I was told that I would be able to swim to completion and experience the resulting sense of pride and accomplishment if I waited precisely 1 hour after consuming sustenance
My wife has this, she’s incapable of breaking rules.
Let’s say her employer to do things a and then b, but then a coworker tells her it’s better (in practice) to do it the other way around…she’ll get an error and stop functioning at all.
I was told all these scary things about life and always had this: “i’ll see it when i get there” attitude. So now i have to spend half my energy dragging my wife along otherwise she’ll forget to live life.
I 100% understand your wife. I’m not that bad, but it’s a consequence of being told you have to be perfect or you failed growing up, at least for me. If something doesn’t go right the first time I still get that mini freeze “error encountered on line 1 please reboot” that my parents unintentionally instilled in me.
it’s a consequence of being told you have to be perfect or you failed growing up
This would explain so much of the political in-fighting we see here, where “the perfect” becomes the enemy of “the good.”
Abaolutely, it’s obvious where it came from.
I have my own, different issues especially socially. It’s bad enough she has to deal with that, sometimes i wish it wasn’t an issue because she has so much potential past that unlike myself…so i hate watching it be like this.
Sounds like generalized anxiety disorder
remember the early 90s and how like everything causes cancer? I remember even reading burnt toast causes cancer. Everything was cancer in those days
As a child, media showed me that if you could tap dance well you basically had a love potion and a get-out-of-jail-free card wrapped up into one.
My life up to this point has proven this to be painfully wrong.
:ball chain, turn:
Well, no. I realized those things were silly. My mom told me and my sister we’d get skin cancer if we pinched each other. She just wanted us to shut the fuck up and so we did. You later learn these things aren’t real and that’s the end of it?
I wish critical thinking were taught and encouraged, but even my school teachers told blatant lies and sent me to the principal for pointing them out. There’s a systemic issue interfering with people’s abilities to question what they’re told (at least, here in the U.S.), and the addition of anxiety makes cracking that egg an even bigger challenge. I learned long ago not to assume that everyone else thinks about things the way I do, and unfortunately almost everyone holds some kind of belief that they’ve never critically examined.
There’s a major differencebetween something entirely made up that your parents know is bullshit and something that’s false but your parents genuinely believe, because thr delivery will be very different. Especially if even the danger of the myth is exaggerated (I was always told it’s a bit dangerous and to not do it but never that it’s a huge risk of death).
Though also being lied to about some dangers would make me think that everything I’ve been warned about is false or greatly exaggerated, and I’m very grateful that despite being quite anxious about my safety, my mom never did that. But that might be an autism thing because reportedly if she explained why something was bad I’d get it and just not do it, even when I was very young.
I do partially blame my teenage depression-fueled 2ish years of barely every brushing my teeth, the consequences of which I’m still dealing with, on being told that even skipping one day is really bad and I will probably get cavities if I do that a few times. Cue me skipping it on some days because of mental health, realizing that even after months of occasionally doing that my teeth are still fine (including the dentist saying they’re doing great and no issues), and subsequently no longer being able to find the motivation to do it at all since the consequences I was trying to avoid never materialized.
In my early school years, we only had round tipped plastic safety scissors that could barely cut tissue paper. As a kid, I was terrified at the degree of responsibility and potential to take another kid’s life those scissors represented.
The adults in charge when I was a kid had us convinced that if we ran with scissors in our hands we were going to kill the other children in the vicinity by accident in the most horrifically bloody and violent manner. They even showed us video re-enactments of children getting stabbed in the heart, neck, and eye complete with fake blood gushing out and Bugs Bunny worthy death performances.
A lot of us thought this was some super common way that kids were dying by the millions all across the world.
Growing up is realising that sometimes a blunt knife can do more damage than a sharp one.
