Before I was seven years old, I was convinced that my mother knew my every movement. She told me that she could see what I have been doing via a hidden camera. She also promised to show the camera, and the niffy hand-held devices which she had, when I was seven.
Needless to say, I didn’t believe at first. But one day, she came home and asked whether I have done something. Couldn’t remember what it was, but she got it right - I did something that day and was convinced that my mum did have a wireless camera hidden somewhere (that was before the 1990s!)
Eventually she let the cat out of the bag - I also figured it out myself by then.
So what are strange things you parents have told you when you were just a small kid?
For years when we were little, my mom kept tropical fish. She had two tanks, one on top, one on the bottom. The bottom one was where she’d put the baby fish so they wouldn’t get eaten. But when there were no baby fish, she told us the bottom tank contained a rare, special species of fish called “invisible yogi’s”. We’d watch that tank for what seemed like hours, hoping to catch a glimpse of one! Sometimes we’d swear we saw one, too!
In a lot of ways, my mother was not a good mother. But she did teach me a lot of good stuff about how to mess with my kids!
My dad told me “Kemosabe” meant “Stinky feet.” He sometimes told me that capers were rooster testicles. He also told this to my mom and she believed it.
My parents would have martinis in the evening and we’d dip a finger in to see what it tasted like. They tasted nasty and when asked why they would ingest something that awful, my dad would say, “It’s the only way your mother and I can stand you little bastards!” Of course, they both thought that was side-splittingly funny.
When I was about 7 or 8, my parents told me that black people were people who had drunk too much coffee. I liked a mixture of coffee and milk, called “coffee milk”, back then. I guess they figured I liked it too much.
I also got the bit about them walking to school barefoot, in the snow. We lived, and I still live in south Louisiana, where you might get enough of a snowfall every 12 to 14 years to build a snowman about two feet tall if you use most of the snow on the ground in a typical sized yard. Took me a while to figure they were pulling my leg.
My father told us kids that our new car knew when its odometer reached a nice round number, and sure enough every 1,000 miles it beeped its horn! It was years before we caught him tapping the button at the critical moment.
My aunt told me until I was about 6 or 8 years old then when popping popcorn, the popping inside the bag is actually a monster trying to get out. So when we heat up the bag, we have to heat up the bag so he goes away so we can get to the popcorn. I think she did this to make sure we didn’t open the microwave before the popcorn was done popping, but man it scared me enough that I didn’t go into the kitchen until she came out with an already fully popped bag ready.
