My health class was taught by our gym teacher and she was terrible at it. Some points I remembered being taught:

• Hypertension is when the hamstrings of your legs shrink because you don't stretch every morning. Hypertension can kill you, so make sure you stretch.
• All drugs make you hallucinate. Every single one of them. Usually dragons. People die on drugs because they're trying to get away from the dragons and jump off buildings or run into traffic.
• Babies have super suction power which they use to breastfeed. An adult cannot get milk from a breast because they can't suck hard enough.

I learned these were wrong after starting secondary school where biology was taught by someone who studied biology. Except for the breastfeeding thing. That one was through personal research.

"I will love you no matter what"

That changed real fuckin fast when i came out as trans

"When you grow up, you can be anything you want to be."

I wanna be a homeowner. 🫩

"This will go on your permanent record".

Outrageous lie back in the 80s.

Unfortunately true today with the internet and the surveillance state.

With liberty and and justice for all.

• It's illegal to turn the interior light on in the car while driving.
• If you make that face, it'll stay like that.
• Sitting too close to the TV will give you square eyes
• If you lie, you get spots on your tongue (would then ask to show you your tongue when they asked you if you telling the truth)
• The Square box in that corner (the maximize window button on a PC) is a camera and we can watch what you do.

I was little and going through that "ask an unending stream of questions to figure out how the world works / determine the limits of your parent's patience" phase. At one point during this my mother, who had up until this point used this as an opportunity to teach me how to research things and overall handled it with grace, began to hit her limit. And so one fine morning when I had perkily jammed myself underneath the toilet in a way that startled the living daylights out of her when she came in and I asked how toilets worked, she said in great exasperation "toilet gnomes, and you shouldn't be down there bothering them". This of course made perfect sense to me - someone had to crew the little boat, and humans would never fit in there.

I maintain to this day that it was an act of class solidarity that I shouldn't be mocked for when, several days later, she found me pooping in the yard because I "didn't want the gnomes to work too hard".

1. there is a god

2. race is a biological reality

3. men and women are fundamentally different

4. Just world theory

5. America is a force for good in the world

6. The Enlightenment makes Western culture superior

7. The post-war boom where a single income could buy a hose/ car/ and college was a universal reality and not exclusive to white men.

8. Guns make you safe.

Hard work will always lead to success, which is why anyone can be president.

Some really solid teachers in high school were able to cover why that was bullshit just by proper framing of the material.

Oh boy, where do I start? I was raised by racist crack and meth addicts in the rural southern US.

Black people hate white people.

Black people are trying to replace white people on a genetic level (Great Replacement Theory).

Black people have smaller skulls and thus, smaller brains than white people, which makes them more ape-like and prone to aggression.

Black people are taller, run faster, and jump higher than white people because they have three extra muscles in their knee area. Basketball was a white people's sport before they set the slaves free.

Black people drink and play loud music all the time because "that's their culture".

All black people are lazy moochers who cheat the welfare system for free money to drink and smoke crack all day because they feel entitled to it after slavery.

Black people actually liked slavery back in the day because they had a decent, simple life. Many of them begged to go back to the plantations after they were freed because they had nowhere else to go.

The world was a better place when black people were slaves because at least then, they worked. Now, you have them all sitting around, collecting welfare, having white people pay their bills for them. If you think about it, white people are the slaves now.

Just a little crack is fine, as long as you're not an addict like those black people.

Beer is for white people. It doesn't get you too drunk so you can still go to work. Black people don't work, that's why they drink liquor.

Birds have wings because they're supposed to fly, that's what they do. Women have wombs because they're supposed to have babies, that's what they do.

Men are supposed to have as many babies as possible because God says to be fruitful and multiply. But women are only supposed to have their husband's babies to keep the bloodline pure.

I'm sure there are more, those are just the ones I haven't repressed.

