A Boomer and GenXer Walk into a Bar
Wit and wisdom, some smart assery, and a Mother and Daughter questioning “Are we even related?”
A Boomer and GenXer Walk into a Bar
Everyday Lies We Grew Up Believing S:02E:06
What if the rules you grew up with were just really sticky stories? We dive into the myths that shaped our childhood and still echo in our choices today—from the grain-heavy food pyramid and “wait 30 minutes before swimming” to TV ruining your eyes. We laugh at the harmless stuff, but we also go deeper into the narratives that steer money, power, and trust.
The conversation turns personal with parenting warnings and cultural pressures that leave marks: using police as a threat, inflating fear after local tragedies, and the polished promise that “you can be anything” or “college is the only path.” We unpack misattributed faith quotes and share the lines that actually helped us push through tough seasons. Through it all, we keep the tone warm, curious, and a little mischievous, because unlearning deserves both honesty and humor.
We’d love to hear the lies you grew up believing—especially the regional ones from mountains, coasts, cities, and farm towns. Follow the show, share this episode with a friend who loves a good myth-bust, and leave a quick review to help others find us. Got a topic or a tall tale we should tackle next? Email us at boomer and genxer at gmail.com.
email: boomerandgenxer@gmail.com
Welcome everyone to today's show. A boomer and a Gen X are walking to a bar, coming to you from the Rabbit Hole studio, where you, as our listener, will experience some wit and wisdom, some smart asssery, and a mother and a daughter questioning, are we even related? My name is Bobby Joy, and my co-host is my mom Jane. And we are here to entertain you for a little bit. And I think this one will be entertaining. It will be entertaining based on what we've already talked about. Oh yeah. Yeah. Now I will warn listeners, this is one that we just kind of pulled out of thin air. Yeah, we um but we're both ready for it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it was like a last minute, yeah. Let's do that topic. Absolutely. And sometimes those are the best. Yeah, because other people have asked us about this too and said, Have you ever had somebody say this?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Especially, you know, like a lot of uh, you know, I'm getting older and we do a lot of reminiscing for Gen Xers about how we were raised by our boomer parents and things like that.
SPEAKER_00:You guys make up so much bull crap. We were beat, we were never let back in the house.
SPEAKER_01:We were stubbed to death. Okay, well, I would I you did kill me a few times, but you brought me back. But did you die? I mean I mean you brought me back. Uh we did get beat, okay. Probably rightfully so. I don't remember.
SPEAKER_00:You call them beatings, I call them, you know, taps. Medium spankies.
SPEAKER_01:Medium spankies. Oh, for the love of God. So speaking on that, let's uh let's talk about some lies that we have been told throughout our lives.
SPEAKER_00:You mean like common lies that other people might have been told too?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, like let's see if our listeners have heard of these lies or if this is just some uh something around our neighborhood.
SPEAKER_00:So these are kind of common lies or misconceptions, I guess, that people may have heard while they were growing up as kids or even adults. Right. Right?
SPEAKER_01:And and I just kind of threw this topic out. So I'm kind of interested as to what you have come up with or what you've thought of um when I say these things.
SPEAKER_00:Mine are probably pretty, pretty simple-minded lies. Yours are probably some hardcore thing that you're gonna call me out on and roll up on me on. I mean, like maybe one. Okay. Well, thanks for letting me know.
SPEAKER_01:But I think it was my dad that told it to me, so we'll just do that.
SPEAKER_00:Because if it's really bad, I'm gonna blame him. Hey, can I have the chicken? I may need some emotional support here.
SPEAKER_01:No, he's mine.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, what's his name?
SPEAKER_01:You have an emotional support rabbit head. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Looks like it's what's uh what's the chicken's name too? Chuck. Chuck. Chuck the chicken in the channel. Chuck the chicken. I might chuck him at somebody at somebody. Okay, so we're gonna be talking about lies we have been told. Right. Interesting. Well, I'm gonna let you throw start on this one.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, sure, sure. So I'm gonna start with probably well, I know it's one that we were all told when we were kids, and it was kind of a nationwide thing. You know, when we were kids, we were told, you remember the food pyramid? You know, things like that. So you know, when we were kids, we were we were pretty healthy kids. I mean, other than the fact that we were eating pure sugar and drinking groundwater, we were pretty healthy kids.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my gosh. But see, that's the food pyramid.
