When I was about 5, my sister told me that boogers were brain cells and that every time you picked your nose or sneezed, you got stupider. I refused to blow my nose in the winter and pinched my nose everytime I sneezed. Thanks for the ear infections Marie.

Kaitlin

When I was 3 or 4, I was a real tomboy and I usually watched the Disney movies, especially Pinocchio. My parents said if I ate boogers (eww) I would turn into a donkey, and i was horrified. i was cleaner and...er, had a better diet from then on.

N/A

My dad used to say if he caught any of us picking our noses 'Did you catch the monkey?', so I believe there was a monkey up my nose!! Never questioned how it got there or how a big monkey could live in my nose but it kept me thnking for years!

betty

I was told that eating my boogers would make me sick. It didn't, so I kept eating them. Then one day, I was sick in the toilet and some of the puke missed and landed on the toilet seat (sorry about the grossness!), and it was yellow-green and looked just like boogers! I thought that the boogers I had been eating had built up over the years in some corner of my stomach and had finally made me sick. I never ate boogers again...

Sean

when I was little my dad always used to ask if i was digging for gold when he saw me picking my nose. I thought there was gold up my nose until months later my dad told me that there was no gold up my nose. i was really disapointed.

untitled

My friend insisted that spiders eat bogies. She picked her nose and dropped the bogies onto spiderwebs. Goodness knows if the spiders ate them!

Helen

When my sister was little my mom told her that there was a mouse that lived in her nose called a booger mouse and that it ate her boogers. She told her that if she picked her nose then the booger mouse wouldn't have anything to eat so he would start eating a hole through her nose. That put an end to the nose picking for awhile.

Anon

My mum told me that when you pick your nose your nostrils will enlarge and look "unsightly and un-ladylike". I must have been about four back then. Now I'm closeto thirty, with a university degree in medical sciences, and I am still a little suspicious of people with big nostrils (including my husband)!

Katerina

My Mum told me that if you picked your nose you would turn into a matchstick man - I didn't believe her until one night,I did it and I stood in front of the bathroom mirror screaming "I don't want to be a matchstick man"

Annette

When I was a little girl my Mother told me that there were little black bugs in my boogers and that if I ate them they would fly out of my mouth

Ame

I saw the movie BEETLEJUICE, where the main character, namely Beetlejuice, is a disgusting green color; I was only four, and I loved this flick--I must have watched it at least a dozen time the first six months we had it! Well, I told my Mommy that "Beetlejuice was a very disgusting green man..." and she told me it was because he picked his nose alot when he was my age--and ate it! I never did it again, for fear of turning into Beetlejuice or anything even closely resembling that color!!! I still laugh with my mom, as she was never one to make up stuff like that, but in this case it was not only hilarious but it worked! :)

Anonomous

i used to believe that there were bugs in your nose, my parents told me this in a sad attempt to keep me from picking my nose

ashley

When I was probably about 4 or 5, my big brother told me that if I stuck my finger too far up my nose, a sharp toothed snail would bite it off. I believed him, so I tried not to stick it too far up when I picked my nose and also warned all my friends in kindergarten about sticking their fingers too far up their nose because of the sharped toothed snails. My older brother also got my little brother to believe the same thing.

Anon

when I was eight years old, I developed pneumonia and was in hopsital for a week. My mum told me that I'd made myself ill by picking my nose and eating the bogeys. A little bit harsh of her, I think...

Carol

I used to think that if you unscrewed your belly button (naval), your bum (butt) would drop off.

Also I had a teacher who used to yell at unsuspecting kids in the class "Don't pick your nose, your eyes will drop out". Truely terrifying. When I used to see those kids who had spectacles with a plaster over one of the lenses, I thought that they had been picking their noses too much.

CL

When I was a child I beleived that picking your nose would bring out the 'boogie monster'.. the REAL one. He would appear from your nose, like water from a tap, and give you a lecture about the atrocities of nose picking, and how it disturbed his slumber. After a severe finger-wagging session (and I don't mean in my nose) he would hide back up inside my nose, waiting for the next time he could get up me.

put some boogie into it

I used to believe that if I ate my boogers, the Boogy Man would grow inside of me.

Brianne

This is disgusting - When I was at primary school I used to pick my nose, wipe the bogey under the table (which I called the oven). Then about a week later I would check under the table to see if it had been cooked and pick it off. Oh dear!!

bogey queen

I was told when I was younger that the boogeyman lived inside my head. If I picked my nose too much, it would make him very angry and he'd come out and eat me!

Star Ravenwings

when i was about 10 i had a really bad cold and like any stupid kid i thought i was being proactive by picking out as much snot as i could and therefore get rid of my cold. well it ended in a huge nosebleed and my mom had me stuff tissue up my nostrils to try to soak up the blood, it just wouldnt stop. after a while i was fine and removed the tissue, tho my nose was still blocked with the cold. about a week later my right nostril was still blocked. in the middle of a clothes store i went rooting for gold and pulled out the biggest hardest lump of red tissue from my nose that had been stuck up there since the week before, unnoticed, and presented it to my mom shouting "Look, i unblocked my nose!" needless to say she was highly embaressed tho i was quite proud of myself!

snotser