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| Mother's Day has come and gone, here in the US, with my usual avoidance of anything related to it and ritual blocking of any business that emails me with MD promotions. This article, from Atlas Obscura way back in 2018, can be an exception. The Ultimate Guide to Bizarre Lies Your Mom Told You  Turns out mothers all over the world are telling a lot of the same outrageous fibs. One particularly famous parental fib involves avoiding tough conversations with your kids about death. Your dog gets run over by a truck, so you tell the kids he went to live on a farm where he'd be happy running around outside all the time. Well, that wouldn't have worked for us because we lived on a farm. And then they have the chutzpah to tell the kid that lying is bad and you shouldn't do it. Being a mom is a tough job, in large part because you just can’t reason with small children. What you can do, however, is lie to them. In honor of Mother’s Day, we asked Atlas Obscura readers to send us the most outlandish white lies their mothers ever told them. As it turns out, moms all over the world are telling some wonderfully inventive lies. I doubt many of them are "inventive." They were probably passed down from their own lying mother, and so on. Some do, however, have modern twists. Many mothers still tell variations on the classics: If you make a funny face, it will stay that way; if you eat before you swim, you’ll get cramps (or die); moms have eyes in the backs of their heads, and so on. Calvin and Hobbes did a great take on the funny face thing.  We couldn’t include all of the fantastic entries we received, but we’ve collected over 100 of our favorites below. Clearly, I won't be commenting on all of them here. “In order to keep us kids from stealing pennies from water fountains, my mother told us the water was electrified and we would die.” —G. Johnson, Georgia Yeah, I would have still had to find out for myself. That's the kind of kid I was. “Mom always knew when I was fibbing. She said she could tell because I had a black mark on my forehead. My grandma used to say the same thing. I would run to the mirror to see it, but it was never there. They said I couldn’t see it because fibbers eventually go blind! I was scared to death.” —Batzion, Chicago, Illinois Would have been funnier if Grandma were blind. “Eating the crusts of your bread will give you curly hair.” —Rosie, Farnham, United Kingdom That seems to be a common one, coming from both UK and US sources. This is the first I've heard of it. Unlike apparently some kids, I never had a problem with bread crusts. Of course, the crap they passed off as "bread" (mostly Wonder brand) never had a real crust. My only hardline objection was I wouldn't eat the end slices of the loaf, and, as an adult, I still avoid them. But it hardly matters because I prefer real bread with firm, chewy crusts. “Eating end of a bread loaf will help to grow breasts.” —Elina, Latvia This is not why I avoided the ends, but it's hilarious. “I wanted a pet very badly and my mother told me that if I could put salt on the tail of a bird, I’d be able to catch it. Hours were spent outside with the salt shaker and various homemade traps.” —Anne Falbowski, Colchester, Connecticut "Mission accomplished." -Anne's mom, presumably. “Not to play in rain puddles. Will get polio.” —Maryann Kelly, Boston, Massachusetts I don't know about polio, but I don't doubt you can catch something from playing in rain puddles. Tetanus, perhaps. “You get canker sores if you pee off a bridge.” —Stacey Henrikson, Rochester Hills, Michigan I had many questions, until I remembered that Stacey is also a boy's name. “My mother told me if I bit my nails, a hand would grow in my stomach.” —Mary Pagone, Los Angeles, California Lie? Yep. Brilliant and effective? Also yep. “Don’t let your umbrella open inside the house or your mommy is going to die.” —Norton McColl, Sao Paulo, Brazil I expect Teenage Norton wasted many hours opening and closing an umbrella in the house, to no avail. “That there was a man that traveled around town and he would chop off your middle finger if you used it to make crude hand gestures.” —G. Johnson, Georgia "But I need that one!" “To deter my brother and me from eating my mom’s delicious homemade chocolate chip cookies she told us the extra crunch to them were frog legs. Really they were walnuts.” —Jen, California I should be offended on behalf of the French for that, but they already do "offended" so well. “Never go swimming in the pool/ocean after eating watermelon (common parental lie in Israel).” —Sharon, Israel One wonders why it's watermelon in particular. I got the "don't go swimming after eating" warning, but for everything. “My mom told me that sugary foods had little bugs on them, and the bugs liked to eat teeth, but if I brushed, then it would take them off.” —Adam Drew, Calgary, Canada I mean, as parental fibs go, that one's not far from the truth. “Everything on the ice cream truck is poison.” —Jon Thierry, Dearborn, Michigan That one too. Delicious, delicious poison. “My pet chickens and rabbits had gone ‘to the farm’ when in fact my former farmer Dad had turned them into dinner.” — Pat, Arlington Heights, Illinois Well? Someone's gotta keep therapists in business. “She told us that if you kissed your elbow you would turn into a boy.” —Tara Bryan, Flatrock, Newfoundland It's a little easier to do that nowadays. “For as long as I can remember when we would drive to Rhode Island, she would tell me that the forest rangers used giraffes to prune the trees. I would always be looking in just the wrong direction and miss seeing one as we went by.” —Edward P. Steele, Connecticut That's a prank, and a really funny one at that. “My mom told me that the gum spots on the sidewalk were actually blood from the kids who didn’t look before crossing the road.” —Ava Moody, Fort Worth, Texas And that one's brilliant. Now, I'm not saying that lying to kids is always a bad thing. (Spoiler: this week's Fantasy newsletter will be about lies.) But you gotta admit, some of them are meaner than others. Lots more at the link, no lie. |
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