SPEAKER_01:Here's the thing, though, with the food pyramid, you know, we were told things like, hey, you need to eat like eight to eleven servings of greens. I don't remember exactly what it was. But it was a lot of grains, you know, because they were pushing grains on us. Well, now they wonder why we're all fat and addicted to carbs. I wonder why.
SPEAKER_00:And why we have gluten intolerance. Right.
SPEAKER_01:Like and oh, it's so good for you, all these grains and bullshit.
SPEAKER_00:So I'm just gonna I gotta correct you on this because you know what? You you girls ate very healthily when you were growing up when you were younger. Right. Um, because when we had control. When I had control because I remember my brother even saying, What are you feeding those kids? Because I I used to say I could put an apple in one hand and a c and a candy bar in the other hand, and you guys would always pick the apple because you just weren't used to having all that other crap. And he used to go, What are you feeding them? Grout and kitty litter? You know, nothing. I mean, we were really skinny kids. You were skinny active, but you were very active and you were very healthy. And so when I had control over it, and now you're drinking monster drinks, so there's that depresso espresso.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know what to tell you.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so that was one of yours. I have one here that cracking your knuckles will cause arthritis. Oh, yeah. It's just synovial gas being released. I mean, it's like, what do you what are you talking about? That is not and it's proven not to be true. No, it is not true.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I've cracked my knuckles since I was a little. I mean, I have arthritis, but not not because of that.
SPEAKER_00:Now, this this one is kind of interesting because now I think it really is true. If you sit too close to the TV set, it'll affect your eyes and you'll go blind. Think about how many people have poor eyesight because they're looking at a computer every single day.
SPEAKER_01:Think about how many kids had to sit next to the TV set because we didn't know we needed glasses.
SPEAKER_00:Well, well, back then we didn't really have remotes either. And so you guys had to sit closer, you could try the channel. Right. So what else, what else did you were you told?
SPEAKER_01:One thing that, you know, growing up in the Midwest, it's kind of different than other places because we are even in the in the cities, the bigger cities, we are farming communities. Right. Okay, period. It doesn't matter, you know, you could be going through Des Moines, which is kind of a bigger city here in Iowa, you're still gonna see farming equipment all the time. Right. You know, it's just how it is. And growing up, and I I do believe this to my core, you know, we were taught that, you know, farmers are the lifeblood of this land, they're so important, they're so revered, and you know, almost to a to a godlike status that these farmers are feeding all of these people and they're the they're the ones keeping us alive. Well, I call bullshit on that because if that's it. No, listen, here's why no, here's why I call bullshit on it. Because if that were true, the government would not allow companies to make farmers buy seeds every year instead of reusing them because they have allowed these seed companies to patent seeds to where farmers are not allowed to reuse the seeds that they have left over from last year, they have to reapply and repay to use those seeds for the next planting season.
SPEAKER_00:You're not wrong.
SPEAKER_01:I'm not wrong. No, I'm not.
SPEAKER_00:And you know, and seeds are all GMOs now, of course. Correct.
SPEAKER_01:And uh and the government's got their hand in it, and they're forcing these farmers to do these things. Well, if farmers are the lifeblood, which they really are, I love farmers. I mean, farmers are amazing in the fact that what they do, you know, sunup to sundown every single day, but we we revere them as people, but the government treats them as subsidies.
SPEAKER_00:That that is true, and you know, farmers are blamed for obviously uh soil contamination and our waterways and crop prices, crop prices, yeah. Yeah, and you know, the fact of the matter is is that's all driven by industry, correct? And so, you know, people go, Well, you don't have to buy Roundup Ready seeds. Yeah, you do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I mean, they don't have the choice. You know, a big one here in Iowa is Stein. Yeah, Stein is huge. I mean, I actually used to serve in one of the bars I worked in, I used to serve Mr. Stein because he he would come in and drink old fashions. Okay. Okay. Um, I knew him, um, not personally, but as a business level, and he is one of the biggest names in the Midwest because he's the seed man. Yeah, I mean, you have to buy his seeds. You have in one way or the other, you're gonna have some Stein in your property.
SPEAKER_00:Well, this kind of gets back to the government involvement, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01:And that's another lie we're told is that the government um is for the people, it has the best interests of their citizens in mind when it does things. That is that is the biggest lie we were force fed when we were younger. Oh, it's horrible.
SPEAKER_00:See, yours goes your lies go so much deeper than mine. Well, mine are kind of I started out kind of nationwide, like you know, ones that we would all hear or even worldwide because mine are like stupid ones, like if you keep like if you keep having that face, it's gonna stick that way. You know, I mean to me that was a lie, obviously.
SPEAKER_01:I mean I've seen some pretty ugly kids, and I I don't know if they made that face, and somebody okay, so the whole thing was is if you make that face and you slap them on the back of the head hard enough, it was gonna stick. That's what we believed as kids. So, in anyways, okay, okay. So, how about uh swimming after eating? Oh, yeah, you have to wait at least a half hour. No, you don't. No, that's what the lie was. Yeah, like who's telling people this? Oh, you gotta cramp. I mean, worst you're gonna do is maybe poop in the only in four feet of water, you know. What are we doing here?
SPEAKER_00:What do you think's gonna happen?
SPEAKER_01:How about um gum? If you swallow gum, it stays in your stomach for 10 years or seven years or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:No, you poop it out.
SPEAKER_00:You poop it out, it comes right back out. So, um, you know, we could go into the Santa Claus Easter bunny and uh tooth fairy thing.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I think that's that's more of a childhood um, you know, keeping them innocent, keeping them having that magic in their lives where they believe in something that's so were you told something specific, Bobby, that was like family related that you found out was a lie later on. So I was a really weird freaking kid. Okay, so uh I'm gonna put some things out there. I there was a couple times, so I used to get up in the middle of the night and eat sticks of butter out of the fridge. Okay. I got in trouble for that quite a few times. I remember that. I used to eat entire tubes of toothpaste when they came out with that crest kids. Yeah. I got in so much trouble for that.
SPEAKER_00:The glitter stuff really was affected.
SPEAKER_01:Oh man, yeah. Um, but one thing I used to do as a kid that I know just drove you and my dad nuts is I would um I would pick at my belly button. And I think I've said in a previous show, I have a really deep belly button. And so as a little kid, you know, you just kind of get bored instead of picking my nose. I'm just sitting there picking my belly button. And it was to the point where I would make my belly button bleed regularly, and then I would pick the scabs because what's more fun than picking a scab to a five-year-old? Nothing. So I don't know, and I'm not gonna pin it on anybody. I don't know if it was you or dad. Could have been a grandparent. One of them said that if you keep picking your belly button like that, it's like the end of a balloon. You're gonna pop and you're gonna deflate. I know who said that to you. Scared the shit out of me.
SPEAKER_00:I know who said that to you. Who said that to me? It was your Mima. Yeah, it was her. I remember that happening, and I thought, hey, I'll go with it. You know, I mean, hey, if it'll stop her.
SPEAKER_01:I'm like, I'm gonna go all over the room. And then there's flat Bobby. Yeah. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, flat Stanley. Yeah, you know, I mean, and it got me pretty quickly to quit picking at my damn belly buttons. So um, yeah, that was I I do, I I do remember that. You know, some of the things that I remember being told that are really kind of just misconceptions, I think, are biblical.
SPEAKER_01:And well, you grew up in a very religious household, too.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so here's another one. God helps those who help themselves. Okay. That's not in the Bible. That's nowhere in the Bible to be found. Nowhere. Huh. Now, God does talk about, you know, making sure that you work. You have to work to support yourself. And see, and I've always, you know, I've heard in there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the God helps others or you know, helps you if you help yourself. I mean, but I've always heard it as, you know, pray to God but row towards the shore. Well, that's your saying. Well, no, you used to tell me that pray to God, but keep rowing towards that shore.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I would say pray to God and hope that He shows up before the before I do.
SPEAKER_01:Because And another one that I I think you told me, I mean, I was going through a really, really, really bad time, um, depression-wise, and things like that in my early 20s. And one thing that you had told me is uh I was like, man, you know, this is this is hell. I'm going through hell. And you said you you you find yourself in hell, keep going. Yeah, why would you stop? Why would you keep going for a minute? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Just keep going and just keep going.
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, I mean, like it's crazy the the things that they say are quote unquote biblical, and they're nowhere in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00:It's like there's a lot of stuff there. And uh I'm no, you know, I'm no master at the Bible, that's for sure. And I will say, you know, Dr. Domain's here, and he's uh a little more versed on it than I am for sure. Oh, he's definitely more versed on it.
SPEAKER_01:And we're not gonna go down the religion rabbit.
SPEAKER_00:We're not gonna go down that, but I'm just saying that there's a lot of things that people refer to as being said by Jesus or being said by God that has or written in the Bible and the Bible and point it out. Stand down, stand up. Point it out. So and I'm just gonna I I will say this though, you know, if you're gonna throw Jesus or God's name around, read the Bible first. You know. So anyway, um So what what's uh you got another one that well you know if you're there's one about if you're in the shower or in the bathtub, you know, in a lightning storm, you could get electrocuted if if lightning hits your house.
SPEAKER_01:Now that used to be true before houses were required to be grounded. Well, because of copper and piping, because of the metal piping.
SPEAKER_00:Now we use mostly PVC. Well, we do, but it also had to do with making sure that the house was grounded, yeah, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And so I mean that was kind of a lie once you know about like the 80s, 90s hit type of thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:80s, 90s type, you know, when they started doing that. Um, Dr. Domain, can you think of a lie that you were told or that you remember just a lie that's like yeah, growing up, we all know Did you wear a lot of hats as a kid?
SPEAKER_01:Were you ever told that if you wear hats all the time that you would lose your hair?
SPEAKER_00:Were you ever told?
SPEAKER_01:I was told that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Were you ever told that if you don't put it? Were you ever told that if you don't put a coat on it, you'll catch pneumonia? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, come on. Crazy. That's not how you get pneumonia. Yeah. What else? Uh you cross your eyes like that, and they're gonna stay that way. Well, the muscles in the eyes are a little bit stronger than that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, my favorite one was uh you can grow up to be anything you want to be. Bullshit. I mean, look, you work hard at something, you might get somewhere that is close to what you want to do. And there are the lucky few that actually have what it takes to be what they want to be when they're young. But guess what? Every kid in my class wanted to be an astronaut. I mean, until we watched the challenger explode on TV. But we're not all made to be astronauts. I don't care how hard you work.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, not all of us were made to be astronauts. I want some of our listeners to tell us what lies were you told, you know, when you were growing up or as a young adult, and that, you know, that you kind of look back now and go, what the heck? What happened there?
SPEAKER_01:So Des Moines. I grew up in right outside of Des Moines. Um, unfortunately, there was, you know, a couple of tragedies that happened. One of the big ones was the Johnny Gosh kidnapping. Right. My friend's parents used to say, uh, it's getting dark. You better get home before uh you get caught up and kidnapped like that Johnny Gosh kid. You know how terrifying that was to a five and six year old? Like we that's why when we would we would run home out of breath, like on the porch, like home base, we're fine. We're fine. Yeah. Yeah.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:So I, you know, I mean, I think one of the biggest ones, of course, was um, you know, if you don't straighten up your act, I'm gonna call the police, or the police are gonna come. Oh, that's horrible to do to a kid. What a terrible thing to do to a kid.
SPEAKER_01:What a horrible, and it just it precipitates that it's just a bad thing to have kids so scared of the cops because who are they gonna call if they need help? Yeah, exactly. You know, and you you you ingrain them with this fear of law and law enforcement, which don't get me started on that because there is kind of a fear of that. But you know, as a little kid, you kind of want to be able to trust a law enforcement officer if you need help and not worry about if you don't clean up your room, the damn cops are gonna come and taser you. So this threat.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that threat doesn't hold a candle too. Oh, the dad till dad gets home.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah, wait till dad gets home. That was that was kind of that was not a lie, though.
