The weird and wonderful things our parents told us

Always go to the toilet before leaving the house.

There are many starving children who would want to have what is on your plate, so eat it and stop grumbling. (If you don't, no pudding tonight)

I'll give you a thick ear.

Never go to bed with your hair wet.

Not to eat cucumber and milk at the same meal time, they would poison me. Not to wash my hair when I had a period. Not to bath after a meal. Never to swallow chewing gum it would get stuck inside you.

A pimple on the tongue meant you'd been lying.

I believed that one, too.

If you sat on the doorstep you would get piles! Piles of what I said, if you tell lies your nose would grow, my grandad used to say eat those sprouts they will put hairs on ya chest! I could understand if he told one of the boys but not me lol

I think the current situation is driving me doolally.

I was told that if your right hand itched you were going to come into money, left hand and you were going to be paying out.

Of course if you dropped a left hand glove in the cold and that sparked off itchy chilblains while you were waiting for someone to come along and pick it up, that would work, as you’d have to buy some Snowfire. And maybe some new gloves if you gave up and went home without one.

Alternatively, if you drop a glove, it's bad luck to pick it up yourself.

But you could wait ages for someone else to come along!

Alternatively, if you drop a glove, it's bad luck to pick it up yourself.

If you drop a glove you are going to have a disappointment. Itchy nose? A disappointment. Itchy hand? You are going to come into money. Drop a knife? Bad news if you pick it up. Fall up the stairs? You’re going to a wedding. I Could go on! I’m from Liverpool, very superstitious people in the old days.

With all this combined information now, courtesy of a convent education, we could put the advice to better use.

Instead of feeling guilty about causing men to have immoral thoughts maybe we could give them a whack of Grannyipad’s telephone directory instead of sitting on it! ?

My parents were very keen moorland picnickers- to get some peace and quiet they would make a little ‘poke’ of salt which they gave me saying if I sprinkled some on a lamb’s tail it would follow me everywhere. They had hours left alone to read the newspapers while I worked off energy!!

Another one here who still crushes the shell if I have a boiled egg in case a witch uses it to go to sea and sink ships. It didn't seem to apply to raw eggs in cooking for some reason, just boiled eggs.

We were told at school (by each other, not by the teachers, as far as I remember) not to sit on the cold radiators in the summer in case we got piles. One teacher impressed me a lot when she told us that we shouldn't sit on the radiators because we would get corrugations and they would show through a bathing costume. Much more likely, I would think!

Grannynannywanny
My Nana told me that it was a sin to wear shiny patent shoes as they showed the reflection of your underwear and could cause men to have immoral thoughts. I had forgotten all about that.

Also men who wore elastic sided boots were not to be trusted!

mothertrucker52

I was told to eat crusts to make my hair curl, however I liked my hair straight so I never ate them!

Haha! I was told that and I never ate my crusts. To the chagrin of my sister, who was good and not difficult like me, who ate crusts and brussels sprouts but whose hair grew thin and straggly, I inherited my mum's thick, curly hair!

My Dad told me sitting on wet walls gave you chin cough in your bum???

I wasn't allowed to wash my hair during my period and couldn't go out with wet hair.

If you swallowed chewing gum it would block your intestines. I have never ever swallowed any.

Grannyipad ?

As a teenager at a convent school in the swinging seventies we girls were told by an elderly Irish nun that if we got a lift to the youth club and had to sit on a boy's knee in the car (those were the days!) we should always make sure we sat on a telephone directory!

You’ve just made this 1960’s convent girl laugh out loud! Were you also told that it was a sin to wear shiny patent shoes as they showed the reflection of your underwear and could cause men to have immoral thoughts? That was drummed into us at school !

Totaldogsbody

Growing up in Glasgow Dandelions were called pee the beds and if we picked them we'd pee the bed that night.

Piss-a-bed used to be quite a common name for dandelions. If you ever had dandelion coffee you'd know why, they contain a diuretic. In France the dandelion is le pissenlit.

Mmm, memories of dandelion & burdock! The imitations you get today are nothing like.

i wasn't allowed to have a bath within an hour of a meal. After a bath I had to wait an hour before going out - although baths were always at bedtime so I wasn't likely to go out.

If I was off school poorly I had to stay in bed upstairs. When I was better I could get up for a day and get dressed but not go out. The next day I could go out. The next day I could go back to school.

My father told me that eating a certain part of an oyster would cause the head to swell (we never, ever had oysters but not because of head swelling!).

A bump on the head? A knob of butter was applied.

Cinder tea - I'm not sure what that was supposed to cure but grandma made it a few times for me.

A scalded finger? Touch your ear lobe with the finger.

I was told bad luck to cut nails on Fridays and Sundays if you spilt salt through some over your left shoulder for luck.
If giving a purse for a present out a coin in then purse would never be empty.

It could ...

Chilblains were horrible and my whole family used to get them and my aunt who’s family lived with us for a while in our 3 bedroom council house suffers bad with them til she found that if she put my baby brothers wet nappy on her feet they were eased - I could have been the urea, I don’t know

GardenerGran

Don’t warm your feet near the fire or you’ll get chilblains. What are chilblains anyway? Wet hair of course was an opening to catch all sorts. Picking dandelions would lead to wetting the bed.

if you had them you would know.
i did put my feet up over the hearth, and i can attest to to resulting sharp pain for many years thereafter, until i learned how to manage and minimise the condition. i had to avoid radiant heat, but it was difficult as a young person to insist on sitting behind the sofa, guarded from the fire when visiting other houses.

If you pick your nose you'd poke your eye out.

Maggiemaybe

GardenerGran

Don’t warm your feet near the fire or you’ll get chilblains. What are chilblains anyway? Wet hair of course was an opening to catch all sorts. Picking dandelions would lead to wetting the bed.

Oh, that was true, GardenerGran (the chilblains, that is - I wouldn’t know about the bed wetting).

I was a martyr to chilblains and my parents should have bought shares in Snowfire. What were they? Ruddy painful is what they were. Horrid itchy lumps all over your toes.

Like you I was always getting chilblains. I used to be plagued with them when I lived at home and we went to bed with feet on a hot water bottle. I used to use Snowfire.
Oh, the relief of rubbing my feet across the carpet just to relieve the itching.
Touch wood, I don't get them any more.

I'm the only child in the family with red hair and people used to ask my parents if I was the milkman's or coalman' s. What were they making my mother out to be....