old wives' tales

There are some old wives' tales - "mga pamahiin ng matatanda" - that I realize I instinctively believe for a few seconds until my good sense takes over and reminds me there is no truth to them. Like when I saw this photo of a child sitting on the hood of a car... My automatic reaction was that she'd get "balisawsaw", that peeing problem my Lola [grandmother] said I'd get from sitting on hot things like a car's hood or concrete stairs that have turned hot under the sun. I feel the same about itchy palms. When my palms get itchy, my automatic reaction is to put my hands inside my pockets... until I realize I can't suddenly turn rich & lucky by merely putting itchy palms in my pockets. I still believe that touching your eyes after touching a butterfly can make you blind. Gosh, is there any truth to this? Or is this also an old wives' tale?

I have to admit though that there are myths I wish my kids still believed. Particularly those old rituals on New Year's Eve. When I look back on New Year's Eves of my childhood, I remember how fun it was to jump 3 times with my brother & cousins when the clock struck 12. I also remember a NYE when we crawled around - underneath our dining table - with huge luggages believing that ritual would assure us of travel that year. 

Noah is quite a realist, reluctant to jump this past NYE because he found it ludicrous that jumping on NYE would make him tall. To some extent, I agree that we shouldn't propagate these myths (Just last week, a co-parent at Noah's school said Noah was "handsome. Pwera, usog.", licked her thumb and reached out to touch Noah with it. Thankfully, another co-parent stopped her, saying, "Hindi totoo yang usog-usog na yan!". Thank God, coz I was too shocked to keep her saliva from touching my son!). But it's still a shame because the NYE rituals we did when we were kids were quite fun to do. And I can't help wish that Noah embraced the fun of it more (vs. half-heartedly jumping). After all, while they're really old wives' tales, they still make for such happy, nostalgic stories of childhood. 

Photo from annnniegirl.