POLL: Did your parents ever threaten to sell you to the Gypsies, as a child?

[Narnian_Princess]

Not Gypsies, but I was often threatened with being sent to a convent. Very strange, as I was 6 years old when the threats started.

 

[Handbag Lady]

She also told me frequently I was adopted.

OMG!!!!!!!! My sister did that to me too. She even told me to ask mom to show me my birth certificate and that mom would make an excuse that I couldn't see it.

So, I asked mom to see it and my mom said, "I'm sorry, it is in the safe-deposit box and I don't have the key. But I have your sister's if that helps."

I was in daze. I went along for MONTHS "knowing" I was adopted!

 

[onelilspark]

My Dad always threatened my brother and I with being sold to the gypsies

 

[scotlass]

My mum never did Gypsies but she did threaten to send me to live with the nuns !!

Bread and water,no telly and bed at 6 with jaggy blankets.....oh yeh and Mass twice a day !!

To be fair she didnt need to add the extras,just the look of our Parish Nuns scared the bejesus oot me !!

 

[dec5girl]

My parents always said they were going to mail me to somewhere. I can't remember the name of the place, but it had a funny name. Now, where I work we get all of our software from a town called Effingham. I think it's a funny name so I always tell my kids I'm going to mail them to Effingham. (Sorry if anyone is from there, but my town is called Snohomish so I guess I really shouldn't make fun!)

 

[Kathi OD]

There were two threats in our house....one to be sold to the gypsies and the other to be dropped off at the "bad girls house." Being sold to the gypsies always seemed so much preferable to me because their lives were full of adventure. Living at the bad girl house (which was on the way to my grandmother's house), on the other hand, was a big scare...Who wanted to be be locked up in some big old stone building doing chores and being beaten day after day?

 

[mumofone]

My parents threatened to sell me to the gypsies. I thought it would be great as I wouldn't need to go to school

 

[Denine]

They never threatened us with the gypsies. They were going to send us back to the Indians!

 

[happygirl]

More then once

 

[bookgirl]

My mom used the gypsy threat on me. I didn't use it on the twins but I did tell them often that there was a really good market for healthy little blond/brunette boys and I had my eye on (fill in an expensive item) so they'd better watch it. They'd just look at me like I was speaking Greek. When they got a little older my mini lawyer would ask me how much he was worth.

 

[jen0610]

I rarely was told the for sale sign was being hung out, but both of my brothers were for sale on a monthly basis.

I've even told DS13, if I could give him to the gypsies for FREE I would, but with the attitude, even they wouldn't want him. Which never fails to get him to smile.

 

[monkey68]

My mom didn't use gypsies, she used Baba Yaga. She lives in a hut on chicken legs that can move around, and would kidnap small children and threaten to eat them. She said if I was bad, she was going to take me into the forest and call Baba Yaga and I would never be seen from again. I said the police would come and look for me, but she said they wouldn't because Baba Yaga has a silver birch broom that clears away any trace of her. And Baba Yaga is scary! we're talking a witch with sharp iron teeth that eats small children!

Once, I was really bad, and we were upstate for the summer. My mom actually took me into the woods and starts calling Baba Yaga's name. I was so terrified, hysterical crying, I swore I would be good from then on, I just didn't want to go with Baba Yaga.

 

[EMom]

I love those Baba Yaga stories! We have a couple of Baba Yaga books and that house on chicken legs is hysterical. And teeth made of iron/steel. That would scare any kid.

An Australian friend who was born in the 1940s told me that when she was little, her parents made this threat when their children misbehaved. "You can either get a spanking, go to bed without tea (dinner), or be sent to live with the Aborigines." She and her many siblings told me they ALWAYS chose to go to bed without tea. It's terribly politically incorrect, but according to her, was highly effective.

 

[islangrl]

I voted sorta.
My dad threatened to send me to a convent school in Canada.
I swear he was completely serious! I don't know if he actually had one in mind, but he made it sound so real. I already attended Catholic school, so a school with only nuns, was terrifying to me. I was also scared of Canada (not anymore ), it was so far away and cold there.

No. My mother threatened boarding school on a regular basis, though.

In 4th grade, my BFF (who was a british expat), went off to boarding school in Scotland. I wanted to go sooosooo badly. I sent away for brochures on boarding schools and everything. Needless to say, your mom's threat would have had the opposite effect on me.

 

[barkley]

no-because they probably realized it would have encouraged us to act up even worse to get them to follow through on the threat

we lived in an area with a pretty significant gypsie population and growing up in conservative homes those gypsie kids appeared to us to not have too bad a lifestyle-their parents did'nt seem as overly concerned over grades or curfews (or so the kids told us), they had some kicking parties (the city would periodically close off streets for their festivals or they would take up a huge chunk of one of the parks to have days long celebrations) AND they were not only allowed to wear but allowed to wear AT school what we kids considered realy 'cool' and cutting edge fashions (this was in the 60's and the gypsies in our region could have been the fashion inspiration for what we were seeing on the news as the chosen wardrobes for activist college students and the hippies ).

it was much more practical to use the threat of catholic school-we did'nt know a single kid who went there who was'nt begging their parents to send them to the public schools

 

[Goofyzgurl]

nope, but they did say that they found me.

 

[cruellababy]

no; and that's really awful.

 

[Cool-Beans]

Never said they were going to sell me.

But my mother frequently encouraged us to take out ads in the newspaper to see if we couldn't find a mom who would let us do what we wanted to do.

 

[Cindyluwho]

OMG!! By brother actually taped me inside a box and told me he was going to sell me to the Indians. And yes, my mother told me all the time that she was going to sell us kids to the Indians. Never Gypsies, though.
My little brother on the other hand...
My step father told him that if he misbehaved they'd give him to the "fat lady in Astoria" who "never takes a bath or shaves her armpits and takes little kids and sticks their heads under her arms" YIKES!! And if you couldn't tell, my step father was a jerk!

 

[paintnolish]

Oh, yes, I was threatened by that all the time. It was more of a joke. I wasn't scared. If I was doing something naughty and got hurt, my mom would also tell me God was punishing me. This might illicit flames, but we still joke around about this.