From maggots being spontaneously generated, to women who enjoy sex have baby girls, people share the strangest things their parents always believed in that was completely false.
[Source can be found at the bottom of the article]
In the 80’s my mother and father heard of a game for the Atari 2600 called “Dungeons & Dragons” and were sure it was possessing children who played it.
They heard that you would become locked in a trance, staring at the screen and you would have a death grip on the controller and no one else could separate your hand from it.
And the power plug for the Atari would be magically bound to the plug in on the wall and no one could unplug it.
boardgamejoe
That with determination and persistence, you can walk into a hospital or law firm and get a job as a professional in those practises without any prior related education or experience.
Seikon32
Anyone who does anything that involves putting something in their mouth (smoking, chewing gum), do so because they were not breastfed as a child and need to make up for a childhood of not having something in your mouth. Every cigarette smoker and gum chewer in the world was never breastfed. She was absolutely perplexed the day I came home chewing gum. “Spit that out. You were breastfed!
bogidyboy
My mother wouldn’t let us drink water right after we took any liquid medicines – she thought it would dilute them.
She meant that diluting it would decreased the dosage of medicine, thereby decreasing it’s effectiveness. Had nothing to do with coating the throat. She sometimes gave us a small piece of chocolate, which was cool.
hippocampus237
My parents believe that maggots are spontaneously generated. They refuse to believe that they’re just fly babies. They think that with enough scum and icky-ness, a load of maggots will spontaneously appear.
They also think it’s dumb for men to groom themselves and treat themselves. They’re just mad my eyebrows are great and my hair looks awesome.
FadedAsAHabit
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This one is classic: told my mom once that 99% of all species that once existed on earth are now extinct. Mom said, ‘Yeah, it’s because the Chinese are fishing them all out.
[deleted]
That the average stranger is not only going to steal my stuff, but kidnap and murder me. I understand being protective, but I can’t even go biking through my own neighborhood.
Gadaren
My mother freaks OUT when we pass a truck. She thinks the car can be sucked under the 18 wheelers trailer. My father is awesome and always acts like it’s pulling the car in, then he saves the day. My mom still thinks that it is possible.
doneski
My mother believes that it is a fact that women who enjoy sex have baby girls and women who don’t enjoy sex have boys.
Not only is this a wives tale but she has it reversed. The women who enjoy sex have boys according to the myth.
I actually got into an argument about it with her. She insisted it was scientific fact. rolls eyes
CrochetCrazy
My mom made a paste out of baking soda and a little bit of water and thought it would cure my sore throat. She would put it on her finger and rub my tonsils with it until I sometimes puked. She also thought that minced onion in your stuffy nose will clear it all up… You just have to endure the intense burning for a few moments.
Yea, I hated being sick as a child.
arn6491
People put razor blades in apples at Halloween, and otherwise tampered with candy. It was all urban legend. Even as a kid, I knew it would be pretty easy to trace it back to the house it came from.
treelovingaytheist
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That if you swallowed a watermelon seed a watermelon vine would grow from your bellybutton. I am 100% sure this is incorrect.
Proteon
My father always laments the invention of gas engines, saying how much better life would be if we had stuck with steam engines since “we would just have to fill our cars up with water!”
Sorry, dad. I know you mean well, but steam engines don’t work like that.
Had to break it to him over the summer and he looked crushed that he had gone on saying this for so long.
dancressman
My mom believes that playing evil games or watching scary movies will bring demons into the house. She also believes that people put AIDS into ketchup dispensers at fast food joints and that if you eat too much popcorn you’ll get popcorn lung. Oh, and she also believes that the government puts RFID chips into vaccine shots so that they can track everything you do.
IrishPub
My mother’s convinced I’m going to get cancer from my phone. Either I’ll get ovarian cancer from keeping my phone in my pocket, brain cancer from talking on the phone, or god-knows-what cancer from talking on the phone in the car. She’s convinced that a faraday cage will form inside the car and reflect radioactivity back at me. If I try explaining that it’s not how any of this works, she just yells “Look it up!”
datmyusername
My mom thought that the word “stealthy” meant strong because of the B-2 Stealth Bomber airplane… I know this makes no sense at all but it’s my mom.
First came up when she said to me one day “Wow you’re looking very stealthy, have you been working out?” I was like wait… Do I NOT know the meaning of stealthy??
MorrisMotion
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My mom thought ordering pizza reflected poorly on her, because the neighbors would see delivery guy and know that she hadn’t cooked her family dinner. On the rare occasions when she would let us order pizza, we had to go pick it up, and then drive it into the garage and close the door before we took the pizza into the house.
By the way, it took us years to tease this out of her. We never understood why she was such a reluctant, secretive weirdo about pizza. It’s actually pretty sweet that she took her job as a homemaker so seriously. But jeez, mom, relax!
jimmyjazz2000
When I had my first child, my mother told me to not sleep with her in my bed.
I told her yeah yeah, I know, I could roll over and smother her. I read about it Mom. NO, she says.
