Many people shared some truly inventive, out of the box thinking. Most were the creative innovations of parents trying to keep everything running smoothly.

Tire Them Out Before Bed

"My mom taught me and my sister to howl at the moon. It would get our dog all worked up, and he'd howl too."

"It would make my grandma so mad, but my mom found it hilarious."

-- eeyoremarie

Smart House

"My parents didn't want to shout our names for dinner or to come downstairs so my Dad installed a literal doorbell in our bedrooms."

"So if we were needed in the kitchen we were summoned by the 'child bell'. - we lived in a 2 bed semi."

-- redridingnuts

A Very Fun Way to Enjoy Burgers

"Burger Roulette: every time there was a barbecue or we made burgers one of the burgers would be stuffed with hot sauce and peppers. So hilarious and definitely made dinners more exciting, but not a normal thing lol"

-- SavvyPanther

A Myth They Made On Their Own

"I think I only thought about this once, then completely forgot about it. When I was a kid (6-7?) I used to think 'brown people pooped brown poop, and white people pooped white poop.' "

"It never occurred to me that I had never seen a white sh** any time I went to the toilet, and so when I saw that someone had unfortunately forgot to flush the toilet (at school) and I saw the 'remnants,' I was immediately intrigued, since I was the only brown kid at that school, and I thought there was another brown person at my school, and I just hadn't seen them."

-- are_you_salty_lol

People Break Down The Best Loophole They've Ever Exploited

Other people came to understand that their parents' strange, often dishonest behavior or commentary actually had a very admirable motivation underneath it.

These were good stories that shed light on the honor of moms and dads.

Be Ready

"My mom used to have me practice screaming for help at the top of my lungs before going to friends houses ಠ_ಠ" -- lazydaisy2pointoh

"You know whilst this is weird it's also a good thing to teach kids to use their voice . They're told to shut up or be quiet so often that when they need to use their voice it's not natural to them" -- Ieatclowns

Gettin' Health

"Whenever I wouldn't wanna get shots my mom would say 'te lo van a poner en tu cosita si no lo dejas' which means 'they're gonna put the shot on yo di** if you don't comply' and the doc who didn't know Spanish was like 'yeah en tu cosita.'

-- asap-sodapoppin

A Boarding House

"Random kids living at our house."

"I had 9 siblings and my parents always had one or two other kids that had been kicked out of their homes living with us. Usually friends of my older brothers and sisters, it wasn't until my twenties that I discovered that most had been disowned by their parents for being gay."

"Also had no clue that this wasn't normal for the 60's."

-- af_chedderhead

Best Guy to Have Around

"It's a little thing, but it was very surprising to me - that it was my dad and not my mom who stayed home with me when I was sick."

"Also, my friends all had stories of their parents trying to get them to go to school even when they were sick. My parents never did that, and even let me stay home a few times even when they knew I was faking it."

"I know it's hard for a lot of working parents to stay home with a sick kid, but all my friends at the time were pretty much from the same middle-class background as I was, and my father was a hospital physician and the head of his division at the hospital and also saw a lot of patients, so it was not easy for him to miss work. I guess he handled a lot of stuff by phone (this was before the internet)."

"It's a little thing, but it really made me feel so cared for and I still associate staying home sick with getting taken care of by my dad who had an excellent bedside manner."

-- zazzlekdazzle

Finally, others discovered the flaws of their parents. These misunderstandings weren't the results of purposeful fibs on the part of parents.

Rather, the kids at the time couldn't conceive of a world in which their parents could screw up.

Everyone's Enemy

"Getting honked at, flipped off, and yelled at while driving. I just thought driving was this extremely aggressive and negative experience that made everyone angry."

"Turns out my dad was a serial tailgater who used to ride right up on people in front of us, regardless of the speed we were traveling. Highways, subdivisions, country roads, didn't matter."

"It wasn't until I began to learn to drive myself that it all made sense."

-- kor_hookmaster

Inventive Dishes

"My mom's cooking. She boiled noodles until they were mush. Her potato soup was boiled onions and potatoes drained then added to warm milk with salt and pepper. Baked beans were beans, ketchup, and pancake syrup."

"The most common meal in our house started as spaghetti, then became chili, and then chili mac."

"Vegetable soup was all the vegetables dumped straight from a can with no seasoning and the meat would be hamburger, canned roast beef, or canned corned beef with potatoes."

"A lot of the other stuff she cooked was pretty good, but that was only if she followed a recipe. If she winged it things got strange. My favorite will always be the grape soda bbq because she didn't have Dr Pepper."

-- ITeechYoKidsArt

Here's hoping you aren't still under the spell of any lies or half-truths that proliferated when you were a kid. But there's no harming in acknowledging just how long you lived according to them.