FFAF: Lies Our Parents Told Us

Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Lies. Our parents sat on a throne of lies and they deceived us, but they probably had honest intentions in doing so, because they had been deceived as well. But today the lies stop.

Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholics Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. On Mondays and Wednesdays we refute the lies about the Catholic faith, but on Friday we have free for all Friday. We talk about whatever I want to talk about, and today I want to talk about these fictions, these falsehoods that we were told as children, usually to get us to stop doing something annoying, or to get us at least in one case to do something healthy. So that’s why we’re going to talk about things that we were told, things that we might be regurgitating to our own children unknowingly, and getting at the truth of the matter.

All right, here is the first one. Who didn’t hear this as a kid? When I was a kid, when you’re in your parents’ 1985 Dodge Caravan and you slide into the middle seat that was really a… It was like a long row. It was like a bus seat, not one of these fancy bucket seats you have nowadays. You just had that one long row you slid into in the Caravan, with the sliding door you had to pull and throw with all your might to get it to close.

So who remembers this? You’re driving at night in the Caravan and you drop your Lego Knight on the floor. This was back before no Lego Batman, no Lego Spider-Man. You either got Lego Knight, Lego Castle, Lego Cowboy or Lego Pirates. That’s it. You want to get your Knight and you reach up and you turn the dome light on above you, and your dad yells back to you, “Trent, turn the dome light off. I don’t want to get a ticket.”

Or you ask your parents, “Mom, dad, turn the light on so I can see this, or so I can get my cassette tape out and put it into my Walkie Talkman.” You know what I had as a kid that I loved? I had the Walkie Talkman… Do you remember Home Alone II, where Kevin gets lost in New York City and he has the thing that can do record and play back, that little cassette player thing? I had one of those, and it was actually a pretty cool toy.

Let’s say you got to put batteries in. You say, “Mom, dad, turn the dome light on,” and what do they tell you? They say, “No, we’re not going to do that because it’s illegal. We don’t want to get pulled over.” It turns out there is no law against having your dome light on in the car. At least in all 50 states there is no law that says it’s illegal to operate a motor vehicle with the dome light on.

The closest is that it’s illegal to drive while being distracted, and you can be distracted by the dome light. The glare on the windshield might make it more hazardous to drive, or the dome light is indicative that you are distracted, you’re fixing something, you’re fiddling with something. And a cop might see that and pull you over, not because the dome light is a clue that you’re distracted, not for the infraction of the dome light itself. So it’s something to keep in mind. It’s not illegal, and I kind of let my kids have the dome light on whenever they want it. If it keeps them quiet all the better.

All right, number two, don’t crack your knuckles. It’s going to give you arthritis. That seems to make sense, right? When you crack your knuckles… Just going to give a little crack for you guys. I got a little bit right there. If you do it over and over again it’s going to wear them down. You think you do it over and over again it’s going to wear them down and you’re going to get arthritis and not be able to move your hands, but there is actually no research that shows knuckle cracking leads to arthritis.

The pop that you hear when you crack your knuckles are bubbles bursting in the synovial fluid. This is the fluid that helps to lubricate the joints and allows them to move. It says here in this article, “Even if knuckle cracking doesn’t cause arthritis, there’s good reason to let go of the habit. Chronic knuckle cracking may lead to reduced grip strength. At least two published reports of injuries suffered while people were trying to crack their knuckles.”

So you might have weaker hands. You’d have weaker hands. I don’t know if that would be a risk factor for arthritis or anything. So, once again we got a kernel of truth here, but not the whole corn on the cob. Does that make sense? No, not really.

Here’s the next one. The seven year gum myth. If you eat gum, if you swallow chewing gum, it takes seven years to digest. I’m always amazed that anybody might believe this one, but I guess enough people did. Like really? Do you think that if you eat gum for seven years, the acid in your stomach takes that long to digest it and break it down and then it’s gone? So that is no. It says here that most people empty their stomachs 30 to 120 minutes after eating, and that includes gum.

The gum base is insoluble, just like the fiber base of raw vegetables, corn, popcorn kernels and seeds. So where does gum go? The same place that kernels of corn go. I don’t need to elaborate on that anymore. So gum travels out the same path as food that’s undigested in the stool.

Speaking though… We have another eating myth, another eating myth to share with you all here, and that is the swimming cramp myth. I remember being told this myth as a kid, and I was skeptical then and I’m skeptical now. That is if you eat food you have to wait 30 minutes before you go swimming.

Why if you eat food… The only time I ever saw it, I remember seeing like cartoons. I think I remember a cartoon as a kid, I don’t know if it was making fun of the myth or really believed in it. A kid like eats food and he goes to the swimming pool and he like puts his toe in the pool right after he ate a meal, and like he leaps up in the air and gets all these cramps and he falls in the water, and he’s like, “I’m drowning, I’m drowning,” just from putting one toe in the water.

I don’t know if it was to make fun of it or to make us more scared of it. Yeah, that’s the idea. You’re going to get this cramp. You eat a big meal and you’re going to get cramps and you’re going to drown and you’re going to die, and it was your own fault, because you didn’t wait to get into the pool. There’s no evidence for that.