“Nnnoooo the tapeworms in your tripas (Spanish for intestines) crawl out of your culo (butt hole in espaol) and INTO baby culo. I’m sorry mijo (son) but that’s how you got baby diarrhea when I let you sleep with me that one time you was a baby.
[deleted]
Alright, so I still get a ton of mail sent to my mom’s house because I move a lot. About a month ago I went over to her house as a visit and she hands me all of my mail. I look through it all and thank her for keeping it for me, but it’s all junk anyway. I tell her I don’t want to take it back home with me, so I’m just going to throw it away. She says “you can’t do that, it’s illegal to throw away mail!”… My step dad and my boyfriend both look at her like what? But I’m coming to the realization that this was why my apartment was filled with unopened junk mail! She’s been saying that since I was a kid! My apartment became so clean that night.
HardcoreBoogieFever
As kids if we asked for something to eat late at night shortly before bedtime my mom would always say sure, but only after you brush your teeth. I never understood the sense of this. I never asked why, or pointed out that our teeth would be cleaner if we brushed after our snack and now she completely denies she ever did this.
[deleted]
My Mother-in-law would not buy/eat/cook with mushrooms because “how do you know which ones are poisonous?” I explained to her that they don’t sell poisonous mushrooms in grocery stores, but she still didn’t trust them.
bovfem
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My dad continues to use the word “atypical” as a cooler sounding version of “typical.” But it kind of works out because he’s sexist and racist. So he’ll say something like “That woman just changed lanes without signalling and almost hit that truck. Man, women drivers, that’s so atypical.” I quit correcting him.
Dicknosed_Shitlicker
My dad continues to use the word “atypical” as a cooler sounding version of “typical.” But it kind of works out because he’s sexist and racist. So he’ll say something like “That woman just changed lanes without signalling and almost hit that truck. Man, women drivers, that’s so atypical.” I quit correcting him.
Dicknosed_Shitlicker
My parents always keep a large garden every summer and they think that the garden will die if a menstruating woman works in the garden or even goes near it. So growing up my step-dad would whine about how he had to take care of the garden while my mom and I were on our periods. I still am not allowed to go near the garden when I visit, if aunt flow is with me.
littlebreeches
‘Chem Trails’, my dad is convinced that the white cloudy stuff left behind planes are chemicals sprayed without our consent/knowledge. I have asked him about it many times, asking him what exactly are the chemicals, and I have even shown him what my science book says about it, but he still says they’re Chem Trails so whatever.
elephanturd
My mom thought if you heated up food three times (including the initial cooking) that it would instantly be bad for you. Not spoil, but that there was some kind of chemical change that would guarantee to get you sick. She says her mom believes it too.
I’m thinking it’s more the fact that if you let the food sit around long enough that you’re eating it three times (most people don’t eat leftovers two days in a row, so it probably would have been over a week or two) that it’s starting to spoil.
levian_durai
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The Nintendo Entertainment System can get a virus from a rented cartridge apparently.
If you type on a keyboard with sufficient force that the keys make noise, you are breaking the computer. If you point out that they make more noise when typing then I do, you are being a smarty pants.
mspencer712
Cold water boils faster than hot water. This was the source of a constant bickering for a few years – I timed it, hot water is already halfway to being boiled so it took no time. My mom insisted that her high school science teacher made her learn this and it was true – I couldn’t make any progress on that argument.
Then one day on Hells Kitchen Gordon Ramsay asked this Asian chick, “What the hell are you doing?” whenever she tried to boil a pot of cold water, and she explained herself that it boiled quicker than hot water. Ramsay of course laid into her and explained that hot water boils faster than cold water.
My mom sat there confused, absolutely shocked that she either learned wrong or remembered the lesson wrong.
[deleted]
I once had a raging argument with my illiterate (literally) stepfather over whether or not the hair on your head was dead.
I remember learning in science class that day that they were dead cells the moment they left the follicle. I came home all excited to share this new factoid and my step father said that that was ridiculous. When I insisted, saying I learned about it in school, he got red in face angry, told me that it was the most idiotic thing he’d ever heard, and asked how it kept growing if It was dead. When 8 year old me couldn’t explain any further he yelled at me for being disrespectful and went on a huge rant about why education was useless, and told me that I should get my face out of a book every now and again, and live in the “real world.”
I stopped bringing up anything I learned at school after that.
GirlsBeLike
That cancer was a condition created by the government and that every person born is born with cancer cells flowing through their body their whole life and it just takes someone to switch the cell “on” for them to get cancer.
That it’s perfectly okay to use powdered sugar in place of flour if you run out of flour.
That WW1 happened before the American revolution, but USA has been here for a thousand years.
That animals 2,000 years ago could all talk human languages because parrots can do it and you can teach a dog to say “I love you.” When I tell her “Ma, animals don’t have the facial muscles to speak our kind of languages” she gets quiet and says “then evolution in the last 2,000 years!”… all of them underwent that? At the same time? In that short of a time? Really…?
Walrus_
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