A few years ago, my husband and I were driving on a road trip through the California desert when a roadrunner raced in front of our car. And as I hopefully watched and waited for the coyote strapped to a rocket ship that was inevitably following it, I had an important realization. My childhood was a lie.
I'm in my late 50s, so I was a child of the 70s and 80s. And every adult, from our teachers to our parents, lied their tails off to us. From historical "facts" to flat-out fantasies, these are some of the lies I grew up with.
My Face Never Did Get Stuck That Way
Whenever I pulled a face, crossed my eyes, or even gave a goofy mug, some adult would tell me, "Your face is going to get stuck that way."
And so I'd carefully rearrange my features in hopes that I'd ultimately get stuck with a more pleasant countenance.
Clearly, this was a lie. I have spent the last 20 or so years walking around making a WTF face or rolling my eyes (I am fluent in sarcasm), and if that old saw was true, my eyes would just roll around in my head all the time, and my face would be perpetually in WTF mode. And while, it's true, that it is in that mode still quite frequently, I assure you that my eyes are staying in one place for the most part and I am perfectly capable of making all kinds of faces.
Me Refusing to Eat My Peas Has No Effect on Starving Kids Around the World
As a kid, I had tons of strategies for not eating canned peas. Throwing them under my sister's chair. Hiding them in an uneaten potato skin. Spitting them into my napkin. Swallowing them whole with milk. What wasn't an option, however, was just leaving them on my plate because, "There are kids starving around the world."
And while this is absolutely true — hunger worldwide (including in the United States) is a huge issue that we all have a responsibility to do something about, me not eating disgusting, mushy canned peas won't change that.
Not only that, but the trick is on them. It turns out that I'm allergic to peas (a medically verified fact) that my parents and sisters still believe I'm lying about.
You Do Not, in Fact, Need to Have Pain to Gain
I believed that as a teen, and sadly, I did as an adult, too. I bought into 80s fitness culture hard and spent years in the gym grinding my body to bits for hours every week (at one point, I was up to five hours a day plus running several miles a day — but to be fair, I was a competitive bodybuilder and a personal trainer/fitness instructor).
And boy, did it hurt. I recall at one point having calf muscles so sore that I couldn't put my heels down on the ground for three days.
Fortunately, we have a much gentler and kinder culture around wellness today than we did back then, but my body still pays for the abuse I heaped on it in the 80s. I'm lucky, though, in that I've found a much kinder, more loving, and more nurturing way to relate to my body. And for all those I trained during the no-pain-no-gain 80s, I sincerely apologize.
God Probably Isn't Bowling When It Thunders
Ah, that old saw, shared with kids to help them feel less scared during the sizzling flashes and terrifying crashes of a thunderstorm.
As a kid raised in the church, I always pictured God and Jesus up there in heaven with all the seraphim and cherubim heaving balls thunderously down the lane, looking like an American Botticelli that combined sport, pitchers of beer, ugly shoes, and celestial goodness. But hey — at least I knew heaven was going to be a good time.
Today, I know that thunderstorms are, in fact, caused by herds of dinosaurs wrestling in heaven, and it makes me love them all the more.
Related: 13 Really Scary Urban Legends to Send Shivers Down Your Spine
I Step on Cracks All the Time, and My Mother's Back Is Fine
I remember carefully stepping around any and all cracks in the sidewalk — including the ones between pavers — because I didn't want to be responsible for my mom being in traction. Or at least I did most of the time unless she totally ticked me off. Then, I aimed for those suckers and made sure I hit every single one. (Sorry, Mom.)
My mother is 84 and still going strong, with no broken back in sight. Nice to know that the universe realized my true intention was keeping her safe in spite of all those times I maybe looked for cracks to step on because she made me eat my peas.
The Blood That Is on the Way Back to My Heart Has Never Been Blue
Thanks, science.
Going to Sleep With Wet Hair Never Gave Me a Cold or a Stiff Neck
I owe this one to my grandmother, who was a virtual fount of wisdom. Though we loved her dearly, that woman was a walking dictionary of things we shouldn't do in order to avoid meeting terrible fates.
And Grandma never let me go to bed with wet hair or with a window open because both of those things would make me wake up with a stiff neck (which would, in Grandma's mind, probably lead to my horrifying and painful death). Instead, having dry hair and a closed window made me wake up tired because I had such thick hair that I'd have to spend hours blow-drying it before bed, and her house was so stuffy I couldn't sleep in all the heat without a window open.
Once again, thank God for adulthood, freeing me from the tyranny of all of life's weird rules we have for kids. I've done both plenty of times, and while I've awakened with a stiff neck, that has more to do with my current age and the no-pain-no-gain gym culture I bought into in the 80s than anything else.
I'm Pretty Sure There's Not Any Years-Old Gum Rattling Around in My Stomach
As a kid, I swallowed a lot of weird stuff. I ate gladiola bulbs because I thought they were celery that I'd magically uprooted from the ground behind the garden shed (that one caused a call to a poison center). I fell off a bucking swingset (remember those?), knocked a tooth out, and accidentally swallowed it (along with a ton of blood). I swallowed a marble not once — but TWICE. And those were the non-edible things that I swallowed that my parents actually knew about.
