No. 106 "Childhood Myths."

Ah, being young. There's nothing better. You don't have to worry about a job, paying the bills, or having to guess your girlfriend's Facebook password twenty eight times to find out if she's been cheating on your sorry ass. It was a simpler time filled with cloud staring and asking your parents "how come" multiple times in a row until they beat you with a belt. But, there were myths that all kids were positive could happen if they didn't play it safe. Most of these myths were made up by that dickhead Joey who was a straight up liar and enjoyed tricking everyone into believing silly things. Every group of kids had a Joey.

Sneezing With Your Eyes Open:
Even at the risk of having your eyes pop out of their sockets and hanging down your face like an old man's ball sack, people will continue to try this and prove it to be untrue. I am actually not sure if this is true or not, and whenever I ask my doctor, he reminds me that his specialty isn't in optometry, but in diseases transmitted from intercourse with livestock. Kids would try to hold their eyes open while sneezing, but after six tries it was deemed impossible by the 4th grade class witnessing the demonstration. Attempting to sneeze with your eyes open will cause a few side effects though, including: a shitty ass headache, looking like an idiot, and public deriding.

Swinging Over The Bars:
There are few things more enjoyable and relaxing than swinging for hours on end. These include: fellatio while having a sandwich prepared, laying on a pool raft with a cold beer, and skipping rocks with the elderly. The swings were always the biggest attraction at the park for children. If the swings were already taken by a few kids, you would automatically hate those kids for the next five years. The slides were lame, and throwing sand at smaller kids can only be fun for so long. I believe it was a Nickelodeon show that convinced me that if you swing over the bars, your skin will go inside out and people will think you look weird. That is why whenever I was on the swings, I would be very careful and yell at my friends for pushing me too high. Plus, jumping off the swing, trying to go as far as possible, and breaking your ankle is much more fun.

Santa Clause:
This is a big one. Unlike the prior myths, this one was perpetrated by your fabulist parents in a giant conspiracy to make you behave during the winter months and eventually spoil you with gifts you won't care about in three months time. Now, it would take several hours to explain the whole story behind Christmas. What we need to focus on is those peeping toms/child molesters called elves. Apparently, they would be sneaking around your house watching you and then communicate with that obese old man who lives in Canada or wherever. Whenever a child misbehaved, their parent would point to a dark window or door and tell the child that the elves were listening, and that Santa would give them coal if their behavior continued. In my household, we eventually found out that the little people watching through windows were not in fact elves, but actually midget sex offenders who had jumped bail.

Cooties:
More of a false bacterial epidemic. Nowadays, doctors do not use elementary terms to speak of this disease. They just call it herpes. According to my 3rd grade diary journal, cooties can be spread three different ways. 1) By touching a member of the opposite sex during contact sports such as tag. 2) Through contact with someone who had been infected with the virus. 3) And, having someone spread rumors that you in fact have the virus, even though you totally don't. Only a trained doctor or child who claims they're doctor could give the Cooties Shot. This is administered by reciting the words: "Circle, circle, dot, dot, now you've got the cooties shot," while using the index finger to circle and dot the infected area. The Cooties Shot can also be administered by a quick punch to the arm. Unfortunately, this was only a temporary treatment. Eventually, sometime around 5th or 6th grade the vaccine was developed, called Commonia Sensia.

Slurpee Brain Freeze:
Frozen carbonated beverages are very popular among children. The sugar gives them a rush and the scoop straws can act as a sword after the beverage has been finished. But, if one drinks a Slurpee too fast, Sphenopalatine Ganglioneuralgia can occur, which in some cases can lead to death. This is what kids believed on the playgrounds across this country. Although no deaths have been recorded, there are a few ways to relieve the pain of a brain freeze. The most common cure is to press your tongue to the roof of your mouth for a few seconds. This can take too long for some children, so crying and yelling for your mommy is the most common response to a brain freeze. The best way to avoid a brain freeze is to either drink the beverage slowly or to grow up and drink a fucking beer like an adult.

Candyman:
Depending on your age, if you call "Candyman," or "Bloody Mary" five times in the mirror, the spirit will summon, and basically you're fucked. The bravest kid would always try this at slumber parties to impress the other children, while the biggest pussy would attempt to dissuade him from doing this because summoned spirits might wake up his parents. Most times, the first person to try it and not die a horrible death is either congratulated by his friends or told that he did it wrong and must try it again. It is unclear whether one must perform the task in the dark, but the first time anyone tries the Candyman, they try it while the lights are on. Because evil monsters can't get you while the bathroom fluorescents are on.

Sitting Too Close To The Television:
As kids, we had a natural proclivity to sit as close to our cartoons as possible. Unlike today, where we'd rather relax on a comfortable leather sofa several yards away while watching Skinamax. Everyone has been told by their mother that sitting too close to the TV will ruin your eyes. Usually, this was just to get us up from the ground so our mothers could continue sweeping (as they should) while we watched Rugrats for another three hours. Watching television too closly is probably not great for your eyes, but it certainly would not "ruin" them. Even so, I will pass this myth on to my children so they don't sit so close to the TV while I'm watching 3-D porn. Nowadays, our eyes are ruined from smoking too much weed, leaving our contact lenses in for a week straight, and knife fights.

Hand/Face Measurements:
Actually, this was a trick that Joey came up with so he could make you slap yourself and then announce to the other students that, not only are you a retard, but you just hit yourself in the nose. Most of us remember this routine from grade school and there is no one out there who has not been conned into a self-inflicted face slap. For those who are uniformed on the trick, basically you tell an unknowing individual that if their hand is bigger than their face, they are mentally retarded. Backing this up with documentation and statistics is difficult, so they're just have to take your word for it. The victim of the coax will then put their hand over their face, and at this time you slam their hand into their face and then point at them while laughing for several minutes. Try it with your boss.

So, those are a handful of myths that we all were "like, totally positive" were true until we got into middle school and were mocked by older kids when asking for a cooties shot. We should all be glad that most of these myths are totally untrue, otherwise we'd be living in a world where diseases could be contracted by simple contact, summoned souls would be waking up angry parents and people would be walking around inside out. I do, however wish that leprechauns existed so I could steal their gold and produce blinged-out chains for the hip hop community.

Updated 7/18/10