IT recently occurred to me that my childhood was built on a web of lies.
Up until a month or so ago it hadn't even crossed my mind to doubt the lessons my parents had passed onto me - that these "pearls of wisdom" were only said to stop me doing things they didn't want me to do and weren't actually true.
It was only when I casually mentioned to my boyfriend that if you ate green chips you got cancer (after he finally stopped laughing he pointed out how ridiculous that was) that I realised I'd been deceived.
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On closer inspection, I can see that there were loads of these "little white lies" that mum used to control our behaviour.
Fair enough, you might think. She was a young mum with three children... only she forgot to let us know that they weren't true when we were old enough to behave ourselves.
Those that stick in my mind, and probably subconsciously still affect my behaviour today, include: "Don't leave half-eaten food in your bedroom or rats will come and eat it in the night" and "Don't swallow chewing gum - it'll stick to the walls of your stomach and stay there."
To this day I still can't bring myself to swallow a piece of Hubba Bubba, for fear it'd attach itself to my stomach wall and stick, there wobbling away like a skin-coloured mole.
It must be hereditary because even my nana would get in on the act.
Woe betide the grandchildren who dared chew a pen lid in her presence.
You knew you were in trouble because she'd turn off the Rolf Harris cassette that she put it on whenever we visited and launch into her well-worn lecture on how she knew a child who swallowed a pen lid, which got lodged in his throat and resulted in him suffocating.
If it does run in the family I'm definitely going to have some fun with my kids when the time comes.
Forget green chips and felt-tip pen lids, I'm going to come up with some really crazy ones that'll get them thinking.
To stop them picking their noses and eating it (the most disgusting habit a child can have, in my opinion) I'll tell them snot contains chemicals that repel Father Christmas.
When they're teenagers I'll stop them smoking and doing drugs by telling them it'll make their spots worse and that nobody will ever fancy them.
Actually, come to think of it, this abuse of parental trust lark sounds like fun - it's just a shame it doesn't work on adults.
I reckon I could come up with a few crackers involving flesh-eating diseases for stopping my boyfriend leaving wet towels on the bed.
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