Pants on Fire

December 2, 2004 4:00 PM

When you're a kid, adults tell you fantastic stories. Which ones did you believe?
posted by Len to Grab Bag (53 answers total)

I could usually tell by the expression on the other adult's faces .
posted by zelphi at 4:10 PM on December 2, 2004

The spaghetti tree.
posted by oflinkey at 4:10 PM on December 2, 2004

Response by poster: Prompted partly by previous threads about the way children think, and also by a sudden memory flash I had earlier on, which involved the following: Back when I was roughly four or five, a guy who lived round the corner from my family told me a story. He was pretty old (at least to my five year old self, but even looking back, I still get the feeling that he was at least of retirement age), he was cranky, he had bad teeth.

But anyway, he had an old Messerschmitt bubble car. It sat in his back garden, covered by a tarpaulin (and probably gathering rust), but he would never let me see it, as he claimed he was turning it into a helicopter – the excuse was always that once the blades arrived and he fitted them, then he'd let me see the thing, and maybe even let me have a ride in it. Obviously, this was all nonsense, but it's something that has stuck in my mind ever since.

On preview: there would have been more inside instantly, had my computer not crashed ...
posted by Len at 4:11 PM on December 2, 2004

My older sister told me that if I got too close while the vacuum cleaner was running it would suck me right up. She also told me that if you accidentally run the vacuum cleaner over the cord, the whole thing would explode. It seemed reasonable enough to me at the time, and I feared the vacuum for years.
posted by ambrosia at 4:27 PM on December 2, 2004

I believed that my step-mom was ten years younger than she actually was for a period of a few years when I was like 5-8ish. Every time I asked her how old she was, or on her birthday, she would just unflinchingly say that she was "29" or whatever... I didn't figure it out until I thought to do the math on when she would have given birth to my older step-brother, and she would have been like 13.

My roommate, whose father is a retired fireman, believed for several years that his father was a CIA agent. As a fireman, he would often have all night shifts, multi-day stays in the firehouse, etc. When he was going to be gone a couple days, he would occasionally tell my friend that he was actually going on a mission, and being a fireman was just his cover. I forget how he eventually figured out his dad was bullshitting him, but I know it took a while.
posted by rorycberger at 4:27 PM on December 2, 2004

Not me, but I told my younger sister that some old dog poop was chocolate...
posted by pmbuko at 4:39 PM on December 2, 2004

A family friend told me that if you swam while chewing gum you would immediately drown. I believed that one well into my teens.
posted by arha at 4:46 PM on December 2, 2004

My parents told me that chocolate milk came from brown cows...
posted by kickerofelves at 4:48 PM on December 2, 2004

I wasn't an adult, but in my pre-teens, I'd always tell my little brother that I used to roll him down the street with a stick (because he was a very chubby baby) when we were younger kids.
posted by lychee at 4:49 PM on December 2, 2004

Good God, my father filled my ears with such creative bullshit and misdirection it's a wonder I have anything straight. I did catch on pretty fast, at around 6 years old, that he was full of crap, but the more notable exceptions (in terms of making me a nervous wreck as a kid) were:

Telling me that everyone was born immortal, but if you sneezed four times in a row you lost that immortality and you could DIE! Unless you sneezed five times in a row shortly afterward, then you could get your immortality back. I huffed a lot of pepper as a kid.

He also told me that the air in the hole of a doughnut was poisonous, and if you bit through the ring, you would DIE! So you had to leave a complete ring around the hole and give it to an adult "to take care of it."

On a related note, he said if you planted Cheerios, a doughnut tree would grow, but I never quite believed that.

I actually convinced my sister to eat a rock when I was 7 and she was 5. I told her it was a burnt cookie from mom's baking, and she actually bit into it before throwing it at my head and chasing me around the house! On reflection, that's actually the meanest thing I ever did to her growing up.
posted by nelleish at 4:50 PM on December 2, 2004

My grandpa (whom I adored) had me totally convinced that his car antenna was controlled by an invisible string hanging from the ceiling of his car. It wasn't until I was in high school that I thought about it again, and realized "Hey, wait! He was just turning the radio on with his other hand while my attention was focused on the ceiling!" I know it sounds lame, but as a child I was totally convinced.
posted by handful of rain at 4:50 PM on December 2, 2004

my father told me a story about a man who really liked the taste of appleseeds; the man apparently saved up an entire jar, and when he ate them all they killed him. Appleseeds do contain cyanide I believe, but I am suspicious of my father's method of illustration.

