When I was a kid we believed there was a place in your hand that had no nerves.

You could stick a pin right through your hand and not feel a thing.

Later, we believed that if you dissolved aspirin in Coca Cola it would make you drunk.

Did anyone else believe this sort of stuff?

Oh yes. I believed Ayres rock was named after an ancester of mine - well, that's what I was told so I believed it. I also believed that if you killed a wasp all the other wasps from the hive/nest would come and hunt you down. I believed we had fairies at the end of our back garden (not that type of fairy!). I fed a dead bat to a vicious dog believing he wouldn't attack me again, funny thing is, he didn't! I believed the lady next door who had a guitor (sp) had swallowed a tennis ball.

That's enough for now, I don't want to come across all weird!

monsters under the bed which would attack me if i did not go to sleep at a certain time.. horrible things pearnts.

See, i can't even spell them...

Lies our parents told us fall into a different category... "You'll go blind if you keep doing that".

I was thinking more of the lore of childhood. Stuff our mother would have given us a non-PC crack under the ear if we had told her about.

This rumour persisted until some mates of mine actually tried it: Dry-roasting banana peels in the oven and then grinding them up and smoking them could get you high.

Up until I was around 10, I imagined the reason the human heart was beating was because it swung inside the body like the pendulum inside a grandfather clock. There was one in my grandparents' house and I thought since it had the same kind of rhythmic beat the two mechanisms must be related.

When I was a kid we took a vacation in the car all over the Western half of the US. Mom and Dad stopped at a campsite outside Las Vegas and left me with my older sisters and my grandmother, told us that Las Vegas didn't allow kids under the age of 18. Believed that for years!

Also thought liver came from Liverpool and that Liverpool must be a pretty awful place to produce something so nasty.

This rumour persisted until some mates of mine actually tried it: Dry-roasting banana peels in the oven and then grinding them up and smoking them could get you high.

Err .... well...actually... bananas contain tryptophan which, when ingested, increases levels of serotonin in the body (the same effect as Prozac). This can lead to various mood-altering effects.

This rumour persisted until some mates of mine actually tried it: Dry-roasting banana peels in the oven and then grinding them up and smoking them could get you high.

Err .... well...actually... bananas contain tryptophan which, when ingested, increases levels of serotonin in the body (the same effect as Prozac). This can lead to various mood-altering effects.

You knowing that, explains a lot

Taking a very rough guess at the age range of our collective readership, we have lived through a period of great change and education the world over and to compare our lives with that of our parents I can see we have (IMHO) steped through to a new age of enlightenment and education. (I guess every generation must do so in some way.) My own misbeliefs: If you turned a television off - then back on the programme would continue from the point where it stopped, of course now that is possible. Everyone carried a huge number of tools and spare parts in their car. That there was a child in India playing with a similar toy to myself at the some time. That as soon as I could afford it/old enough I would buy a TransAm and a particular type of gun, not understanding why every other adult did not do the same. When I was about 13 - that later in life I would have an Asian GF.....

Things adults tried to tell me: That lamps/lights bulbs were bright because of a process similar to echoes of the element's glow from the inside of the bulb glass. Some dogs were poisonous. Beef steak could not be eaten rare.

My sister believed that the stomach was divided into sections and had separate horizonal compartments for each food type; coffee, beans, potato, etc.

Not exactly the same, but a rumour was started........

We guys conspired and told all the girls in our group, same age, 12 - 16, if you did NOT have sex, then you would not grow boobs.

One of the girls, a bit older was quite promiscuous, she was well endowed.

Naturally, all the other girls became believers, it was great...... circa 1950.

Were they going to ask mum or dad?

Yeah, not likely.

At our school reunion 30 odd years later, I was given a bollocking, one old freiend introduced me to her hubby, as the guy who conned her out of her virginty.

Laffs galore that nite with the old gang, no hard feelings.........lol

My Mummy said I could have anything I wanted as long as I said "PLEASE" !!!

Why do parents lie to children ???

