butt-stupid advice

[metaphortunate]

So 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.)

Comments

[jesse_the_k]

My mother advised me not to make too many friends since this would increase the chance that one would turn on me. She also promoted "maintain shallow relationships to minimize hurt."

This might be true, but it's still nutty stupid

[metaphortunate]

That is remarkably bad advice!

[wordweaverlynn]

That guy makes me want to call CPS to save his grandchildren's sanity.

Worst advice ever? There's so much to choose from. My mother's infamous mixed messages come to mind, like "If a boy ever tries to hurt you, kick him in the balls. But not too hard, or you'll ruin him for life." My mother, standing up for rapists and child molesters since [redacted]. (Yes, really. She testified as a character witness when a guy I was in school with was tried for his 2-year relationship with his 13-year-old stepdaughter.)

Or, when I was 5 or 6, "If your husband and your kid are both drowning, save your husband. You can always have another child."

Then there's all the advice I got from my home church. The usual guff about Submissive Womanhood (that sure didn't take) and the simple dictum that no book is worth reading except the Bible.

Note icon. It applies.

[metaphortunate]

Those are terrible! Those are all amazingly terrible! D:

[kore]

My dad telling before I went off to college at 17 that if I got pregnant, it was OK, I didn't have to have an abortion because he and my mother would raise the child as their own. THANKS DAD

[metaphortunate]

Wooooow. I mean...I can almost, kind of, see the germ of the good impulse that that terrible advice wanted to be? But it NEVER MADE IT.

[veejane]

"That'll give you bees."

[metaphortunate]

That is the BEST advice. :D

[princessofgeeks]

i think it's a tossup between a woman in a store who told me to mix bleach and ammonia to get the bloodstains out of my son's shirt; he had just had a nosebleed in the shoe section.

and

my dad, who told me drafting would be a great career for me.

i did not, however, take either of these pieces of advice.

or, perhaps, the advice to buy tech stocks in 2000.

[metaphortunate]

I think it was David Sedaris who wrote that when he was cleaning houses for a living he found that mixing bleach and ammonia actually worked really well to shift stubborn bathroom stains as long as he kept repeating "I want to live....I want to live..." and took regular breaks...

[brownbetty]

Not advice I received personally, but advice a friend received and she was so dumbfounded that she passed it on: she was told not to eat cheese, as it was fattening, because it contained cellulose.

[(Anonymous)]

...

I...

People are confusing.

[metaphortunate]

To quote Wolfgang Pauli, "That's not right. That's not even wrong."

[amaebi]

It's really wonderful for you to be completely surrounded by people who dislike you!" The ! is to indicate the great peppiness of voice with which this was delivered.

[metaphortunate]

Wha...buh...WHY...

[wordweaverlynn]

Why?

[amaebi]

Do you mean, why would it be wonderful for me to be completely surrounded by people who disliked me? Because it would Improve me, and I was in desperate need of Being Improved.

[wordweaverlynn]

Just get into this nice Iron Maiden. It will open you up to new ideas!

[firecat]

Certain adults told me, a depressed teenager with suicidal thoughts, "Enjoy high school! It's the best years of your life!"

[metaphortunate]

Oh god. But you knew it wasn't true, right? Even I could tell that the people who said that were Not My People.

[firecat]

I suspected it wasn't true, but I still have fantasies about finding those adults and ripping out their eyeballs.

[wired]

Just on a side note, I heard about the best onesie ever, which evidently says "My mommy does not need your advice."

I want to buy 10 and travel back in time to give them to myself.

[metaphortunate]

Ha! Wonderful. :D