I was a scared of this one, i was im i going poop out a huge chunk of that bubble gum from the silver pouch? Wich was basically crack and you could not stop eating by the hand full.
We got the “not good for the cold water on your stomach while it’s actively digesting and would cause muscles to seize” explanation. I have zero idea how accurate that is
Stomach muscles initially need blood and oxygen after eating, so best not put yourself in a potentially dangerous place, and have a little nap instead.
I was always told you would get cramps if you swam right after eating, and then you drown from not being able to swim. Not a clue if it's true; was too scared to die.
Swimming immediately after eating (just like going for a run, playing sports, etc.) can lead to cramps or just feeling like shit (bloating, etc). Will that make you drown? Unlikely, but the general advice is not terrible.
>I have zero idea how accurate that is
Like a week ago the kids wanted to go swimming just after lunch. My wife mentioned this, not like it was a rule, but more like remember that?
I asked google and she said it is whoey. The kids heard the answer and ran out the door. They didn't die.
From what I've heard, this is something some parents made up back in the day so they'd get a break after dinner (or whatever meal was happening). Telling the kids they couldn't go swimming meant no adult had to go look after them to make sure they were safe (for an hour).
Your body uses a surprising amount of energy to digest food. About 10 percent of the caloric intake from A Google search. This is how some people say food like celery have negative calories . It takes more energy to digest the food then the food gives you in return.
This means that your stomach is receiving lots of blood that can't be used to nourish your muscles as well.
So there is at least a grain of truth to it.
Thank you. SOMEONE understands the vascular reasoning behind this. That's also why people tend to feel 'colder' outside right after eating - your organs are using your vascular system more intensely than normal...that's why people shouldn't lift weights right after eating.
Wait an hour, so that your food's in your small intestines - at least, before doing anything strenuous (like swimming).
It is sort of accurate, not the muscle part but the stomach needs to be above a certain temperature for proper digestion, and getting immersed in cold water can lower its temperature and disrupt the process.
Ok so they were doing some gardening. He was small tyke, about three years old, and he shoved a bean up his nose. A few days later he was in pain and had a lot of snot coming out his nose so they took him to the doctor. The bean had sprouted. They had to give him a seditive and the doctor pulled it out with some tweezers. His nose was tender for a few days but otherwise he was fine.
The 30 minute wait to swim was one of the milder things my family fed me...
Pouring anything other than room temperature water into a glass will cause it to shatter explosively. Water too hot or too cold? BOOM. Now you're blind and disfigured.
Showering during a thunderstorm will get you struck by lightning and your family will find you dead and naked in the shower. Is that what you want? For mom to find your dead naked body on the floor of the shower?
Any adult male that you don't know is a pedophile waiting for you to let your guard down and snatch you. And even a lot of the adult males that you DO know are probably pedophiles.
Cook all vegetables until they're soft enough to collapse under their own weight or you'll get food poisoning.
Behind every tree and bush is a deadly snake that will deliver a fatal bite once it sees you.
Leaving a curling iron plugged in will 100% burn the house down.
Running the dryer when no one is home will 100% burn the house down.
Sleeping with your bedroom door closed will suffocate you.
The "best used by" date on food is the date it turns into poison.
To be fair, we had more metal pipes than modern houses, so it was actually slightly more likely back then if your house lacked grounding straps and you were somehow considered a preferable path for the electricity. Seems like a pretty convoluted path; a roof vent to drain pipes to water to body to water to shower head to pipes to ground….
It happens. Lightning is scary. It can travel through the pipes or even the water.
I had a friend who was on a landline call in his living room, lightning hit the telephone wire outside, traveled through the wire into his phone and blew apart the phone sending him careening across the room. He, uhm, hasn’t been the same since.
A few of these aren't entirely bad advice.
Showering in a thunderstorm, particularly in an old building with metal pipes as someone else mentioned, it is unlikely to be hit by lightning but not impossible. Windows, esp open windows, are a less recognized danger during lightning strikes.
Dryer fires are real, and while being away from home won't cause them, not being around means a small fire won't be caught before it's a large fire.
I told my kids that! … they were more used to trips to the ocean … without potty …
so when we started going to the pool — I had to scare them 1970’s style!
My mom (born during the war so just barely too old to be a boomer) used this as an example of "dumb things HER mom said where she could never tell if she was joking or not."
