being ill

One day, my friend and I were playing in the woods behind his house. As I was running around, I cut my knee on a thorn bush, so we both looked at the wound (it was nothing big). My friend told me that I MUST NOT let a bee sting me on the cut or else I would get diabetes. I believed him, but my mom quickly corrected me when I told her about it.

Matt

when we were little, my nan used to tell my little brother and me that if we scratched our freckles we would get cancer and die - difficult as i have loads of freckles; just odd ones scattered all over my body. when my brother and i told my mum about this a couple of months ago (i'm 22 now!), but on separate occasions, my nanna completely denied it. she obviously realises now how evil she is, due to the many sleepless nights we used to have, fighting the urge not to scratch an itch

Anon

When I were a nipper, like I believed that when the nurse took yer blood pressure, the cuff had a needle which pierced yer vein and the stuff which ran up the tube was yer actual blood, like!

this is because we were soooo poor that I only saw balck and white telly and the mercury looked the same dark colour as blood.

having yer blood pressure taken scared the heck outa me till I were 18.

Now I'm a bachelour of science and a fellow of operating theatre science; I know that is completely untrue; the bloods in the little black squeeze ball!

Mr Chris

When I was little, my cousin had kidney problems. I'd hear my mom discussing this quite often, and tried to imagine what a kidney looked like - kind of like a red cabbage cut in half. Why I got this image is beyond me.

Kim

I hit puberty when AIDS was "new", and heard that people got AIDS from getting sperm in their butt. I thought you could give yourself AIDS if you ejaculated in the bathtub and they swam up there.

Anon

Circa 7 years old, I had a horrible habit of chewing on my hair. It was a nervous habit, but one that I enjoyed, so I pretty much chewed my hair throughout most of any given day.

Eventually, my mother grew tired of telling me to stop, so instead, she started telling me that I would get herpes from chewing my hair.

Yes, herpes.

At the time, I didn't know what herpes was, but it sounded bad.

I stopped chewing my hair.

Fast-forward a few years, jr. high, my first sexual education class. The teacher was talking about STDs and asked the class, "Who here knows anything about herpes?"

"I do, I have it," I responded.

The class errupted, and the teacher was shocked. I went on to explain that I'd caught it from chewing my hair.. to which more laughter came.

My teacher called my mother, explained the situation and verified that in fact, I did not have herpes.

My mother denied the whole thing up to her death a few years ago.

Go figure.

Cior

I used to believe that if someone broke their arm, leg etc. that this meant that they had actually broken it off completely. I would then look for the join in the skin.

Joel