As the old bedtime saying goes. Were you in the position of a child receiving this adult thoughtfulness, how would you go about following the instruction?
I was, and I also went “Up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire.” Parents say all kinds of nonsense to their kids - it is training for when they grow up and start listening to the ‘news’.
When my mother used the bedbug line on my sister and me, we would respond with,
“If they do,
take a shoe,
beat them till
they’re black and blue.”
My hiking friend on the Appalachian trail would often say that to me at night, with the instruction mentioned by VunderBob which, while they didn’t tell me how to prevent it - I was on my own for that, but at least were the instructions on what to do if they were able to bite me despite any attempt I made to stop them. One does become very child like in may respects thru hiking this trail despite their age.
My mom said this nightly (“Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite”); I just chalked it up to something akin to Mr. Sandman, a folksy thing. It wasn’t until I was 20 or so, and read one of Ruth Park’s novels (either The Harp in the South or Poor Man’s Orange), where the family’s beds had infestations that I discovered bedbugs were real things. And, to my fear in later years as an apartment dweller, that they were a potential reality in my own life.
Still have no idea how I would follow such advice; stay awake in fear? Sleep in a hammock? Burn the apartment down?
I think this is more suitable to IMHO than General Questions.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator