I’ve believed several truly ridiculous things in my life. When I was very small, I didn’t like the crust off bread. My Dad told me that just like fruits and vegetables, the crust of the bread held all the Vitamins. This is not the most ridiculous thing I’ve believed either…. When I was about 6, I discovered/ realized that my mother had a tattoo. You have to understand something about my mother. She portrays herself as a paragon of virtue, the panicle of dignity...

Her tattoo is her name written in cursive just at the stocking line. This was done in the 50’s, so you know she was a wild child, and not a paragon of virtue… She told me that everybody has their name on them; that was how mommies and daddies knew how to name their child. When they were little, their name was invisible to all but the parents. It was only as people got older and turned into grown-ups that their name darkened to the point where everybody could read their name…

My Dad was a wonderful singer. I grew up going to performances of his. One of my favorite songs that he sang was "My Boy Bill" - it is a song about a man finding out he is going to be a father, and how life with his son "Bill" will be. In the middle of the song it occurs to him that the child may be a girl, and the verse is:

"Wait a minute!

Could it be?

What the hell!

What if he is a girl?

What would I do with her?

What could I do for her?

A bum with no money!

You can have fun with a son

But you got to be a father to a girl

She mighn’t be so bad at that

A kid with ribbons in her hair!

A kind o’ neat and petite

Little tin-type of her mother!

What a pair!

I can just hear myself bragging about her!

My little girl

Pink and white

As peaches and cream is she

My little girl

Is half again as bright

As girls are meant to be!

Dozens of boys pursue her

Many a likely lad does what he can to woo her from her faithful dad

She has a few

Pink and white young fellers of two and three

But my little girl

Gets hungry ev’ry night and she come home to me!

My little girl, my little girl!

I got to get ready before she comes!

I got to make certain that she

Won’t be dragged up in slums

With a lot o’ bums like me

She’s got to be sheltered

And be dressed in the best money can buy!

I never knew how to get money

But, I’ll try, by god! I’ll try!

I’ll go out and make it or steal it

Or take it or die!"

I thought my Dad had written that song about me until I was in HIGHSCHOOL!! It's a song from the musical "Carousel." lol

What a neat song! I bet that made you feel very "special"!

It wasnt til I was around 10 or so that I realized that the brown UPS truck wasnt for picking up bad kids.

My parents had me convinced that when we would see that truck lurking through our neighborhood *daily* - that it was looking for me!

Even now as an adult, I perk up when I hear that deep roaring sound coming down the street.

But what is REALLY sick, is that, I NOW tell my kids the same thing - that the UPS truck is picking up misbehaved kids. :tired

LOL Paula that is a good one.

Donali I bet you sure were speacial.

My mom has Tattos right above her knees. For the longes time she tried to hide them but we saw we knew she was a wild child.

My youngest sister complained one day that her food was too hot to eat. My Dad told her to salt it.

From that day on, until she was an adult, she believed that salting her food cooled it down.

When my Dad was dying, and we were all together reminiscing about old times, Lizette said to Dad, "You always knew everything. I'll never forget you telling me to cool my food by salting it."

Dad said, "I never told you that salt cools your food. I told you to salt it thinking that by the time you got the salt and salted it, your food would have had time to cool a little bit..."

ROTFLMAO!!

Don't laugh at me....

White eggs are from machines and brown ones are from the chickens. As a kid I could not imagine eatting a brown egg--not from a chicken!!

Not one of mine... but I had to post.

My friend used to tell her kids that if the ice-cream van was playing a tune it was to tell everyone he'd run out of ice-cream!

How wicked is that?

When she was about four, we told our daughter that there was a law that said that, once you turned 18, you had to be living in your own apartment, living in the college dorm or living in the Army barracks. One day, when she was about seven or eight, she came home really pissed at us when she discovered that her friend had a nineteen-year-old brother who lived at home. Well, it worked for a few years. And she's had her own apartment ever since she graduated from college.

When I was young my Mom told me if I wasn't home by dark the boogie man would get me. I use to run home to beat the dark!

To this day (and I'm almost 50)! :nervous I still believe if I swallow a seed my stomach will get big. But even avoiding seeds all my life my stomach did get big. I still blame my dad by saying the seeds were ground in the mustard, tomato paste, whatever and that is why I am fat.

To this day I do NOT eat tomatoes, cucumbers, pickles, any kind of berry, only eat an apple if I cut it first and make sure no seeds are left, only eat navel oranges and seedless tangerines. I am pathetic and now I can't change my habits. My husband gets so frustrated with me because I don't even eat mushrooms (mushrooms are spores and spores are seeds).

Even therapy could not break this.

Too funny..

The worst I know is that when I was pregnant with my son, my husband's father told our daughter Mimi that all the ladies at the hospital in white uniforms had been traded in for boys. That poor child was terrified to go there for fear we were trading her in....

Every time my mother washed my hair I used to run and tell the neighbors my mother had just tried to drown me.

When my kids were little, they'd have their friends come over and get in the pool, they were sure to tell each one before they got in that I had special chemicals that would turn the Water red if they tinkled in the pool.

I really like the one about the ups truck and music from the ice cream truck.

bumping because it's fun...

Donali, I always salted my food to cool it down, too. I never heard of that before, because nobody in my family knew where I got it from. My subconscious must have picked it up from somewhere - odd.

I believed Oil of Oley was sinful. I found a sample in the mail and was trying to open it when my Mother snatched it away and said it was for grown ups. From that day, I'd sneak in her room and read the container and put a little on, thinking I was being very naughty. Today it's the only think I use on my skin. I'm such a bad girl!

And my mother is really into the afterlife, psychics, etc., so she used to MAKE us have seances (I was a kid, what did I know?) I would get secretly frustrated that my goofy brother would break the spirtual connection by cracking jokes & giggling, so later I'd go alone where it was quiet and try to telepathically move things around in my room. I was raised to believe that if I tried hard enough it would eventually happen - you know, like how Patrick Swayze in Ghost had to keep practicing before he could really move stuff? Needless to say, Bewitched, I Dream of Genie, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir and Casper the Friendly Ghost were all favorites, and I knew one day I'd be either Tabitha or The Flying Nun. Till this day, one of my nicknames is Gidget. Another is Cybil (both Sally Field roles.)