The USA is the land of the free

My parents were super against lying to kids. We'd hear parents in front of us at mcdonalds tell their kids they couldn't have french fries because they were all out and we'd ask "is that true?" And mom and dad would assure us no, it's not true, those parents are just afraid of telling their kids no.

I remember realizing at like 8 that "don't swallow gum because it can't be digested and will just accumulate in your gut" can't be true.

The classic "if you eat watermelon seeds, one will grow in your stomach."

Whenever one of these questions comes up, all I have to say is my parents were saints compared to so many. I was raised without religion, whenever I asked something they did their best to answer honestly, never forced me to do stupid shit, etc.

My brother, on the other hand...

"You'll be better off when you're older"

Dogs get diarrhea if you pull their tails.

my father said you are gay if you don't like sports and you read books.

Much more inconsequential than some of the answers here, but I believed well into my 20s that it was illegal to turn the overhead light on in a car while driving at night.

Most outrageous / unbelievable lies

Jesus is god

Most offensive / dangerous lies

Republicans want what is best for the country too. The world / USA fought the Nazis because of how evil they are
The KKK / Neonazis / White Supremacists are in the past.

Most “adult meant it as genuine advice but it’s laughably out of touch” lies

Work hard and stay loyal and you will progress in your career.

Lies you wish you still believed

Uncle ... is just old-fashioned.

Lies you took as truth and didn’t question it until you were way too old

The ultra wealthy work so hard to create jobs for everyone else

When I was between 10-12 years old, I attended a family celebration at my grandparents' house. I walked into one of the side rooms where my uncle was chilling by himself on a couch, and I noticed something shiny in the upper corner of the window. I took a closer look and found a wad of aluminum foil smashed into the corner against the window pane and it was somehow affixed there. I pointed to it and asked my uncle what the purpose of it was. He replied, "Papa and Nana believe in aliens. They put that up there so if an alien ship fires a laser at the house, it'll reflect back at the ship." And for some reason, I just believed his sarcastic nonsense. I believed my grandparents were alien fanatics well into my teens.

My pronounced cowlick on right side of my forehead was from when I was a baby and my mom let a cow lick me and the cow spit made my hair get stuck that way. I was probably 4 at the time, believed her, and I was very offended that my mom had been so irresponsible as to allow this and leave me permanent defaced. I didn't really question it again until i was probably 8-10

"Trans people are just gay men who are willing to become women to sleep with more men." From my mother who had a bachelor's degree in biology.

Not only incredibly transmisogynistic, but also confused me a lot as a transmasc kid hitting puberty and wondering why my body suddenly felt very, very wrong in ways beyond the norm.

My sister had a practical joke to use on her daughter. When she was only a toddler, she kept saying in conversation that Jessica Simpson was OJ Simpson's daughter. Not all the time, just when it came up. We all thought it was hilarious, and it's pretty minor. The idea is that one day, her daughter will say it to someone else and get corrected.

Then the ease of fact checking that online made it impractical.

Then someone we never counted on - that daughter, being in high school, didn't know or care about either of those people. They don't come up in ANY conversations between high school kids. Or even us, at that point. One day, my sister brought it up and the kid goes "who?" And it dawned on her that it would never pay off. She told her and it was just an awkward silence followed by "um, ok?" Or something like that.

I guess the joke is on my sister for getting old?

My parents told me when I was a kid "If you light the spray from a can of WD40 to make a flamethrower, the fumes will make you wet your pants."

My parents were just trying to keep me from playing with fire.

Women are intellectually, emotionally, and physically inferior to men. That one sort of backfired on him because his daughters worked to disprove that bullshit and don't have relationships with him but his son barely graduated high school and hasn't worked ever and lives at home at 40. He's in for a rude awakening when they die because I'm not taking care of lazy men. He'll die without a caretaker.

Things can only get better.

Bumblebees don’t sting.

I have to give mom a pass for this one, though. The bumblebees in our yard were huge. It kept me from freaking out, which was probably for the best. Unfortunately, I believed it into my 40s, and repeated it a few times.