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.

Mother is convinced that her father's cousin's grandson named his DS after her father's childhood nickname. The child in question is called Jack and I am fairly confident that Jack's dad has no knowledge whatsoever of his grandfather's cousin's childhood nickname.

Microwaves and microwaved food give you cancer. She will throw out or refuse to eat food that has been in a microwave (unless she doesn't know it's been in there), and insists on heating food and drinks in an endless succession of mingingly dirty saucepans that have stuff burnt onto the bottom. She has my sister and niece doing it now too...

This is a thing my sister told me, rather than my parents, but it was so wtf and said with such complete conviction that I think it deserves sharing.

She and her husband could not go to the Brasserie Blanc restaurant because (actual quote): "that's not for the likes of us; we know our place."

To be clear, she was in her early 40s. We had a perfectly normal 1980s upbringing and lived in a boring suburban semi, not as tied tenants on a squire's country estate, or anything like that. Now fair enough if you don't like french food, or waiter service makes you feel anxious, or you think it's overpriced, but she was absolutely adamant that the reason they could not go to this restaurant was because they would be getting above their station. This was said in 2011; not 1911. I have no idea where it came from, or why she wanted to put back social mobility by fifty years.

That Father Christmas is real...

That a cup of tea 'cools you down'

I think that one's true. www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-hot-drink-on-a-hot-day-can-cool-you-down-1338875/

My mum is convinced that shaving your body hair makes it grow back thicker, quicker and darker, all evidence to the contrary. She is also sure that I only get ill when I haven't been taking my vitamins regularly enough, and will show up with a big bottle of them to "cure" me.

Oh, where to start? My dad:

• is convinced meat is some substance other than muscle. He thinks gristle is muscle. He will not be budged.

• doesn't really believe in lesbians. He'll say he will, but when he talks about those homosexuals, he automatically assumes they are all men ('homo' in 'homosexual' is the Latin for man according to him). He gets a bit confused by female ones, but tends to assume they are either secret men, or just very very friendly. He'd get on well with cao's parents.

• believes his son is the perfect, stern-but-fair father. Even though this makes everyone, including his other children, his grandchildren, complete strangers, and his daughter-in-law fall, about laughing hysterically.

• thinks being a shorter-than-average man is a 'disability'. As is having (undiagnosed) face blindness.

• believes that he and my mum did 'more or less 50/50 on housework and childcare,' despite the fact he never cooked or cleaned, and worked a 9-5 job.

• thinks that if you're raped by someone you know, it's 'less bad' than if it's a stranger, and if you're raped by you're partner, it's 'even less bad'.

I could go on, but it'll just irritate me.

And MIL law:

• I put whisky on baby's gums. I'll do that with yours.
• I weaned all my babies onto solids after a few weeks. It's the best thing.
• I never put mine in nursery. It's bad.
• I never got morning sickness. You shouldn't.
• I never got tired during pregnancy. You shouldn't.
• I'll have the baby overnight for the first bit.
• I'll be there are the birth.
• I'll send your sister down as an (unpaid?) nanny, she'll live in your spare room.
• A bit of cat poo/raw meat/beer never did any pregnant woman any harm.
• You shouldn't take folic acid/ [prescribed] medication during pregnancy. If you ate a proper diet you wouldn't need it.
• You're don't have to wear a car seatbelt if you're pregnant.

She means well, but oh my lord.

@Gil FIL is that you? Get off Mumsnet and clean your house!

My mum also washes chickens before cooking them Bert.

Alas no Paddy, I am not your father in law. However he is nearly right re. the Raspberries, it wasn't travellers though. A former colleague who went raspberry picking in Perthshire during her school holidays told me her and her brother's pissed on Raspberries to increase the weight.( In Scotland families would go raspberry picking just like London families went hop picking.)

The Raspberries would be picked and placed in a big tub with handles called a luggie. You'd be paid by weight of each luggie you'd filled. Putting any foreign object in to increase the weight would arouse suspicions, and given you'd be out picking all day, you'd need to pee somewhere: two birds, one stone! An empty bladder and a heavy luggie: win-win.