My mother also told me that school got better when you were older.
posted by cmyr at 4:55 PM on December 2, 2004

Thanks to my father, I spent four of my formative years firmly entrenched in several such sundry revelations. The winds were caused by our speedy planet’s capricious revolutions, hippopotami were merely juvenile rhinos, my left ear occasionally produced two-bits harvestable only by him, and the consumption of carrots would lead to various vision dependant superhero powers. I was under the impression that platypodes were freakish Frankenstein creations of primitive aboriginal scientists, ice cream truck drivers received incremental bonuses based on the number of children they were able to flatten, and that one could use latent charisma to cajole nearly anyone to purchase nearly anything. When my childhood culinary curiosity inspired me to feast on fried frog legs, my father regaled me with a terrible tale of the tiny amputated amphibians morosely trundling in their diminutive wheelchairs in the alley behind the restaurant. Goldfish often swam upside-down as a sign of protest concerning their current living conditions and this often indicated that they were to be returned to the ocean via household plumbing. I soaked my father’s sapience like a sponge (which if eaten, would slowly kill me over the course of twenty years) and took his word for gospel (religion being inherently evil and absolutely bootless) and never once considered supplementing his wisdom with the liberal application of sodium chloride (superstitions, such as the precautionary propelled pinch of salt were an absurdity that my father sought to consistently fly in the face of, and under his guidance I smashed several mirrors, angled my ambulation perpendicular to the path of darkly furred felines, and eschewed the freakish four leafed clover mutants and ghoulish rabbit feet in favor of deductive reasoning) it required.
phew.
posted by ktrey at 4:58 PM on December 2, 2004

Thanks to a beloved if slightly sadist aunt, that an evil being named "Mr. H" lived behind the little bathtub plumbing access door at my grandparents' house.

nelleish: That donut hole thing is brilliantly sinister! I'm going to use that one on the first kid I come across.
posted by jennyb at 5:02 PM on December 2, 2004

Striped paint. Muffler bearings. Smoke is what makes electric things work (confirmed with my own eyes -- the smoke escaped from my radio and it stopped working).

Oh, and if Popeye counts as an adult, he has to answer for all that spinach I ate.
posted by joaquim at 5:07 PM on December 2, 2004

I pretty much convinced my brother that Santa Claus was the head mummy, and if you killed him, all the other mummies would die. And sure, everyone hates the evil mummies, but who would want to kill Santa Claus?

He tried to resist it, but as he got more and more unsure, and finally just asked my father if it was true, "yes, Nicholas, Santa is a mummy," I gave in and told him the truth, since he seemed upset by it.

Related to the vacuum incident above, not quite a lie I believe, but my mother used to pretend it was going to 'suck up my toes,' and to this day, I get nervous not wearing shoes when vacuuming.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 5:11 PM on December 2, 2004

My dad had this big scar on his knee which he told me he got when a tiger mauled him.
posted by gyc at 5:17 PM on December 2, 2004

I told my sister that fig newtons were filled with crushed-up worms, which she believed for a looooooong time. Also I told her that pancakes used to be living, breathing creatures (because the pattern the butter makes on them looks kind of like veins). Pretty much got her off fig newtons and pancakes FOR LIFE.

As for stories I got told and believed, once I got some roofing-tar on my hands when I was little, and the stupid stuff would not come off with normal soap-and-water. That stuff is STICKY! I asked my dad how to make it come off, and he told me the only way to make it come off was to be good, forever. I promptly burst into tears because I knew that was never gonna happen and I thought for sure I was doomed to a life of sticky tar-hands.
posted by contessa at 5:25 PM on December 2, 2004

I actually convinced my sister to eat a rock when I was 7 and she was 5. I told her it was a burnt cookie from mom's baking, and she actually bit into it before throwing it at my head and chasing me around the house! On reflection, that's actually the meanest thing I ever did to her growing up.

I told my 4 year old brother that if he closed his eyes he would get a nice surprise. I fed him a spoonful of Tabasco. Sadly, I pulled this off twice trusting little brother.

