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:
If my MIL was driving her car and the check engine light came on, she would immediately pull over and stop, no matter where she was, because if you drove the car with the check engine light on, the car might “blow up”.
If my wife’s mother was late coming home from anywhere, her grandmother would phone us, frantic, because she was probably “lying in a gutter” somewhere.
Never use the phone during a thunderstorm, because you could get electrocuted. This also included cordless phones!
Don’t put anything into the trunk of your car where others could see you; they will think it’s something valuable and break into the car and steal it.
If the expiration date on the milk was yesterday, pour it out and don’t use it, because it “was due to go bad” yesterday!
Absolutely, positively, turn the dishwasher and dryer off before you leave the house, or they will “catch fire”.
Another bit of racism. Some old family friends came to visit while my grandmother was also visiting but I was not. Grandma was concerned about them using my bed while I was away because they were black. She offered to let them use her bed while she slept in mine so that I wouldn’t have to use a bed that a black person had slept in. Luckily, she only said this to my mom, and not them.
If your car is in NYC when you put something the trunk, this, unfortunately, is true. Happily, it is not true where I live now, but I bet NYC is not unique that way.
I wasn’t allowed to walk around barefoot in case I stepped on a rusty nail and got tetanus.
I also wasn’t allowed to go on an outing with a youth group once because they were going to swim in the river and my mom thought the water was polluted and I would get a UTI. I also wasn’t allowed to play on the splash pad at that same river because she figured the water came straight out of the river and would give me a UTI. (Urinary Tract Infection.)
I do that because I have a dairy curse. If the expiration date on the carton is tomorrow, it has gone bad today and I will be the first to discover this the hard way. One of many reasons I switched to almond milk.
Dryers do catch fire. They can accumulate lint (especially if you’re not diligent about cleaning the trap). I never leave the house with a dryer running.
Dishwasher, not so much. A flooded dishwasher would be horribly inconvenient and messy, but not likely to kill anyone.
Seriously, though, the reason I do this is because I have the idea (erroneous or not) that if it caught fire while I was home, I might be able to do something about it (put it out if it’s small, or at least get the cats out and call the fire department before it gets too big). If I wasn’t home, the cats would be in trouble and the house would probably get a lot further burned before the neighbors spotted anything and called.
When I lived with my brother, I was always harassing him to clean the damn lint trap and he was always “forgetting”. One day I was getting on his case about it and he turned to me in exasperation and said, “Julie! I don’t care if my clothes get lint on them!” :smack:
My plumber says that if you have the right sort of vent, and everything is set up properly, that even if the lint catches on fire, it’s not a big deal. He says, “it goes BOOM and it’s scary, but it should be contained in the vent and then go out.”
He also says those cheap mylar/plastic-wrap vents are really dangerous, because they DON’T contain the lint fire.
Extreme concern about things “wearing out” if they’re used even just a little bit, especially if they’re devices used for comfort or convenience. Remote controls, air conditioning, dishwashers, garbage disposals, and so on – never to be used, because they’d “wear out.” What kind of special occasion folks were saving a remote control for, I have no idea.
Being very stingy with water - drinking, washing your hands, flushing toilers, and so on, because of the “water bill”. Mind you, this was the Great Lakes region, where droughts and shortages were nonexistent, and the water rate was a dollar or two per 1000 gallons/4000 liters.
Sitting close to the TV. CRTs put out “radiation”, like bup wrote, and will also make you go blind.
Thermostats were seen as extremely delicate precision instruments that could break just by looking at them the wrong way.
Problems with Microsoft Word or any other computer programs? Call AOL. Problems with the tint levels or vertical/horizontal hold on the TV? Call the cable company.
Cars need to be “run down” after they’re parked, just as they’re “warmed up” before a trip.
Never enter a house through the front door. This was something of a tradition in my home town; front doors were only supposed to be used for very special occasions, like if the President visits. Otherwise, you always knock or rung at the side door.
As my parents got older, they started leaving stingier tips in restaurants. They were thinking back to the 1950s value of money; that the few dollars they left for a $40 meal could buy a week’s worth of groceries or whatever.
Cigarette ash is good for carpets. It supposedly helps to trap more dirt, which would get sucked out when the carpets are vacuumed.
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.
The first 3 things on Elmwood’s list were standard fears in our household. I regularly got yelled at for flushing the toilet before it became a hazmat site, or using the regular setting on the washer rather than water saver.
That interrupted the nostalgia of Christmas!
Huh, it was like that at both of my grandparents’ houses. I always just assumed that it was because these older houses had separate garages that were set back a bit, and the back door was simply closer.
We bought a hanging lamp in Mexico, complete with cord. I insisted on replacing that cord with something that was clearly UL listed. Not sure if that would count for this thread.
One of my grandmothers was insistent that I’d behave like a perfect little Southern gentleman, which was something my parents never worried about. Politeness and respect, sure, but none of the “ma’am” and “sir” stuff Grandmother was interested in. I understand now what she was trying to do, but it seemed very confusing when I was four or five.
This makes me a little bit crazy. I live in the South. I was born here, raised here, and have lived in Georgia for the vast majority of my life. We say “ma’am” and “sir” here. It’s important to me, for the same reason that I want my children to say “please” and “thank you” and “excuse me” - it’s an expected social lubricant. It’s polite.
My ex-husband and his current wife* strenuously discourage the usage - it makes them feel “old.” (They are old, but that’s beside the point!) When the kids were younger, it was very confusing that the rules were so inconsistent.
As for the water issue - I get it. My father’s parents and my mother’s grandmother had shallow wells. Every summer, without fail, the water quality and pressure would become worse and worse. Those were weeks and months of “second-water” baths, and extreme care with water use, because a dry well is an expensive disaster! I have my own home now, and a deep well, so my water only costs me a few pennies in electricity for the pump, but I’m still careful with it - the real danger here isn’t running out of water, but salt water intrusion on the aquifer from which we draw. I have HE appliances, but I still raise Cain if someone runs the dishwasher or washing machine half-full, or leaves a faucet running or doesn’t jiggle the handle if the toilet continues to run after flushing. It’s not the financial cost that worries me, but the environmental consequences.
*And she’s from Glennville, Georgia, for Pete’s sake! She ought to know better! Just like she ought to know that “y’all come in and have lunch with us” is a polite charade, but that didn’t stop her from accepting my mom’s invitation to eat at my family’s reunion after dropping off the kids from a weekend visit! (Wouldn’t have been so bad, but this was 6 months after my husband had left me and the kids. And she and my ex- and their 3-week-old baby joined us for lunch! :smack:)
I’m from Alabama. Born and raised here and lived here my entire life. I don’t value “sir” and “ma’am” and it wasn’t important to my parents and only once have I ever heard a deal made of it (in kindergarten). I don’t hear it much now (only from service industry people), and I’m glad of that, because it makes things easier for me.
Ditto, but South Carolina. The only time I ever heard a deal made out of it was my best friend as a child’s grandmother, which confused me very much because we didn’t say it at home.
