“If the wind changes, you’ll be stuck with that look for the rest of your life.”
Even at the time, I found this unlikely. Wind changes are common, particularly in Sydney during the late spring and summer. If my mother’s theory was true, walking down George Street would be like entering a canvas painted by Hieronymus Bosch, every face distorted into a mask of pain, lechery or despair.
Actually, that’s pretty close to the truth, so maybe she was right after all.
The Last Judgment by Hieronymus Bosch – what young Richard Glover thought his face would look like when the wind changed. Credit:Getty
In any case, there were more lies to come. If it were the weekend, we might go to the beach. After eating your lunchtime sandwich – argghh, more Vogel’s – you needed to wait a full hour before entering the water “because otherwise you will have a cramp and die a tragic death by drowning.”
I thought this medical insight might have been unique to my mother but, just this week, I’ve discovered the same advice was given to the writer Christos Tsiolkas by his Greek parents. He believed it too.
Of course, swimming seemed to inspire a swathe of parental lies, most particularly the tale of the dye added to all Sydney swimming pools. Generations of kids were told that it would turn bright purple if you peed in the water.
This was meant to prevent kids from doing so, but mostly had the opposite effect. Generations of children took to peeing in every pool, just hoping to observe this magical sight.
Each time the exciting swirl of purple failed to appear, they thought: “They must have forgotten to add the dye. Never mind, I’ll try again next time.”
Most of the lies were designed to make life easier for the parents. The kitchen clock might be wound back on a Friday night – “oh, is it 8 o’clock already?” – just so the kids were asleep before the start of the 7.30 movie.
Or the sound of Greensleeves playing from the Mr Whippy van would be noted with the phrase, “Ah, what a shame. When they play that tune, it means they’ve sold out.”
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Other lies, though, were downright scary. If you swallowed chewing gum, it would, in various versions, stay there for seven years producing constant indigestion, glue up your intestines generating an explosion, or – more alarmingly still – cause a gum tree to grow out your ears.
All manner of calamities surrounded the credulous child. A swallowed apple or cherry seed would cause a tree to grow in your tummy, its branches pushing out through your skin, while any sort of nose-picking would cause your head to collapse inwards due to the destabilising effect of such constant excavations.
Meanwhile, older siblings had their own torments to offer to a younger child. One common trick was for two brothers to tell a young sister that they, too, were born as girls but, in this family, all the girls turn into boys the moment they turn five.
This tale was just as effective when told by two sisters to a younger brother, and – in both cases – was best done about three days before the arrival of their fifth birthday.
I do not support any of these lies. In fact, it’s a wonder people of my generation are not even more troubled and generally weird than you can already observe us to be.
My only point is to reassure those young parents struggling with the white lies of the snowy season.
Given what a previous generation was told, a merry fellow with gifts to distribute starts to glow with a rather festive magic.
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Crusts make your hair curl, and other lies we tell our kids
Source: Philippines Alive
