Driving the kids insane with well-placed misinformation

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My first-grader has become enamored with Forbidden Words, and is now interested in what is a “bad word” and what is not. No big deal, I’m sure that a majority of kids go through this stage.

However, she’s driving my wife batty: “Is darn a bad word?” “Is heck?” “How about gosh?” Etc, etc, etc.

So my wife, in an effort to silence my daughter (and gain some peace) said the following:

“Sophie, do you want to know the baddest word of all?”
“YES!!!”
“I can’t really say it, it’s so bad. But I can give you a hint…”
“PLEASE, MOMMY! I HAVE TO KNOW!”
"OK… the baddest word of all begins with the letter ‘Z’."

The poor child has done nothing but wrack her brain for the past week, trying to figure out what this word is:

“Does Daddy say it?” “No, honey - it’s even too bad for Daddy.” ( :o )

“What would Father Michael do if I said this word?” “Honey, he would probably drop dead from shock, it’s that bad.”

“Come on, Mommy! You can tell me the second letter!” “No, unfortunately, I cannot, for you might know it and therefore put your soul in eternal peril.”

I’m sure she’s asked all her friends at school. It wouldn’t even surprise me to find Sophie asking adults about it… she can be rather brazen at times.

But when my wife told me she said this to Sophie, I must have laughed for 5 minutes. Maybe you had to have been there. :wink:

So… the inevitable question. What pieces of misinformation have you fed your kids (or had fed to you)? Why did you do it?

And, if you can, let’s keep it a little light-hearted. “I never told my son his father was a pedophile and that’s why I killed him” might qualify, but isn’t really what this thread is about. That’s what the Pit is for. :wink:

2

When I was about 3 or 4, I went through a phase where I wanted my skull to be perfectly cube shaped. It must have been inspired by a cartoon character. Anyway, my mom needed me to cooperate to go to the doctor for booster shots, so she told me the doctor would make my head a cube like I wanted. I knew just enough about doctors to believe it, and was disappointed when it totally didn’t happen.

3

Do little brothers count?

My friend and I were playing magic tricks on our families. Kid Brother was going crazy trying to figure out how we did it. He was becoming very insistant on knowing our secret.
I had an epiphany. “It’s our skirts.”
“What?”
“Wearing skirts causes psychic powers. That’s how we read each other’s minds. If you wore a skirt or dress, I guess you would be psychic, too. But you’d have to wear it most of the time, in public.”
Kid Brother declined to get in touch with his feminine side.
And thus, the Secret Psychic Society of the Skirt was born.

4

Most people have heard that glass is made from sand, in that silica is a common ingredient to both. I convinced my Sister-in-law that moisture on the outside of glasses–condensation–was actually the liquid inside the glass seeping through the grains of sand that made up the glass. The clear color was attributed to the filtering process: Coke syrup was too thick to pass through the glass, but the water wasn’t. The sand cell structure also trapped the carbonation bubbles.

5

When I was in 7th Grade, my German teacher(we had German for 9 weeks in 7th Grade) told us that in Germany, chickens don’t go “Cluck-cluck!”

Instead, they say, “Kikity-kee! Kikity-kee!”

Her real point was that they had a different onomatopoeia for the sound, but she told us that “German chickens and American chickens can’t communicate with another because of the language difference.”

Most of us giggled, but I remember one girl genuinely believing that American chickens can talk to one another and German chickens speak a different language.

This girl was 13, by the way…not the brightest girl of the class.

6

Heh, my dad told my sister and I the same thing about Pekingese dogs. He said the reason why they were all so pissy and mean was because they barked in Chinese and no French dog could understand them. We totally bought it, too.

7

When I was a kid, the next-door neighbor girl (who was a few years older) told me that when you fell asleep, your heart stopped beating. For weeks, I went to bed holding my hand over my heart just to see if she was lying.

8

My dad and I used to go for walks in a nearby park. The park had a large pond and a trail around it, with informative signs next to various trees and plants describing them. Looking out at the pond, my dad told me the pond scum was called “snog fraut,” which was his made up catchall word for any disgusting substance (like dog slobber).

Of course, I believed him completely, and when my 2nd grade class went on a field trip to a local nature reserve, I confidently pointed out to our guide that the green stuff floating on the water was snog fraut, and I let my dad know when I got home how I had schooled the entire group. He got a big kick out of that.

9

Had a girl I didn’t know briefly convinced that Jackalopes are a real live creature native to Texas. She was, I think, about 15 at the time.

Then, again, when I was recently at Sheppard AFB, I almost convinced this girl in my class (this time about 19) that Jackalopes were a real thing. For bonus points, when she didn’t believe me, she asked the instructor when she walked in whether Jackalopes were real or not, and the instructor, not knowing how this came up, said basically the same things I did about them. XD

10

From the author of the Bunny Suicides books:

The Statue of Liberty switches arms when nobody’s looking, you know.

11

At the age I went from bath to shower, my brother was teaching me to shower. He was teaching me how much shampoo was the right amount. Instead of simply telling me not to waste shampoo, he told me to be careful not to use too much or my hair would fall out.

I believed it.

Other lies I believed:

“Your face will stick that way.”

“You’ll grow a watermelon in your stomach.”

“Say ‘Bloody Mary’ in the mirror 3 times at midnight and she will appear in the mirror.”

“There’s an old man who lives in the attic who has orange and green hair and eats rotten cheese out of a broken trophy.”

12

It seems a lot of prankish older brothers and sisters are telling children that eskimo and squaw are dirty words.:wink:

13

While playing at the pool one hot summer day, I was bitten twice by some sort of biting fly. My sister convinced me that it had been all over the news recently of a NEW kind of biting fly in our town. If it bit you three times, you would immediately drop dead.

I was so scared I spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool with just my nose sticking out to breathe, the rest of me under water, protected from the “Thrice Biting Death Flies”

14

Zemprini?

(actually, there’s no profanity I can find beginning with z)

15

Zakenayo count? Japanese, means ‘don’t fuck around with me’. Actually, has about eight meanings, but that’s the core. (Eg, can also be, ‘are you fucking with me’ and so on)

16

I can’t wait to tell my son “a wizard did it” everytime he asks me a question I don’t know the answer to.

17

By the way, zipperhead is a nasty slur.

18

Zamboni!

19

My wife said the word she was thinking of was “Zounds!”, which is an archaic curse meaning “the wounds of Christ”.

20

Wow! This must have been a popular one, I remember an older kid telling me the exact same thing when I was little. (Would have been mid to late 80’s.)