SPEAKER_00:For a lot of kids, that was not a lie. That was a lot more effective than one of the things that I remember this was in a commercial, and here again, this was our federal government. Lord, this ought to be good. Um, was when they used to spray for mosquitoes in towns, and I think they do still spray. Yeah, they spray in our town, and they used to use DDT. Yep. And there was a commercial, an old commercial back in the 60s, I think it was, where the DDT truck is driving down the street and these kids are running back. And the narrator is saying, run in it, kids, it'll not, it won't harm you at all. That'll just kill the mosquitoes. It's just gonna kill the mosquitoes. And DDT, dichloral diphenyl, trichloroxy. One of the most important world in my in my lifetime, but um, yeah, one of the most horrible things. But I remember seeing those commercials. Yeah, and the other one was that you can't go swimming when you're on your period.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Do you remember that? So I remember that because you know, we took a lot of trips, you know, as a family, and I've seen the oceans, I've swam in the oceans, and it was we tried the the sharks can smell it. Yeah, the sharks will smell you. You better not go swimming if you're on your period, because the sharks will come. And I was like, Well, shit.
SPEAKER_00:All right, what am I supposed to do? But I remember, you know, that was part of our class, you know, when we had our whatever class it was your health and hygiene. Health and hygiene.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, don't go swimming while you're on your period. Oh, yeah, because all these horrible things can happen. You can get an infection, other people can, you know, see your blood leaking out. It's gonna infect them. Okay, let's not go any further there, Bobby.
SPEAKER_00:God, yeah. So, um, but other than that, I can't think of any real major lies that I was kind of told. Can you? Gosh, I'm I'm trying to, I mean, other than like college, you have to go to college to be successful.
SPEAKER_01:That is a big line. You know that over people. And over half of college graduates are actually working jobs after college that don't even require a bachelor's degree.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that that's kind of that was uh that was crazy talk. Well, I will say that if you have any type of lies, even if they were just little lies, and we left out, like I said, the Easter bunny. Oh, I got one. Oh, what is it?
SPEAKER_01:Marijuana is a gateway drug.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it kind of is.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's not.
SPEAKER_00:You don't know that.
SPEAKER_01:No, it's not. It's been proven it's not. What by the federal government, by High Times magazine. And I'm not, listen, I'm not really, you know, you're gonna bring up the whole acid trip and the mushrooms and everything else. No, but let me tell you, I did that. I did that before I ever tried marijuana.
SPEAKER_00:And I just want to clear this up for everybody that but this was not a deal that Bobby went on for, you know, this wasn't like summer camp that she was tripping out all the time. She tried it, it didn't work. And she tried it, she tried it, didn't work, and we're moving on. Yeah, I don't want anybody to think that you're a drug addict. Because my I've been very fortunate. Now, you know, my kids and my grandkids are all clean, and so you know, thank God for that. Um, but I do uh want to hear from our listeners to see what kind of weird lies that they were told.
SPEAKER_01:And tell us what area of the country you grew up in when you heard these lies, because there's some very specific areas and very specific. Like I'll call them fables that they were told as kids, you know, just for specific areas, especially like, you know, if you grew up in the mountains versus if you grew up around water type of things.
SPEAKER_00:Or in the city and the country. Yeah, absolutely. So I think that's probably all the absurdity that we have for today. We appreciate you joining us here at the Rabbit Hole Studio. Be sure to follow us. We look forward to spending time with you every week. Please like us. And if you have some feedback, if you have a topic you want us to talk about, please send us a note or send us a note and tell us those little lies that you were told. Um, and or drop us a short email at boomer and genxer at gmail.com. If you have hate mail, I'm not interested in it. It's probably a lie anyway. It's probably a lie. So anyway, uh, until next week, I'm Jane Burke. And I'm Bobby Joy. And we're stuck with those. Peace out.
SPEAKER_01:Later.