Not all reasons are created equal or are all true. I started thinking back to some of the reasons I was given over the years for certain things that had happened. For the most part, I accepted these things as gospel. I hope you recognize some of these. You may also have some of your own. I guess we all hear things that explain what is happening, has happened, or might happen.
If someone was a large person or maybe was a bit overweight I was told that they were “big-boned” people. I don’t think that is a thing. I imagine that most skeletons are similar. The differences are mostly male vs. female. Adult vs child or infant. But I think the whole “big bone” idea is not true or at least more research should be done to dispel this “myth”.
When I was growing up there was a neighbor that was extremely overweight. Almost morbidly obese. My mother said that the reason she was so heavy was that a chair had been pulled out from under her when she was a child and that falling on her butt made her overweight. I guess that is as good an explanation as any other. Maybe she just ate too much and didn’t exercise. Having a chair pulled out from under you could be the reason. I won’t speculate.
Then there were all the reasons to get rid of hiccups…put a spoonful of sugar in your mouth and let it dissolve, drink water out of the other side of the glass, stand on your head and drink a glass of water, have someone scare you. Hiccups can certainly be annoying but unless they last for days I doubt that you need to follow any of the above ideas.
Should we touch on “Old Wives Tales” surrounding pregnancy? From the internet there are seven of these tales regarding how to get pregnant. 1. Have honey with cinnamon, 2.Best time to conceive is when you are in the mood, 3. An orgasm increases your chances of getting pregnant, 4. You should elevate your legs after ejaculation, 5. You get pregnant when you stop stressing, 6. Cough syrup will help you conceive, and finally 7. Acupuncture can help. Whatever. I guess Kathy and I were lucky. We never had any difficulty with getting pregnant. This was a blessing. I know that it isn’t the easiest thing to do and I have compassion for any couple needing to consult “Old Wives Tales” for help.
Has someone ever suggested to you that if you pick your nose you will pull your eye out? I don’t know exactly how that might happen but it made me think twice.
Then there is the one about self-gratification that will make you go blind. I guess that isn’t true or there would be a lot more blind people.
My mother claimed that people who lived in big houses and had a lot of money were not happy. I grew up thinking that was true. How big of a house? How much money? Are there thresholds that would prove my mother’s theory? It absolutely makes no sense to me now.
Have you heard that you shouldn’t go swimming after eating or at least wait some time or you might drown? It turns out that this is a myth. There is no proof that eating and then swimming will cause you to have cramps and drown.
If you eat a lot of candy your teeth will fall out. How much candy do you have to eat to make that happen? What about genes? Do they play a role in whether your teeth fall out or not? I have eaten a lot of candy in my life and have yet to have any of my teeth fall out because of it.
There was a time between real estate and paper sales that I actually sold cars. This was a very dark period in my life. Still had to earn a living and put food on the table so I did sell cars. I remember I was working at a dealership in Sacramento and then moved to a dealership in Auburn California. One of my friends in the business who had been in the business for a number of years said that “Auburn was a good car town”. To this day I don’t know what that meant. I mean are there good car towns and bad car towns? Is there something unique about Auburn that would cause someone to make that claim? I dismissed the idea but I couldn’t help but think that at the end of the day I was going to be selling cars in a “good car town”. That gave me some comfort.
I invite each of you to think back to things that you were told. Things that you believed to be true or that might cause something to happen. I think most of us hear these things when we are young and don’t question the validity of the statement. Today if you doubt something you can refute it with a few clicks on the internet. I wonder where these ideas and statements came from. Some of these things that I heard as a child seem pretty ridiculous today. Please share some of the things that you were told and that stuck with you or caused you to stop doing something. It is an interesting exercise.