The boys next door were told if they ate too many black olives, their skin would turn black.

When I was in my thirties I routinely told the 5 and 6 year old children of a friend of mine that I was 9. My mother backed me up on this...they weren't sure what to believe.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 5:30 PM on December 2, 2004

Which ones did you believe?

Every one of 'em. Anyone who's seen me breaking in here on MeFi knows how gullible I am.
posted by Doohickie at 5:35 PM on December 2, 2004

I told my 4 year old brother that if he closed his eyes he would get a nice surprise. I fed him a spoonful of Tabasco. Sadly, I pulled this off twice trusting little brother.

Don- is that YOU? (My older brother did that to me!)
posted by Doohickie at 5:36 PM on December 2, 2004

Oh... one in particular I just remembered:

"If you play with it, it will fall off!"

I'm not sure why that one stands out.........
posted by Doohickie at 5:38 PM on December 2, 2004

Thanks to Dad (who else?), I was terrified of eating watermelon seeds, because a watermelon plant would grow inside you if you swallowed them, and you wouldn't know until the vines started tickling the back of your throat.

Using the tragedy of poor Augustus Gloop as an example, he also pretty much scared us away from using the pool while the pool filter was running.

I used to tempt fate regularly from the ages from 5-6 trying to get my ugly face-pulling to stick when the wind changed (dammit, i wanted to look like a troglodyte, it would save me effort trying to maintain my contorted visages!). I always felt ripped off that it didn't happen.
posted by elphTeq at 5:46 PM on December 2, 2004

My great-aunt Mima told me that if I picked the Orange Hawkweed growing in the Catskills in summertime, it would ooze a black, tar-like milk that would stain my hands forever. I was very drawn to orange things, and quailed just seeing it in the roadside.

It still seems a sinister plant to me today.
posted by Tufa at 5:51 PM on December 2, 2004

I don't know why but I believed until about 5 or 6 that brains were made of gold and silver - they had to be the best part of the body, right? My doctor told me that brains were actually gray.... :(
posted by Lynsey at 5:53 PM on December 2, 2004

The big rolled hay was dinosaur poop. I didn't believe it at first, but my whole family convinced me by constantly dropping things about not wanting to get caught in the country at night (it's when the dinosaurs came out and pooped).

And they wondered why I was terrified of the dinosaur exhibit at the zoo.
posted by geoff. at 6:04 PM on December 2, 2004

My dad told me they kept sunlight in safes during daylight saving time. I believed him for about ten seconds, which was the record for believing in any of the things he kidded me about.
posted by zsazsa at 6:10 PM on December 2, 2004

That my mom (b. 1942) was 28 in 1998, and that the little statue of a chinese wise man that my brother kept in his room would bite me if I touched it.


And for YEARS, I was quite convinced that the Carly Simon song "Life is Eternal" was "Life is a turnip."
posted by stray at 6:27 PM on December 2, 2004

At our summer cottage, years and years ago, the nasty little boy next door told me that the submerged tree near our beach had a cadaver stuck underneath it.

He was the neighbor's kid - a sinister little boy about 2 years older than me. A satanic version of Bart, if you will. He was 7, and I was 5.

Sometimes, as I was just learning how to swim, he would be sitting on the beach, grin the evilest of grins, and quietly point toward the general area where the tree was submerged.

I would burst into tears and call for my Mom.

Of course, my parents had to take the row boat out to investigate the tree that caused all my terrors.

It was about 50 feet away from the shore, just where the gentle grade of the beach became suddenly deep. That tree was stuck in there - I remember my Dad hiring a local contractor with a tractor, to try to dig it out. To no avail.

I was terrified of that submerged tree for YEARS. Even now, when I go kayaking or canoeing on some new lake, I get a bit of a jolt when I see a submerged tree, esp when I see its entangled roots.
posted by seawallrunner at 6:38 PM on December 2, 2004

Cut a fish in half and you'll have two
posted by holloway at 6:40 PM on December 2, 2004

I'm in the group of people conned by my father. I was a curious child: I asked Dad where electricity came from. He answered that it was brought over from England by boat. I asked him what a gazebo was. He told me it was a wild animal native to Africa (whereupon I imagined vast herds of gazebo sweeping majestically across the Serengeti). Lastly I asked him how he got the big scar on his leg. "Fighting a dragon".
posted by Ritchie at 6:47 PM on December 2, 2004

When I was younger, I asked my mother what was in my belly button (referring to the little nub of skin, I have an "innie-outie, if you catch my meaning), and she said it was a blueberry.

