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If there’s something that my expensive college education has taught me, it’s to base what is true on empirical evidence. However, that wasn’t always the case when I was growing up. I was the youngest child. That means I had many older siblings whose life mission was to trick me at every possible opportunity. For example, I remember when I was 5 years old, my older brother convinced me that a lobster man with claws for his hands would eat me while I slept. Sleeping after that was a little hard, but I finally did. Little did I know that my siblings had gone to the creek below our house and captured a crawdad and put it in the bed with me. When I woke up and saw the claws on the crawdad, I was so scared that…well, let’s say that I had to change my underwear. I was sure that the lobsterman had gotten me.

Now that I’m older, I can see the humor in making me believe something untrue. However, I realized that I wasn’t the only one who thought things that weren’t true. Many people today accept specific facts to be true that are not. For example, I’ve heard it said that lightning never strikes twice. That’s the very reason for lightning rods to exist. We don’t get a get-out-of-jail-free card once lightning strikes. It can strike at any time, just like indigestion after eating at a Mexican restaurant.

I saw a drink the other day that said it would detox your body. Yep, it would rid your body of all the toxins and waste in the body. I’m sure the good Lord gave me a liver to do that. I don’t need your overpriced Kool-Aid to do what my body is already doing; thank you very much. Doing a job that doesn’t need to be done sounds like they must work for the government. 

Then, there’s the fairy tale that carrots help you to see in the dark. Well, I’ve been eating carrots my entire life, and I still stub my toe when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom in the dark. I don’t ever run into rabbits while stumbling in the dark, either, so I say this one is false.

One of the big lies I’ve heard my entire life is that it takes seven years to digest swallowed bubble gum. I don’t believe this for a second. If my stomach can handle all the beef jerky I’ve sent its way over the years, surely it can handle the few pieces of Hubba Bubba that I swallowed as a kid.

There are many things I always believed as truth that I’ve come to realize are not. For example, we only use 10% of our brains. Maybe they use 10% of their brain, but I need all of mine just to figure out how to work my phone. The list of lies that go on with driving with the interior light of your car on is illegal. Buy one, get two free, There are dozens of hot singles in my area who are dying to meet me and take it from me; just because a food is sugar-free doesn’t mean you can eat all you want.

I had a professor tell me once that everything we hear is someone’s opinion and everything we see is the perspective of the person looking at it, except for the lobster man. I’m still on the lookout every night for him.