Throughout the elementary upbringing of our childhood, certain messages are ingrained in our minds through constant repetition of adult figures, educators or whatever inspirational figure television has provided.  How ever it happened, our youthful brains sponged up the social propaganda that society has brainwashed us into believing about the world around us.  Until that wonderful point in life when we learn to think for ourselves, and become capable of looking back at some of these moral adages and say “That was total bullshit!”  I have gathered six of these myths to re-visit for your viewing pleasure to explain why these precepts are in fact nothing more than a salty bologna sandwich.

Reading books is more fun than watching the movie

The Myth

One of the most gratifying moments of  your childhood was when you first began to look at printed words, and make sense of the writing in front of you.  You can finally read the world around you, and no longer do you have to annoy everyone in the room when the television screen is flashing subtitles by begrudgingly asking “What the hell is happening!?!?”  It is in these first few years of developing readership that literature is fun, suddenly everything is enjoyable to read: street signs, warning labels, even the ingredients of your Fritos, and it’s around that moment that most people generally realize they should never consume Fritos again.

what is Dextrose?

The novelty of reading your way through life eventually rubs off however, and it begins to feel more like a task than anything else.  Your teachers are aware of this, as they spend the majority of their weekends going through countless, poorly written essays scribbled in sloppy hand writing over-detailing their family’s last visit to the fishing dock.  This is the reason they drill it in your head that reading is good for you; it will build your mind and if you enjoy it enough, you too could end up working the same underpaid, cement-ceiling living they have some how found themselves in, because misery loves company.

Why it’s Bullshit

Have you ever watched a movie after reading a book?  It’s kind of like the exact same thing, only it took approximately 397 less hours to complete, time varies depending on if speed-reading techniques were used because your book report is due Monday and you didn’t pick up the book until Saturday.  Essentially, the book version of a story is the same as the movie, sure there are the occasional different scenes because the director didn’t have the budget to re-create the bat-shit crazy scenario the book played out, either way the only time this benefits you after having read the book is that you can turn to your neighbor and say “that didn’t happen in the book.”  Well, spoiler alert:  Everyone hates that!  We heard that you read the book when we first popped in the DVD and you announced “I read the book, it was pretty good,” we were impressed by your literary efforts, then forgot about it ten minutes later, that doesn’t mean we need to be reminded every time a scene differs slightly from the pages you flipped through.

Sure, the book allows you to paint the story with your imagination, and that’s all well and good if a movie doesn’t exist of the story yet.  But once it has been cinematized, it doesn’t matter that you envisioned Captain Ahab with a bad ass mustache and glass-eyed monocle, now he’s Patrick Stewart, and he’s going to speak like a 15th century Jean Luc Picard.

Fuck off Moby Dick!!!

I’m not saying books are a total waste of your time, but if a movie has been made of the story, just rent the movie, for your own sake.  Remember that scene where the gang creeps into the abandoned warehouse to find the answer to the dangerous un-solved mystery?  Remember how it took you a week and a half to get through the over-described dark caverns of each corner only to learn that the frightening sound in the cellar was just a squirrel nestling it’s acorns?  That scene took a minute and a half in the movie, and five minutes to discover that you could’ve skipped that entire chapter.  Thank you cinema, you’re like literature’s cheat code to awesomeness.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away

The Myth

Remember this cute little nursery rhyme?  Or perhaps it was a limerick, whatever you want to call it, the fact is it is total nonsense.  The idea of it was innocent enough; eat your fruits and vegetables kids, you’ll be strong and healthy and won’t need to visit the doctor for any unforeseen illness or injury so long as you consume your daily dose of apples.  Fair enough, but I was a kid once, and this is how I translated that message; apples, despite their bland, solid-liquid taste, have some sort of life-saving preservatives that will extend your life beyond reasonable means, and doctors are evil patrons who you want to avoid visiting at all cost.

