# Odd things your elderly relatives were concerned with that caused you embarassment or confusion **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 21, 2014, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213 "2014-11-21T00:17:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![Cinnamon\_Imp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/58956e/32.png) [@Cinnamon\_Imp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cinnamon_Imp)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/241 "2014-12-27T19:51:50Z")
That’s the alleged remedy for a fishbone caught in the throat, but the irritating scratchy type, rather than the causing-death-by-choking type! ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/242 "2014-12-27T20:39:57Z")
> [@t-bonham@scc.net](#): > > No 21st-century appliance will last for 30 years. Except for the ones that do. ---
**Author:** ![Catamount](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/catamount/32/2840_2.png) [@Catamount](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Catamount)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/243 "2014-12-27T20:54:30Z")
> [@Wolf333](#): > > From my mother: > > You should not have a cat in the room while you are sleeping because they will steal your breath. The [boo hag](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boo_Hag) is what steals your breath. The cat keeps the boo hag out of the room. Or so I have been told. ---
**Author:** ![Wolf333](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolf333/32/3460_2.png) [@Wolf333](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolf333)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2014, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/244 "2014-12-27T21:49:02Z")
> [@Kamino\_Neko](#): > > … Someone is not quite clear on the concept of ‘choking’. > > What does she think you have to do if they’re choking on bread? Feed them more bread, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Goob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c77e96/32.png) [@Mr.Goob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Goob)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2015, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/245 "2015-01-01T02:40:12Z")
Elmwood, I’m in the Buffalo area and own the home I grew up in. 33 years now and can’t think of one time anybody came in the front door! Never really thought of it before. Now my head hurts thinking of friends and families houses I’ve never used the front door. ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2015, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/246 "2015-01-01T16:45:43Z")
> [@Oglomott](#): > > My parents were of the belief that if you didn’t have a BM every day, you would “get sick”, whatever that meant. More than a couple of days? Enemas! :eek: I knew a girl who had to live with her grandmother for about 6 years, along with her two brothers, when they were in their teens. Grandma apparently believed the same thing - 24 hours without a BM? Enema time, and I mean the old-skool bag and everything. The cure for a cold? Sniffles? Headache? Fever? Acne? Enema time! She admitted to me one time she had probably had “hundreds” of them, and they were horribly embarrassing every time. She developed Crohn’s by her early 20’s, and although there is no proof, her doctor suspects the overuse of enemas. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2015, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/247 "2015-01-01T16:52:59Z")
Oh yeah, here’s a howler - the MIL (age 70) claims that in her opinion jogging is responsible for most of the health ills of society, and if she was in power she would make it ILLEGAL to jog, run, or otherwise move in a fast manner. I asked her if she understood what she was saying, and her reply was along the lines of “since we have the NHS, everyone’s medical costs are paid by everyone. So we should be able to ban anything unhealthy.” When I pointed out that by that token there should be a law against being morbidly obese, she (who is more than 150 pounds overweight) strenuously objected, because “no one can help that. It’s all genetic.” And when I asked why not make tobacco use illegal first, the reaction was “oh, a little smoke never hurt anyone.” ---
**Author:** ![Honey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/honey/32/5074_2.png) [@Honey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Honey)\ **Post date:** [January 1, 2015, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/248 "2015-01-01T20:40:48Z")
My grandmother would not let any of us female cousins go to bed wearing underwear. She said that nighttime was for letting your lady parts air-out and breathe. To this day I cannot sleep with anything on from the waste down. A t-shirt and nothing else. ---
**Author:** ![Nawth\_Chucka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c57346/32.png) [@Nawth\_Chucka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nawth_Chucka)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2015, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/249 "2015-01-02T02:47:04Z")
> [@Honey](#): > > My grandmother would not let any of us female cousins go to bed wearing underwear. She said that nighttime was for letting your lady parts air-out and breathe. > > To this day I cannot sleep with anything on from the waste down. A t-shirt and nothing else. That explains all the nighttime whistling. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2015, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/250 "2015-01-02T03:34:19Z")
> [@Mama\_Zappa](#): > > Mom: “Don’t wear your glasses all the time. They’ll make your eyes get weaker”. > > \ > > Me: “Mom says wearing glasses makes your eyes weaker” My 85yo grandma never used glasses. She drank right out of the bottle. ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2015, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/251 "2015-01-02T13:53:25Z")
