After last week’s false start, I’m again linking with Kerri Sackville to talk… My First Revelation.

As it happens I actually cannot recall what this was, so naturally instead I’m sharing yet another embarrassing story from my past.

Did you know that toads, during the day, turn into rocks or large stones?

I have no idea who on earth shared this piece of wisdom with me when I was a youngster, but I took it as gospel. For years.

Until one day in my early teens #MyFirst bestie and I were enroute to school (we rode to school together for most of our 12 years of schooling) and I swerved to avoid a rock. Which naturally reminded me of this toad-related fact I decided to share with M (the aforementioned bestie).

M was actually quite smart and mature for her age – less prone to frivolity and the TV addiction which plagued my own childhood.

She looked at me for a moment before realising I was serious.

I cannot remember HOW she relieved me of my erroneous thinking and doubt she made fun of my misperceptions. I also doubt she told everyone in school, so I could become the butt of jokes. Although I wonder now if I possibly I even argued with her, assuming my information was correct.

I’m reminded of an internet provider ad which appeared on our TV screens here in Oz a few years ago. A young boy was asking his father all sorts of difficult questions. His father – obviously not the most enlightened of humans – fed him bullshit answers. Of course the ad cut to the child relaying this ‘factual’ information to his teacher and class. The implication was obviously that ‘fact checking’ is much easier in these days of the World Wide Web.

Of course when I was a youngster we relied on always-out-of-date reference books. In retrospect, the World Book, Funk & Wagnalls or Encyclopedia Britannica or the like just didn’t cut it.

Now we just google everything. I could ‘ask the interwebz,  “What happens to toads during the day?”

And I would be advised thus:

 Hmmm…. #whatevs. And, #oops.

Other than the obvious (Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy etc) were you fed any false information growing up, which you took as gospel?

PS. For my international readers… here in Oz we have a plethora of cane toads. They were introduced to control cane beetles before (of course) spreading out of control themselves. (And yes… the Old Lady who Swallowed the Fly comes to mind! It seems scientists could learn a thing or two from childhood nursery rhymes.)