Oh god running with scissors! I totally forgot that
“On February 15, 1909, Millet’s 15th birthday, these “girl stenographers” promised that when the workday ended, they would kiss him once for every year of his age. At 4:30pm, they made good on their vow and descended on Millet to deliver the expected smooches. Millet tried to wriggle away, and in the ensuing rumpus was heard to exclaim, “I’m stabbed!”
According to the Times, 23-year-old Gertrude Robbins, one of the kiss-happy stenographers, rushed to his aid, but fainted at the sight of blood streaming from a wound in his chest. An ambulance was summoned and Millet transported to New York Hospital, but he died from his injuries on the way there.
Arrested on the charge of homicide, Robbins told police what had happened. Right before the office kissfest, Millet had been holding an ink eraser—not a rubber blob, but a six-inch-long metal tool that resembled a knife. When the stenographers surrounded him, Millet’s eraser was in his pocket. During the fracas, he fell forward, and the sharp point of the eraser drove into his heart.”
https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/10/george-spencer-millet-kissed-to-death-in-1909.html
Someone lands on the bad roulette number once in a while.
Damn, that poor boy. To go from being kissed by a pack of young women to stabbed in the heart.
Goddamn, that’s a “monkey paw wish” if I’ve ever heard one.
(Creepy that the kid was 15 and the women were adults, but that’s a different issue.)
Was told that watching too much TV would make my eyes square.
Also, attaching sheets of papers to the front of the TV (static of CRTs) could allegedly make the TV explode.
Try being raised in a narcissist Christian household with clearly sensitive parents seething at every opportunity to lob shame and judgment on ANYONE else to distract from the fucking evil stain on life which they themselves are. Couple it with some financial success in their lives so they extra feel like they don’t need to answer to anyone else for fucking anything.
I didn’t have that but my girlfriend in high school did.
My parents neglected me enough they made those wackos look sort of OK.
I feel like I’ve supported a lot of therapists monetarily 😆 🤣
lol anyone else remember being in pre-k and pleading with God not to send you into eternal fire?
Are you me?
No pretty sure they’re me.
Story of my god damn life. Thanks to them I struggle to hold down a job.
I feel your pain with the narcissist parents. My parents were autists, so there was a lot of abuse growing up.
Just an FYI, having autism doesn’t make someone an abuser… it’s just possible for assholes to have autism too.
Are you seriously trying to absolve my parents of responsibility for their abuse? You’re disgusting.
❌ My parents were autists, therefore I was abused.
✅ My parents were narcissistic abusive assholes, therefore I was abused. (They were also autists, which may have altered the presentation of their abuse, but was not the root cause ✅✅)
I’m more than happy to say my parents abused me because they had a mental disorder, but they weren’t diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, so I’m stuck using autism instead. I wish they had a more socially acceptable disorder to blame.
Ok.
❌ My parents were autists, therefore I was abused.
✅ My parents were
narcissisticabusive assholes, therefore I was abused. (They were also autists, which may have altered the presentation of their abuse, but was not the root cause ✅✅)So how come you think autism isn’t okay to blame for abuse but narcissism is? And why should I listen to a hypocrite who can’t decide whether disorders cause abuse?
For me it was if you swallow a plant seed, the plant will grow in your stomach and you will die from it. My dad was joking, but I was 5 and didn’t know any better. I went on believing that until I was in my teens because things like that you don’t re-evaluate every so often. It’s just “my dad told me this and he wouldn’t lie to me because grownups don’t lie” stuck on autopilot.
That can actually happen. But it’s very rare, obviously.
As a kid, I always assumed if someone fell down the stairs–they died. It just appeared that way often enough in tv and movies.
If you faint, you can hurt yourself pretty badly by just falling to the ground; now imagine the same thing with stairs.
Even if awake, falling down the stairs has the risk of you hitting your head/neck/back, so it might be exaggerated somehow in movies, but still potentially bad.
To be fair falling down the stairs could very easily kill you if you land wrong.
For sure!! I just assumed every instance had to end in death for some reason. I just remember eventually seeing someone on tv not die after falling down stairs and i was stunned, lol.
