Sincerely, I liked these two prompts of this week because they brought a lot of nostalgia and childhood memories, which I was just smiling at due to the way I believed some of them that time, but I'm glad I know better today. However, while growing up, there were a lot of things I was told, and I believed them, like if anyone uses a broom to beat a child in my culture, his penis will stop growing. A lot of funny and rediculous things when I think about it now.
But there was this particular one of my younger brother's that I cannot easily forget because of how it happened. He was lying flat on the sitting room floor one evening after he had disturbed and played with everyone in the house. I casually stepped over him to pick up the TV remote, and the way everyone reacted was like I had done something of a big crime.
"Do you want him to stop growing and have that height forever?" my elder sister said, dragging me back to step over him again just the way I did, like reversing what I did like it was a sort of ritual. I don't know how everyone got to believe that because it sounds so funny to me now.
Though I was still young, and I believed that so much completely that I stopped avoiding such a recurrence anytime he was lying on the floor or I saw anyone else doing such a thing. I took it like a real safety hazard because I never knew it was just mere folklore. Funny thing was that no one in the house ever challenged it or questioned where it came from. It was just a thing passed down, or they heard it from somewhere too and just absorbed it like that.
I later got to know better during a biology class in my secondary school that growth hormones are from genes and nothing like stepping over someone can stop their growth. No, my younger brother is taller than everyone in the house, even taller than me, who was the tallest before.
I am glad I took the biology class and got to know better. But right now, I still keep wondering how much unquestioned certainty a household can tell a child and polish it in a way they will believe it and how long they move about with that information without questioning where it originally came from.
Thank you for reading.
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