If I never finished my food at dinner as a child, I was told there starving children in Africa who would love my food. Everyone knows it's a hoax, hasn't anyone seen that episode of South Park?
My Mom has told me that if your baby is born with an outty bellybutton, tape a quarter on it for a couple weeks. Voila! Perfect inny every time.
If there is going to be a lunar eclipse, all pregnant women should wear a key, a safety pin, or some other piece of metal tied around their stomach, or else their child will be born with birth defects. When my ex-wife was pregnant with our son, her mother and grandmother beseeched her to do so during a lunar eclipse in 2000. She told them she would but really didn't, and our son came out exceptionally healthy. The saddest part: I had a college professor tell me that such advice was true. He couldn't tell me WHY, but he swore up and down that it was true.
My dad used to tell me that if I spilled crumbs on the floor cockroaches would come and eat it. They would then subsequently sniff out my scent on the food and come try to get me while I was sleeping looking for more food. If they couldn't find it, guess who they would eat? A couple times I would even put a decoy sandwich on my dresser to give the roaches something to snack on other than my flesh. What a dick.
If somebody hits you while your eyes are crossed, they will stick that way. I'll try to remember some of the folk things that I have come across with patients at the hospital....people do all sorts of strange things around sick people. ghettoastronaut - some complementary/holistic types of remedies are effective, even if it is just by placebo effect. Plus, you aren't going to talk people out of them so you better learn to just accept that and work around it.
I was told as a kid that if you pulled faces the wind would change and your face would stay like that forever. Must've pulled an ugly face as a kid one to many times...
My dad along with quite a few others seem to think that if you fill plastic drink bottles with water and put them out on the lawn or "nature strip" - the grass area between the road and the footpath that it will deter dogs from shitting on the nature strip or lawn. At the moment we have 3 empty crushed plastic bottles that had been tied to wire and pegged into the ground. It seems that local dog owners don't like people that try and interfere with Rovers shitting routine. I'v thought of pinning a notice to the tree out on the nature strip with something along the lines of - "You are welcome to allow your dog to defecate on our nature strip if you leave your address details with us so that we can come and defecate on yours"
My father's solution for treating a burn? Apply butter. Oh thank you very much, now the burn has spread to previously unaffected areas thanks to the oozing dairy remedy. A favourite of my school teachers, and answering back, "Well send my left overs to them" would often result in a swift clip round the ear.
These two gems are courtesy of mom: It's bad luck to: - wash your hair on a Wednesday - cut your nails after dark
Straight from my mother. If you eat hot sauce on your food your taste buds will be ruined and you will never be able to taste the flavors of food. She was speaking of La Victoria mild of course.
My mom used to tell me that if I flushed the toilet, than the toilet water and all the shit and piss would flow into whatever tap is running. I have no idea what she was trying to accomplish, perhaps encouraging me to not flush the toilet when she's in the shower? Either way, it resulted in me becoming fearful of whenever I used the faucet, lest a torrent of shit come out.
My Russian grandmother insists that rubbing sour cream on sunburn is a miracle cure that "the pharmaceutical companies don't want you to know about."