.. to ask for the weird rumours you believed in primary school? (And still sort of do)

[HubbabubbaT]

Just remembered these weird ink eraser things.. and how we all were sure they had pig wee in them..!? also that if you swallowed even one piece of chewing gum you'd have to have an operation to remove it ... Etc etc!

That a child rocked back on that chair too far, tipped over, split their head open and died - always from the teacher when someone was swinging in their chair!

I too believed in the apple pip story for the longest time. I never let my kids eat the pips even though I know this is untrue.

@MrsToothyBitch I remember every single one of these - even the test tube one! I'm actually wondering if we went to the same school

If someone was off school they had died. Usually in a fire or a long painful death.
The ‘dead’ person would obviously be back at school in a couple days and everyone would stare at them amazed they were there. This rumour was ongoing throughout the time I was at school but we must have been so stupid to believe it each time even in flu season where lots of people weren’t at school. I guess it’s more fun to believe that half the class have been accidentally impaled by a knife making some toast rather than everyone has a D&V bug due to lack of hand washing and sharing makeup in the school loo’s.

That a child put once put their knife in their mouth at school dinner and cut their tongue out.

A boy had a pencil case with buttons that would make certain parts pop out (I’ve recently seen similar ones in Smiggle). He told me, in grave tones, that some buttons could blow things up, so I mustn’t touch them. I believed him!

If the teacher sent you to stand in the corner, it was above the shaky floor which might collapse and you would fall through, if you fidgeted too much.

Wearing trainers without socks might make them walk by themselves; this could happen when you were wearing them!

@LunaHardy - the Titanic one, too? Oh my god! Maybe you were in my year!

Did you go to school in Surrey? All girls?

If I chewed my hair Id have to have a massive hair ball removed from my stomach. It literally occurred to me the other day I was nearly 40 and this hadn't happened!

The melon seeds thing - when my Nanna had cancer I thought it was because of melon seeds. I was 12! Still makes me queasy though.

Not primary but secondary: That a certain female rap star had her stomach pumped and it was found to be full to the brim with semen and Prince had ribs removed to give himself a blowjob

I too did not eat apple pips for years, for fear of a tree growing in my innards.

We used to dare each other to pick dandelions. And then tease each other about wetting the bed.

I also grew up when the dangers of quick sand were very well known, & I memorised instructions on how to survive from the back of a coastguard leaflet found in a holiday cottage we stayed in.

At secondary school it was rumoured the nurse would make everyone put a condom on the caretaker's broom handle (that's not a euphemisn). Sex ed was actually very boring & there was no practical work at all, thank god!

If you ate carrots, you wouldn't need glasses.

A primary school one was that if boys played with their hair, teachers would put ribbons it.

As well as too much TV giving you square eyes (this fate befell a certain Peregrine Piecrust in one of the classroom books), if you touched a TV screen, it would burn your finger. Remember how a TV used to crackle when you touched the screen?

I heard the semen one about Marc Almond! And the rib one about Iggy Pop (my teen years were the 80s so they obviously get updated!)
Swimming pools - if you belly flopped you could split your stomach open, obviously true because Sophie told me her friend saw it happen in Slough...
Also pool related, the rumours of people putting razor blades in the flumes.

Oh the belly flop one is true, I met a boy who claimed his dad died that way and that explained why he was reticent to jump from the high dive 😂

We had a long and contrived story about how putting plastic bags on your head was dangerous - obviously true, there is a risk, but the story went that our teacher’s friend’s son was in the bath and he had a plastic bag so wanted to pretend it was a helmet. He only put it on his head for a moment but apparently the thing with plastic bags is that when you take just one breath they suck in to your face so you can’t breathe and get it off. Freaked us all out!

I was also fully convinced that sperm had the ability to reach through clothing, and that once I’d started my periods if I sat on a man’s lap I could get pregnant

That if you saw an ambulance you had to hold your collar ‘til you saw a four legged animal.
One my DM told me. Mulligatawny soup is made from dead owls.
I’m certain she made that up herself, she had a very quirky sense of humour.
Another of DM’s gems was that eating mouse pie was a certain cure for stammering.

Keenan and Kel were severely maimed and killed in a car accident

We heard this but it was Screech from SBTB.

Writing on your skin with gel pens caused parasites to burrow into your bloodstream because "they're made in china and the water there has parasites".

This one I'm genuinely annoyed about : Frazzles are made of cat food. I spent my whole childhood not eating Frazzles because of that and they're bloody delicious.

Is it just me who was thoroughly convinced that the missing rib to perform self-fellatio was Michael Jackson?

I was very alarmed by the prevalence of tapeworms, which I now realise was unnecessary. I thought the ribs was Cher!
Richard Gere hamster, definitely
Chewing gum was made of sheep’s bladder and you’d definitely die if you swallowed it
I was bloody terrified of quicksand
You could get arrested for treason if you put your stamp upside down (or any flag)
If you gave yourself a tattoo with a fountain pen you’d be poisoned by ink
You could definitely die of lead poisoning if you chewed your HB pencil
If you listened to a variety of records backwards you’d call the devil
Lord’s Prayer backwards, same

My Dad was convinced that if the Police found you outside with no money in your pocket they could arrest you for vagrancy. We kids always had some spending money given to us to prevent this unfortunate fate.

My friends dad said the gap between the escalator steps could swallow you. He was pretty scary and I believed it.

We had the swallowing chewing gum means it gets stuck to your ribcage for eternity m one (not sure how it bypasses the stomach and gets attached to your skeleton but kids aren’t concerned with details).

Also if you pick your nose too much your brain will come out of your nostrils (I think the ancient Egyptian burial and embalming lesson inspired this one).

Also quite funny but there was briefly the understanding that sex was done solely for adults to have babies, and that it worked everytime - so if your parents had 3 kids they’d had sex 3 times, if they had one kid then they’d only done it the once - which tickles me now.

If you had your ears pierced, your brains would run out of the holes.

The teachers probably quite liked that one, it would make PE much easier if nobody needed to stick plasters on!

If you put your finger in your belly button your bum fell off.
Sneezed with eyes open your eyeballs would fly out.
Bodily function ones are the only ones I remember haha

“A kid once lifted the anvil in the school metal work room then got his balls caught when he dropped it”

Turns out it wasn’t a rumour more of a cautionary tale based on a student 10 years before who indeed got his ball crushed under heavy object and the work table in metal work.