Several days later I had to go to the hospital, because I'd picked at my belly button until it got infected.
posted by hughbot at 6:58 PM on December 2, 2004

My aunt convinced me that my great-grandfather had invented the flush toilet.
posted by JoanArkham at 7:04 PM on December 2, 2004

My grandfather had my sister totally believing that during the war they used to practice searchlighting during the day, using a black filter over the light to make it shine a black beam.
posted by coriolisdave at 7:06 PM on December 2, 2004

On a long cartrip when I was about 7 I asked my dad to make up a story to tell me. He proceeded to tell me the entire plot of 2001: a space odyssey but he replaced the character "dave" with "tina" (me). It took about an hour to tell and I loved every minute of it. I sat for the rest of the long cartrip pondering this story and thinking what a great story-maker-uper my dad was. It was quite a shock to me the first time I saw the movie as a teenager. There was a moment of confusion, thinking that the filmmaker had stolen my dad's story and changed the character from my name to "dave" which is coincidentally my dad's name as some cruel joke.
posted by tinamonster at 7:10 PM on December 2, 2004

Someone told me about burying the seeds of something, and then a tree of it grows (like apple or orange). But I feel like they must have confused me, because I buried an empty cheese and cracker's package, hoping to grow a cheese and crackers tree.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:31 PM on December 2, 2004 [1 favorite]

The neighbourhood electric utility building was where they ground up misbehaving children into hamburgers, a proposition supported by the sinister buzzing from within.

I refused, however, to believe my mother's assertion that babies came from their mothers' bellies, finding it ridiculous and insisting she tell me the *real* truth.
posted by Krrrlson at 7:32 PM on December 2, 2004

I believed that my mother was 29 for about 5 straight years. I believed that TicTacs were safe for adults but poisonous for children. I did NOT believe that Diet Coke was safe for adults but poisonous for children, so I snuck sips whenever my mom's back was turned.

Every time the food arrived on an airplane, my brother told me there was something exciting out the window, and then he stole my dessert. For years, I thought airlines didn't serve desserts. My father convinced me that he had won a Nobel Prize that he kept in our coat closet. What, I'd never noticed it? Mom's jacket must be covering it up.

And I was pretty sure that the Tooth Fairy didn't exist, but I wasn't absolutely positive. I remember making my mother promise to tell me the truth because otherwise I wouldn't do the right thing for my kids. What if I thought there wasn't one, and I replaced the teeth with money, and the Fairy got mad? What if I thought there was one, and my kids never got paid for their teeth? My mother solemnly assured me that the Tooth Fairy was real. "No, mom, reallllly...you have to tell me the truth!" She never did.
posted by equipoise at 7:39 PM on December 2, 2004

These are fantastic.

When I was real little, I was very puzzled as to just what function turn signal indicators on the dashboard had. I asked my mom if they told her how to get home, and for whatever reason she told me yes, they did. For a long time after that I imagined elaborate networks of satellites beaming information directly to our car.

I also used to fall asleep on the couch downstairs at night, and my parents would always carry me up and put me in my bed. They, of course, told me that magic brought me upstairs, and I always envisioned this sparkling motes of light carrying me up over the balcony and into my room.

The things that parents do to their children.
posted by deafmute at 7:57 PM on December 2, 2004

I Used To Believe... a collection of stories just like the one's you're reading now.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:11 PM on December 2, 2004

And those big round bales out in the fields are cow eggs, not dino droppings.
posted by five fresh fish at 8:12 PM on December 2, 2004

My father convinced me that all the milk in the world comes from two cows, Bessie and Beulah; my mom insisted it all comes from Lani Moo. I was never sure who to believe, but I was convinced ONE of them was telling the truth.

