body functions: general

As a child, I knew that spitting was rude, and that spit itself was considered disgusting. It concerned me greatly that I seemed to be swallowing spit all the time - surely this made me very dirty and bad, but what else was I supposed to do? Surely spitting it out would be worse? I was very worried that I produced so much spit as to need to swallow it all the time, so I asked my friends "do you do this too?" - I got no very definite answers, they all hedged or denied it outright, because they all knew, just as I did, that spitting was rude, and that spittal itself was disgusting. For years I thought I must be seriously malformed, and quite disgusting, it was a long time before I figured out that everyone is continually renewing their saliva in order to keep their mouth dry, and hence has to swallow it.

I am glad to know that I'm not unique in this belief.

I too thought that little men were running about inside me (think of miniature Ooompa Loompas). They'd move my muscles, send messages when it's time to dispose of waste (and open the valves when it was time to), handling cuts and scrapes by scurring to the site and putting internal bandages on (scabs), resting when I did, etc.

I thought the sole purpose of my eating and drinking was to keep THEM going.

I used to believe (through some skanty mis-reading of Judy Blume books too young) that menstruation was masturbation, and that masturbation was menstruation. So then, at the proper age, I asked my mother what masturbation meant, and she said, "Honey, you should never be ashamed."

Took me years to make sense of that. And by then I was pregnant!

I used to think that when you waved to say "hello", you had your hand wide and waved it from side to side (like normal waving) and to say goodbye, you had to have your fingers together and wave your hand up and down. I never really wondered what would happen if you didn't...

I used to believe, that if I yawned at the same time someone else yawned, we were automatically the same age. Don't ask me why or how, I just believed it happened.

When I was a kid (1950s) I used to believe that anything you wanted to do that was any fun would either put your eye out or give you lock-jaw according to my parents

When I was little, I believed that each person had a set amount of blood in their body, and as you got bigger the blood would thin out to fill up your body. I always liked to wear bandaids because they would stop the bleeding if I got cut, so I'd have more blood when I grew up.

When I was a kid I believed that bodies were operated by little people inside of you. They were little people dressed fully in white tights so that all you can see was their face. They talked to you and had weird machines that made your body work. When you got cuts, some would fall out.

When I was about 8 my older brother [17 at the time] told me that he could shut off his hearing..I belived him and spent hours trying to figure out how!! As a mom now, I tricked my 10 year old into believing it to..for hours she tried turning it off,by feeling for the buttons inside your ears....

I used to believe…

a friend of my mum's used to believe that you shouldn't wear underwear in bed because your bum needed to breathe.Her mum told her this.

When I was younger, I saw a TV show where there was a guy who had passed out and was lying on the ground. A girl got down and started feeling his wrists and his neck for a moment, then shouted, "I found a pulse!" and the guy woke up. From then on, I thought for certain that if you just touched someone's wrist for a while, you could find a pulse and save their life. I wondered why paramedics sometimes weren't able to save people's lives, if it was that easy.

I used to believe…

while my son was crying one day, my little brother announced that "babies cry to let off moisture". ha!

When I was little I believed there were creatures/people of some sort (kinda like the builders from Fraggle Rock) that lived inside of me and made my body functional. Every time I would eat I would picture my chewed up food going down a shoot and landing on a conveyer belt where it would be divided. Same with them being in my eyes and all over the rest of me. So when I was sick I thought maybe they were dying.

I used to believe…

rude-bits, I remember my friends telling me that if I masturbated my eyes would get slanted like an oriental person. Then a band called "The Vapors" came out with a song called "Turning Japanese." The song is about masterbation. AS you can probably tell I wouldn't touch the thing for a long time!

When I was younger my friend said that she had a sweet tooth and I said 'I've got one of those, but I don't know which one it is!'

At the age of 5 or 6 in the very early '60s my mom would take me with her shopping downtown. We took a string of street cars and buses to get there. Along the way I would notice on a regular basis "persons of color" spitting while at the bus stops or out the window of the bus. Their spit was brown. I now know it was from chewing tobacco, but at the time I reasoned that white people spit white, and brown people spit brown.