Her mom was born in like 1905. Older parents run in my family at least that far back.
That was actually the truth behind that precaution. Just like running or Crossfit. Cramps or retching.
Wait an hour, and kids won't cramp up, or get sick in the pool.
I heard it, but a cousin of mine drowned when my mother was pregnant with me. When they retrieved his body, his knees were pulled up indicating he probably had a stomach cramp, so when I tell you I heeded that warning (and also the warning not to go swimming on a completely empty stomach, which is what he did, and not to swim in an area without a lifeguard, which he did too), I mean I heeded it.
\[typo edit\]
Oh thank you. It was a thousand years ago, and I didn't know him, but it really broke my whole family's heart, and affected how all of my cousins and I were handled in water situations.
My parents were super strict about it. As a teenager, I couldn't go in a four foot deep, above-ground pool, at a family member's house, with my parents present, until a half an hour after I'd eaten. I remember arguing, "But it's not over my head," and getting The Look.
One summer, when I was home from college, I was taking the car to go to the beach. As I went to leave, my father (who was very easy going) kind of snapped at me not to go any deeper into the water than waist-high.
Edit: My cousin was 17 when he drowned, so my parents didn't ease up as I got bigger.
Thank you, you're kind to say so. I grew up under the shadow of his loss, but I didn't know him, so it was more about feeling for my family members who were scarred by it.
My mom didn't mind spraying me down. Well I guess she did mind, because she'd act mad about having to do it, but she was raised on a farm. She was classy and friendly and funny but she was not dainty. Dirty kid with a hose was an easy fix.
I remember my older cousin getting all the adults to laugh at me when I got quiet after she advised me that a watermelon seed would grow in my stomach. Obviously everyone assumed I believed her and was worried about it.
The truth was that my cousin was visiting from the country and I was shocked she could be so obtuse and felt sad that she must have been receiving a poor education, but I knew it would have been rude to say that so I just bit my tongue.
Liars
Here's another one. You have to wear a giant bright orange life preserver. Even though you're 12 and know how to swim. Because your sister who is six years younger will cry. Ugh
i never heard the consequence be drowning. it was more like vaguely maybe cramps, maybe throw up. i don't have that rule for my pool. i do have a "don't throw up in the pool" rule though.
How many times I've wanted to talk back, "Yes, yes in fact I *am* trying to air condition the whole fucking neighborhood, looks like we better try harder," when I had the door open in August for more than like three seconds.
I almost said this a couple of times.. ugh.
Also almost told my son about eating and swimming.
And I did tell him do not go in the cold with wet hair you will get sick.
My grandfather's younger brother drowned in the Missouri River at the age of 11, so for my grandparents, this rule was extended to like 3 hours and included being in the same room as a single grain of rice.
Missed out on a lot of quality swim time with this one. The worst part was that was usually at our own GD pool and all our friends were swimming and my mom made us sit out. The. Worst.
When you eat, there is increased blood flow to your gut to facilitate digestion making it slightly less available to your muscles. So it sorta kinda makes sense. It’s easier to run fast and hard on an empty stomach vs after a big meal right? Maybe that’s where that comes from?
I told my mom when I was six that didn't make any sense at all, and she thought about and said, "Well stay in the shallow end, and I'll keep my eye on you." I didn't drown and that silly rule was never enforced again. There was also the addendum "Don't wear shoes in the water! They'll fill up with water and pull you down!" Also complete bullshit. When I was in USMC boot camp some recruit said that to the swimming instructor and the instructor pushed him in and hollered "Well? Are ya drowning?"
We couldnt just google it and find out if it was true back then... as parent I caught myself almost telling my kid the same but then I looked it up.. total BS so glad I looked it up...
You know thats what parents say when they want some quiet post food time. Perhaps for a nap.
Just like my grandpa would say "Dont chatter, you scare the fish!" When went fishing. It wasnt about that, it was him wanting some peace and quiet out by the river.
There are a lot of those.
That one kid in Jaws (the one with the raft) almost wasn’t allowed back in the water because his fingers were getting pruny and wrinkled. If only he had listened to his mother and stayed on the shore…
My parent still believe you get colds by going outside in the cold with wet hair. It doesn't matter how many times I have explained to them how viruses work.
