12 Unbelievable Rumors We All Stupidly Fell For As Kids

Kids are a pretty gullible bunch, as many of them haven't been exposed enough to the world to have a healthy level of cynicism. As a result, they tend to believe pretty firmly in some very, very absurd things.

We here at Throwbacks polled our staff on some of the weirdest things they believed when they were young, and the results were the 12 rumors, that vary from common, to hilarious, to outright insane.

Shooting out tonsils.

Let's start off with a weird one. According to a coworker, "my dad told me that to have your tonsils removed, they would "shoot them out." I'm not sure I want to know what that even entails.

Mountain Dew lowers your sperm count.

Chances are we all heard this one in high school at some point. What I wanna know is, why did anybody care about their sperm count as a teenager?

Blood-sucking wrist elastics.

As one coworker commented, "my dad used to tell us that wearing an elastic or hair tie around our wrists will kill us because they suck the blood out of us." Yeesh, what the hell dad?

Sitting too close to the TV.

Parents have been telling us to sit away from the TV for decades now, and we all turned out just fine regardless. So what if I need glasses as thick as a Coke bottle?

Blinded by socks.

Seems like there's a trend of dads messing with their kids, because another coworker commented that "my dad said if i wear socks going to bed I'll go blind." I have so many questions.

The lies just get even more ridiculous from here...

"We took your pet to the farm."

Talking to your kid about death is never a fun or easy prospect, and some parents opted to just tell us instead that our beloved pet was taken to a farm where they could run free. Maybe this one wasn't the worst...

Monsters under the bed.

Between an overactive imagination and watching way too many scary movies, pretty much every kid has this fear at some point. Which monster was under your bed? Apparently for one of our writers it was Shrek.

Turning on lights is illegal.

Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, had their parents tell them this bull**** lie about why you couldn't drive with the indoor lights on in the car. What else haven't you told me, mom?!

Candy can shrink your balls.

This is a personal one. When I was in grade 8, someone started a rumor that eating Nerds candy would shrink your testicles, and one of my best friends at the time was like "I know it's not true... but I also haven't eaten them since..."

Don't cross your eyes.

I've crossed my eyes plenty of times and they've never gotten stuck that way, MOM!

Knowledge through sleeping.

Anyone ever try to sleep with a math book under their pillow to try to make themselves remember the material better? Yeah, me neither...

Stomach watermelons.

If you're like me, you saw the episode of Rugrats where they had to get a watermelon seed out of one of the kids before it grew into a full watermelon and burst out of their stomach like a facehugger from Alien, and it traumatized you for years.

Which of these did you believe as a kid?