My Mom knew when we lied because our 'Tongues would turn black'. Of course, she was 100% accurate as we'd refuse to stick them out when guilty.

We lived in remote 40's New England, and during our first visit to New York City, we both shouted "Mom - look!, that person must be an awful liar!!" upon seeing a Black person for the first time, To this day our grand-children are reluctent to show their tongues for fear of being caught in a lie.

Medved

When I was about 4 my mum told me that when I lied a black spot apppeared on my tounge. Not only did I believe this untill I was about ten I also used to sit in front of the mirror telling lies to try and see it!

princesstallulah

When our oldest boy was 5, we bought him a bow-tie, in a brown paper bag, for his first school concert, but his little brother cried because he'd missed out on a present.
In a moment of desperation, we told him, "There's no need to cry, your present is still in the bag."
Of course, the bag was empty, but we told him that only Mommies and Daddies could see the little Fresh-Air inside.
Well, we had that little Fresh-Air doing somersaults, jumping in and out of the bag and all sorts of circus tricks.
He carried that crumpled little brown paper bag around for months, showing it to envious friends and to grown-ups with looks of barely strangled laughter on their faces. We had to warn family in advance that the Fresh-Air was being brought for a visit.
Things came to a head 6 months later when he realised that nobody was feeding the Fresh-Air.
We told him, "He's eating the inside of the paper bag"...
"But there's no holes in the bag", said he, triumphantly...
"But it only eats the inside of the bag", we shot back...
That bought us another couple of weeks. He swears blind now that he twigged it straightaway.
We all know different...

Biggles

Anon

I use to believe that if you told a story/lie you would get a bump on your tongue.

Anon

When I was little, my ma made me go to Sunday School. For whatever reason, I got the idea that if you told a lie, then God would punish you. I once told a friend who had inadvertantly told a lie (she said she hadn't touched something when she accidentally had), that God would come round and burn down her house and kill her parents because of what she'd said.
Scary preaching Kid! It's a good job I don't believe in God anymore...

Beth

When I was very young my parents used to tell me I was found under a rock. Naturally, after being told this for years I believed it.
All was fun and games till we were at a grocery store when I was eight and an old friend of my mom's asked where I came from.

anon

when i was about 5 my parents told me that when u were in bed, and u were bad an blue alien spider would come up and bite u thenu would become an alien spider too! i was never bad because of that lol

good grl

When I was little, my parents gave me a watch as a present on one of our family vacations. It fit me perfectly, and at night it would show stars in the background of the dial, and the sun during the day. It was my very first watch, and I loved it. We traveled all over the state, making pit-stops at family's houses, and visiting the coast, all the while my watch ticked marvelously. When we finally got home after a few days, I couldn't find the watch I had grown to love and cherish. I was devastated, but learned to live with disappointment, and move on.

A few weeks later, we revisited my grandparents, and Grandma had something new and exciting to show me. She said that Grandpa had given it to her as a gift, and she pulled back her sleeve to reveal a shining ticking replica of the watch I had lost - stars and all. I was shocked. My youthful suspicions awoke. For years I was convinced that I had left my precious watch at my grandparents' house and that my cheapskate grandpa found it and gave it to my grandma as a present. How could he do such a thing to me?!

It wasn't until recently that I thought about it harder, and realized that the band wasn't even the same, and that I had probably just left it in a hotel room somewhere in our travels. I recounted the story of my hot anger and betrayal when the granparentals came to visit recently, and we all had a good laugh.

Rachael the Great

My brother tortured me by saying he was going to eat the house and he'd bite into the woodwork in the kitchen. Everyone laughed while I cried my eyes out and I could not understand why they were not worried!

Vicki

i used to believe that if i lied my tounge would turn black so i used to stand in front of a mirror and lie so that it would turn when it wouldn't i thought i was not lieing properly and made up stupid lies over and over. i didn't know that lieing didn't turn your tounge black

gem

About five years ago, my sister and I used to do everything together, we worked, lived, shopped and went out drinking together... I use to always complain of having a really dry mouth during the night and that my tounge was like sand paper.. She told me that you are always suppose to drink 4 pints of water every time you go out drinking.. Otherwize you will swallow your tounge! I only found out a few months ago, I can't believe i could be so gullibile for like..4 years..I can be such a bone head! whats funnier is that i am 22 now!

Anon

When I was younger I would talk constantly. So to shut me up my Dad told me people only have a certain amout of words in their lifetime and if I used them all up I wouldn't be able to speak when I was older.

jen

I used to believe that if you were a tattle tale, then you would actually begin to grow a tail from behind. When I got older and figured out it wasn't true, i would tell my younger sisters the same thing. It was great because they would always look behind them.

Tootietilla

I was a very big "story teller" when I was about 4 or 5, so my mother told me that green smoke came out of my ears everytime I lied. Soon I started telling stories while covering my ears with my hands.

Sami

When I was little, around 6 or 7, my older sister was afraid of spiders. Since I wasn't and she didn't like that I wasn't she made me scared of them by telling me that everytime you fell asleep with your mouth open or woke up with your mouth open it meant that you ate a spider. I would try to keep my mouth closed everytime I was ready to sleep and if I woke up with my mouth open I got freaked out that I had eaten a spider until I was around 10.

Anon

My brother was mean to me when i was young. We were sitting in the car while our mother was visiting someone real quick, and those little plastic reflecter things were in the road. My brother pointed to it, since it was pretty close to our car, and told me it was a bomb. I got out of that car SO fast.

A Gullible Girl

This happened when i was seven. My EVIL ten-years-older-than-me brother told me that he was actually a really big three year old. His other seventeen year old friends agreed with him, so i believed him.

I suddenly got the idea that i was negative-seven years old because my parents said he was ten years older than me.

Yes, i did the math all wrong. I was only seven!

Anyway, i started freaking out because i thought that i was'nt even born yet... maybe i was a freak of nature? That made me belive a whole lot of other things that made absolutley no sense.

All because of my brother. -.-;

Lecia

my aunt used to tell her children that she has a house somewhere, as big as a palace and done up like one, and whenever the children asks about it she would say that it was still in building. and they believed her and waited for the day to move into the palace.

rain

Once, when I was little, some slightly older kids I was playing with drew a circle around me and said that if I left it cacti would grow through my feet. They proceeded to taunt me from outside.
Needless to say, I believed them and weeped and cried loudly until my mom came to my rescue to carry me out and yell at the others.

Zeta

When I was about 12 I asked my mom how people got emu oil. Her response was you put your forefinger and thum on either side of the emu's leg and almost milked the emu oil out. She always said that she never lied so I believed her for a few weeks until she finally told me differently.

Anon