Funny Childhood Lies and Myths We All Believed Growing Up
Tell her I’m not at home; cat meat will make you meow at night; if you swallow orange seeds, they will grow in your stomach; a girl gets pregnant when a boy touches her; girls and women don’t fart.
These are just a few of the many lies our parents, guardians, and elders told us—or made us tell others—to scare us into doing or avoiding certain things. The “science people” have explained that humans easily pick up behaviors during their developmental stages. Ironically, while parents often preach honesty, many of the elders I grew up with did the opposite. Their daily lives were filled with petty lies, insults, fights, and misconduct. Alarmingly, they often acted this way in front of children, and sometimes even involved them in these behaviors.
One day, Daavi came looking for my mum. The truth is, that woman can talk endlessly, whether or not the other person is interested. My mum always tried to avoid her, especially when busy. As soon as she spotted Daavi from afar, she dashed into the room and told us to say she wasn’t home. We reluctantly obeyed, even though she had warned us many times not to lie. That day, she permitted us to lie, so we did. We believed that anything allowed by a higher authority must be good.
As for the cat meat story, I remember vividly when I was about nine. We had an old cat at home, and in a typical “number 9” family, no one would let it die and go to waste. So, we planned its end. “Joseph” was a delicacy for most number 9s, just as “Charles” was for others. (For those who didn’t learn animal meat names in Class 5, Joseph means cat meat and Charles means pork.) Before any human Joseph or Charles thinks of suing, remember my Class 5 teacher taught me this—he’s resting in the Peki cemetery now. Anyway, our Joseph was killed, fried, and prepared for stew. I was excited to taste it for the first time, but my grandmother stopped me, saying: “If a child eats Joseph, he will cry like a cat at night.” I was scared, but not enough to stop me from sneaking some later. Curiosity may kill cats, but I’m no cat—and I’m one of the quietest sleepers in town.
Did your mum ever tell you eating too much meat makes you a thief? Mine did. In reality, children denied meat often end up stealing it. Some parents even gave little food, claiming full stomachs cause bad dreams. Yet, it’s usually when we sleep hungry that we dream the strangest things.
And then there was the story about counting stars without swallowing saliva. That “toli” was top class, told by my eldest cousin. We had a children’s Bible storybook we read nightly. One page showed Abraham gazing at the sky. My cousin explained that Abraham challenged God, saying he could count all the stars without swallowing saliva. He tried, but before reaching 100, he swallowed and died. LOL.
Ladies, how many of you got pregnant just because a boy touched you? Another lie meant to keep girls away from boys. One story tells of a girl who returned from school crying. Her grandmother pressed her for answers, but she stayed silent until the next day. She finally confided in a neighbor: she was pregnant. Shocked, the elders questioned her, but she didn’t understand what “slept with” meant. She explained that a boy had hit her on the back, so she assumed she was pregnant.
We were also told that swallowing orange seeds would make a tree grow in our stomachs overnight. We went to bed terrified, trying to stay awake to prevent it. And some of you village boys were probably given fish or chicken heads, told you’d become intelligent by eating their brains.
The lies are endless. Parents often justify these “instrumental lies” as tools to reinforce good behavior. But the consequences are clear: the “harmless lies” we tell children manifest in adulthood. Small lies grow into bigger ones, leading to corruption, theft, and dishonesty in society.
Researchers Gail D. Heyman, Anna S. Hsua, Genyne Fub, and Kang Leeac, after studying parental lies in the US and China, concluded that this raises “important moral questions for parents about when, if ever, parental lying is justified.”
And somewhere, a kid is still wondering why God made farts only for males.