h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was thinking today about the fibs my parents told us, like, someone made a rude gestulation to my Mum who was driving and she told us that it meant 'stick up your jumper'. Only to be mortified a couple of weeks later when we enthusiatically told someone to stick it up their jumper when they beeped at us for stalling.

The tongue in your sandwiches isn't really tongue...

When a four year old asked my friend 'why is that cow on top of that other cow' she replied 'because it's trying to get a better view'

Any porkies you'd care to share?

Fibs told to me by both parents and teachers.... the main one was the lie that I'd do well/get a good job, so long as I got a decent education

If you bit your tongue whilst talking you were automatically assumed to be telling lies

When the wind changed you'd remain with the same expression FOREVER

If you cut your nails on Thursdays the devil'd be with you for a week

If you didn't clear your plate another child in Biafra would die *because you hadn't eaten everything*

Boys didn't make passes at girls who wore glasses

Proper Education was only for clever people



Oh yes - and the big one, of course: "And they all lived happilly ever after"

My wife was told as a kid that the van that drove round playing pretty tinkly music was the potato selling van...

My mum always told us that if the ice-cream van was playing music it meant he'd run out!

Bless her, I bet she's looking down on me now. She's not dead, just really condescending.

my nan used to tell me that if I bit my nails, I would be really embarrassed when I died because they'd cut me open and find a pile of nail cuttings in my belly. I never really got that one and it definitely didn't work!

As a parent I managed to keep the story that sheep that lived on hills had shorter legs on one side than on the other to stop them falling off the hills, going for some time.

And that a building near where we lived was a worm research centre.

And that another was an earthquake venting centre.

And that I knew a little boy who picked his nose so much that the top of his head caved in and that when it rained, he had to wear a hat to stop puddles forming on the top of his head.

PP.

When i was told by my mother that Father Christmas was not real and that it was only my dad dressed up,i knew she was fibbing because i always used to leave a glass of brandy for Santa and a carrot for Rudolf.In the morning there was an empty glass and the carrot was gone.As my father only drank whiskey and hated carrots,it stands to reason someone was telling porkies!