I used to believe that if you picked your nose deep enough, you would find gold because whenever my dad caught me picking, he would ask, "Ya diggin for gold?" I had a lot of nosebleeds as a child.

Bingalingadingdo

I believed that one was born with a perfect sphere of booger-material at the top of each nostril. Each nose-picking whittled away at these spheres. I don't remember whether or not I thought these spheres served any purpose, but I recall lying on the floor at nap-time in pre-school with my finger up my nose thinking I'd have to pace myself if I wanted any left when I became an adult.

dan0

When I was little I saw this commercial where it was just the camera on a hospital ceiling for 30 seconds. It then says "Think that was boring? Try it for a lifetime. Don't snort". Meaning cocaine, I guess, but snorting my runny snot back up was a bad habit my mom had tried to cure me of constantly. After that commercial I was afraid it would kill my brain and I always kept a box of tissues by me so I could blow my nose instead.

Anthropo

When I use to eat my boogers I knew that it was wrong and that it was an embarrassing habit. I thought that if I ever had an x-ray that the doctor was going to be able to see the boogers in my stomach and scorn me. I had a plan that I would just say they were pieces of cheerios cereal.

I'm still embarrassed

When i was young, my parents told me that boogers were part of your brain, so to stop me from picking my nose. Logically, i thought that if i ate them, they would just go back into my brain, and no harm done. needless to say, i never wanted to blow my nose, because then that part of my brain would be lost forever!

MEH

When I was about 5 I used to bite my nails, my dad said that if I didn't stop I would get hookworm - one day I would be walking down the street and the hookworm would fall out my bum & hook me to the sidewalk & I'd have to stay there until someone saved me & everyone would know that I was a dirty little girl.
Stopped me from biting my nails in record time.

Ann

six years ago (when I was a seventh grader). One of my friends bit her nails like CRAZY. She bit them until they bled, she did it non-stop, she even did it while talking. It was awful. So my two other friends devised a plan. We went up to her and told her that there was (some sort od mineral we made up) Deolxiumnotrate in nails. Which caused cancer. She totally bleived us! We even made up fake symptoms like it caused sneezing, puffy eyes, and dry mouth, whenevr she had these "symptoms" she would freak out! She left our school in junior year, and even then she still believed it. To this day i think she still belive that nails-biting causes cancer. (hey! At least we cured her!)

Fiona, destroyer of bad habits...

When I was little, I bit my nails. My mother told me that if I didn't stop, I would look like Venus de Milo. I had no idea that was a famous armless statue. I thought for years it was an old Italian woman who lived on our street.

Catherine Marenghi

My Great Nan told me of a girl who sucked her thumb until there was only a bone left - I quickly switched preferred thumb from my right to left, so that I would still be able to write even if my left thumb was sucked to the bone!

S

My dad was at a ballpark and he had a little girl sitting beside him (not me). The little girl was sucking her thumb and asked where his thumb was (he had recently chopped it off with a saw). My dad replied, "I sucked it off." The litle girl immediatly took her thumb out of her mouth. Her father was sitting behind her, and said, "Thank you!" Later that month my father ran into the man at the grocery store. He said that his daughter hadn't sucked her thumb since.

MaBl