Spotlight on Health and Foolish Habits: Episode 4

When the kids have been sick and come back to school, they wear scarves around their necks for several days. Even if they are sweating buckets in the cramped, overheated classrooms, they cannot take their handkerchiefs off because they don't want to get sick again. Most of these children have at least one parent that is a doctor, but they still cling unswervingly to these traditions.

Here are some other wives-tales that I've heard the teachers talk about:

- drinking cold water weakens teeth and makes them fall out.
- women should not sit on cold, hard surfaces because it will make them infertile.
- don't wash your hair before test or something important because you'll wash memories away.
- pinching the nose makes it less flat
- massaging kids legs makes them grow
- tickling babies will make them stutter when they're older
- when a tooth falls out, throw it on the roof and the new tooth will grow in straight.
- if you carry a baby with it's legs wrapped around you, it will be bowlegged.
- Eel, dog meat, garlic, green onions, barley water, etc. give a man "stamina." This is especially awkward because Jae Won always comments on it proudly. He believes it because his mother always tells him this. That is just weird.

There are TONS more superstitions and beliefs about health. The older-fashioned beliefs are more wild and mostly held by grandparents, so I don't see them in practice as often. And, I'm tired of writing about this stuff, so this is the last one about silly Korean beliefs.