No. I remember hearing my friends parents say that, but my own parents never did. My dad was a dr and my mom a nurse so probably had a more science based view lol.
My mom told me to be careful getting into a cold shower when I was hot because I would get a shock. I thought she meant deathly electric shock, so I never ever did! I never asked for clarification and she never provided any.
Mom let me go into the shallow end of the pool after lunch. After ten minutes, she either said, it's OK to swim again, or else I'd just act unilaterally. Like most moms of that era, she didn't exactly keep an eye on me.
I couldn’t go swimming on my period because it would stop and I would die. My grandmother swore she knew someone that had happened to. Who knows what really happened.
I heard it. I have not passed it down.
My parents' two big ones were about how not to fall asleep: "don't fall asleep in the tub, you'll drown" and "don't fall asleep with your headphones on, you'll strangle yourself"
Ummm, maybe if I'm like 4 or younger, but I was hearing both of those into my pre-teen years. I haven't bugged my kids about either of them, although they are pretty :eyeroll: at wired headphones to begin with being either GenA or right on the line respectively.
For females, were you told you couldn’t go swimming while having your period? I asked my mother once what would happen if I did. She had no real answer!
In all honesty, my mom took me to swim lessons when I was ~6 yrs old and took me to Burger King right beforehand. I puked in the pool 5 mins in and swim lessons ceased immediately for everyone.
My Mom was so embarrassed (as she should have been)
All this kind of stuff comes from old 1950s health books and like Boy Scout handbooks and what not. I remember in 7th grade health class still using a textbook from the 50s ...
But anyway what I find kind of interesting about this kind of advice -- don't swim for 20 minutes after eating, the weird 1950s health book obsession with "hygiene", etc. -- and how it was drilled into us is what it says about the midcentury culture, like this was the big problem: kids might swim on full stomachs. There are all these kids out there running around all summer without adult supervision and this is what you are worried about.
I think it was in Happy Days one of the characters on it thought she was pregnant because pregnancy is caused by “necking while wearing a bathing suit.”
I was told I would get cramps in my stomach, not drown. I did have a teacher, in third grade who was a nun, who told us if you go in a pool before a certain date you’ll drown. What a bitch. It has something to do with some saint blessing the water. So glad I left that toxic religion behind.
This is true!!!
I finally got to see this for real (everyone's safe) But the person went in maybe 5-10 mins after eating and his whole body cramped to to the point where he couldn't move and was using what little energy he had to keep his head above water..
Another guy in the group had noticed trouble and swam all the way out and slowly brought him back.. his whole entire body was cramped up for the rest of the day.. shit was wild, especially cause I'd been hearing that phrase my entire life and just kind of yea, yea, whatever'd it.
And I never got chance to test the theory out of sheer terror .. I didn’t want to die 🤷🏻♀️🤣 next time I go swimming imma test this theory, … nice knowing y’all 🫣
When I was a kid I went swimming every single day during the summer. The pool did hourly forced breaks for adult swim.
We all converged on the snack shop and happily ate peanut butter cups and drank Tab and as soon as the lifeguards blew the whistle we raced to the pool. Absolutely none of us seized up with cramps or otherwise suffered any post eating consequences.
Edit words
Never once, in all my life, have I ever met anyone who got cramps from swimming too soon after eating. Heck, we ate/drank while in the pool, no issues.
Omg I finally got my MIL to stop insisting the kids need to wait to go in the pool after eating. They are not trying to cross the English Channel after a meal (where a cramp might actually be a real problem)!
Is it me, or we're there more swimming pools in the 80s? Swear in the neighborhood near my farm all my friends, or at least 1:3 had a pool. Almost drowned, saved right before I passed out. Why I joined the army for the Ranger program vs trying to be a Navy Seal. Deep water still bothers Mr to this day in my 50s lol
Neighbor told me that she'd know if I peed in the pool because there was a chemical in the water that would make it turn color. Five-year old me knew she was full of it as I'd already peed in the pool and nothing happened.
The “not going swimming right after you eat” wasn’t the worst advice…but no one ever explained the logic of why you couldn’t even put your feet in the water!
You have to get a "vaccine" to protect others from a virus they took a 'vaccine' for.
People will be talking about this one for the next hundred years.
