When I was just a tot, I absolutely loved Dick Tracey. I would wait anxiously for the radio program to come on and listen breathlessly to his latest adventure. And I hit on the idea that I wanted to be called Dick Tracy and I bugged my mother endlessly to change my name. I guess she got sick of it because she came home one day and told me that she had gone to the courthouse, found the book that had my name in it, and changed it. But, she said, she couldn’t call me by my new name because she loved me by my old name and might not love me by my new name. After a week or so I asked her to change it back and she told me she did. Damn, I don’t know if I’m dumber now or then.
My grandmother once told me if I fell asleep with my arms over my head I’d suffocate. Also, there was a little girl who walked around on her tippy-toes all the time and she lost the ability to put her feet flat on the floor. Also, if the mirror fogged over in the bathroom while we were taking a shower it was a sign we were taking too long a shower.
Why she pulled such bullshit I’ll never know.
One of my sisters told me that, when you take the plug out of the bath, spiders will immediately climb out of it. I was about 18 before I could stay in the bath with the plug out.
I don’t tell my daughter that many falsehoods. The sweetest was the Dream Maker, a mystical being who came round to people’s houses and sent dreams in through the windows of those who particularly needed them. Thing was, he could only do this if you were in your own bed. Yes, this was my way of making her stay in her own bed rather than coming into mine.
The weirdest was the day that I managed to convince her that feet could talk. The only reason she’d never heard about this before was that her own feet were disabled and mute, and nobody wanted her to feel bad.
I used to give my kids a Magic Kiss when they couldn’t sleep. It was very powerful, and they had to run right back to bed afterword.
Worked every single time. 
But generally, we didn’t lie to our kids, nor did we use euphemisms for body parts.
My dad convinced my brother that the bumps on the road that separate the lanes are actually braille so blind people can drive. That’s why the bumps are bigger when you pull into a left hand turn lane. Seeing eye dogs are trained to bark when the light changes color so that they don’t run through intersections too. He had him going for about 2 weeks before he finally figured out that my dad was full of shit.
"Alright son, it’s time to learn how to take a piss, so come over here in front of the toilet and whip your cock out . . . "
. . . ok, sorry
Yeah, and there was also the “smoke sifter” and “key to the flag pole.”
ETA: I used to have the bad habit of sticking my hand down the big air conditioning outlets in my Grandfather’s old Pontiac. That is, until he told me that spiders lived in there. Worked like a charm.
Back when I was teaching English, my students would occasionally ask me what various swear words they’d heard in rap songs meant. I knew full well that they knew they were bad words and were just trying to shock me, but it took awhile for me to come up with a good strategy for dealing with this. The first time it happened, I pretended to misunderstand. It helps that my kids had a difficult time with the English “i” sound.
My 7th graders: Kyla, what does “beetch” mean?
Me: Beach? It means “beach”! [Okay, this conversation was in Bulgarian.]
My kids: NO! Not “beach”…“BEETCH”.
Me, feigning confusion: It means “beach”!
Hahaha! Oh, kids. When I finally gave in and told them what it meant, they were delightfully shocked to hear a teacher swear.
Eventually I came up with my favorite method of dealing with this question - I’d tell them it meant the exact opposite of what it means.
My kids: Kyla, what does “bitch” mean?
Me: It means beautiful, fantastic woman. I recommend calling all women you meet “bitch”. It will go over very well.
My kids, 95% sure that I was screwing with them: NO WAY.
Me: Absolutely way.
My kids: …really?
Me: mwahahaha!
Or I would just translate directly.
One of my eighth graders: Kyla, what does “shit” mean?
Me: Poop.
My kid: what?
Me: Poop.
My kid: Okay, rap makes no sense.
When I was a little kid, my grandfather had me convinced that women’s breasts were called “accoutrements” (which he pronounced “uh-COOT-truh-ments.”) I’m not sure he did it to tease me or if that was just what he called them, but I ended up calling them that until I was about 10 years old. I still think it’s kind of amusing.
A couple things I’m teaching my kids:
-
If you play with that thing it’ll fall off. That’s why your sister doesn’t have one.
-
There’s a chemical in the pool that turns bright red and stains your swimsuit if you pee.
That’s how it’s pronounced, and since it kind of means accessories . . .
This happened to a kid we know. She walked on her toes, everyone thought it was cute. This girl walked funny when we were well into grade school, apparently it took years for her to get her tendons stretched out properly. Stupid, stupid parents.
I threatened to stay up and watch the Easter Bunny hide the eggs. Pa told me that the Easter Bunny would bite my arm off if he caught me watching. :eek: I called BS but my dad convinced me by saying that a kid in his class had done that very thing and was now missing his arm from the elbow down.
I believed this for a ridiculously long time.
You have to be careful with that one. You wouldn’t believe how many adults there are that believe this chemical actually exists. Some people even going so far as to claim to have seen it in action.
Was it green? In my Scout troop, we always sent the new guys out looking for a “green left-handed smoke shifter”. We had a red one, we explained, but the red ones were made by a different company, and were lower in quality. And in our case, when one eventually ended up being made, it was more of a handheld fan sort of thing.
One of my own: As a teenager, I worked for a few summers at a kiddie amusement park, as a ride operator. One of my favorite rides was the boats. Now, of course, the kids always wanted to drag their fingers in the water, but there have been a few cases at similar rides of a sleeve catching on something and the kid being pulled into the water, so we always had to tell them not to do that. So I always told them that the waters were infested with ticklefish, and that if they stuck their hands in, the fish would tickle them to death.
The best was one time when a girl of about 10 was riding with her younger brother: It was obvious that she saw through it immediately, but that she also realized that there was a legitimate reason for it, so she spent the entire ride expounding to her brother in depth all about the many details of the fascinating ticklefish.
It is present in all pools that I swim in. Oh, and it stains your skin, and it’s permanent- you’ll be marked for life if you pee in a pool that I am in 
See, the problem is, for kids like me it made me MORE likely to do that. At the YMCA daycare was when I first encountered that, I thought it was possible but unlikely, but nonetheless it had to be verified so I peed the smallest amount I could to check (I realized the reasons so I didn’t just empty my bladder, but the “red color changing water” thing was too weird not to test). So… yeeaaaaaah….
That’s quite possibly my favorite cartoon ever.
Women can do this to themselves if they wear high heels a whole lot too.
Well, yeah, but I’ve heard it the French way. (More like “uh-coot-ruh-MON”)
I pretty sure my ex-sister-in-law managed to tear her tendon this way.