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Italian Catholic grandmother, so she was very superstitious. In addition to the usual (ladder, black cat, mirror) we also had to add the following which would bring bad luck:
- Cross eating utensils in your plate when you are finished with a meal.
- Putting clown or mice figurines of any type in your home.
- Painting your toenails
- Making a mark on your face with your finger (ex: using fingers to indicate where blush should be applied on your cheeks) leads to a scar in that location
- Laughing too much today leads to twice as much sorrow tomorrow
She would also go to each of her doctors, tell them how horrid her family was to her and that they caused her great anxiety. This resulted in her able to obtain multiple “happy” pills - mayonnaise jars filled with them. If you made any mention of stress, upset or disappointment, she would respond with, “Want a valium?” Once when I declined her offer stating it would put me to sleep for days (hers were 5mg), her response was, “Oh, these little things are nothing. I can take 2 or 3 and I am still wide awake. Now if you REALLY want a good night sleep, just take a couple of these and drink some beer."
Have your parents or grandparents ever said something that made you want to scratch your head and say "huh?"
When we were about to have our first child, my mother told me we had to get rid of our two cats. "They like the sweet breath of a baby," she said. It sounded like something an old peasant woman would say in a Grimm's Fairy Tale. I looked it up, and sure enough there is an old wives' tale about cats "sucking the life out of" babies in the cradle. Strange. For the record, my mother was born in New Jersey in 1924 and both her parents were also born in New Jersey. Not sure where she got this Old World-sounding tidbit from.
My grandfather, on riding in a car- "Don't stick your elbow out too far, it might go home in another car!" If you were pouting- "Don't stick your lower lip out or a rooster will come and sit on it."
My aunt- "If brains were dynamite, couldn't physic a gnat"
My mom- "Home again, home again, rig-a *** ***"
My dad- "All men are after is only one thing, so don't give it to them" (this didn't scar me or anything or make me afraid of men for awhile during adolescence)
My step-mother- "Take a long look at yourself before you criticize someone else." I was ten, so I went and looked at myself in the mirror.
My cousin-in-law- she would only use cold water to start boiling for pasta, and would get very upset if you tried to tell her using hot water would get it to boiling faster. I have no idea why.
My aunt was born at home during a snowstorm in 1934. My grandfather walked out into the storm to get the doctor, stopping first to send over a nurse who lived nearby.
The baby came before the doctor got there. She was born with what they used to call "the caul", the amniotic sac over her face. Such babies were supposed to have powers to tell the future, and the nurse was afraid and wouldn't touch her. By the time the doctor got there and removed the membrane, my aunt had been deprived of oxygen. She had cerebral palsy and was also mentally challenged, with the intelligence of about a five-year-old. It completely changed this family's life. There were no services for mentally retarded kids back then except that the school sent over a tutor who taught her the alphabet and how to write her name in her palsied scrawl.
She could walk until she was 9, when polio came through and she caught it and had 30 seizures in one night. Everything the family had or did centered around my aunt and her disabilities. She lived to be 61 years old, doomed to most of her life spent in a hospital bed listening to music, all because of some nurse's stupid superstition.
That reminds me of one of my sisters old landlords. Her landlord fell off the roof, and his wife dragged him from the spot. She was from the Old Country and believed that it was important to remove an injured person away from the spot they were injured, or else they wouldn't recover. The man was paralyzed after his fall. Not sure if the moving/dragging did it or the actual fall, but it gives you an idea of just how dangerous some of these beliefs can be.
My cousin-in-law- she would only use cold water to start boiling for pasta, and would get very upset if you tried to tell her using hot water would get it to boiling faster. I have no idea why.
The reason you start cold water to boil, not hot is:
Because your tap water on hot produces more accumulated minerals/impurities out of your hot water heater. Cold water comes out of you pipes. Try it making tea.
Hot water lacks the same oxygen as cold. Because it's been sitting there.
There was a debate about which comes to boil faster, though. Which was determined to be a folk myth.
When we were about to have our first child, my mother told me we had to get rid of our two cats. "They like the sweet breath of a baby," she said. It sounded like something an old peasant woman would say in a Grimm's Fairy Tale. I looked it up, and sure enough there is an old wives' tale about cats "sucking the life out of" babies in the cradle. Strange. For the record, my mother was born in New Jersey in 1924 and both her parents were also born in New Jersey. Not sure where she got this Old World-sounding tidbit from.
She was talking about smothering the baby.
Which is why you're not supposed to have pillows in the crib. Also why you don't put them on their stomachs to sleep until they are older. SIDS risk. Even though they say parents are in revolt of that theory.
Not really a red flag but it HAS happened according to urban legend-ish reports.
Of course, as a pet sitter I would NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS let a cat in a baby crib. They just left their dirty litter pan, for goodness sakes! UGH. Not to mention all that hair and dander.
It's also likely that in 1924 the baby was in a small cradle probably on the floor; not a big crib. My mother was in a CIGAR box as a preemie.
When we were about to have our first child, my mother told me we had to get rid of our two cats. "They like the sweet breath of a baby," she said. It sounded like something an old peasant woman would say in a Grimm's Fairy Tale. I looked it up, and sure enough there is an old wives' tale about cats "sucking the life out of" babies in the cradle. Strange. For the record, my mother was born in New Jersey in 1924 and both her parents were also born in New Jersey. Not sure where she got this Old World-sounding tidbit from.
I mentioned upthread that my grandmother believed the same thing. It all goes back to the old wives' tale of cats being the harbinger of evil. While I don't doubt that a cat may want to curl up against a soft, warm, quiet baby and an accident could happen that way, there's no way that a predatory cat would try to kill something by breathing on it. Good parenting and good pet ownership means that the cat shouldn't be allowed in the baby's room/bed.
The reason you start cold water to boil, not hot is:
Because your tap water on hot produces more accumulated minerals/impurities out of your hot water heater. Cold water comes out of you pipes. Try it making tea.
Hot water lacks the same oxygen as cold. Because it's been sitting there.
There was a debate about which comes to boil faster, though. Which was determined to be a folk myth.
Oh wow! That actually makes perfect sense. Thank you for explaining. I won't give her a hard time about it next time!
Ok, that's a new one! I was always told using tampons would make you "not a virgin". So could riding a bike.
Unfortunately, mine center around weirdo beliefs about bodies and sex. I could fill up the entire forum with these. Let's see...
The girl is to blame for premarital sex, not the man.
Men's brains and muscles are bigger than women's, meaning they are smarter and stronger.
You should ask boys questions to make them feel smarter, even if you already know the answer.
Homosexuality in men is caused by having too close a relationship with the mother. (I had a few more on this topic, but they are just too painful and offensive to repeat. Gawd, I was raised by an ignorant person.)
Females menstruate today because of Eve's sin.
If I was to begin to bring up the pseudoscientific stuff...we'd be here all day. Just insert every wackadoodle herbology, iridology, reflexology, and cure-all vitamins sold via pyramid schemes here.
Just this week I heard a Christian whacko refer to tampons as "Satan's cotton finger."
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