Things I was told as a child - essay

Thinking back on it now it strikes me how difficult it was for me to grow up as a reasonably well-balanced, informed and happy person. I seem to have been raised on a pack of lies, some of which I confess didn't bother me much but others of which caused me untold grief. I confess to not being either taken in by or much concerned with the standard lies adults told everyone - Santa Claus, the Stork, the Easter Bunny, and even the Tooth Fairy. I knew that "spinach will make you strong" had its rationale in the minds of grown-ups and, although I wouldn't eat the stuff, I didn't worry about it either. I was also aware at a tender age and from much empirical evidence that my face wouldn't really "stay that way" when I screwed it up into the worst contortions of which I was capable. "Step on a crack, break your mother's back" I recognized as poetic rather than real. I also recognized walking under ladders, black cats, throwing salt over your shoulder and broken mirrors for the cheap superstitions they obviously were. Even as an adolescent I was very skeptical that masturbating would make hair grow in the palms of your hands. Not having sisters I wasn't too sure that girls wouldn't die if they went swimming when they had "the curse." And I instinctively rejected the claim that Asian women were anatomically different from Caucasians, at least in certain ways.
But there were other things I was told, and not all by my parents by any means, that really troubled me, still trouble me. Take a fairly innocuous example to start with: horsehairs, if placed in water, will turn into snakes. I don't say I necessarily believed it, but I do recall my cousin and I pulling hairs out of horse's tails and putting them in water, in the sun, and then waiting for days, even weeks, for something to happen. When it didn't we weren't particularly disappointed, just a bit more distrustful of adults from then on. How about "eating watermelon seeds will give you appendicitis." My mother told me that. She rightly, I guess, didn't want me to eat watermelon seeds. But it was also claimed true by my Italian neighbors who were of an entirely different culture. I loved watermelon. And it is hard to never eat a watermelon seed, especially when you are slurping it up out of your hand. I worried about that. I still do. I fear that it will catch up with me some day. When I was very young I worried a lot - I mean a lot - about the boogeyman. I admit it. I thought he was real. My mother told me that he "would get me if I didn't watch out." That is, if I didn't do this or that or whatever I was supposed to do. I'm serious. I really thought that someday he'd appear and I'd be in for it, although it was never at all clear to me what "it" was in that context. I eventually outgrew the boogeyman.
But then I was of an age when I was told that "too much reading will cause you to go blind." Wow! As I loved to read, and was also extremely myopic, this did little to make me relax and enjoy myself. Reading in the dark and too many movies were variants of this. As I used to try to read in bed with no light and I loved movies and went every chance I could, I'm not at all sure why I didn't develop colitis or something over this, no thanks to those who fed me this traumatic misinformation. I was also hung up for quite a time on "smoking will stunt your growth." There was something about that that seemed to have a real ring of authenticity. It didn't stop me from smoking those eleven cent a pack WINGS when I could get them, but I did worry a lot.
To go back to an even earlier age, however, when I was much more impressionable, there were other things that truly bothered me. Someone, for example, once told me that cougars would follow you in the woods for miles. They never told me why. I guess I assumed they followed you for obvious reasons, like to kill you and eat you. To this day I get nervous in the woods and I look back now and then just to make sure. "Cats will steal your breath." I used to love cats and had them as pets. I guess my parents, who for reasons I never understood didn't want me to have a dog, would not have let me have a cat if they believed that. But I believed it. It made me nervous when I went to bed. Far worse than that, however, and going back even further, I had been told that geese would peck your eyes out. I was terrified of the damn things. And to this day I don't bend down in the presence of geese. In fact, I try to avoid them entirely. Similarly, I was told by some other sadist that dragonflies would sew my mouth shut. To this day I flinch when I see one, especially one of those great big ones that seem to come and hover right in front of you. Thank god no one told me that if I masturbated I'd go insane. It must have been an oversight.