And sure, I swallowed my gum and was told if I did, it was going to take seven years to digest. SEVEN! It was a horrifying idea that my stomach would mostly just be old, undigested gum blocking out the room for the nutritious foods (like peas) that I could eat.
Turns out that, like all the other odd things I swallowed (I may have been part goat as a kid), the gum left my stomach just like the marbles did and showed up in the toilet within a few days.
I Sat Close to My TV Plenty of Times, and I'm Still Not Radioactive
My grandparents had one of those HUGE old console TVs that was a piece of furniture all by itself. And I liked nothing better than to sit as close as possible and watch Saturday morning cartoons.
Whenever my sisters and I spent the night, Grandma would shoo us away and ask us to sit on the couch away from the TV, telling us that we'd be glowing with radiation if we sat so close. At 59 years old, I'd honestly give anything for glowing skin these days, so perhaps I should've done more of it. Thanks, Grandma.
I Have Yet to Have a Watermelon Grow in My Stomach After Swallowing a Seed
Thank goodness for seedless watermelon, amiright?
Happily Ever After Is Not a Thing
Oh, Disney and fairytales, if only it was true. And while it's absolutely possible to live a happy life, there are always ups and downs. Believing that happily ever after is a thing creates false expectations and denies us the resilience we need to be truly happy in our lives.
Not to get up on a soapbox (I say as I jump up on one), but I actually believe that we do a huge disservice to kids, teaching them about happily ever after and that in doing so, we fail to show them how to actually live happily and give them all sorts of wrong ideas about how healthy relationships work. But that's another article for another time.
I Swim All the Time After Eating, and I'm Perfectly Fine
An hour. That's how long my mom would make us wait to get in the pool or the water at the beach after we ate anything. And it. Was. Torture.
I lack such discipline as a grown-up. I still love water and can't wait to get in it. So I eat something, dive right in, and no cramp has ever come up and caused me to sink like a rock to the bottom of the pool. Whew.
I Eat a Ton of Carrots, and I Still Have Night Blindness
Not even carrots can make me see more clearly. Thank goodness for a little thing we call eyeglasses.
Sometimes I Forget to Clean My Ears, and There's Not a Potato in Sight
Too bad. I love potatoes. Was hoping that one was true.
Turns Out, I Do Always Have a Calculator in My Pocket (or Close By)
Back in school, my math teachers would warn us that we needed to be solid on the fundamentals or we would suffer as adults because we wouldn't always have a calculator when the math wasn't mathing.
Turns out that — let me check my notes – oh yeah. I have a personal device that does just about anything I need it to except for the laundry. The future is a glorious place like that.
As an Adult, I Can Confidently Say That Adults Do NOT Know What They're Doing
Adults were superheroes in my eyes. They knew it all. And yet here I am at 59, and I am still making it up as I go along. And most of the other adults I know are doing the exact same thing.
Unverified: So Far, My Eyes Haven't Popped Out When I Sneeze, but I May Still Be Closing Them
Honestly, I may never get to the bottom of this one because I'm afraid to try, but I suspect this is just another lie they told us.
Still, if you see a pair of eyeballs rolling down the street, you know what happened.
High School Was Not 'the Best Days of My Life'
Kids, if people tell you this, please do not believe it. For a lot of kids, high school is torture, and it can and does get better.
The best days of your life are those that you make. Are some days better than others? Sure. Are some years (or decades) better than others? Absolutely. But there are ways to find joy during any time, and you gain more skills to do that as you venture further into adulthood.
Boys Do, in Fact, Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses
Ask me how I know.
Very Few People Have Actually Been Eaten by Piranas
When I was in college, there was a guy who lived in my dorm that had a tank of piranhas. We used to dare each other to stick fingers in the tank, and never once did they take even a small nibble.
Sure, very hungry piranhas can and do attack human adults, but not in the numbers you've been led to believe. It's kind of like quicksand. We were led to believe that these things would be a big problem in adulthood, and it turns out that pirana attacks on humans are relatively rare.
The Legends Live On
When I became a parent, I told myself I'd never lie to my kids. New parents and people who haven't been parents are super cute that way. And, on my son's first Christmas Eve as a toddler (when he was old enough to remember the magic of Santa Claus), I filled his stocking and put presents under the tree.
"Welcome to the big lie," my dad told me. This, from the man who had all of his grandchildren convinced that the old surgical scar on his knee was because a very small pirate had stabbed him with a sword.
We all tell big and little lies to ourselves and to kids. Some, we do inadvertently because we don't know any better. Sometimes, we do it because it's funny, and we're tired of answering kid questions. Sometimes, we do it because the truth is inconvenient or not age-appropriate. And sometimes, we do it to preserve the wonder of childhood for just a little longer. After all, they'll eventually find out the truth for themselves.