That one is way more true than “if you swim after you eat you will die”. And even the swimming one is way more true than the interpretation that most people had that if you just enter the water, you will die.
If you really want something crazy, look up “fan death”.
As a kid I would have been fine falling down staris.
Now, overweight and in my 40s I get it. I slipped on porch steps last year and went down 3 steps and I had to go to the ER and was basically bedridden for a week.
Just a random fact that had barely anything to do with anything: In parts of Germany, there is the saying “did you fall down the stairs backwards” when someone cuts their hair quite short. I am from a part of Germany where this is not common and first time I heard it, it was a mentally handicapped person so I assumed he was just talking random stuff as he often did until I was told that that is common here.
That’s such a fun tangent! Thanks for sharing that 😆
What shows were you watching? I can only think of the Exorcist and Psycho, but those are kind of unique falls. All the others I can think of were comedy pratfalls and definitely not fatal.
I wish i could remember! Guess I’m old enough now to have forgotten where those ideas even came from. Whatever it was, it was likely in the early-mid 80’s…
I was told swimming after eating caused stomach cramps. Sucks that OP was lied to.
There were a lot of other things I was told would kill me as a kid, but they were all lethal things like farm equipment, cars, and guns. Don’t need fearmongering when there are actual things to fear!
It’s a rule created by adults who got tired of kids stuffing themselves with food and then jumping in the pool and throwing up. It has nothing to do with cramps, and everything to do with making a child wait a few minutes after eating because kids have zero self-control.
Why not just tell them that it will make them throw up then? Kids don’t enjoy throwing up.
Speak for yourself. Gestures to children triggering their own gag reflex for fun and profit
I mean, any vigorous activity directly after eating can cause a stomachache. I don’t know why swimming was the sole focus but a general caution to digest a bit before activity isn’t bad advice.
Maybe the lethal logic goes cramp = can’t swim = drowning? Not true, but that is my best guess.
Yeah, waiting a short bit after eating is a good idea in general.
Because it’s misinfo to reduce people bringing food to the pool. Same with the pee indicator thing… Someone must’ve been on a crusade
But the cramps thing just isn’t true. Light exercise like a walk or casually swimming is great
is not made up, reading this Wikipedia entry parents would say “better safe than sorry”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_shock_response
Edit, add another more complete source https://wpool.fr/en/blog/temperatures-eau-piscine/choc-thermique/qcq-hydrocution/
And what does that have to do with swimming after eating?
I added another source that relates alcohol and copious meal.
I’m not convinced that source isn’t just spreading the urban myth. You’re going to have to come with something with more weight behind it than the webpage of a seller of heatpumps. Here’s another source saying it has nothing to do with eating: https://www.la-tour.ch/fr/conseils/se-baigner-apres-manger-faut-il-vraiment-attendre-3-heures
That’s for very cold water or very large temp difference. As a rule, if it’s summer, splash some water on you first and go feet first, never head first.
It is about the difference of temperature, so, being under the sun for long time makes it more risky, even if the water is not so cold.
I added another link that maybe explains it better.
What you mention is also important, “entering water slowly…”
I was told the same thing but I don’t really feel anxious very often.
I think some of the stuff you worry about as a kid will just arise naturally. Ideas like not stepping on cracks, or imagining monsters in dark places are likely produced spontaneously and naturally by an underdeveloped ape brain.
But it’d be nice if we didn’t tell kids about old superstitions, yeah. Wait until they’re old enough to react with dismissal about the stupid stuff people used to believe.
In secondary school, we always had the rumour that if you blew into a woman’s vagina then it would kill her.
It was received with more hilarity than sensibility… though it did mean that future oral sex was delivered with a little less exhalation.
Then, it turns out you can kill a girl by blowing into her minge and middle age dudes creased with laughter again, as if the previous 20 years of maturity never happened.