He also convinced my mother that asparagus grows on railroad ties, a theory she didn't debunk until recently.
posted by Marit at 8:17 PM on December 2, 2004

A friend told me if I pissed myself at night it meant I had AIDS. I couldn't sleep for days and believed it for a couple years.
posted by ch3ch2oh at 8:35 PM on December 2, 2004

I was about 6-8 years old. I was once rummaging through my parent's drawers in their bedroom while they were both cleaning up or something. I picked up a wrapped condom, and asked my dad what it was. He said it was his 'sleeping pills', and that after he used them he fell asleep right away. The only thing that confused me about this is why I've never seen pills that were shaped like a really thin donut before.

Here's the embarassing part I shouldn't disclose: I also stole a bunch and tried to eat them when I had trouble falling asleep. I couldn't keep them down, though.
posted by sleslie at 8:35 PM on December 2, 2004

Here are a couple from my seriously damaging childhood.

If you freeze a fish (salmon) with its head down and tail up all of the toxins will travel to the head which can be chopped off and the rest of the fish will be clean.

For years (until I was at least 10) my father always told me that those cows that you see jumping on each other in the fields have 'tired feet' and just need to rest them on the other cows backs.

The same dad was the one we were told that always brushed his teeth before we all got up in the morning.

Maybe more will come later.
posted by vidarling at 8:54 PM on December 2, 2004

Wheelchairs in airports used to have a tall (maybe 6') metal hoop sprouting from the back, to keep you from walking off with them. My stepfather had me convinced that this was so handicapped people could fly. (At the time, the airport in the small town where we lived didn't have a jetway, and you had to go up stairs to the plane.) He said that they would wheel the person out to the middle of the runway, and that the plane would do a low pass and snag the wheelchair's hoop with a hook, then winch them up inside. I believed that one for about a year.

That, and a babysitter once told me that if you lost a tooth, a gold tooth would grow in its place, if you never put your tongue in the empty space. My willpower was and is crap, so no gold tooth for me, alas.
posted by Vidiot at 11:16 PM on December 2, 2004

When I was in Grade 1 My Dad told me that, when he was out hunting, he took a lunch break and a foot-tall red gnome appeared from behind a stump and asked for some of his lunch. He said he shared some sandwich with him.

I fell for that one bigtime...it was my show and tell item on the Monday, and I got nothing but blank stares.
posted by jimmythefish at 1:15 AM on December 3, 2004

My grandparents still lived in the house that my father grew up in when I was little. The upstairs was a single bedroom which was my dad's bedroom as a kid. This is where they kept all of the toys and games to entertain all of us grandchildren when we came over for a visit.
My grandfather convinced all of us that the floor of the bedroom was very weak and could cave in at any moment if we weren't careful. Every time we went up to get a game we all stood with our backs against the walls and kind of shuffled along. We would then talk someone into darting out, grabbing the game, and making back to the edge of the room before the floor gave way.
We firmly believed this and observed this ritual everytime we went over to their house. Not until a few years ago did we all realize that they were joking and the floor was fine.
posted by ttrendel at 6:03 AM on December 3, 2004

Thanks to my Dad I believed until adolescence that I had been born with a tail. This made perfect sense, because, as he kindly pointed out, I could feel for myself the stump where my tail had been amputated.
posted by Cuke at 7:11 AM on December 3, 2004

So I guess I'm not adopted after all.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:00 AM on December 3, 2004

When I was 4 I nearly saw the Easter Bunny. He scampered out of the house just as I was racing down the hall to see it, but his footprints were there and he did leave the chocolate eggs.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:01 AM on December 3, 2004

My older brother, adhering to the strict older-brother by-laws, told me the following when I was about five:

"If you get bitten by a dog with rabies you have to get like twelve of these huge shots right into your stomach. Then your family has to buy this big expensive metal cage to put you in, because, you know, the rabies makes you go nuts and you're trying to attack and kill your family. Anyway, the shots don't help and you die anyway."

Also, after stepping on a nail at a friend-of-the-family's wedding he told me that bleeding in public was illegal.

Ah, older brothers!
posted by blueberry at 12:54 PM on December 3, 2004

My father denies this, but I seriously remember him telling me that taxes were invented by Jimmy Carter. He actually has better stories than I do, his father convinced him that steel wool came from the sheep on Iron Mountain.
posted by dagnyscott at 3:45 PM on December 3, 2004