A bit of googling also revealed she wasn't the only one in the 70s and 60s pissing on Raspberries.

books.google.co.uk/books?id=qk0OusZmCaYC&pg=PT13&lpg=PT13&dq=luggies+raspberry&source=bl&ots=fQA8M6anB2&sig=YR6lPuhhyEBbITp-cmnumh--u8s&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiM_-_G4MfRAhXjBsAKHUqIDW4Q6AEIKDAG#v=onepage&q=luggies%20raspberry&f=false

Very glad it's not just my parents that spout utter shite.

Is that why raspberries are always so bitter? Minging little fruit.

Tangy I'd say. Now you know why!

According to mum, TheGays are forcing all hospitals and all parts of the public sector to use the word 'partner' instead of 'husband' and thus make everyone gay, because only gay people have partners. No amount of explaining that husband is a type of partner will convince her otherwise.

A few of the finest from my MiL:

-Never put your hands above your head when your pregnant, or else the umbilical cord will strangle the baby.
-Toddlers shoes should be a little bit tight on them as it helps their feet feel the ground better
-You can only move into a house on a Friday or else you'll bring bad luck on the family in that home
-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
-A cup of tea on a hot day will cool you down
-You should bite your baby's nails, not trim them
-If you're pregnant with a girl she'll rob your beauty so you have to have more babies until you get pregnant with a boy and get it back

There is so much more and they always have me in stitches

Back in the 1960s the most heinous crime anyone could commit, according to my DM and her sisters, was to wear a black chiffon scarf. Apparently it was 'common'. One of my cousins was seen going to a dance hall wearing one and was the subject of gossip and disapproval for some months.

The first time DM cooked spag bol she was convinced that 4 strands of spaghetti was sufficient to feed four people. She said it expanded and one strand each was masses. Fortunately we managed to persuade her otherwise or we would have been very hungry

Oh I just remembered one of the funniest from MiL...Don't drink orange juice on a hot day or else you'll get violent diarrhoea

My Gran insisted that Mrs Jones only had boys because she only had one ovary - the boy making one. My sister used to go eye-poppingly pink at the suggestion..'its not true....' she'd mutter.

LRD, my Granny didn't believe in lesbians either! She'd say, "oooh two men together? Well, they can't help it. They were born that way. But two women. No. I just can't understand it..."

My DM was adamant that freezing food 'killed the germs in it'. I remember being horrified when she said she was going to freeze some bacon that was out of date,for a week or so,as it would be 'germ free' by the time she defrosted it. I never did manage to convince her that freezing food simply prevented any bacteria in it from multiplying,it didn't kill it outright!

My mother was convinced that if you put butter on a cats paws it wouldn't stray.

My mother can't grasp the concept of a bisexual person being in a monogamous relationship. I have a bisexual female friend whose sex life is an endless form of fascination for her.

Mother: 'does her husband mind that she sleeps with women?'

Me: She doesn't. She's attracted to men and women, but she's married to Paul and their relationship is monogamous., it just means that she's attracted to both sexes and her monogamous life partner could have been a man or a woman

Mother: so she's not bisexual then. She must sleep with other women.

Me: if my dad died and you ceased to be in a sexual/romantic relationship, would you then cease to be heterosexual?

Her: don't be stupid, that's completely different.

.

That you cannot legally change your first name, only your surname and if anyone tells you they can they are lying.

Guess who has a different first name on their passport to their birth name?

That all your organs stop working overnight and 'wake up' in the morning. So no one ever needs to pee in the night then?

-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

Rubbish for a bruise, rubbish that the yeast eats it but it is great for a whitlow.

My MIL believes ....

You catch nits from resting your head on the back of cinema seats.

Skylights in the roof are more dangerous than windows because children will be more intrigued to look through them, climb up and fall out.

That if you get pregnant (and you don't own a house) the council must give you your own house. Even if you have a family to stay with or a partner. She believed this utterly - until BIL and His gf got pregnant. She clung onto her conviction right up until they rented their own flat.

sugar, that's hilarious.