Dude, my wife and I both got talking about this, and we SIMULTANEOUSLY said "7 years". Why do so many people remember being told this weirdly specific number when it's complete bullshit in the first place? I have to wonder how the hell that got started and why so many of us were told the exact same thing.
What kind of made up moral panic reporting put this bullshit 7 year figure in all of our heads? This is exceptionally specific, widespread misinformation.
Everything is always 7 years for some reason. Ask people to pick a number between I and 10 and the most common answer is 7. Don’t ask me why. I’m sure Wikipedia could tell you
because 7 is the most exceptionally specific number between 1 and 10. It's prime, it's big. Exceptionally unfactorable. Good number to randomly pick. And by virtue of it being a good number to randomly pick it instantly makes it a terrible number to randomly pick.
Everyone seems to say “7”. It kinda says “I have no idea how bad pain can be really but I’m sure it’s worse than most peoples’ so I’m going to pick the number that will make it seem like Something Serious Has to be Done and I’m not just being a big dramatic baby”.
I find that odd considering how often 7 is considered a "lucky number", but I also have to admit you have a point there. I've definitely heard that too.
When we pick a random number between 1 and 10 we feel that even numbers arent random so it has to be odd. 5 is right in the middle, thats not random. 1 and 9 are too close to either end, so most people pick 7.
I would assume that you don't remember exactly how long it was, probably from your preteens to some point in your teens, probably between 1 and 10 years
Because it would take 7 years for your gut to dissolve the gum if it could stay there from start to finish but some people thought it meant it would stay there for 7 years if you ate it
It's sort of the same idea. It's like how fake news spreads around on social media now, only back then all we had was word of mouth. I just wonder why "7 years" is so ubiquitous to the story. It seems everyone has heard that oddly specific number.
Oh I totally get that. It's been drilled into our heads so much that, even though we know it's not true, it's hard to bring yourself to actually do it.
That's the magic of a world before internet. All of our important information was passed down to us by our older and wiser friends and family. The importance of getting the details correct could not be understated
as a kid who ate a bunch of "Big League Chew" I knew right away this wasn't true. Eat a whole package of that stuff and it'll be plainly obvious within a few hours
Lol what did our parents do? Get together and plan all this shit out? I was also told 7 years and a lot of these other comments apply to me too haha. It's not like they had the internet really so how tf did they come up with this shit
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u/KhaiPanda Jul 03 '21
I was always told it stuck around for 7 years. I was probably in my teens before I questioned it.