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butt-stupid advice
Jul. 27th, 2012 08:56 pmSo when Mr. E got home today, he told me about this guy he had met on the bus on the way home. This guy had smiled and waved at the Junebug (everybody does; he's freaking adorable;) but then when the Junebug smiled back, he told Mr. E, "No! Teach him not to talk to strangers!" (The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children DOES NOT endorse this advice.) And then, he related the story of what he himself does with his grandchildren, which is, apparently, every night, five minutes after they've fallen asleep, he presses down on their chins to open their mouths. Apparently the theory is that this will cause them to bond. They'll remember their grandfather! They're all growing and learning, or something!
And then later, eating capers at dinner, I reminisced about how every time I eat pickles, I feel remembered annoyance at my family, who told me not to eat pickles because they are fattening. Pickles. The ones made out of cucumber and vinegar. I have heard a lot of crazy-ass theories about what causes weight gain, pointing the finger at a lot of different things, but pickles is not one I have ever heard of from any other source no matter how dumb. But then, these were the same people who told me not to drink carbonated water because carbonation causes cellulite.
So now I'm wondering. What is the dumbest advice you have ever gotten?
(I feel like this is different in kind from the people who tell you you must have a(nother) baby, or that you mustn't sleep train or you must put a hat on the baby you already have, or similar, but I am sick and do not have the brain to explain exactly how. Something to do with it maybe being fine or at least somehow logical advice for one person but applied indiscriminately to everyone, including to people for which it might be not helpful or actually quite harmful and the advice-giver has no way of knowing. I'm not sure in which category the advice my pregnant coworker got from her mother, to scrub up her nipples with steel wool to toughen them for nursing, falls into; but either way, OW.)
And then later, eating capers at dinner, I reminisced about how every time I eat pickles, I feel remembered annoyance at my family, who told me not to eat pickles because they are fattening. Pickles. The ones made out of cucumber and vinegar. I have heard a lot of crazy-ass theories about what causes weight gain, pointing the finger at a lot of different things, but pickles is not one I have ever heard of from any other source no matter how dumb. But then, these were the same people who told me not to drink carbonated water because carbonation causes cellulite.
So now I'm wondering. What is the dumbest advice you have ever gotten?
(I feel like this is different in kind from the people who tell you you must have a(nother) baby, or that you mustn't sleep train or you must put a hat on the baby you already have, or similar, but I am sick and do not have the brain to explain exactly how. Something to do with it maybe being fine or at least somehow logical advice for one person but applied indiscriminately to everyone, including to people for which it might be not helpful or actually quite harmful and the advice-giver has no way of knowing. I'm not sure in which category the advice my pregnant coworker got from her mother, to scrub up her nipples with steel wool to toughen them for nursing, falls into; but either way, OW.)
