I think we all heard growing up that you shouldn’t swim for at least 30 minutes after eating. Well, that fact has been proved false. Needless to say, there are a lot of other things we were told growing up that turned out to be false.
And a few months ago, Reddit user u/monsterpupper was curious about which things Gen Xers were told growing up that ended up being untrue when they asked, “What would some of our disproven facts be?”
Well, thousands of Gen X’ers shared the big myths they were told. And here are some of the top and best comments:
1.”I thought we were going to be offered drugs by strangers a whole lot more.”
2.”The food pyramid is a healthy way to eat.”
3.”You won’t always walk around with a calculator in your pocket.”
“Yes! Suck it, eighth-grade math teacher! In the future, we all walk around with a calculator!!!”
—u/[deleted]
Science & Society Picture Librar / SSPL via Getty Images
4.”The safest place to be during a nuclear strike is under your desk.”
5.”I took my son to a dinosaur exhibit; literally everything I learned about dinosaurs is now wrong, including names of dinosaurs.”
“I still remember reading books that the dinosaurs evolved into modern-day reptiles, only to be taught again many years later that dinosaurs are actually modern-day birds.”
Denver Post / Denver Post via Getty Images
6.”Eggs are bad for you. No, wait, they are good for you…hang on, are they bad again?”
7.”Your child is hyperactive solely because of sugar.”
8.”If I swallow gum, it will take seven years to digest.”
9.”Not on fire as much as I thought I would be. So much ‘Stop, drop, and roll’ growing up.”
TBS
“I recently discovered that my niece and nephew haven’t been taught about ‘Stop, drop, and roll’ in school. They looked at me like I was crazy when I explained it to them!”
10.”Don’t sit too close to the TV or you’ll go blind! Then computers came and we would have to spend eight-plus hours at work with a screen 5 inches from our eyes.”
11.”Acid rain wasn’t an actual threat to the extent it was touted. Oh, and killer bees!!! 😆”
12.”The tongue has a map of different taste buds that taste different things.”
“The tongue map being debunked was one of those ‘I fucking knew it!’ moments when I started reading about how they BS’d us with this one.”
Peterhermesfurian / Getty Images/iStockphoto
13.”Japanese cars are poor quality and unreliable.”
14.”Slightly foolish but true, LOL: that quicksand would be a real-life problem”
“Dude, it was quicksand and amnesia for me — like, I was ready for that shit, and nothing. But it seems it was more cartoon narrative tropes than anything. Oh well.”
Motortion / Getty Images/iStockphoto
15.”You will have to write in cursive for the rest of your life.”
16.”Plastic bags will save the Earth because we won’t have to kill as many trees to make brown paper bags to carry groceries.”
17.”The United States will be using the metric system by 1983.”
18.”Technology would give us so much free time in the future that we’d only have to work 5–10 hours a week. And we’d be able to do it from home, and employers would be on board with it. That one still hurts.”
19.And last: “Mikey didn’t die after eating Pop Rocks while drinking a Coca-Cola.”
You can read the full thread of responses on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
