Random shite your parents tell you with utter conviction...

[CharleyDavidson]

but that you know is bollocks!

My Mum insists that anything that you can inherit genetically from your family always skips a generation.

My Mum's blood is negative. As is mine. She asserts that I must have inherited that from my Grandmother. And she must have inherited hers from her grandmother.

Bonkers. I know that genetic traits can skip generations, but not always and not with such predictability. But she won't have it.

"-A cup of tea on a hot day will cool you down"

There is good science behind this. Your body tries to keep your core temperature at 37 degrees regardless of the weather so if you ae warm and have a warm drink you will seat more, the hairs on your arms/legs will stand up more and there is a cooling effect.

My mother always told people there was "18 months between them" when asked about the age of my brother and me. There isn't there is 23 months, so you'd think she would say that or 'two years' if she wanted to round up.

No idea why she said this. My brother has no idea. We were too young to do the maths when we were little and we didn't think to ask why she said it when we were adults.

Dunno if it's been said before but the eye colour thing (skipping generations, or both parents having a certain eye colour etc) is a thing. It was used in my gcse biology to explain regressive genes and dominant genes and how things are passed on through the genes. (Probability of getting blue/black/brown eyes etc). There was a fiagram and alll....
But I don't remember the ins and outs of it.

Even a diagram!

Damn I wanted to see the fiagram!

The whole recessive and dominant gene thing that's taught in secondary schools is not entirely accurate, but a vast oversimplification. For example there are multiple genes involved in eye colour.

My mum used to tell me you couldn't make a mayonnaise if you were on your period...the mayonnaise wouldn't go up !

My mum is fairly sensible but my aunt's most recent gem:

Phone call at 7am- Are you sure you're not pregnant? Because Teresa next door (names changed to protect the bonkers) said she did a reading and you are.

I said I thought it was unlikely considering a) I'm 52 b) I no longer have my ovaries and c) since having chemo, I haven't had a period in 3 years.

Auntie focussed on the lack of periods as evidence and was undeterred by the fact my gestation period would be longer than an elephants!
Apparently, Teresa is NEVER wrong and so I should get myself down to Mothercare immediately.

Actually, Teresa was right - once - when cousin A got pregnant but considering she'd only been married 9 months and spent 6 of those telling everyone who would listen that they were trying - it wasn't exactly earth shattering.

Dunno if it's been said before but the eye colour thing (skipping generations, or both parents having a certain eye colour etc) is a thing. It was used in my gcse biology to explain regressive genes and dominant genes and how things are passed on through the genes. (Probability of getting blue/black/brown eyes etc). There was a fiagram and alll....
But I don't remember the ins and outs of it.

But GCSE is a very low level of science, it is an easy way to teach the very simple idea of genetics and inheritance but is the first step.

The majority of brown eyed parents do have brown eyed children, but not all, but one of the brown eyed genes is passed on, whether it is 'expressed' ie whether the child has brown eyes depends on a number of things including other genes.

That if you swallow orange pips a tree will grow in your stomach and eventually kill you

My dad told me he was sticking tiles on the wall with condensed milk. He wasn't was he? It was adhesive wasn't it?

MIL, who was as mad as a box of frogs anyway, insisted to me that breast feeding 'wasn't natural'. XH was potty trained reliably at 13 months and had such small feet that she knitted all his shoes.

DD1 has huge amounts of allergies and was lactose intolerant for several years. MIL gave her yoghurt. When I said that it was made from milk, she disagreed vehemently and said it is made of yoghurt!

DF had taken to heart the warning of being careful meeting with people from the internet. My dearest friend was a case in point. We had known each other for a couple of years at this point, but she was down for the weekend and stayed in the house while I visited DD1 who was once more in hospital. DF arrived and my friend made him coffee and chatted about his garden etc. DF phoned me later and asked how I knew that she wouldn't have stolen my TV and put it in her luggage - which consisted of one tiny bag! He adamantly believed I really didn't know my friend right up until the day he died - and we'd been friends then for over a decade!

And whoever said upthread about hot bread on a wound - if there's infection, it certainly does work. I speak from experience when I had a bad riding accident and developed a serious infection in the wound. A&E wasn't a thing where we lived, so a hot bread poultice was slapped on it (and boy did it hurt!) and the doctor declared the next morning that that was the best thing DM could have done. It saved me from a case of sepsis.

-If you have a cut/bruise/burn put wet bread on it with a bandage over it. Apparently the bread pulls out the infection and the yeast eats it
I don't know about yeast eating the infection, but a bread poultice is an old remedy for drawing out infection, and also splinters, etc.

-You should bite your baby's nails, not trim them
This is because the skin around the baby's nail is thin and it's believed that when cutting it's easier to cause a nick that could get infected. Instead of biting, though, I just used a file on my DCs

My mum has told me several times that everyone on MN has penis beaker!

*a penis beaker

My mother was born four months after her batshit parents got married, but they managed to keep the date of the latter a secret for 50 years.

These two events were either side of the end of the Japanese occupation in the Far East and as we all know the Japanese didn't leave two bricks on top of each other were well-known for the excellent neonatal medical care they meted out to civilians with incredibly premature births, which became the story once the truth came out. Yes Grandma, of course you weren't five months pregnant when you walked down the aisle in your deeply Catholic society.

I wasn't allowed to play any of my CDs on my mum's hifi in the living room, even if she was out. Apparently those dodgy metal bands would definitely give the CDs those viruses her computer could catch. When the hifi sneezed on the computer, presumably.

My dad always used to explain that people in authority were always right, because if they weren't they wouldn't be in authority. So despite his misgivings, it must have been right to sell off all the council housing without building more, start the second Gulf War, etc. Only when Dubya became president did he start to doubt this (and Cameron and the referendum had just about convinced him that some people in authority are bloody idiots. Trump apparently won't be in authority even when President...???)

Frequently told me as a kid that it was "too cold to snow"

Certainly when I lived in Canada, it had to warm up in the winter for snow to fall.

My mum has told me not to use whatsapp as the encryption warning message you get is to warn you that terrorists are reading the messages. Why the hell she thinks terrorists are interested in whether I can pop to my local branch of M&S to see if they have the blue coat she wants in stock is beyond me but apparently they're tracking her movements and we have to be aware.

MIL believes you shouldn't make a baby giggle. Kills them stone dead apparently.

DM insists that I'll have been somewhere or done something in the past even though I absolutely haven't and even when another sibling pipes up that it was them, not me who went to that place or did that thing we are all wrong, she's right.

I'd forgotten about 'too cold to snow'.

On the 'too cold to snow' theme, my mum always says that a covering of snow on the ground warms the air up. She thinks snow stores warmth. That will be why it's so warm at the poles

Too cold to snow's true isn't it? It's usually about 1 degree when it snows. I didn't think it could snow when under 0. It might be stuck on the ground in freezing weather, but won't be falling down.

We need @OhYouBadBadKitten to tell us about if it can be too cold to snow.

You mustn't put a baby in green. It's a sign to the fairies to come and take it away. I can't remember which elderly relative told me that, but DD was 2 before she had a stitch of green in her wardrobe.

I believe it's someting to do with the fact that as the air gets colder, it's ability to hold water vapour diminishes. So if it's too cold, the air is also too dry to produce snow.

Usually about 1 degree above freezing at the ground is enough. The air can hold the moisture. When it's higher it gets colder and the moisture turns to snow.