My paternal grandmother was obsessed with how new my clothes were, no matter what I was wearing. Even when she’d come over to my dad’s and I was wearing the cutoffs and paint-covered t-shirt I wore when working on stuff for art class, she’d asked me why I was so dressed up. My stepfather (20 years older than my mum and a general worrywart) spent his whole life thinking up things that could go wrong in every possible scenario. The one that drove me nuts was his insistence that all bedroom ceiling fans HAD to be turned off around 5 am, because they might catch on fire/fall out of the ceiling/keep me from waking up in a pool of sweat in my un-airconditioned room in Florida in August. Apparently fires and explosions only happened between 5 am and 7 am – the fan on at other times was just fine. So every morning he would slightly open my door and turn off the fan. And since my mother is never hot, we never had air conditioning in our house. In Florida. So it was fucking HOT in the bedrooms. (“Cross-ventilation”, my ass.) This continued through high school. Then I went to live with my dad and stepmom when I went to college, who had air conditioning and no desire to sleep in sweat. I’d started wearing only underpants to bed when I was in college. During my first visit back to my mom’s, I went to bed as usual, fan on. I’d apparently kicked off the sheet. Around 5 am, my stepfather opened the door, saw me naked, said “Oh! Excuse me!” in a horrified voice, and went away without turning off the fan. Which did not catch on fire or fall out of the ceiling. Poor guy. He was embarrassed for days. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2015, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/252 "2015-01-02T14:44:04Z")
> [@Una\_Persson](#): > > Oh yeah, here’s a howler - the MIL (age 70) claims that in her opinion jogging is responsible for most of the health ills of society, Has she ever explained _why_ she thinks this? ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2015, 2:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/253 "2015-01-02T14:52:46Z")
> [@KRC](#): > > Maybe it doesn’t qualify, but there was the time I got into an argument with Mom about Iggy Pop’s song “Lust for Life.” I had some difficulty convincing her it was not about a cruise ship. Yeah, my friends and I all thought that was a \*very \*odd choice for that ad. ---
**Author:** ![El\_Kabong](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/el_kabong/32/496_2.png) [@El\_Kabong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/El_Kabong)\ **Post date:** [January 2, 2015, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/254 "2015-01-02T14:59:26Z")
I love this thread. I unplug the toaster when it’s not in use. No, I have no rational reason to do so. Only one in my immediate family I can think of is that my mom never in her entire life fueled her car at a self-service gas station, because such a task was ‘unladylike’. Oh, hang on, now that I think of it she was another ‘going out with wet hair will cause a cold’ type as well. The husband of her best friend, a retired university professor, had some interesting quirks. For one thing, books had pretty much taken over their house: as in, every square inch of wall or flat surface was covered with books. The living room sofa had two spots to sit down between stacks of magazines, and getting to the bed in the spare bedroom was basically the act of negotiating a narrow corridor weaving through snowdrifts of books. Moreover, the dining room was filled with plastic tubs containing hundreds and hundreds of partially-used legal pads. Apparently the Professor was in the habit of making notes to himself, but insisted on starting a new pad (not just a new page, but completely different pad) whenever changing to a new subject. So for each pad, often only the top page had anything written on it. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2015, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/255 "2015-01-04T03:43:32Z")
That sounds almost like hoarding. > [@cochrane](#): > > I just bought a new toaster and the manual does recommend unplugging it when not in use. I don’t bother, I just leave it plugged in. I don’t think anything will happen if I don’t. It’s probably just CYA by the manufacturer. I do, but that’s because I have to keep it in the pantry, to free up space on the counter. No matter how much I explain it to her, my mother still thinks that that how much stuff you have on your computer affects how fast it runs. I tell her that memory and storage are different. She doesn’t believe me. I tell her that hard drives are a LOT bigger now. She doesn’t get it. On my old computer, I was going to install the Sims. She was convinced it was going to cause a virus (even though I bought it from a freaking store). She wanted me to use it on a flash drive. No matter how many times I told her it wouldn’t work. :smack: > [@Soylent\_Juicy](#): > > I wasn’t allowed to walk around barefoot in case I stepped on a rusty nail and got tetanus. I stopped walking around barefoot outside after stepping on a bee. OW. ---
**Author:** ![Kenm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bc79bd/32.png) [@Kenm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kenm)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2015, 10:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/256 "2015-01-04T10:09:10Z")
This went on for years, first with my parents’ car, then my own. Mid-January, –35°F. **Me:** I’m going (somewhere). Bye. **Dad:** If the car doesn’t start, don’t run the battery down to the nubs! Mid-July, 95°F, with the humidex, 103. **Me:** I’m going (somewhere). Bye. **Dad:** If the car doesn’t start, don’t run the battery down to the nubs! I thought of getting a pile of worn-out ball bearings or or a bunch of pebbles, returning after not starting the car and pouring them into his lap. **Me:** The nubs fell out of the battery! Now I need new nubs! But I didn’t. From childhood onward: Winter, and I’d go outside, then come back in for a few minutes for something or other before going out again. **Mum:** Take your coat off in the house! **Me:** Why? (I’d always ask her why.) I don’t know why she believed it, but: **Mum:** You get too used to wearing it inside and it won’t do you any good outside! (But magically, no one got used to it in grocery stores or a mall.) I was 14 or so: **Mum:** Take your coat off in the house!\*\* Me:\*\* Too late! It won’t do any good so I’m going out in my underwear. **Mum:** Oh, you think you’re so smart! ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2015, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213/257 "2015-01-04T19:05:25Z")
> [@elmwood](#): > > - Cars need to be “run down” after they’re parked, just as they’re “warmed up” before a trip. > [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > That one was actually true for turbocharged vehicles (and still is.) Of course, I doubt you know anyone that had a turbocharged vehicle before maybe 1990. Perhaps it’s a holdover from when low-octane gasoline would cause knocking? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-elderly-relatives-were-concerned-with-that-caused-you-embarassment-or-confusion/705213.md?page=12)