I'll glady tell you that it is the exact number my doctor at the VA told me to get. 5 boosters 0 positive covid tests. As a critical employee, I worked out in the world for the entirety of the pandemy.
Wow imagine making your whole personality "own the libruls" to such an extent that you come into a silly, lighthearted funny thread like this and take a mental shit on it.
If you swallow chewing gum, it stays in your intestines for 7 years before it's digested.
I was a scared of this one, i was im i going poop out a huge chunk of that bubble gum from the silver pouch? Wich was basically crack and you could not stop eating by the hand full.
Big League Chew. You could literally just grab a handful at a time.
The flavor lasted about 15 seconds!
Nothing was worse then the zebra gum
I have an idea let's sell a bucket of shredded gum to the kids!!!
I was told my insides would stick together....
I heard that gum was made from spider eggs. Little did I know the truth was worse than that.
Yes!! I forgot about that one. Lol.
I was told I wouldnt be able to grow a beard.
Us girls believed it would stay in our stomach until we gave birth and it would be stuck all over our baby . Terrifying.
We got the “not good for the cold water on your stomach while it’s actively digesting and would cause muscles to seize” explanation. I have zero idea how accurate that is
Yes, it was about the cramping.
No, it was so kids wouldn’t vomit in the pool which is a huge pain in the ass. Source: used to be a pool lifeguard.
The truth behind the lies! Makes sense.
Stomach muscles initially need blood and oxygen after eating, so best not put yourself in a potentially dangerous place, and have a little nap instead.
Haha I didn't hear that one. It was more like, until your food was digested, it was basically a weight that would pull you down into the water lol.
“But Mom! I can’t even sit on the steps?”
I’m laughing because I can hear us saying this statement like it was yesterday 😂😂😂
"I'm just gonna put my feet in."
Yeah I lost pool time for challenging the explanation as the food hadn’t “left me” so how could 31 minutes be ok but not 30.
I heard you could get a side cramp and drown.
I was always told you would get cramps if you swam right after eating, and then you drown from not being able to swim. Not a clue if it's true; was too scared to die.
Swimming immediately after eating (just like going for a run, playing sports, etc.) can lead to cramps or just feeling like shit (bloating, etc). Will that make you drown? Unlikely, but the general advice is not terrible.
Yep, I heard that, too. It was always an hour, though. And your stomach would size, and you would double over and drown.
My mom was truly pathological about this myth and doubled down when other parents pleaded for her to reconsider the logic behind the idea.
To be fair, doubling down without considering logic is often applied to many other applications as well.
>I have zero idea how accurate that is Like a week ago the kids wanted to go swimming just after lunch. My wife mentioned this, not like it was a rule, but more like remember that? I asked google and she said it is whoey. The kids heard the answer and ran out the door. They didn't die.
From what I've heard, this is something some parents made up back in the day so they'd get a break after dinner (or whatever meal was happening). Telling the kids they couldn't go swimming meant no adult had to go look after them to make sure they were safe (for an hour).
Your body uses a surprising amount of energy to digest food. About 10 percent of the caloric intake from A Google search. This is how some people say food like celery have negative calories . It takes more energy to digest the food then the food gives you in return. This means that your stomach is receiving lots of blood that can't be used to nourish your muscles as well. So there is at least a grain of truth to it.
Thank you. SOMEONE understands the vascular reasoning behind this. That's also why people tend to feel 'colder' outside right after eating - your organs are using your vascular system more intensely than normal...that's why people shouldn't lift weights right after eating. Wait an hour, so that your food's in your small intestines - at least, before doing anything strenuous (like swimming).
Yes that's what I was told.
It's bullshit. Complete and utter bullshit. Simple as that.
It is sort of accurate, not the muscle part but the stomach needs to be above a certain temperature for proper digestion, and getting immersed in cold water can lower its temperature and disrupt the process.
Don’t swallow a watermelon seed because it will grow inside you.
My cousin found out if you shoved a bean up your nose and didn't tell anyone it got stuck that mofo will start growing.
Wait… What? Simultaneously I do and do not need details.
Ok so they were doing some gardening. He was small tyke, about three years old, and he shoved a bean up his nose. A few days later he was in pain and had a lot of snot coming out his nose so they took him to the doctor. The bean had sprouted. They had to give him a seditive and the doctor pulled it out with some tweezers. His nose was tender for a few days but otherwise he was fine.
