bad habits

I used to believe…

When I was younger, I use to bite my finger nails until one day my mom told me that they would never grow back if I kept doing it. I believed her, and till this day, I have never bit my finger nails.

I used to believe that boogers were a part of my brain. I was told that if the brains were removed from my head I would lose brain cells, thus losing intelligence. In order to avoid being stupid I ate my boogers to keep them "in the system."

I used to believe…

When I was little, all the grownups smoked. My uncle told me that when the cigarrette burned down to the filter, it would explode. I hung around waiting for this to happen, but it never did.

I used to believe…

my babysitter told me to stop digging for gold. I beleived that I could really find gold and started hiding all my boogers and waiting for them to change to gold.

I used to believe…

my brother used to pick his nose when he was little. one time my dad caught him and told him that he shouldn't do it because he could scratch his brain.
i've never seen him pick his nose again.

I used to believe…

My dad lost half of his ring finger a couple of days before I was born so I never knew him with it. All my siblings and I always had our fingers in our noses so he would tell us that he was picking his nose one day when he was little, in the car and his mother hit a bump and half his finger got stuck up there. We didn't stop picking, we just stopped picking in front of him but my younger brother believed it long enough to pass it on to other kids his age.

I used to believe…

My mother told me that if I picked my nose my nostrils would expand and become extremely wide. I had an uncle who had an unpleasantly big nose and wide nostrils so my mom would say that my nose would be just like his because he picked his nose when he was a kid. I used to believe this until I was a teenager!

I used to believe…

When I was 5 years old, my aunt told me if I didn't stop biting my nails, I'd get worms. The only kind of worms I knew of were earth worms. Terrified I would have a bunch earth worms growing in my stomache, I never bit my nails again.

I used to believe…

When I was about 4, my mum told me that her dad bit his nails when he was a kid and that, after a while, they just gave up growing and never were a normal length again. It certainly stopped me from biting my nails, but it only occurred to me TODAY that it might not be true, so I googled it. If only I could say I was still relatively young or really dumb... but no, I'm a straight-A student in my GCSE year. If only I had been more cynical and disbelieving as a child...

I used to believe…

One of my friends had an uncle who lost part of his thumb in an accident. He tricked her into thinking that he could take it off and put it back on whenever he wanted (using a similar trick to 'Got-your-nose' to convince her.) Apparently she did not notice that he never had his entire thumb on him. Then he told her that the reason he could do this was that he had sucked his thumb non-stop for a whole night once, and in the morning his thumb just fell off. She, of course, wanted to have this special ability to remove a part of her hand at will, so she tried it. Disappointment is a sad thing...

I used to believe…

When i was little every single adult in the family smoked (and still do) and then when my mummy said to me that she can't quit, i thought you HAD to smoke to live.

I used to believe…

When I was little, my mom told me that if I ate my boogers they would turn into worms and chew at my insides. I stopped eating my boogers.

I used to bite my nails a lot. Every time I got a stomachache, I would imagine the little crescents of my nails poking into the lining of my stomach. Unfortunately, I could never stop biting my nails.

I used to believe…

My sisters convinced me that mucus was dead brain cells and if you picked your nose, it would make you stupid.

I used to believe…

When i was little, i always wondered why my grandpa had big nostrils and one finger with no nail. So i asked him why. I remember him saying he poked his nose a lot and that the booger monster bit his fingernail off. So i never picked my nose and now i tell my kids the same thing.

I used to believe…

To scare me out of picking my nose, my grandmother told me the boogers would turn into worms.

...This only made me try harder.