Upon the birth of my brother, who required a wet nurse (I can’t remember now why.) my Gran was appalled because she feared he’d get milk from a black woman!
( It was the fifties and she was born in England.)
Cripes, I forgot about that one. Even late into my teen years, my mother was asking me “Have you had a bowel movement lately?” 
That’s number 1 plus number 2 at the same time.
A cousin answered this to Grandma about age 4. She didn’t know whether to be upset at his smart-mouth comments, or proud of his early math skills.
My grandmother had the worry about being outside in the rain, and one day when a storm was coming and I insisted on going swimming she said “What if it’s a hurri-kan?”
Being all of 7 I insisted that I could go swimming during a hurri-kan. Fortunately I never had to test that one, although I’ve proved many times you aren’t going to die if you get rained on.
like LSLGuy said, there is something to this. a steel cable or chain breaking under extreme tension can severely injure or kill someone.
Winch manufacturers touch on this. It’s also why towing with chains isn’t really the done thing any more, in favor of textile tow straps.
No, #1 and #2 at the same time is #12. #3 is showering. (Cite.)
An early episode of Mythbusters investigated the “snapping cable can cut a person in half” idea. While there’s no doubt that such a thing can kill a person, their conclusions were that death would be due to internal injuries. Try as they might, they couldn’t sever a dead pig. Does anyone here have eyewitness evidence to the contrary?
While my grandmother sometimes asks about my digestive status, it’s much, much preferable to the time shortly after my divorce where she asked if I had given him enough sex.
When I was little, my Mother would not let take baths/showers when it was raining. She was afraid I would get electrocuted if lightning struck the water.
I have never heard of anyone getting electrocuted from lightning while taking a bath, but I still try to avoid showering when it is raining. However, it is not always practical. But I always still think about it.
My wife’s elderly mother unplugs every appliance except the refrigerator (or the TV if it’s in use) to save on electricity. I don’t think her table lamp is stealing any electricity when it’s off.
A friend and I drove across the state and he insisted that the windows had to be open at least two inches, though it was the cold part of the winter. He said his parents always did it, so he did too. I wonder if they smoked in the car, or if it was some other reason.
A similar experience I recall was from Dr. Benjamin Spock (the baby book guy). He had a People magazine interview in the 1980s where he said
(from People May 13, 1985). An old superstition or “we’ve always done it this way” sort of deal.
Yes, but No umlaut for U didn’t indicate whether his acquaintance was American. He could have been from one of the countries where driving barefoot means a fine and a stopped car or have been trained by someone who was. I drove in the Americas for over 6 years all counted and I still find it strange to see a car turning right on red, being from the half of the world where that would give the cops permission to play proctologist.
…
Wasn’t the fresh air thing meant to get sunlight, to combat the once rampant vitamin d deficiency illness rachitis?
I can guarantee they never said that.
This is how urban legends start.
They would always say “Don’t listen to your father when it comes to cars…”
They would then explain that the A/C compressor cycles on and off all the time when it is running, so turning the A/C on when the car is running doesn’t hurt anything.
The oldest generation that I knew- my grandparents and their unmarried siblings who lived with or around us- were seniors before they ever saw a TV set, and though they took to TV like a thalidomide baby takes to gesturing with his nose they also got very confused by it when their minds began to recede. Only my grandmother (the youngest of the lot, by years) experienced full blown dementia, but she would call the sheriff to report that two black men (not the term she used) were in her living room trying to kill each other and “if my husband was home from the railroad he’d kill their black asses!”
While she definitely had the usual prejudices of her time/place, she had no more than the usual, and under normal circumstances wouldn’t have used racial slurs or the word ‘asses’. And point of fact her husband was home and had been retired from the railroad for years.
On the up side, she became very fond of Bear Bryant and (Auburn U. football coach) Shug Jordan, both of whom would come and visit with her every weekend. She’d make sandwiches and lemonade for them. (They co-hosted a TV show on weekends during football season, but they were her honored guests.)
My great-aunt who lived with me until she was 97 never went full blown “loony toons”, but she did get confused by the TV. She knew where she was, she could carry on a cogent conversation and generally tell you who was president (Reagan) and governor (“George Wallace I believe… it usually is”) and where she was and how old she was, etc., and aside from talking to her invisible dead twin sister she was sane except for two folks.
One was Vanna White, who she would wave to and speak to nightly on Wheel of Fortune- I have no idea why it was Vanna who confused her when she knew the difference between TV and real in almost every other circumstance, but she was convinced half the time that Vanna was in the room.
The other time was when she confided in me she’d been unable to “ish” the night before (her idioglossiatic euphemism for bowel movement) because there’d been a lady in her bathroom watching her and she couldn’t go in front of her. When I asked “Who was in your bathroom Carrie?” she confided in a loud whisper “Sandy Duncan from the tee-vee!” (Not saying Sandy was really there, but I did later find a set of petite footprints and a Hogan Family script marked with a receipt from "The Eyes Have It! Prosthetics Company’ in that bathroom.)
My other grandmother didn’t get quite as confused, but she did once call and tell me to turn on the TV and watch the news broadcast because there was a little black boy on a window ledge about to jump off. It was an episode of DIFF’RENT STROKES, though I think there was a newscaster on it, and she thought it was the news. Not sure why she thought the nightly news had a laugh track now, especially for a kid on a ledge, but, worth remembering she was well over 50 the first time she ever saw a TV set and probably 60 the first time she ever lived with one in the house.
I remember hearing that Car Talk segment, and yes, they essentially did say not to turn the AC on and off at driving speed. I remember it because I was so startled at how wrong they were.
The grandmother of a close friend insisted pets, especially dogs, should not come indoors during thunderstorms because they “drew lightning”.
My grandmother believed everything on TV was intended to be factual, even Star Trek. For some reason she never blinked at the existence of Spock, but she poo-pooed the idea of the Enterprise because “everybody knows there’s no air up there!”
Can we stand another grandparents and bowels story?
My grandparents (Dad’s mom and step-dad) had a little summer cabin. It had electricity, but no water or plumbing. Water was brought in jugs from town and there was an outhouse near the back of of the property, maybe a 45 second sprint from the house.Night time calls of nature were always handled by using my brother’s outgrown baby potty… not a chair but the shaped bucket type thing that may have been an insert to a larger commode. This was done in the kitchen, because that was the only place which had linoleum rather than carpeting.
At age 16 I refused to use this contraption with my grandparents sleeping in the next room, so went to the outhouse, urinated and returned. The noise of the door opening and shutting woke my grandparents. My grandmother was aghast and somewhat upset at my going outside at night. I thought I would tell a little white lie and tell her i had a BM and that would make going to the outhouse ok.
Dear Grandma, bless her well-meaning soul, phoned my mother a day later and suggested I might need to go to the doctor, because moving my bowels at night was a sign there was something terribly wrong with me.
Also: When my brother went throught the loud burping/ burp the alphabet/ etc phase my grandmother would admonish him “David, don’t do that, you will get a gallbladder.” (Years later when my mother had hers removed both my brother and I suggested she take up burping to see if her’s grew back.)
Also, later in life she gave up her driver’s license (thank goodness!) she became very dependent upon rides from my dad, her only child. She would never take a taxi, not because of thriftiness, but because “taxis are for drunks and Indians!”
Honestly, what was it with grandmothers and mothers and bowels?
I was asked by my mother and my grandmother about my bowel movements.
I was 24 and no longer living at home. It was none of their business.