1. Consuming Pop-Rocks and Coke at the same time will kill you – This was always one of those things we’d try to get someone else to do—hoping fervently that the teachers wouldn’t end recess early just because little Jimmy Burton dropped dead on the playground—but would never be willing to try ourselves. As a result, we spent our childhoods in fear of anyone who happened to have those two deadly ingredients on hand. Even now, years after we’ve learned how it’s “scientifically impossible†to kill yourself doing this, I can’t help but cringe and feel terrified that I’m about to witness a horrific, sugary explosion every time I see a child eating Pop-Rocks and drinking Coke at the same time.
2. If you say “Bloody Mary†three times into a mirror, a ghost will appear and tear your face off – Damn, we were some morbid kids. For those of us who actually believed this one, congratulations on making it to Yale—we’ve certainly come a long way. It’s actually pretty hard to understand why we believed this one. Then again, if we were brought up by the parents who thought that the state of our nation would improve if we elected a man named “Bush†three times, maybe it’s not so hard to believe that we thought we could summon a ghost out of a mirror if we repeated her name three times. Back in the day though, this was some seriously scary shit, although looking back I really can’t see why we thought so. I can accept that we might have believed in ghosts, and even that they could be summoned by looking into a mirror while repeating their name three times, but still, I can’t believe we never asked ourselves, if everyone who had done it had been killed, how did we ever find out about it in the first place? Even if someone had tried it and somehow managed to escape from Bloody Mary’s wrath, why would that lucky soul choose to share this information exclusively with children under twelve? Yes, I did once get a gash across my face from trying this, but the lesson there is that it’s a bad idea to chant anything while moving a shaving razor across your upper lip. If a ghost appeared and tried to kill you, would you really not think to alert the authorities or the media, or at least maybe share how you managed to escape before terrifying an entire nation’s youth? I mean, anyone who had ever seen the movie Ghostbusters would have been pretty clear about who you should call in situations like these. Instead, we kids spent many a Halloween double- dog daring each other to say it, while secretly hoping the all-powerful triple-dog dare would not be unleashed upon us, because again, in accordance with our 12-year-old logic, being murdered by a ghost named Bloody Mary was still better than all our friends thinking we were a wuss for ducking out on a triple-dog dare.
