I don't want to think too much about bad advice I got. (I'm more concerned with the bad advice I gave.) There was the time when I was ten and absent from school and my mother suddenly got the idea that I should bicycle down to the track and meet my brother and sister who were at their school's sports day. The last thing I wanted was to be seen biking around town during school hours, and I tried to say no. But then she got angry, and I had to go unwillingly and hope I wouldn't be seen.
Of course, I was seen. Shortly afterward, in school, the teacher said to me in front of the class, "Instead of riding your bike, you ought to come to school." For some time after, kids kept saying to me, "Don't cry, Jamie, Mommy will always let you ride your bike instead of going to school!" I didn't talk about it at the time, because I was deeply ashamed of the whole business.
What bothers me is that Mother let a whim turn into a fixation so instantly. It isn't like there was some urgent function that I served by doing what she wanted; she just had a vague idea that this was the kind of thing I should be doing. And there was nothing I could say, because she saw what she wanted to see. It's bad enough to make your own mistakes without being forced to make other people's mistakes too!
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