Thank you. That is hilarious as well as a warning… No shoving beans up noses unless you wish to be a garden.
Haha that's a good one!
If you keep making that face, it'll freeze like that.
Only if someone slaps you on the back. We learned that from One Crazy Summer.
In the summer…”It’s 8 AM, you going to sleep all day?!?!”
Ummm…yeah, I was hoping to 🤷♀️
Any time of year, a “good” morning starts by waking up at the crack of noon.
The amount of bullshit that we were fed like this was astounding in hindsight. Which is why I don’t care about so much of this stuff as a parent.
The 30 minute wait to swim was one of the milder things my family fed me... Pouring anything other than room temperature water into a glass will cause it to shatter explosively. Water too hot or too cold? BOOM. Now you're blind and disfigured. Showering during a thunderstorm will get you struck by lightning and your family will find you dead and naked in the shower. Is that what you want? For mom to find your dead naked body on the floor of the shower? Any adult male that you don't know is a pedophile waiting for you to let your guard down and snatch you. And even a lot of the adult males that you DO know are probably pedophiles. Cook all vegetables until they're soft enough to collapse under their own weight or you'll get food poisoning. Behind every tree and bush is a deadly snake that will deliver a fatal bite once it sees you. Leaving a curling iron plugged in will 100% burn the house down. Running the dryer when no one is home will 100% burn the house down. Sleeping with your bedroom door closed will suffocate you. The "best used by" date on food is the date it turns into poison.
Yeah the lightning coming through the pipes when taking a shower is another good one!
To be fair, we had more metal pipes than modern houses, so it was actually slightly more likely back then if your house lacked grounding straps and you were somehow considered a preferable path for the electricity. Seems like a pretty convoluted path; a roof vent to drain pipes to water to body to water to shower head to pipes to ground….
It happens. Lightning is scary. It can travel through the pipes or even the water. I had a friend who was on a landline call in his living room, lightning hit the telephone wire outside, traveled through the wire into his phone and blew apart the phone sending him careening across the room. He, uhm, hasn’t been the same since.
Dang, you resurrected a lot of core memories!
And then the media threw quick sand in there. It's a wonder we survived.
A few of these aren't entirely bad advice. Showering in a thunderstorm, particularly in an old building with metal pipes as someone else mentioned, it is unlikely to be hit by lightning but not impossible. Windows, esp open windows, are a less recognized danger during lightning strikes. Dryer fires are real, and while being away from home won't cause them, not being around means a small fire won't be caught before it's a large fire.
If you pee in the pool there's a chemical in there that will turn blue and follow you around so everyone will know you did.
I told my kids that! … they were more used to trips to the ocean … without potty … so when we started going to the pool — I had to scare them 1970’s style!
Pee Pee See! It was bogus but we believed
If you eat a watermelon 🍉 seed it will grow in your stomach.
And don’t swallow apple seeds or a tree will grow out of your ear.
My mom (born during the war so just barely too old to be a boomer) used this as an example of "dumb things HER mom said where she could never tell if she was joking or not." Her mom was born in like 1905. Older parents run in my family at least that far back.
Yep! Oh, and don’t forget that it’s illegal to drive with the interior lights on in the car! I confess that I have passed this one down to my kids 😆
Even if it isn't illegal (and with 51 states/districts and thousands of cities and counties, who knows) it's darn annoying and not very safe.
This and not being able to use the phone during a thunderstorm.
Wrote about this above. Friend was on the phone in his house and bolt went right into the phone and blew his sneakers off and him across the room
Eating Pop Rocks and drinking a soda will cause your stomach to explode.
If it can happen to Mikey, it can happen to you!
Check your Halloween candy for razor blades!
Never once saw a kid drown after eating a hot dog and drinking a gallon of tang then jumping in the pool!
I didn't hear the part about drowning. I was told I'd barf in the pool
That was actually the truth behind that precaution. Just like running or Crossfit. Cramps or retching. Wait an hour, and kids won't cramp up, or get sick in the pool.
If you watch the microwave cook through the window that close, it'll cook your eyeballs.
I find it amazing that even across the Atlantic our parents told us the same shit as kids. I thought these were just British things! Amazing
I wonder if the warning exists in other languages? Maybe it's just an Anglophone thing lol.
