Swallowing bubblegum
I always heard when I was a kid that if you swallowed bubblegum it would remain in your system for 7 years. Some versions of the story said it lasted “forever”. I didn’t fear these much since I heard all this from children.
When I was three or four years old — this is one of my earliest memories — I saw two teenage girls walking down my street wearing tiny bikinis. Since I was still many years from puberty (and since this was the early 70’s), the thing that I noticed was that their tummies were concave instead of convex.
I clearly remember asking them, “Why do your tummies go in like that?”
They grinned , and one of them said, “We always swallow our gum and it makes our tummies stick to our backs.” The both giggled and walked on.
Stupid, right? But it made perfect sense to a preschooler. And since it came from an adult (fom my perspective), it must be true. Adults never lied to me. Somewhere in my head, I filed this tidbit of information away in case it should ever come in handy. And then I forgot all about it.
I recalled this memory when I was a teenager; maybe it was the puberty that revived it. I remembered the hot day, the barefoot girls walking on the dirt road, the one girl answering my curious question. And then it hit me for the first time: she lied!
But more shocking to me was that I had just realized this at the age of 13. How could I believe something so stupid for so long?
Clearly, the idea had been inserted into my head when I was gullible enough to accept it. Once accepted past my bogosity filters, it was safe to nestle in my mind forever. It was only because I retrieved it that it it set off the more skeptical bogosity filters of my much older mind at all.
And that’s the problem with lies you tell to kids. They believe it because they don’t know better. It can really get them in to trouble later. Like the time I narrowly survived the icy stares of my girlfriend and her family…
July 4th, 2005 at 3:43 pm
Great story. I like your fallacy category.
I’ve been influenced by Transactional Analysis (TA) that states at birth (or earlier) you have a tape recorder turned on which first records things like warmth, cold, pain, and emotions. Later on it literally records what parent-figures tell you, parents, teachers, other adults. These become your parent tapes and you either accept them or rebel, but they control your beliefs until you take time to think about them and determine if they need reprogramming. The lucky ones got good parent tapes or bad tapes that they rebelled against. They thereby make fairly good choices based on those tapes until they take time to rethink them. The problem is, one life-time is too short to rethink all the parent tapes you have been given so they will have some influence on you your whole life.
Your advice to never lie to children is excellent. They will believe the lie until they have time, if ever, to rethink and reprogram the tape. If their tapes are based on lies, they will make poor decisions until they figure out the tapes are wrong and reprogram them.
My oldest son told my yougest daughter that her legs would fall off if she pressed her belly button. She believed this into her mid teens even though she was a straight A student from the beginning through college. After all, her older brother would not lie to her about something as important as keeping her legs attached — or would he.
Jerry
December 20th, 2005 at 8:26 am
HAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You people are so stupid !!
August 11th, 2007 at 7:53 am
read this
http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/05/09/21/what_really_happens_if_you_swallow_your_gum.htm
February 24th, 2008 at 1:20 am
May 5th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
This was great! I used to think that stars were little till I was about 13 years old. Ya know that old song? “Twinkle, twinkle, little star…” Well I really thought, okay, stars are little, and in third grade, I remember my teacher telling me that the sun was a big star. So I thought the sun was the biggest star, and that all the other ones are little. Then it hit me. My mom was telling my brother about stars, and I questioned all wide-eyed, “Wait! You mean stars are twinkle, twinkle, little??? They’re just little because they are so far away?!?!?!?”
I don’t like nursery rhymes anymore. =P
May 5th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
aren’t**