Why it’s bullshit

Apples are a nutritional, healthy fruit, I will not dispute this, and it’s always good to get your fill of fruits and vegetables.  Now that I have done my share to sound like a tame School House Rock special, allow me to explain why this entire concept is total BS.  First of all, it applies to only apples, so all the delicious, consumable items that are said to be apple-flavored, such as apple sauce, apple juice, apple pie, and sour apple Shocktarts – they don’t apply.  This is definitely something I used to do to humor myself as a child, direct Baby Cas quote: “Do mini apple gummies keep me away from doctors?”  I was such a clever little bastard.

will not keep doctors away

Also, since when is the goal of good healthy living to keep away from doctors?  This slogan, or limerick as it may be, seems to infer that regular check-ups with the doctor is not a good thing, and that as long as you have your daily dosage of apples, there’s no need to seek doctor assistance for any reason.  This concept not only completely undermines the assistance that doctors provide to healthy living, but also leads children to believe that all good health can be achieved as a reward to consuming apples on the regular.  Surely this would have set up a horrifying dose of reality upon receiving the news of any new-found illness.  ”Bone cancer?!?  But what about all those apples I ate when I was ten??”

Disney movies are the foundation of a normal, healthy childhood

The Myth

Chapter one in any parenting manual reads something like this: “Keep your children away from unsafe areas and objects, keep them entertained with simple, educationally-healthy entertainment, and only offer them drugs or booze if they’ve proved mature enough to handle the hangover effects and have completed their chores.” The last part of that manual may have been an excerpt from the Britney Spears edition, but I digress.  The point is, watching a child can be tiring, and eventually you’re going to need to sit them in front of the television, throw on a movie, so you can read the latest chapter from whatever non-cinematic novel you’ve chosen to dive into.  And what is 95% of the time the choice of film to pop in?  Any colorful Walt Disney-created classic with a lovable character’s grinning mug shot pasted on the side binding.

wall of happiness

Why it’s Bullshit

As anyone who has watched Disney films mind-bendingly close enough to read in between the lines, or simply Googled “hidden Disney messages” in the Internet machine, may have discovered- Disney movies are f*ckin crazy!  These film makers over at the wonderful world of Disney are apparently over-worked, underpaid drones who’s only escape to reality and sanity is inexplicably adding horrifyingly obscene subliminal messages.  Whether it’s Ariel swimming around an underwater forest of penises or Aladdin encouraging underage fornication, the begrudged little men who make Disney happen have definitely proven to be a group of sadistic sick fucks.

But you can’t tell me a few subliminal messages ruins all Disney movies! Good point, angry defiant reader in my head, that is why we shouldn’t read between the lines and actually read the lines, the ones that show how warped out and bizarre the writers must have been to come up with such nonsensical stories in the first place.  The vintage flicks from the early years of Disney are riddled with trippy visuals, and bizarre plots and scenarios that could probably be best explained with the aid of hallucinogenics.  Movies like Alice and Wonderland, Pinochio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs all made us happy when we were little tots, but watch them again and really try to understand the meaning of the story, and then think about what kind of people would go about putting something like that together.  The Disney vault is loaded with scenes of unexplainable madness, such as this scene from Dumbo.  Nothing proves my case more than the Disney original itself; Fantasia.  Explain the plot of Fantasia to me and I will give you my house, like you can live here, I won’t even object to making a life for myself on the streets.

Beyond the outlandish stories played out by erratic animated characters, many of the early Disney films are filtered with pure, unadulterated racism.  Whether it’s a raucous stereotype under the guise of a talking animal, or just a happy walk through good old fashioned racism for the whole family to enjoy, such as The Song of the South, released in 1946, which is essentially one long southern black stereotype.  A film that is deemed an unsuitable by Disney standards to ever be released on video, but still worthy of being the theme for one of Disneyland’s most popular rides, Splash Mountain.

Disney films are always a family favorite, but if you raise your child on nothing but Disney don’t be surprised when he grows up to be a skipping mine-worker who greets his fellow bus-goers by day with a “hello negro!”  And settles in for a warm acid trip by night.

Clowns are your friend

Birthday parties, carnivals, circuses, pretty much anywhere that is meant to be a fun place for little children always seems to have one common denominator: Clowns, and lots of them.  Your entire childhood you are raised to feel as though the silly, colorfully dressed, funny-voiced, obnoxious gag-tards known as clowns are the friendliest strangers of all.  Look at all his ridiculous gags; his bag of tricks never runs out, and you’ll find that out real soon because he won’t leave you alone until he’s completely played out his act to your entire family.

