Toilet wisdom

We had some bizarre conversations last night of which I only remember this one, when Ella went to the toilet after she'd gone to bed:

Ella - I'm doing a poo!
Me - That's good that you went to the toilet to do a poo.
Ella - Because poo makes you strong, doesn't it?
Me - Errr.

I have used the makes-you-strong motivator for all sorts of things from eating meat and veges to walking and riding the trike, but I swear I have never made a link between physical strength and poo! Not even during those early stages of toilet training when a significant proportion of our conversations seemed to revolve around toilet-related topics.

It reminded me of a story I believed my mother told me as a kid to explain how my sister got to have red hear. She said - as I remember it - that she went to see a scary movie when she was pregnant and she got such a fright that my sister's hair turned red in the womb. I proudly relayed this explanation for red haired people - scientifically proven beyond any doubt - to my peers in primary school, who of course accepted this without questioning. And even when I got to the age where I accepted that it was just one of those stories parents tell their kids to stop the why questions, I still regularly told the story at dinner parties when the topic of the gullibility of children came up.

Until - when I was in my 30s - I reminded my mother of her telling me this and she flatly denied that she had ever told me such a thing. I'm still not a 100% convinced that she didn't, because surely I wouldn't have made a thing like that up myself?

So now I'm wondering if in 30 years time I'll find myself in the awkward position of having to convince Ella that I never, ever told her that poo makes you strong.