Top 10 funny lies told to me by family members...

After talking to a friend about my family, I came to the realization that I was told a lot of nonstandard childhood lies.  Although these lies bring amusement to my friends and I now, they were really used to get me to behave as a child.  As a naturally curious person I wanted to know the "why"  and "what will happen" of everything.  I'm sure I was an annoying child, so the following lies were born out of necessity...

• ·      Eating while standing up your feet will get bigger. (I still feel wrong standing and eating.)
• ·      Eating a watermelon seed or apple seed will result in that plant growing in your stomach.  (Freaked out as a 9 year old and thought I was going to have a watermelon patch in my stomach.)
• ·      Swallowed gum will stay in your stomach for 7 years. 
• ·      If you don’t wear a bra your boobs will be down to your knees. (Resulted in 24-hour bra wearing for several years.)
• ·      “Holding it” for too long will make your bladder burst.  (This one was ineffective on me since I’ve always thought that going to the bathroom is a waste of valuable time. Pun intended)
• ·      Reading in dim light you will damage your eyes. (Still do it all the time, if I can see the words I can read. I do have glasses, but not from this)
• ·      Eating cheese will make you constipated. (Being lactose-intolerant, I’ve never had this experience but feared it)
• ·      Swiss cheese is made from using acid to burn off the mold, that’s where the holes come from.   (This is just ridiculous, and I believed it until college.)
• ·      Sitting too close to the TV will give you radiation poisoning and damage our eyes.  (It doesn’t unless you have one specific model of TVs from GE from the 60s.)
• ·      Eating bananas before bed will give you nightmares.  (To this day if I call my mom and tell her I had a nightmare she always asks if I’ve been eating bananas after dinner.)

I'd like to say that I won't tell lies to my future children to get them to behave, but I have a feeling these types of things are used for a reason.  What I've learned from my brief stint working in a daycare and all the years of babysitting is that toddlers are not easily convinced of anything.