Your face will not freeze like that....

(another piece of mine, originally published by stridepost.com, re-printed here, for posterity, with their official okely dokely.)

 I realized something, recently.

As parents, we’ve broken the chain.
The generations-old chain of passing on scary falsehoods to our kids.

They’re going back in the water right after eating now!
They’ll never know that their face may “freeze like that”.
If they swallow gum, it won’t stay in their stomachs for seven years.
And they’re likely not going to go blind, at least not for the reasons about which we were warned.

That whole “Waiting an hour to go swimming” story?

It’s been around for at least a century. 

But is likely not as vital to our continued existence as we were made to believe.
When you think of all the time wasted as a child, gazing with longing at the water…. I’m sorry.
Truly.

And I was right there with you,
Solidarity, my friends!

Once you realize that you won’t immediately die if you don’t wait an hour after eating or drinking to go back in the water, your whole world can open up.

“They clearly don’t know what they’re talking about, so Why NOT juggle fire while riding a unicycle? “

And while it might not be a surprise to any of you at this point, let me be clear about something. Your face will not freeze in any position that you voluntarily put it. Unless you have one of two neurological disorders.   
If you do not suffer from Spasmodic Toricollis, or Blepharospasm, you’ll probably be ok.

And while your digestive system does not break down gum like it would food, It does keep it moving along the digestive tract, like anything else.

Accurate nor not, these were some of the safety warnings of our youth, probably because they were the safety warnings of our parents’ youth.

But at some point, I have to think that my dad would have jumped off the rocks into the stream, at his favorite swimming hole (One he showed us many years later) right after eating or drinking, and realized he had been fed an untruth.

So why pass them along?

He ate, he swam, he did not get a cramp and immediately sink and drown… Probably more than once.   So… Why?

Perhaps to give us a time out, a bit of chill time to catch our breaths and calm down a bit?   Or to give themselves a break from having to keep an eye on us?

Or were we told these things as a way to ease us into the notion that our parents were fallible?
“We do what we can to keep you safe, and to keep your face from freezing, and to keep you from going blind, but at the end of the day… we’re imperfect.”?

Or, less profound, and more likely, they did so, simply because it’s what they heard, when they were kids.

Regardless, we haven’t passed these chestnuts on to my daughter.

But she knows we do what we can to keep her safe, and she certainly knows we’re imperfect.

But we keep working at it.