When the ice cream van had its jingle playing he has no ice cream left. =(
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When I was a kid my parents had a picture on the fridge of their young selves, pre-marriage, holding a chimpanzee. One day when I asked why there was a monkey in the picture, they said, "Don't you remember? That's you!" Obviously when I showed them my own face in a mirror they said, "Well yeah we had you shaved because you were scaring people. You were born a monkey." I guess technically this is a harmless lie but it was kind of devastating for a four year old.
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My mom once ran over a squirrel in front of our house coming home from work one day. As a five year old, I was devastated by the fact that she hadn't completely killed it, and that it was laying in our yard all twitchy and half-mangled. So I convinced her to put it in a cardboard box in the backseat of the car, and drive it to a local vet clinic.
The vet came out, talked to my mom, who then came over and told us that they had saved the squirrel and were going to let him back into the wild the next morning.
It was only about two years ago, when I was retelling the story of the squirrel to a friend, that my mom looked at me and said, "That squirrel died, you know."
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That if I didn't go to bed when my parents wanted me to, I would turn into a stone donkey in the real world, and be banished to Pinocchio's Pleasure Island, where I would never be able to return to my family again.
They would touch the tops of my ears, and with a horrid look on their face, desperately plea with me to go to bed because, "OH! It's starting! You have to go to bed...NOW! QUICKLY!"
When we would see the concrete lawn ornaments of donkeys, I was told, "See Son, there is a little boy that didn't go to bed when his parents told them to, and he'll never get to see them again."
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My mom told me once that President Reagan cancelled my birthday. It's no shock that I don't speak to her anymore or that I lean towards libertarian.
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my mom told me that she found me in a garbage can and felt sorry for me so took me home. sounds terrible, but it's like the asian version of the stork story.
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When I was misbehaving my parents would threaten to take me back to the rest stop where they found me.
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When my dad was a kid, my grandfather told him Saturday/Sunday morning cartoons were silent. At night, after my dad went to bed, my grandfather would turn the volume all the way down on their TV. My dad watched silent cartoons for years before he finally realized he was being duped.
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Every time we passed a Toys R' Us I was told it was closed. Even if it was 4pm on a Saturday and the parking lot was full.
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from many years back: my mom hates Mosquitos, they tormented her. in the summer she would storm the halls at night with a rolled up magazine hunting them. quietly on the side my father would tell my brother and I that Mosquitos didn't exist. he had us thinking mom was crazy for a few years
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That my mom and dad were a witch and a warlock, and were each several centuries old. When they decided to have kids, they went out into a swamp and found a frog and a salamander and transformed them into a little boy (me) and a little girl (my younger sister). They kept this story going for YEARS, referencing it constantly. I figured out it was BS pretty early on (but not before telling some kids at school all about it), but my sister did not, and I used to make it worse by teasing her until she cried. I can still picture her with tears running down her face, saying over and over "I was NOT a salamander!"
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I was told "gullible" was a made-up word and wasn't in the dictionary. I never bothered to check it...
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I asked my Dad why he drank whiskey. He said it was to help him grow whiskers. I looked at his magnificent moustache and the coarse stubble on his face and determined, then and there, that I would drink whiskey whin I grew up.
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A friend of mine was telling us about her kid's hamster dying, and how they'd told him it had gone to a farm. People started sharing their stories along those lines, how it was always "gone to a farm". The friend's husband was laughing along with us, then suddenly stopped and said "Oh my god." He'd only just realised, thirty years later, that his childhood dog hadn't actually gone to a farm.
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When my cousins were young, they saw my uncle watching an old black & white film. The they asked him why there was no colour in the film. He explained that the film was made before colour was invented. Not colour TVs, colour itself. He convinced them that the whole world, that life itself, used to be in black & white up until someone invented colour in the 50s. They believed it well into their teens.
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Growing up, I was told stories about the Black Beast living in the woods outside our house. My mom went so far as to buy a pair of cast iron claw decoartions and hide them in the bushes. I don't think I went outside until I was in middle school.
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I had several teachers (when I was in grades 1-5) call my parents telling them I talked too much which was causing problems distracting other students and interrupting class. A complaint from a 5th grade teacher was the last straw for my mom. She made me watch the movie “Oliver” and told me that boarding schools are just like the orphanages Oliver attended. If I wasn’t quiet in school, with the next complaint she received I would immediately be sent to boarding school. I never said a word again in class unless asked and was known as "the quiet girl" from that point forward... Until I went to Uni.
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That my Father was an alien... my mom showed me his Alien Registration Card (Green Card)... I was afraid of him for a few weeks
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There was a Walmart jail that they threw children in. My mother even asked a couple of employees to tell me to behave or they'd throw me in it.
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While eating Chinese takeout one night my dad convinced me (I was like 10) that water chestnuts were prized underwater vegetables guarded by venomous sea snakes and that harvesting them took many divers' lives every year. I think I believed this for a year.
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When my children's hamster died, they wanted me to get it cremated. I had no idea if this was even possible so I asked my friend to save her and her husbands' cigarette ashes for a few days. They gave me the ashes in a baggie (about a hamster worth) and I bought a little wooden box at the dollar store, my friend wrote the hamster's name on in nice calligraphy. I brought it home and told my kids that I had just picked it up at the vet. That was about 5 years ago, my five kids were aged 2-10 years old. To this day the box is on a bookshelf and they believe it to be their hamster's remains.
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My older brother would take me out to shoot birds with his pellet gun. I was devastated until he told me that they come back to life if i throw them in the river. I threw them all in the river.
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My nephews are both horrified because my parents told them that their belly buttons are scars from where an Indian shot them.
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My parents told my brother and I that they had a daughter and son before us, but my parents ate them because they were bad.
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Every night, before going to bed, my dad would ask me if I'd brushed my teeth and washed my face. Some of the time I'd lie and say I had, but not always. I guess he knew when I was lying, because he hadn't heard the tap or whatever. He'd then say that he could see a black cross forming on my forehead. He'd trace it out on his own forehead to make his point more dramatic. It was a creepy world back then.
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My dad told my brother that when he grew up his penis would fall off. He apparently got concerned when it didn't.
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When I was little my uncle used to take me to play Pinball frequently at a Bar & Grill by his house. Regularly he would go up to the jukebox and put on some tunes for us. One of them, I was told, was a song written by "his friends" for me, because I was so good at Pinball. I fully believed him for an embarrassingly long portion of my life, until I got a little older and did some research. It was Pinball Wizard by The Who. =(