Why it’s Bullshit

Have you ever stopped to think about what kind of individuals get into the business of being a clown?  What sane person would willingly dress up in a polka dotted man-dress, plaster white paint and lipstick all over their face and act like a jackass for his profession?  Probably not the kind of person you want hanging around your kids.  This early McDonalds commercial featuring Willard Scott as the original Ronald McDonald dives right into the taboo topic of trusting a stranger dressed as a clown.

So by early McDonald’s campaign logic, it is okay to trust a stranger dressed like a clown so long as he’s wearing a box of fast food on his head and can magically create cheeseburgers through cutting edge editing technology.  As I watch the commercial end with the young boy groping his new clown friend as they walk off together into the distance, I can’t help but wonder what kind of person a child who actually does carry a great affinity for clowns will grow up to be.

Don’t talk to strangers

With the concept of talking to frighteningly happy strangers in mind, let’s discuss the myth that talking to strangers is something your child should never do. There are bad people out there, some dressed as clowns, others just as shady figures you don’t want to mess with, so parents often teach their children of stranger danger by directing them “don’t ever talk to strangers!”  Because nothing bad can happen to you if you don’t talk to strangers.  This is true, but let me add a little bit to that statement- NOTHING can happen to you if you don’t talk to strangers, good or bad.

Why it’s Bullshit

Children have enough trouble fitting in with the constant peer pressures fashion, music and television industries shove down their throats, they don’t need to be taught to be anti-social to top it off.  Teaching your kid to not talk to strangers is like a coach teaching his players to never make physical contact with the opposing team, sure they’ll be safe but also they’ll be totally lame and suck.

Kids should be aware not to totally trust every person they don’t know, so when that shady man pulls up in his Cadillac and offers you candy to get in, as the generic scenario plays out, he/she knows better than to just hop in because you’ve totally been jonesing for an Almond Joy all day.  But a kid who is told to never talk to anyone is being trained to be a lonely hermit who will probably spend his Lunch Period playing with his Gameboy, or whatever the latest handheld version of entertainment there is nowadays.  Kids should be encouraged to talk and socialize with the people they don’t know, let them find their own setting for themselves.  Parents should encourage socializing but not how to become popular, because that kind of stuff changes each generation, and any advice that may have worked in your time will probably just get tomatoes and rocks thrown at him, or however these kids break down their fellow peers nowadays, I can never keep up.

Everyone has one true soul-mate

We’ve all seen that romantic comedy movie that features a quirky, lovable damsel who finds her true love in the most unlikely of all places, and is completely unaware that this is her soul-mate, until the moment he takes off her glasses, which is also the moment he realizes he’s found his true love because, hot damn she’s actually smoking once you remove the four-eyes look.  Not sure which movie I’m referring to?  Does it really matter?  The message behind these movies are pretty much always the same; everyone has their one true love, you just have to find them to be happy.  This is also a re-occurring theme in romance novels, women’s magazines and pretty much anything involving Meg Ryan.  Approximately 90% of women believe that their one and only soul-mate is out there somewhere, that fact has been scientifically proven through the research center of Ryan Castle’s Guestimation Clinic.

Why it’s Bullshit

You found your soul-mate through a chance encounter, just like Julia Roberts in that one movie!  You fall deeply in love and get married, living with your true love forever.  Well that is until you find your soul-mate going down on the bartender from Cheers, then maybe it’s time to find a new soul-mate.  Love exists, but it is something that happens through growth, maturity, trust and friendship, it is not the result of a real world scavenger hunt, in which you just need that chance encounter to come across the love of your life.  Sometimes things don’t work out and love that once was a fiery torch has since burnt out, it doesn’t mean that your one chance at love is gone it just means it’s time to move on.  It’s the women who believe that there is one soul-mate for them out there that tear their life apart when they break up with their significant other.  It’s not the end of the world, and you would see that if you hadn’t put so much faith in your life playing out like a Kate Hudson flick.

Don’t spend your life searching for a soul-mate, take each day for what it presents you and appreciate the love you may or may not feel today for what it is, because tomorrow is another day, and what you feel today might make no sense tomorrow.

~Castle