Unusual things your mum taught you that you still unconscionably do

[julian abram]

I can remember on grocery store trips mom saying about a million times, "Do NOT mash the bread". The loaf of Wonder bread was carried independent of the grocery sacks, because it was special. Today, every grocery trip I still think, do not mash the bread.

[Robert Engel]

"A place for everything, and everything in its place"

I guess I forgot that one.......

[Bill Dufour]

To improve my sons aim when he was very young I put a table tennis ball in the toilet

A single Cherrio is a smaller target and can be flushed away after each use. No need to fish it out and reuse it.
Bill D

[Erik Loza]

Whenever entering a retail business, I put my hands in my pockets. Mom always told us when we were kids, "You break anything, you're paying for it". Still do it to this day.

Erik

[Jim Becker]

A single Cherrio is a smaller target and can be flushed away after each use. No need to fish it out and reuse it.
Bill D

Yea, an accidentally flushing a tennis ball might make for a difficult plumbing situation. LOL

[Bill Carey]

Whenever entering a retail business, I put my hands in my pockets. Mom always told us when we were kids, "You break anything, you're paying for it". Still do it to this day.

Erik

yes, I can see from your avatar that the lesson stuck with you.

[Erik Loza]

yes, I can see from your avatar that the lesson stuck with you.

Bill: HAHAHAHA! I never actually noticed that.

Erik

[Roger Feeley]

My mom raised three boys and got tired of telling us not to touch stuff in stores. Rather than, “don’t touch this or don’t touch that”, she simply made us put our hands in our pockets. To this day, I can’t enter a store without putting my hands in my pockets. This saved my butt once. I was at an estate auction to look at a harpsichord and browsed around a bit with, of course my hands in my pockets. I looked at a stained glass table lamp and thought it was nice. It turned out to be an original a Tiffany Dragonfly lamp that sold for $110,000 to a phone bidder. I was sure glad I didn’t pick it up.

btw, the harpsichord had a warped sounding board. I don’t know how you would fix that. I just stuck around for the lamp hoping I could snag it for $80.

[Kev Williams]

The biggie: Don't Lie. Not that THAT is all that unusual, but what may be unusual, is that I don't
Thanks Mom!

[Peter Kelly]

Hello Brian,
To add some fuel to this fire, when I was growing up in India, we referred to the garment you're describing as a singlet. I always thought it was a holdover from British colonial days, but perhaps not.

Edwin

”Singlet” is also the correct term for that garment in UK and Australia.

I’d say my mother taught me how to be a good listener.

[Doug Dawson]

As a child I was taught to lift my vest ( undershirt) up and hold it under my chin when I got dressed and still do it today and this puzzles my wife

Disrespect for authority is the foundation of innovation.

[Thomas McCurnin]

I use the term "tin foil."

[Roger Feeley]

The biggie: Don't Lie. Not that THAT is all that unusual, but what may be unusual, is that I don't
Thanks Mom!

Kev, you hit on a sore point with me.

When I was a high school shop teacher many years ago, something that really peeved me was that there was no punishment for lying. Johnny does something and is sent to the asst principal. Johnny, knowing that there is no consequence for trying to lie his way out, tries to do so and tell some story that is quickly debunked by the asst principal. Johnny is punished for doing whatever he did. My point here is that, to a kid in school, lying is ALWAYS worth a shot. Maybe you tell a good enough lie and get away with it. There is no down-side to giving the lie a try.

My view then and now is that whatever you did, say skipping class, would be a misdemeanor. But lying about it should elevate it to a felony. In my opinion, the consequence for lying should be so painful that it's not worth it.

I've sort of kept my finger on this issue for many years and I haven't seen any change. You talk to principals and they will regale you with war stories about the crazy lies kids tried to sell for offenses big and small. It's a point of honor to lie your way out of something.

Flash forward to a Supreme Court case some years ago that involved a strip search for an ibuprofen tablet. The story went like this: A kid is sent to the principal and tries to deflect by telling the principal that another kid has an ibuprofen tablet in her backpack. There is a zero-tolerance policy regarding drugs and the ibuprofen tablet puts the gears in motion. The unsuspecting kid is hauled in and interrogated and eventually stripsearched. The SCOTUS case was about whether the asst principal had the right to do the strip search. I saw something very wrong with the whole thing. The first kid had a long rap sheet with the school. The kid that was searched had never had a discipline problem. It was clear to me what the first kid was doing and I would not have ruled that the administration and probable cause for the search. SCOTUS found for the administration on the narrow question of the constitutionality of the search.

Flash forward to last summer when my next door neighbor was running for the local school board. I asked her about the policy on lying and she had no answer but put the query to our administration. There is no policy on lying in our local school district. So I think it's still an issue which I will take up with the district as our grandson nears kindergarten.

[Joe Wood]

I remember my mother telling me how she had to keep me on a leash when I was a little boy in the early 50s,

that might be the root cause of some of my mental problems ..

and why I love dogs so much!

[Mel Fulks]

Several mentions of terlet etiquette here.
This will sound strange ,but standing to pee was not always the norm indoors. The old potty seats had small target holes.
There were urinals ,but usually in places like dining rooms. Some were pots kept in the sideboard. YES ,the side board.
And some were finely made "stand up" pieces that stayed in a corner in plain sight. I think the universality we know
today was from the conditioning of modern public toilets.