My grandma told my cousins and me that if we ate watermelon and then drank Pepsi it would kill us. I am 59 and still haven't tested that theory!!

pb

My brother's friend told me when I was little that he had once found a snail in the crust of his pizza, in one of those crust bubbles. For years after that, I carefully dissected every crust bubble before eating my pizza.

Margaret

My mother told me that Hershey chocolate bars were made at three mile island and that they were radioactive. This was just after the meltdown was in the news. A very effective method of curtailing my desire for the candy when we went to the store. Years later I asked her why she made up the story and she claimed that she never said it.

caleb

When I was about 7 years old, I watched a show about atomic bombs. They mentioned that the destructive force was brought about by splitting atoms. For a long while after that show, I believed that there was a small chance that I could split an atom while doing something like cutting bread with a knife. I was always terrified that by cutting my jelly sandwich into halves, I may accidentally wipe my town off the map.

SMooSH

I didn't want to taste M&Ms at a birthday party, but my parents made me, and I found out that I liked them. I liked the red and yellow ones, but there were green and black ones too. Green and black were "boy-colors", so they were disgusting, and probably poisonous for girls.

Anon

i used to be deathly terrifed of Rice Krispies cereal. I thought the "popping" noise it made was a warning for me not to it eat!!

Snapcracklepop

I was told as a child that if you ate bannans you would grow a tail and become a monkey. I didn't eat any but I sure fed a lot of them to my little brother since I wanted a monkey.

No Body

I used to believe that the inside part of the banana was posonous, but fortunately the outside part was the antidote, so as long as you ate the whole thing, you'd be fine. I was told this by a microbiologist when I was 9 and believed him utterly.

Janet

My Granddad told me his favorite jam was boysenberry. I thought he was saying poisonberry, and I was afraid to taste it.

bessy

Remember Pop Rocks, those little candies that used to "explode" in your mouth? When I was 6, a friend told me that if you mixed those with soda and drank it, you'd blow up. My older brother put some into my cup of Sprite when I wasn't looking once and told me with a smirk after I had taken a long sip. I was so upset that I ran crying to my room and laid there for hours, convinced I was going to die and cursing my brother's name for all eternity. When I heard my stomach rumble from hunger, I believed I was in the final moments of my life and I started screaming so loudly my neighbors called the cops because they thought something was seriously wrong.

Kelly

When I was about six years old, I saw an advertisment on TV for those cream-filled chocolate eggs. There was a rabbit on-sreen bawking like a chicken, and a real-live chicken making no noise. I was scared to eat one because I knew rabbits did not make that sound. I was convinced that if I ate one of the candy eggs, that I would start to make that chicken sound uncontrollably, and never be able to comunicate with my friends again in words. For years when Easter rolled around, I would give all my eggs to my cousin. Why his English wasn't translated to bawking I never knew.

Loren

I assume sometime when I was a young child, I ate a banana and then requested another one. My mother, thinking that one piece of fruit was enough, told me "No, you'll get sick." For the longest time, I thought there was something special about bananas in that one was a tasty treat but two would make a person sick.

Frank W.

I used to have phobia about seafood (shrimp, crabs, etc.) because I thought that they would slither up my face and crawl into one of my orifices. There it would proceed to nest and slowly eat my brain and lay eggs...

Taylor

My grandmother used to say "you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die", and not having any idea of the weight or measurement of a peck I believed that when you reached that limit of a "peck", you just automatically dropped down dead. It was my job to scrub the vegetables before cooking and you better believe I scrubbed the heck out of them.

Judith Hampton

When I was a kid I used to love Burger King fish sandwichs (called the Whaler) with a vanilla milk shake. My mom (from Pakistan) told me I should never drink milk with fish or it would cause me to have huge white spots all over my body. Once we saw a lady with huge white spots and my mom told me she drank milk after eating fish. She said I could drink milk first then eat fish and I would be ok, but never the other way around. I would still drink my milk shake after the fish just waiting for the white spots to appear. They never did. But I figured if ever they did appear, i would just keep drinking milk and eating fish until my whole body turned white. Then I would look ok.

I finally realized this was a Pakistani myth. But my mom still believes it. So do some of my uncles.

Rafay from Connecticut

When I was little, before I developed my perception of size, I use to be convinced I would fall down the holes in crumpets so would never go near the things!!!!

Rachel Jones

When I was little I swallowed an ice cube and thought I was going to freeze.

Squirrel 1254

When I was a kid, I was very afraid of chicken pot pies, and wondered why anyone would ever eat any such thing. It was probably because I wasn't yet clearly hearing a distinction between "chicken pot" and "chicken pox". So I must have been thinking of them as "chicken pox pies".

Jennifer

i used to believe that if i ate mushrooms they would grow on me

gwen

If you don't eat Potato Croquettes in under 1 minute they explode.

Sarah