So what’s some BS your parents fed you growing up? Let’s all commiserate together over our shared "dupedness."