It's not. Exact same warning in most Asian countries.
I heard it, but a cousin of mine drowned when my mother was pregnant with me. When they retrieved his body, his knees were pulled up indicating he probably had a stomach cramp, so when I tell you I heeded that warning (and also the warning not to go swimming on a completely empty stomach, which is what he did, and not to swim in an area without a lifeguard, which he did too), I mean I heeded it. \[typo edit\]
Oh geez. Sorry to hear that.
Oh thank you. It was a thousand years ago, and I didn't know him, but it really broke my whole family's heart, and affected how all of my cousins and I were handled in water situations. My parents were super strict about it. As a teenager, I couldn't go in a four foot deep, above-ground pool, at a family member's house, with my parents present, until a half an hour after I'd eaten. I remember arguing, "But it's not over my head," and getting The Look. One summer, when I was home from college, I was taking the car to go to the beach. As I went to leave, my father (who was very easy going) kind of snapped at me not to go any deeper into the water than waist-high. Edit: My cousin was 17 when he drowned, so my parents didn't ease up as I got bigger.
I’m so sorry 😢
Thank you, you're kind to say so. I grew up under the shadow of his loss, but I didn't know him, so it was more about feeling for my family members who were scarred by it.
Sorry, you’re going to have to stay outside until dad comes home so he can spray you clean with the garden hose.
My mom didn't mind spraying me down. Well I guess she did mind, because she'd act mad about having to do it, but she was raised on a farm. She was classy and friendly and funny but she was not dainty. Dirty kid with a hose was an easy fix.
I remember my older cousin getting all the adults to laugh at me when I got quiet after she advised me that a watermelon seed would grow in my stomach. Obviously everyone assumed I believed her and was worried about it. The truth was that my cousin was visiting from the country and I was shocked she could be so obtuse and felt sad that she must have been receiving a poor education, but I knew it would have been rude to say that so I just bit my tongue.
"I have to wait two hours after farting before cleaning my room. Be outside playing if you need me."
“Mama’s tired of watching you do cannonballs and wants a short break to refill on wine and empty out the morning’s wine.”
THIS! We had a pool when my kids were little. I would offer snacks to get a break from the pool.
Liars Here's another one. You have to wear a giant bright orange life preserver. Even though you're 12 and know how to swim. Because your sister who is six years younger will cry. Ugh
i never heard the consequence be drowning. it was more like vaguely maybe cramps, maybe throw up. i don't have that rule for my pool. i do have a "don't throw up in the pool" rule though.
I always thought it was because of cramping.
My kids know exactly what to do if they get caught in quicksand.
How many times I've wanted to talk back, "Yes, yes in fact I *am* trying to air condition the whole fucking neighborhood, looks like we better try harder," when I had the door open in August for more than like three seconds.
I almost said this a couple of times.. ugh. Also almost told my son about eating and swimming. And I did tell him do not go in the cold with wet hair you will get sick.
My grandfather's younger brother drowned in the Missouri River at the age of 11, so for my grandparents, this rule was extended to like 3 hours and included being in the same room as a single grain of rice.
😞
Missed out on a lot of quality swim time with this one. The worst part was that was usually at our own GD pool and all our friends were swimming and my mom made us sit out. The. Worst.
I changed it from that to telling my kids , you can swim but you might feel like you have a rock in your stomach.
when i was little at a friend’s birthday party a kid puked in the pool. and yes it was more than 1/2 hour after he ate.
That must have been fun for them to clean up!
When you eat, there is increased blood flow to your gut to facilitate digestion making it slightly less available to your muscles. So it sorta kinda makes sense. It’s easier to run fast and hard on an empty stomach vs after a big meal right? Maybe that’s where that comes from?
Yup. Get body cramp, gasp, sink etc. Stomachs do not understand swimming.
What the hell was that all about anyway. It really pissed me off as a kid.
30 minutes? I am Italian, for us it was at least 3 hours. To be fair, though, our beach lunch was the same as that of a Sunday feast
Other things Italian kids shouldn't do if they don't want to die: run, sweat, being hit by a current of fresh air
One time I went outside in the winter without a jacket. Immediately caught pneumonia. Should’ve listened
I told my mom when I was six that didn't make any sense at all, and she thought about and said, "Well stay in the shallow end, and I'll keep my eye on you." I didn't drown and that silly rule was never enforced again. There was also the addendum "Don't wear shoes in the water! They'll fill up with water and pull you down!" Also complete bullshit. When I was in USMC boot camp some recruit said that to the swimming instructor and the instructor pushed him in and hollered "Well? Are ya drowning?"
