“Pay heed to the tales of old wives. It may well be that they alone keep in memory what it was once needful for the wise to know.”
The wind is terrible. It has the proverbial sound of a freight train. My front fence, badly needing to be replaced anyway, fell, three sections of it. I pulled each section up and used sticks to keep each in place. The sections were heavy and wet. My hands were freezing when I was done. Once inside the house, I warmed them around my cup of hot coffee.
It had been raining since yesterday morning. Now we are left with fog, wind, clouds and chill. Nothing is inviting about today. Today is a perfect sloth day. It is a perfect day to snuggle on the couch under the afghan and watch bad movies. Where are the bonbons?
I have learned certain truths in my life. Buttered toast will always fall to the floor on the buttered side. Wearing dirty underwear is courting disaster. When you are halfway to somewhere, it will start to rain. Your tongue will turn black if you lie. Leaving the house with wet hair will bring on a cold. Sitting too close to the TV causes blindness, but carrots might just be the cure. Darning needles, aka dragonflies, can sew your eyes shut. Swallowing seeds made a garden grow in your stomach, but I had trouble with this one. The only seeds I ever swallowed were watermelon seeds. If I went swimming too soon after eating, I’d get cramps and maybe die, but I won’t fault my mother on this one as she believed it too. If I cried, I was told I’d get something to cry about which made no sense to me. I was already crying because I had something to cry about.
I never doubted my mother. I was sure she wouldn’t lie. I’d spit out my watermelon seeds, wear clean undies, watch TV from far away and never expose my tongue if I lied, but I did cheat a little. I went swimming before the thirty minutes. Strangely enough, I never got cramps. I never went blind and never had my eyes sewed shut. I just thought myself lucky.
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 
April 4, 2024 at 2:12 pm
Hi Kat,
Today the sky is perfectly clear with a high temperature predicted to hit 82°.
Many old wives tails have some modicum of truth behind them. Many years ago, I caught the flu. I called the only physician I knew, my Ophthalmologist friend. He suggested homemade Chicken soup when I asked for a prescription for something to make me feel better, (This was prior to the discovery of antiviral medications). He told me that he had an internal medicine professor, when he was in medical school, who studied homemade chicken soup. His study discovered it contained major ingredients that would make you feel better. Many old wife’s tales work or else they would have gone into the trash bin of history. All of the ones you listed were spoken at one time or another by all mothers who had baby boomer kids, including mine. My mother wouldn’t let us even put our feet into the swimming pool until one hour after eating anything.
The wet hair nonsense causing colds is still around. Regardless, catching a cold is viral.
April 4, 2024 at 8:57 pm
Hi Bob,
82° is July or August here. I would hate to have it so warm in April. The spring hasn’t yet. Taken hold here yet.
Much of what my mother told me wasn’t true. I suspect some of it, not the TV of course, came from her mother. The black tongue was just a psychological ploy. If we didn’t show her our tongues, she knew we lied. Tricky! I think they didn’t end up in the dustpan of history because we didn’t cross the line.
I wonder which ones my sister told her kids.
April 4, 2024 at 4:08 pm
Carrots – absolutely improved your eye sight so maybe you should have eaten a few when you were sitting too close to the TV
Mrs MDH and I are in the air again tomorrow heading for Denver for a Granddaughter’s first birthday. Its a fly in fly out job so we will be on our way back to Detroit on Monday in the middle of the eclipse. Mrs MDH has insisted on a window seat !
April 4, 2024 at 8:29 pm
MDH,
I did mention that carrots might just be the cure to TV blindness, but I only ate carrots if forced. My mother used to mash them with potatoes to hide them.
Have a wonderful time in Denver. That is great that you get to spend your granddaughter’s birthday with her. Have a wonderful time!
April 4, 2024 at 5:14 pm
Maria Tatar wrote an article “On the Subversive Power of Gossip.” (https://lithub.com/on-the-subversive-power-of-gossip/) in which she suggests fairy tales began as gossip and old wives tales. Perhaps watermelon seeds need to find a place in our fairy tales.
April 4, 2024 at 8:00 pm
When I was training in Ghana, my language instructor told us about JuJu and the JuJu man. He explained that the Juju man cured a woman with his magic. She was quite sick, but after the JuJu man did his magic, ants came out of the woman’s chest. She was cured. Lawal, my language instructor, believed the story.
Watermelon seeds are a definite part of mothers’ lore.
April 5, 2024 at 7:58 pm
It was a great moment of personal liberty when I decided that no harm would come of swallowing watermelon seeds.
April 5, 2024 at 8:57 pm
I used to have spitting contests with watermelon seeds and then also with cherry pits. I didn’t swallow the seeds as I needed I was always skeptical a garden would grow in my stomach.