Random childhood stuff you have no explanation for.

It's weird to think about it isn't it? We used to play out at all hours with random children from the block. We also just used to go into their houses - my parents had no idea where we were.

My mum would also leave me in the library and go shopping. I think I was about 7.

Funny thing is, she is really anxious if I don't reply to a text immediately even though I am an adult!

Yes. I have a photo of me and sibling posing with a monkey (in a jumper I think) at Southend. Would probably have been early 70s. I have also seen pics on Facebook of monkeys in the local high street but I don't remember those myself.

@SowWhatNow I used to have to clean the leaves of my mum's rubber plant with cotton wool balls dipped in milk. One day I found my poor dried up goldfish curled up on one of the leaves. He was in a tank with no lid and must have decided to jump out one day. I was convinced he had died and been flushed down the loo but my parents swore this hadn't happened. We were all mystified by the missing fish until I found it.

That’s a little bit rude and sarcastic. Predators have always existed, and walking down the street, you don’t get wolf whistles etc anymore. Safeguarding wasn’t really a thing growing up so you could argue the world is safer now. Just think of all the historic sex cases - Jimmy Saville, Rolf Harris etc Not saying it doesn’t go on today, it does, but children are believed and listened to more today, and there’s more measures to prevent it happening.

Bikergran is not wrong, though!

Cattle grids. I remember the explanation that they were supposed to stop animals wandering, but I never did see an animal stuck in them.

It was an enigma to me what the point of games like Pin the Tail were. Why would you try to pin the tail when you couldn’t see to do it? I remember trying to “use my mind” to develop X-ray vision, or that the adult would fail to cover my eyes properly, but it was no good - when I had the tail in my hand, I couldn’t see a thing! But I liked the game “keeper of the keys”, where I was blindfolded and had to point in the direction of any sound I heard, while someone crept up to steal the keys - there was skill in that game, and I had great directional hearing.

@Snooples I loved Puddle Lane. The overbearing Mrs Pitter-Patter would have loved Mumsnet!

Mrs Pitter-Patter to the sleeping Magician: Wake up and do something useful!
Magician: Very well, I’ll do something very useful. (Makes her tiny)

It was so that you didn’t get a cold in your kidneys. Which you also got from sitting on cold concrete or benches outside.

There were several old gravel pits near my childhood home in the 70s, and at least one of them had quicksand in. A horse got trapped in it and had to be rescued by the fire brigade.

School Santa was a woman for years.. why didn’t any of us question it? We accepted her with her cotton wool beard as the real deal.

Why didn’t we get sunburn? I don’t once remember having to put on suncream.

Who decided on the formula for how many % you and Barney from class 2 had of a successful relationship? You know where you use the letters of your name?

why were toys and cartoons SO amazing in the 1980s? Keypers, glo worms, woodland fairies, popples, Super Ted, Family Ness, Banana Man, Puddle Lane

I grew up in a mining village and we had a coal house at the top of the path (brick built, shed sized), and the houses along the lane all had them (this was at the back of the houses, think Coronation Street but a wider, accessible road). Ours had a hatch in the roof & the other houses had little wooden doors on the road side, as well as a full size door on the house side. The coal lorry would come and fill them up with coal via a chute.
Right up until we sold my parents' house seven years ago we would fill the coal scuttle from the coal house (always had one bucketful in the house and another full one waiting). Most of the others along the lane were used as wheelie bin stores as noone else still had the open fire.

Indeed. You know what’s weird @Bikergran , your comment is. Also your inability to realise how different the world is now! Do you live in a silo?

You find it weird? Love, there’s predators quite literally everywhere these days! They’re not shoved in asylums anymore, they’re left to exist in communities! Not to mention how much, much more populated we are now than 67 years ago!

🤍🤍🤍 I’m so sorry

Weren’t the dummies something to do with Gatecrasher?

Mine is from my old school in the 80’s/90’s. If you saw someone wearing Kickers you would ask them what shoes they were wearing. When they replied “Kickers”, you would then kick them in the shin.

Did that at our guides. Loved it.

At my primary school, the usual punishment for any child who dared to move after the bell had been rung was to miss the next playtime. I was far too well-behaved to break rules like that, but in my last term. I got caught out by “I haven’t told you to line up yet!”. Once I had got over the shock of this, I was oddly proud. I think I saw being made to miss my play as a rite of passage, and grinned as I sat in the punishment area (outside the staff room), looked at pityingly by teachers surprised to see me there.

The enigma of the parachute games at school. I remember one called “Mushroom”: when the teacher said this word, we were supposed to hold the parachute up. She would say other words beginning with M:
Monday.
Maths.
Mushy peas.
Mrs Smith.
Mushy peas (again).
on one occasion; “I can’t think of any more words!”

Another one I had was being dyspraxic, I couldn't sense whether I was lying straight for years. I used to lie on the carpet and Mum would stand over me and nudge me with her foot to straighten me up. I used to love it - so much so that occasionally, as I got older, I would deliberately lie crooked so she would straighten me out....

Stuck In The Mud was definitely a popular game at my school. We also had a weird one where we would congregate around the benches in the playground and someone would stand in the middle and shout out a random food. You had to run to a different bench depending on whether you liked it, loved it, hated it or had never heard of it. And try not to get tagged, so you didn't have to go in the middle. This being an international primary school, there could be some very peculiar foods thought up!

Yes to dogs running free

Getting on the bus to a town about half an hour away from home, aged 9 ish, with a couple of mates (no parents, no mobile phones, just 10p for the phone box). We’d go with £3 ish each, that would cover the return bus fare plus a portion of chips and a new lip balm/hair bobble/sparkly nail polish from the chemist shop.

Solid plastic “dummies” on cord necklaces that all the girls used to wear and trade with each other. Basically a large plastic marble with a disc and loop at one end - they’d be banned as a choking risk these days.

Glitter jelly sandals. Awful things that rubbed your feet to pieces but we all wanted a pair!

Also playing in the foam offcuts that a local factory used to throw in a skip in the yard (a bit like a giant foam pit that you’d see in a trampoline park). Any of us could’ve easily suffocated.

Another enigma was actually about a piece of office equipment from the 1980s: the microwriter (see picture). My dad used one: the idea was that the buttons would sit under your hand, one button for each finger (two for the thumb), and you would get each letter by pressing different combinations of the buttons. There were mnemonics to help you remember them: for example, P was "press all". My dad said that with practice, you could type really quickly, and you only needed one hand. I wonder why these never caught on?

Candle wax

I've remembered another childhood enigma which I never found out at the time. An adult would do a trick of rapid paint strokes over a piece of paper, and a word (such as my name) would magically appear. I suppose it was prepared in some way beforehand, but I never found out how. I suppose I could Google the answer, but does anyone else remember this?

I also remember the magic pens: one pen would write with "invisible" ink, and would change the colour of other pens. That was always a mystery.

Apparently it is a thing in the USA to spot and take a photo of number plates from every state. Hawaii and Alaska are the hardest to find.