Old Wives Tales

'Quick give me some numbers for the lottery,' my mum-in-law shouted at my son as he fell UP the stairs.

'What?' my son said, rubbing his shin, where two purple bruises were fast appearing.

'It's lucky to fall up the stairs,' mum-in-law explained. 'Give me some numbers and I'll pop in to the co-op on my way home and get a ticket.'

My son shook his head and reeled off a string of random numbers.

'You'll be a millionaire tonight,' mum-in-law said confidently.

Needless to say -- he wasn't.

But it set me thinking about old wives tales and, to be honest, I think I must have spent the first years of my life totally believing most of them because they spilled out of my nana's mouth like a verbal waterfall and were spoken with absolute conviction.

When I was about thirteen or fourteen I was seriously teased at school because of my hairy arms. Let me say I am by no means a hairy person. I've hardly ever needed to shave under my arms or my legs because God thought it would be fun to put the entire lot on my forearms. Fortunately, they were white blonde hairs, but that didn't stop the kids at my school mercilessly teasing me about them.

However, this didn't faze me because as I walked away from the bullies and their taunts of 'gorilla arms' echoing in my wake I knew one thing was for sure. My nana had told me that if you had hairy arms it meant you were going to be rich. I was utterly convinced that I was going to be fabulously wealthy. I was also utterly convinced I would lead a very long life because she also told me people with long ear lobes lived longer that people with short ones.

As a youngster, I actually used to feel sorry for people with little ear lobes because I thought they weren't going to last long!

Well, I'm still waiting to be fabulously wealthy and the jury's still out on the long life thing.

It was all porky pies. Old wive tales.

Nana also told me if you crossed on the stairs there was going to be a row. And if knives crossed on the table there would be a row, too. In fact, there were so many ways a row could be caused that, as a kid, I spent most of my time trying to avoid them happening. It was quite stressful!

My mum was no better. She told me if I ate the remnants of cake mixture in the bowl after she'd made a cake I would most certainly be inflicted with worms. I was terrified of raw cake mixture! Until one day, when I walked in the kitchen to see my mum scraping the bowl and shovelling it in her mouth.

I have eaten mountains of crusts to get the curly hair that alluded me. Lamented over the mirror I broke because my nana said it meant I was to experience seven years of bad luck. And if I ever went to open an umbrella indoors she would screech at me to stop because apparently that would give me a huge dollop of bad luck, too. If I pulled a face, she would say if the wind changed my face would be stuck that way. And the times I saw her chuck salt over her left shoulder after she's spilt a bit on the table.

Of course some old wives tales have been proven to have a grain of truth in them. For example, drinking warm milk makes you sleepy. An apple a day keeps the doctor away and chicken soup is good for a cold. And even carrots being good for your eyes. They don't actually make you see in the dark which was the reason I consumed fields of carrots as a kid, but they do reduce the risk of getting macular degeneration when you are older which I guess makes up for the disappointment of not having eyes with super powers.

But the thing I'm most peeved about is not so much an old wives tale as a myth. The myth that denied me years of selection boxes -- the ones my auntie would buy me at Christmas.

'Nooooo! You can't eat those,' nana would squeal as she snatched the box out of my hand while simultaneously slipping in her false teeth.

'Why not?

'Don't you know chocolate gives you spots? You eat all that chocolate and you'd be riddled with acne.'

'I will?'

'Riddled!' Nana said emphatically. 'You'll look like Job in the bible when he had all those boils and stuff. You'll never get a boyfriend.'

'I will! I won't!' I said, recoiling in horror at the brightly coloured box. 'Well, what shall do with them?'

'Leave them with me,' nana said reassuringly. 'I'll get rid of them.'

'Oh, thank you, Nana. I don't want to have spots.'

'Just looking out for you, dear.'

I have more than a sneaky suspicion those chocolates went the same way as the left over cake mixture -- just in a different mouth.

Were you fed any wives tales? I'd love to hear them.