[ SECRET POST #2490 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2490 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.


__________________________________________________



08.


__________________________________________________



09.


















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 048 secrets from Secret Submission Post #356.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

01. http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/1609/tlws.png

[(Anonymous)]

I used to love those books... then I found out how many urban legends were in them. :/

[(Anonymous)]

Pretty much. I used to love those books and picked one up for old times sakes but I can't even read them now.

[quantumreality]

I've never read them. I always thought they were supposed to be long rambly self-help books, not collections of anecdotes.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

I had no idea either. But now I'm interested. They sound entertaining.

[kaijinscendre]

Meh. I still like to read stories out of them, though I donated all my childhood copies a couple years ago.

[(Anonymous)]

"They didn't know that you could only get HIV from tainted blood donations"

jesus christ

I do love those books though, ngl

[(Anonymous)]

My mom was super into these things for a while. I figured it was supposed to be mostly pick-me-up short stories that may or may not be true. The one for pets upset me, I remember, as it involved a story about the grief and process of having to put a cat to sleep (something I'd recently done)... but ARE the stories all supposed to be true...? I didn't realize that was a thing.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm not really sure tbh. I think there's some that are clearly anecdotes not intended to be taken as truth, but there's also been a few I later learned were urban legends. It wouldn't surprise me if a lot of them did, at the very least, omit and/or exaggerate certain details.

[sootyowl]

I owned a few of these books when I was a kid. I liked them enough. I think I thought they were all true stories? Kinda disappointed to hear they aren't tbh. Ah well. At least they occupied my time and tried to be respectful and such to people. I remember a few making me cry too.

[loracarol]

I'll always have a soft spot for them because my Mum slipped a copy of "for the Ocean Lover's Soul" in my suitcase when I went to my first overnight camp (ocean themed, of course).

That one and "Pet Lover's Soul". Maybe the stories are true, maybe not, but I can't bring myself to care.

[(Anonymous)]

not sure on the context but no, actually spreading misinformation about HIV like that is dangerous

also I haven't read those books since I was 12 but in general I'd prefer to have something that wasn't extreme in either direction

OP

[(Anonymous)]

It was from one of the ones intended for children. It was talking about some people who burned down the home of a child with HIV. They used the excuse that they didn't want to catch it from him. (Even as a kid, I figured they just wanted to burn someone's home and thought he would be a good target.)

[siofrabunnies]

Pro-tolerance is absolutely better than anti.

I've never read any of the books (I can't stomach 'inspirational' or 'feel-good' things), so I'm not sure how 'sanitized' the stories are. My problem with the example you gave is that misinformation is harmful, especially about controversial social issues like HIV and what's connected to it. "You can only get HIV from botched transfusions" is almost as bad as "Only gay people get AIDS".

It seems like this situation would only lead to tolerance of the sanitized version, anyway.

[(Anonymous)]

Well, they're story collections, so they have some really good ones and some really bad ones. We had one of the ones for kids in my classroom, and I always liked the stories the teacher read us from there, so I bought a copy of my own only to find out the good stories were the exception and most were just plain boring.

And yeah there was one that bothered me because the author talked about how he lost a lot of friends after his dad came out as gay, but he learned not to let it bother him, because his real friends knew it wasn't his fault his dad was gay! Fuck the guy who put that one in there.

[(Anonymous)]

but he learned not to let it bother him, because his real friends knew it wasn't his fault his dad was gay!

That one sounds vaguely familiar... yeah, there's much better ways of handling it. It might not have been intentionally homophobic, but being gay isn't the same thing as someone's dad having an embarrassing hobby or something.

[(Anonymous)]

I read the original book as a young teen and I remember it as being trite and full of platitudes.