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Go to bed with a wet head and you'll wake up with a cold.
I guess they didn't know about germs and viruses. Though, I have to admit, every single time I've gone to sleep with a wet head, I woke up with a headache and sniffles!
"Stop it or I'll take you back to the orphanage!"
My mom would say this a lot to us if we were acting up, and it was kind of funny, because by the time I was a kid (the 70s) there really weren't orphanages anymore. Turns out, she was just repeating what her mother used to say when she was little. My mom was born in the 40s and grew up in Philadelphia. I later learned that this must have been a pretty common thing to threaten your kids with in Philly, because a lot of my therapy clients in Philly, who were my parents' age, used to say their parents would say that to them when they were kids. Some even would tell of their parents driving them over to "the orphanage" and threatening to leave the kid there, until they cried and apologized and promised to behave. Then they'd drive back home.
My Grandfather used to tell a story of a pet he'd had that was half-cat and half-raccoon. He would say he knew it was half and half, because he {cough cough} saw it being made. I didn't "get" what he was saying until I was older.
My Grandmom had a very sheltered life, and though she was not racist, she really had very little if any contact with black people in her 93 years. So she would say things that would be considered totally offensive, but that were really completely innocent. Like she'd say that her mailman was "a black fella, but he's very nice!" Or her new foot doctor was a black woman "but she's very good!" Then if we were watching TV together, she'd see a black person on TV and say "Wow, there really seem to be a lot of black people on TV these days! But I think that's really nice for them, because they didn't always have it so well, you know."
I was told by my Grand Diddy that if you peed in a corn field, you'd get a stye in your eye. Same with having a stye...you must have peed in the cornfield! 😆
Many years ago, my grandfather took his mother to Coney Island, and took her into a booth where you'd talk or sing into a microphone and the machine made a record for you, right then and there. She knew what a record was, but had no clue how they were made, and he kept saying "Cantare" ("sing" in Italian) and she just kept giggling because she had no idea why. Too bad the record got broken over the years, I've never heard either of their voices.
My grandmother who drove, didn't understand that a drive wheel(s) rotates to make the car move. Maybe she thought it was magic or a jet that propelled the car! Being a naïve teen, I tried explaining and even showing it to her, and all I got back was "You don't know what you're talking about!!!"
My mother, still in her 60s, thinks the dishwasher fills up completely like a clothes washer. Imagine dishes clanging around!
As a child my grandmother's friends told her that if she ate a fly, she would get a new dress. She caught and ate a fly, then waited and waited. She gave up at the end of the summer.
My parents were raised in a cult (and stupidly raised me and my sibs in same), so there is no end to the beliefs and crap I could share.
I grew up in a previously very insular culture (Southern Appalachia) that has still held on to a lot of its beliefs.
If you dream about crossing water, there will be an illness in your family.
If your ears are burning, someone is talking about you.
Paint the ceiling of your front porch blue (we called it 'haint blue') to keep the spirits away from your house.
Pick a bunch of grass, wrap one long strand around the bunch and hold it in your pocket to keep sickness away.
Eating black eyed peas, hog jaws and collard greens on New Year's day to bring good luck all year.
If you sweep after the sun goes down, you'll never be rich.
If you look in a mirror held over a spring, you will see the face of the person you will marry.
A horse shoe hung upside down (open side to the top) over top a door will keep away spirits and evil spells.
Big crops of nuts means a severe winter is coming. So do woolly worms with a connected black pattern on their backs.
That's just a few of the old beliefs. We also kept many of the plantlore traditions alive and there are many notions of certain plants and their healing properties. Some of these are truthful (making a tea from squaw corn -- probably not a PC term, but I don't know another name for it -- will help relieve symptoms associated with menstruation), some probably aren't.
There were also some less than nice beliefs. One that springs to mind is that people of color were non-white due to being descendents of Ham, who was cursed in the Christian Bible for seeing his father naked. (Very weird, but I have friends that grew up in conservative parts of Utah where folks believed the same thing.)
I always heard my grand say " don't can any food especially tomatoes while on your period or they will turn black LOL;
don't wash your hands in a thunderstorm because lightning can come through the pipes and electrocute you .
don't sweep over a young womans feet or they will never get married or have children .
Rob peter to pay Paul I actually thought my mom had robbed a man named peter to give money to Paul LOL ... Never let an animal lick you in the face or you will die from the germs
I swear I truly wonder if they believed all this stuff they were told by their parents or grandparents . I'm sure I heard more but the above is what comes to mind .
When we were kids we believed that letting the dog lick a cut would kill germs and make it heal faster..... we did it all the time, none the worse for wear.
My grandmother thought seatbelts were dangerous. She thought it was safer to be ejected from a vehicle in an accident than to be restrained by a belt.
My mother told me tampons caused Toxic Shock Syndrome and were dangerous, and she didn't allow me to use them. (I suppose this may have been true in rare circumstances.)
My Mom believed that stores never, ever sell goods below cost, no matter how much they are marked-down. She would come home with something she paid 25 cents for and say, "And they are still making a profit", even if the original price was 10 bucks. We could not convince her that sometimes stores sell stuff below cost just to get rid of it.
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