I think the theory behind it is that if you’re digesting food… I think what people imagine is that all the blood goes to your stomach to digest your food, and so if you get in the water and you swim there’s not enough blood going to your muscles, and so your muscles are going to cramp up and they’re not going to work anymore, and you’re just going to stop swimming and sink to the bottom of the pool and drown because your body is just too busy digesting this food and it can’t send any more energy or resources to your arms or legs if you’re drowning. I mean it’s just kind of silly, but that is the myth. There’s no connection to that. It says here in this article you might feel uncomfortable, but you’re more than capable of swimming to the shore and getting a glass of water and resting.

I also don’t know the source of this myth. I feel like our parents were so annoyed by us that once we were done eating they would want us to get out of the house as quickly as possible and into the swimming pool, like, “Get out of my hair. Go jump in the pool and go swimming.” “What if I get a cramp?” “You’re not going to get a cramp.” So I don’t know the necessity behind this one.

All right, here’s the next one. Toads give you warts. That kind of makes sense. Toads got little bumpy things and warts, and you touch them, they’re gross, it’s going to get on you. It’s all gross. You get warts. No. It says here there are no amphibians that give you warts. This myth has been around for a long time, and it’s probably related to the fact that many frogs and toads have warty looking bumps on their skin. These are glands and do not secrete anything that can cause you to have warts. So you can kiss a toad, you will not get warts. He will not become a prince either, but you don’t have to worry about the warts I suppose.

All right, here’s the last one. Here’s a myth that was told to… Oh, no. Sorry, I have a bonus one after the last one. The last one, this myth was told to get us to do something healthy, but it did arise… I’m sure that our parents heard it from our grandparents, and our grandparents heard it from a reliable source, the Ministry of Aviation, the British Royal Air Force, Manchester United, the RAF… Manchester United of course is football, but this is the myth. If you eat carrots it will help you see in the dark.

You probably heard of this one, right? Carrots improve your… They make your eyesight better, they improve your eyesight. If you eat enough carrots you can see in the dark. Make sure to eat your carrots, little Timmy. So it’s a helpful myth to get people to eat carrots. Now there is a kernel of truth involved in this, and that is carrots have Vitamin A, and Vitamin A is good for your eyes for eye health, to keep your eyes from deteriorating.

So eating carrots is good for you and it’s good for your eyes. Where the myth showed up were people thinking not just that carrots are healthy for your eyes or that it keeps them from getting unhealthy, but if you ate enough carrots it would improve your eyesight, if you ate enough carrots it would make you have… You’d have this superhuman ability to have night vision goggles inside of your head, that you’d have this amazing cat eye night vision if you ate enough carrots.

Where in the world did that come from? No, they’re good, they keep your eyes healthy. They’re not going to give you superhuman vision. Where did that come from? Well, it seems to have been traced back to 1940 in World War II. When there were aerial fights between the British Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe the Royal Air Force had an advantage because they had just recently developed airborne intercepted radar, and this allowed them to shoot down the German planes at night that they were having these dogfights with and stuff.

So in 1940 and RAF night fighter ace, John Cunningham, nicknamed Cat Eyes… You know, John Cunningham, greatest generation Cat Eyes, shoot down them Germans, he was the first to shoot down an enemy plane using airborne interception radar. He racked up 20 kills, 19 of which were at night, and people were wondering how did he do that. Now the RAF did not want the Germans to know about airborne intercepted radar, that they had this tool, so they told the newspapers… How did he get so many kills at night? They said well, Cat Eyes John, Cat Eyes Cunningham, he ate his vegetables today. He ate his carrots, and if you eat your carrots too you could have cat eyes and join the Royal Air Force.

Excuse me, sir, why are you talking in an American accent? I thought this was a British story. Well, it is. Everybody in the ’40s was talking like this, with a transatlantic accent. So, yeah, that was what they said. And we don’t know if the Germans bought it or not. It seems like some Germans, there’s a cultural inheritance after that really pushing carrots on people. I don’t know if that’s the German diet or not, but yeah, I think that’s where it came from. There was this myth, this was World War II propaganda to hide the fact they were using radar to shoot down planes. They said oh, he ate a lot of carrots. That’s how he was able to do it. But as I said, carrots are good for you, so definitely I know I need to eat them more.

And finally my bonus myth. Our parents told us this, and it was probably true when they were our age, but they always told us this. Why do you need to learn to use arithmetic? Because you aren’t always going to have a calculator on you. You’re not always going to have a calculator. Timmy, you got to know your times tables, and division, and quadratic formulas. You’re not always going to have a calculator on you. You got to know this stuff. And look where we are today. Now I think almost everybody… Even the dumb phones, maybe they have a calculator. I’m not sure. I thought about getting rid of my smartphone, but how will I do math if I don’t have my smartphone with me?

So that is that. Those are the lies our parents told us, often with very honest intentions. Thank you guys so much, and I hope you have a very blessed weekend.

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