I have always made it a point in this blog to try and turn the negative into positive.  But there is always an exception.  So let this be the one (if I have more in the future I will create a new blog – Ha!).

The first myth I need to bust is that self-cleaning ovens do not clean themselves.  There! I’ve said it!  It is the biggest lie in the world.  Right after “no, honey, that dress does not make your butt look big”.  Oh wait…if you live in Sydney, you would probably agree that the Cityrail timetable is also a myth – the greatest piece of fiction ever written, as it is sometimes known.  The mere existence of a timetable does not mean that it is real.  So back to my first point:  Whoever came up with the term “self-cleaning” needs to be shot…unless he is already dead…in which case, R.I.P.

What else…oh yes!  Who came up with the phrase “common-sense”?  Just as I never believed in Santa Claus – apologies to any kids who may be reading this but the man with the fat belly and white beard in the red suit would never last five minutes in the hot Australian summer Christmas Day – my mother also always taught me that common-sense is NOT common.  Otherwise, there would be no Darwin Awards or TV shows like Funniest Home Videos, right?  Come on, admit it, you have seen someone poke a fork into a toaster that is plugged into an electrical socket and NOT told them to stop just to see what would happen… and if you say no then you are a liar and should stand in the naughty corner 🙂

I still remember going home from school in tears when I was about 5 thinking I was going to die because I had accidentally swallowed a piece of chewing gum.  I told my Dad I was dying and seriously believed it to be true. My Dad, oh how I love him, reassured me I was going to be OK.  Happy as I was that I would not die from chewing gum sticking to my stomach causing instant and painful death, what did that say about the myths my parents told me as a child?

Remember the old “if you screw up your face like that the wind will blow and you will stay that way forever”? NOT TRUE! Or how about this: “if you swallow those watermelon seeds a watermelon will grow out of the top of your head”.  The slightly smarter ‘me’ now, of course, would laugh it off as being ridiculous (where’s the fertiliser or sunlight inside your body to make it grow?) but I certainly did believe that little myth back then.

Whilst it may be true that “if you build it, they will come” – whatever the “they” may be, the same cannot be said of “if you ignore it, it will go away”.  Let me give you a classic example from my real life: way back in my first job (I won’t tell you how long ago that was but it was in the last millennium), I worked in an office where we had a small kitchen on our floor, shared by about 10 people at the time.  The company was much larger than that, probably about 200 in that building but spread over several floors, and whilst we had a cleaner who would come in at the end of the workday to do the general cleaning, it was also up to the staff to try and maintain some sense of overall cleanliness around us.  Usually that task fell to myself and one of my friends, primarily because we hated messy kitchens.

One lunchtime I walked into that kitchen to make a cup of tea and to my horror there were scraps of cut-up tomatoes, lettuce and other miscellaneous vegetables in the sink and on the benchtop!  But that was not the worst of it.  When I walked back out to the main floor and asked rather loudly who was responsible for the mess, my then-manager came out of his office and asked “oh, is it still there?” to which I replied, “do you think those scraps have legs of their own to walk into the bin?” or something along those lines.

So, enough of my grumpy ramblings.  What was my point when I started this post?  Oh yeah, to sum it up: Don’t believe everything people tell you – “Trust but verify” 😉

If you have your own myths you would like to share and bust, please feel free to leave a comment!

Toodles xox