We couldnt just google it and find out if it was true back then... as parent I caught myself almost telling my kid the same but then I looked it up.. total BS so glad I looked it up...
You know thats what parents say when they want some quiet post food time. Perhaps for a nap. Just like my grandpa would say "Dont chatter, you scare the fish!" When went fishing. It wasnt about that, it was him wanting some peace and quiet out by the river. There are a lot of those.
They just didn't want you barfing or pooping in the water. If something would make you sick, it would most likely hit you quickly.
“Dungeons and Dragons is of the devil!”
That one kid in Jaws (the one with the raft) almost wasn’t allowed back in the water because his fingers were getting pruny and wrinkled. If only he had listened to his mother and stayed on the shore…
I knew that was a lie when I was a child!
Shit, we use to eat in the pool.
My parent still believe you get colds by going outside in the cold with wet hair. It doesn't matter how many times I have explained to them how viruses work.
My guess is that it was coined by someone tired of cleaning child puke out of their swimming pool.
This is true. It happened to me once but a mermaid rescued me.
"Don't eat seeds or they'll grow inside you." 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
If you eat a dessicant pack it will burn a hole through your stomach.
I never heard that one! They don't look very appetizing though!
That happened to me.. I drowned and died
30 minutes??? We had to wait an hour !
I was told this as a kid, but have deliberately avoided passing this so-called “wisdom” to anyone else.
Ah yes, the deadly cramps that would freeze you like De Niro in Awakenings and make you sink like a stone
Not often you see an Awakenings reference
Another one was "every chocolate bar contains (X amount) of spider legs" and "the average person eats (X amount) spiders in their life"
Don't forget the "chocolate causes acne" chestnut.
What was with this one? Parents just didn't want to spend money on candy?
I heard most of these from peers. My parents didn't care enough to explain why they didn't want to buy candy. It was just "no".
Well, I mean, FDA does have limits on allowed amounts of various contaminants including I believe insects and rat hair, so it's not that far fetched.
And now we are making "bug flour"
No that wasn't how it was said. It was that you'll get stomach cramps
Stomach cramps, muscle cramps, then drown. So many ways to die for GenX 😂
This is the correct order
No. I remember hearing my friends parents say that, but my own parents never did. My dad was a dr and my mom a nurse so probably had a more science based view lol.
Our parents just wanted a break.
NEVER HEARD THAT AS A KID. SUMMERS AT THE LAKE MEANT SCARFING THAT HOT DOGGER AND RUNNING RIGHT BACK INTO THAT FILTHY SEAWEED-BOTTOM CESSPOOL.
Likely so you don’t blow chunks in the shallow end.
Oatmeal sticks to your ribs!
You broke a mirror, now you're going to have seven years of bad luck!
My mom told me to be careful getting into a cold shower when I was hot because I would get a shock. I thought she meant deathly electric shock, so I never ever did! I never asked for clarification and she never provided any.
Longest 30 minutes ever!
I used to like farting while swimming. I would always hope that everyone around me could see the bubbles. 🤷
Mom let me go into the shallow end of the pool after lunch. After ten minutes, she either said, it's OK to swim again, or else I'd just act unilaterally. Like most moms of that era, she didn't exactly keep an eye on me.
I couldn’t go swimming on my period because it would stop and I would die. My grandmother swore she knew someone that had happened to. Who knows what really happened.
I heard it. I have not passed it down. My parents' two big ones were about how not to fall asleep: "don't fall asleep in the tub, you'll drown" and "don't fall asleep with your headphones on, you'll strangle yourself" Ummm, maybe if I'm like 4 or younger, but I was hearing both of those into my pre-teen years. I haven't bugged my kids about either of them, although they are pretty :eyeroll: at wired headphones to begin with being either GenA or right on the line respectively.
For females, were you told you couldn’t go swimming while having your period? I asked my mother once what would happen if I did. She had no real answer!