This rumour persisted until some mates of mine actually tried it: Dry-roasting banana peels in the oven and then grinding them up and smoking them could get you high.

Err .... well...actually... bananas contain tryptophan which, when ingested, increases levels of serotonin in the body (the same effect as Prozac). This can lead to various mood-altering effects.

Fair enough, perhaps there was something to the rumour after all.

Still - what quantity of roasted peels, or how many bananas would you have to eat, in order to achieve a Prozac-like effect?

Trip instructions: http://users.lycaeum.org/~sputnik/Humor/banadine.html

And some more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bananadine

I found out last year that there isn't a Boogie Man, after all. It gave me a new lease of life.

Also thought liver came from Liverpool and that Liverpool must be a pretty awful place to produce something so nasty.

I wonder what comes from Arsenal?

Also thought liver came from Liverpool and that Liverpool must be a pretty awful place to produce something so nasty.

I wonder what comes from Arsenal?

1. I was a little kid and wouldn't have known that word and

2. even when I did learn that word, it wouldn't have been arse

1000s of purile boys love to stand on the terrace shouting, 'Up the Arsenal!'

TV eyes... if you sit too close to the telly, you'll get square eyes.

TV eyes... if you sit too close to the telly, you'll get square eyes.

Ah, but did you believe it?

My father insisting that i left out a glass of whiskey for Father Christmas - he even helped me fill the glass.... Oh, and carrots for the reindeer which i duly peeled. Saved mum doing it the next day!!!

And lo and behold not a drop left in the glass or a carrot to be seen...

TV eyes... if you sit too close to the telly, you'll get square eyes.

Ah, but did you believe it?

I'm scratching my head to remember, but I recall that the message stuck and I refrained from sitting too closely (until it became habit to not sit closely), so I s'pose I probably did (believe it). Yes.

As a 5y/o living in NZ, I remember seeing my dad off on a train to London.

He was actually off to join a troopship in Wellington.

For many years I really believed one could get a train from Auckland to London.....

Until I was about 7 I believed I had a monkey growing in my tummy, I could feel him whenever we drove over a big hump in the road & my stomach dropped. One day I woke my mum up to tell her I had had my monkey, I told her to put her hand out, which she did still half asleep & I placed a large hairy scab, which had fallen off of a wound on our very scrappy mongrel dog, into her hand. That was my baby

Once she figured out what it was she threw it out the window whilst having a fit & I went mental cause she had killed by baby.

Bugger me boo, that has a faint whiff of 'weird' about it. Like some strange horror movie!

Twas a very odd child dear tiger & tis an even odder adult I grew into

This rumour persisted until some mates of mine actually tried it: Dry-roasting banana peels in the oven and then grinding them up and smoking them could get you high.

Up until I was around 10, I imagined the reason the human heart was beating was because it swung inside the body like the pendulum inside a grandfather clock. There was one in my grandparents' house and I thought since it had the same kind of rhythmic beat the two mechanisms must be related.

Tried it also, is this a Swedish thing or does this exist in other countries?

Twas a very odd child dear tiger & tis an even odder adult I grew into

Maybe we can meet up when I'm in Thailand and I can decide for myself!

What, you gonna make me come all the way from London??? Talk about effort How about we just try something closer to home

Sorry boo, I thought you were in Thailand! Next time I'm 'down south' I'll let you know.

I believed for years that because I could see the people on the TV that they could see me too. Even on the coldest winter mornings when only the living room would be warm I still used to take my school clothes to my cold bedroom at the other end of the house instead of getting dressed in the warm living room in front of the TV.

I was shy back then....now it's an effort to get me to keep my clothes on.

I believed that a man was as good as his word, I believed that my goverment had its citizens best interest as its driving force, I believed that what was right, was right and conversely I believed that two wrongs don't make a right, I didn't believe that without provable evidence only computer forcast saying global warming a fact by using data sources that when plugged in from years past can't come up with correct data for years that have occurred afterward ( ok I didn't dream of global warming when I was a kid, I just threw that in)