Running alongside the train:
“DIPAYAN! If you get a tough piece of meat, SPIT IT OUT! DON’T TRY TO SWALLOW IT!”
You SEE! These things happen!
My mother was always good for all kinds of bizarre warnings, but now I’m a parent, I understand. My daughter and I frequently have conversations where she asks me to repeat my warnings to her and asks me if I still think they make sense. Little does she know that I am stopping myself from saying: “Be careful going down the stairs. You might trip and fall on your back and smash all your vertebrae, and then somersault down the stairwell smashing all other bones en route. If you make it down the stairs please be careful not to catch your fingers in the door, possible mashing your fingernails which might make you writhe in agony and twist an ankle. If you make it outside the building watch out for rogue cars racing up the sidewalk and also rabid dogs… etc., etc.” So telling her not to go in a car where people are smoking because an ember might drop off and set fire to the seats and the gas tank might explode is pretty restrained.
Hmm. I always thought I was pretty laid-back as a parent, but apparently not.
My grandmother, who raised me, always told me that I read too much and reading too much caused insanity which lead to this exchange.
“You know you’ll go crazy if you keep reading so much!”
“Like Don Quixote?”
“Quien?”
“A guy in a book who read too much and went crazy.”
“A guy in a book? Ves? The book tells you you read too much. Here, let me put on the TV.”
The thing is, I am now quite insane. Ask anybody.
Yes, grandmas in particular have are subject to the Great Fear of the Chill.
For example, my grandma hated it when I would lean forward playing with my Leggo and in so doing my shirt would become untucked, exposing my lower back.
It exposed my kidneys - very much like “wind on the tummy.”
I guess exposure to the Chill makes your internal organs freeze.
I vote for NightRabbit. So poignant and funny and cinematic.
Eep! Better hope Mom never finds out about that one!
One time at my late grandmother’s house, I was heating up a cup of tea in the microwave. She said I had better put oven mitts on, because it was hot inside. I said,
“No, Grandma, there is no heat in the oven, just the tea.”
“What do you mean there’s no heat in it? It’s an oven!”
I went on to explain to her how a microwave oven radiates microwave energy into your food, which vibrates the molecules, which creates friction, thus heat, and that cooks your food. The oven itself doesn’t get hot like her electric oven.
Then she got extremely offended and upset, and told me that I was telling her a bunch of bullshit because I thought she was a stupid old woman. There was no way I could convince her that this was not the case, I was simply explaining a bit of science - but she would have none of it.
(sigh)
Oh! My dad and I LOVE sitting on our little front porch during thunderstorms. (It has a roof). My mom HATES that we do so, and gets all upset about it. When I was little, I wasn’t even allowed to look out the window during a storm.
Zephyrine that has got to win, hands down, as the -most- remotest possibility disaster that I’ve ever heard tell of, and my Mom was a doozy at coming up with them, let me tell ya. 
It’s definitely related to becoming a parent though–once I had my kids, all these dreadful images and circumstances suddenly loomed as if they were most certain of happening. Just last night, I asked my 16 yo son to water the Christmas tree before turning the lights on. He did this, then looked at me before he plugged in the tree lights, “I know what you’re thinking!” he said. LOL And he did! But honestly, it -can- happen. Unfortunately, a family in No. Va. lost three members yesterday; their house caught fire and the cause might have been a dried out Christmas tree combined with extensive use of extension cords. 
This reminds me of something that happened with Mom when I was a kid.
There was a thunderstorm, and at about midnight, Mom wakes us all up and gets us out of bed, screaming, “Get out of the house! It’s going to blow up!” There is a bright light and loud crackling sound coming from outside, but we have no idea what’s going on. Blearily barely awake but frightened, we all head for the front door. As we go out onto the porch, Mom cries, “No, don’t go outside! You might get killed!”
So we stand on the front porch, 4 bewildered, half-awake, and soon-to-be dripping wet children huddled in our jammies and blankets (the front porch was covered, but very small and open on 3 sides; with the wind lashing the rain in, it wasn’t much of a shelter). Do we go back in and die? Go out and die? What the heck is happening?
From the porch, however, we could see that a big branch had fallen from one of the trees across the street and pulled down some wires. Live wires were in the street, making a loud BZZZZT! noise and letting off sparks. Very scary, but the whole width of our side yard and the empty field next door lay between the wires and us, so we were in no danger from them even on the porch. Had we stayed in our beds, we possibly might have slept through the whole thing–although we would have also missed the firemen who came to take care of the fallen wires (to small children, firetrucks and emergency vehicles are always cool).
Elementary school. Numerous instances of heading out to the bus stop on sub-zero mornings. Mom: “Don’t open your mouth out there; your lungs will freeze!”
Well, the bus stop was three other girls and me, and as girls that age will do, we talked each others’ ears off. Obviously, I’m still here.
But your ears fell off. That’s something.
I always wondered how a child who has been told “don’t play with that or you’ll go blind” would react to a blind person. Or someone who needs strong glasses.
My location line shows me to be in Newport Beach, California.
Beach means I live on the ocean, so according to Mom tsunami’s are a hazard, and of course in California earthquakes are a leading killer.
The facts of course… there’s NEVER been a tsunami here, and more people died yesterday from drunk drivers than all the people who have died of earthquakes for as long as I’ve been living here.
Perceptions are reality to some people.
-k
So, am I the only one who was scared of escalators for years as a child, because my mom was sooo careful of us getting on and off them? Every time I ride one, to this day, I can hear her saying, “Step off, don’t slide off. Step off, don’t slide off.” I had dreams of getting my feet caught and going all the way around, coming out flat and grooved at the bottom.
But I always step off, and I’ve never been killed by an escalator, so maybe she was right. 
If I did something bad or even if she didn’t want me to go outside to play alone… my mom would say “Some-in will getcha…”. Know what? I was scared absolutely thoughtless of this ‘some-in’… never did find out what the hell it was!
My mum always used to say stuff like this. Always.
“Be careful! You could fall off the side! You could get dragged down into it! You could get your shoelaces stuck and be trapped in a fire!”
And I never paid any attention. And then, one day, we were riding casually up an escalator, and it caught fire. A sheet of flame came roaring upwards from the base of the escalator. We ran for it.
In conclusion, they’re nutty - but sometimes they’re right.
I don’t know whether this qualifies but in my teens I caught my mother telling a new friend of mine to “Be careful, he’s a very bad influence.”