In all honesty, my mom took me to swim lessons when I was ~6 yrs old and took me to Burger King right beforehand. I puked in the pool 5 mins in and swim lessons ceased immediately for everyone. My Mom was so embarrassed (as she should have been)
All this kind of stuff comes from old 1950s health books and like Boy Scout handbooks and what not. I remember in 7th grade health class still using a textbook from the 50s ... But anyway what I find kind of interesting about this kind of advice -- don't swim for 20 minutes after eating, the weird 1950s health book obsession with "hygiene", etc. -- and how it was drilled into us is what it says about the midcentury culture, like this was the big problem: kids might swim on full stomachs. There are all these kids out there running around all summer without adult supervision and this is what you are worried about.
I think it was in Happy Days one of the characters on it thought she was pregnant because pregnancy is caused by “necking while wearing a bathing suit.”
I was told I would get cramps in my stomach, not drown. I did have a teacher, in third grade who was a nun, who told us if you go in a pool before a certain date you’ll drown. What a bitch. It has something to do with some saint blessing the water. So glad I left that toxic religion behind.
This is true!!! I finally got to see this for real (everyone's safe) But the person went in maybe 5-10 mins after eating and his whole body cramped to to the point where he couldn't move and was using what little energy he had to keep his head above water.. Another guy in the group had noticed trouble and swam all the way out and slowly brought him back.. his whole entire body was cramped up for the rest of the day.. shit was wild, especially cause I'd been hearing that phrase my entire life and just kind of yea, yea, whatever'd it.
Omg. I forgot about this😂🫣
And I never got chance to test the theory out of sheer terror .. I didn’t want to die 🤷🏻♀️🤣 next time I go swimming imma test this theory, … nice knowing y’all 🫣
When I was a kid I went swimming every single day during the summer. The pool did hourly forced breaks for adult swim. We all converged on the snack shop and happily ate peanut butter cups and drank Tab and as soon as the lifeguards blew the whistle we raced to the pool. Absolutely none of us seized up with cramps or otherwise suffered any post eating consequences. Edit words
I was told it’s cause you will cramp up.
I have a friend who was tazed showering during a severe lightning storm.
Never once, in all my life, have I ever met anyone who got cramps from swimming too soon after eating. Heck, we ate/drank while in the pool, no issues.
Omg I finally got my MIL to stop insisting the kids need to wait to go in the pool after eating. They are not trying to cross the English Channel after a meal (where a cramp might actually be a real problem)!
Your legs will cramp and you’ll throw up in my pool, words of wisdom from my uncle who was in the navy.
Is it me, or we're there more swimming pools in the 80s? Swear in the neighborhood near my farm all my friends, or at least 1:3 had a pool. Almost drowned, saved right before I passed out. Why I joined the army for the Ranger program vs trying to be a Navy Seal. Deep water still bothers Mr to this day in my 50s lol
If you pee in the pool a red circle will form around you.
Neighbor told me that she'd know if I peed in the pool because there was a chemical in the water that would make it turn color. Five-year old me knew she was full of it as I'd already peed in the pool and nothing happened.
Haha perfect!
"stop, drop and roll"... For the zero times in your life you'll be on fire.
Haha yeah! And we actually practiced this!
But it kept Dick Van Dyke working, so for that we’re thankful.
don't make a funny face else it'll stay like that
If you sit that close to the tv you’ll ruin your eyes.
If you have a bad dream, don't tell anyone about it till you ate breakfast
 This is your brain on drugs.
The “not going swimming right after you eat” wasn’t the worst advice…but no one ever explained the logic of why you couldn’t even put your feet in the water!
You have to get a "vaccine" to protect others from a virus they took a 'vaccine' for. People will be talking about this one for the next hundred years.
Only the stupid people. Kind of how vaccines work.
Just the opposite. Found the liberal.
Keep doing your "research". ×34
Is x34 the number booster you're on?
Just the number of felony convictions your fearless leader has so far.
It's okay if you don't want to admit to the number of boosters you've had. We understand.
I'll glady tell you that it is the exact number my doctor at the VA told me to get. 5 boosters 0 positive covid tests. As a critical employee, I worked out in the world for the entirety of the pandemy.
LOL!
Wow imagine making your whole personality "own the libruls" to such an extent that you come into a silly, lighthearted funny thread like this and take a mental shit on it.