The weird and wonderful things our parents told us

I don't think either my sister or I ever believed that if the wind changed our faces, which we had pulled, would stay like that.

GardenGran, chilblains are horrible itchy and sore patches you get on your fingers and toes if you are too long in damp, cold places.

They were very common in my Scottish childhood before the days of central heating. Nothing helped to stop them itching.

Later on, people who had been in Greenland told me that the only thing that does help is to rub your own urine on them. That is actually true.

Neither have mine, but during the war when elastic was hard to come by, grown women and teenage girls wore "French knickers" with a button and button-hole in the waist band.

A girl-friend of my mother's who was nineteen at the time, lost the button of her knickers while crossing the city hall square in Copenhagen, and she did kick them aside and walk on, as hér dress was so short, due to rationing, that she didn't dare bend down!

Told if I sat on the front step ( outside ) that I would get king cough in my bottom, piles I presume

I remember being told to eat my crusts to get curly hair. Not to swallow apple pipes as the tree would grow in my tummy. Chewing gum getting tied around the intestines but the best one was, when I started to go out with boys, that ' it only takes 5 minutes to ruin your life'. It took me a very long time to realise what my parents meant.

I was told not to eat are mushrooms as they would give me cancer!

NannyKat

My dad, who was a serious joker, used to take us 6 children for a drive in the country.. when he came across herds of cows, he told us to open the windows and breathe in the air because it was good and healthy.. the smell of cow dung was awful but we all grew up thinking it was good for us..

My Dad would say "Don't sniff too hard or there won't be enough to go round"

Take your coat off when you’re indoors (even if you only popped in for 5 minutes!) or you won’t feel the benefit when you go outside.

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

cossybabe

I find that I still crush eggshells to stop the rats going out to sea in them and entering the boats - I am nearly 70 for goodness sake?

Oh dear, cossybabe, I’m as bad. My grandmother’s version was that witches would sail out in them and sink shops. My MIL nearly cried laughing when she asked me why I insisted that all eggshells were crushed before they went on the compost heap.

Sink ships, not shops. Because that would of course be ridiculous.

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....

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.

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

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.

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

It could ...

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.

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.

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.

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 !

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!!