Random childhood stuff you have no explanation for.

I’ve just had a right giggle at the mum who sent her kids out to the garden to collect number plates of passing cars. Good one. 😁

I had the I-Spy book about roads and transport. On the back there was a list of the two letters saying where they were registered.

I remember going to Chelmsford and saw many cars with POO. OO were registered in Chelmsford https://www.drivearchive.co.uk/regcodes.htm

We acquired a dog in 2005 who was regularly let out "to play" with the many dogs who roamed the estate his owners lived on. He was only 11months but that had been his life. People hadn't stopped doing it by then. But also, some dogs just escape and do all sorts of daft things.

My DDs used to thump one another if they saw a yellow car 😅They still do it sometimes at age 21 and 17 (not if one of them is driving though!)

I did trainspotting with my dad which was not a lot more than this. Looking up numbers in a guide and ticking them off.

On long car and bus journeys we used to play "red". This was where you'd shout "red" every time you saw a post office, a letter box, postie or post office van! Sometimes kids used to try to cheat by saying "red" at random red vans or shout too many multiple "reds" if they saw a post office.

We used to play a different car numberplate fame. It went on for months. You started with a registration with the only number in the registration was a 1. Once you found a 1, you could start looking for a 2 and onwards until you got to 999.

I thought everyone did this 🤣 my kids wouldn’t do it now though

Yeah I used to do that

I remember my nans dog would just wander around the town on its own. Go out at 9am and come back like 6pm. No one found this weird! The dog warden bought him home one time because apparently he had gone into Safeways and tried helping himself to some food.

Otherwise he just... wasnt home? I often wonder if he had a job...

I’m sure I did this too! I used to have a book, 50 games to play on a long car journey or something like that, always came with us on holiday and we’d work our way through it. There were definitely several number plate games.

I remember playing rounders, losing all the balls, playing with an orange, then stuffing the orange with grass when it inevitably burst.

I just don’t see any grass stuffed oranges being used in rounders anymore and it saddens me.

The gates that would lock the drive way entrance to our school (which was right next to the playground) would stay wide open all day and the two other footpath entrances that lead into the playground as well. It’s crazy to think about it actually as we could easily just walk out of school at any given time!

We would frequently get random dogs causing mass hysteria at playtime. I remember vividly running into the bathroom and standing on top of the toilet seat holding the door closed because a (friendly) Alsatian chased me in there!

The number plates thing, on journeys as a kid we looked for number plates that could spell words, either accurate or with a big of imagination, probably to stop the 'how much longer ' whines lol

This takes me back to the depth of lockdown, when having run out of all other ideas, I sat my kids at the end of the driveway and got them to tally up the numbers of different coloured cars driving past. I think blue won.

Definitely. We used to try to be the first to spot a new plate. D deg car whoop.

OMG that's triggered a memory! I think one summer I had a notebook and on our journey to our holiday I wrote down as many number plates as I could. I have no idea why 🤣

That's fun! I love how my kids are interested in mundane things.

I remember on family holidays it would be 1st August and the new letter on the number plate would come out so we'd excitedly count H-regs or whatever letter it was. Until we reached 100.

What?! 🤣🤣🤣

This really made me laugh. I can’t imagine my DC doing this.

White dog poo is caused by bone content in the dogs food - back then, dogs were given bones quite often - and there was less concern about picking up poop.

Come look in my back yard before we've poo picked each day and there will be several white dog turds because mine eat a raw diet and so there's plenty of bone in their food.

I have no explanation why im an orphan.

Schools weren’t as locked down as they are now, even in the 90s, so if there was a dog out it would more easily get into a school. My daughter’s schools both had fences around them. My schools you could easily get into.

Collecting number plates.

When my mum wanted us out of her hair she would suggest we went out into the front garden and wrote down the number plates of passing cars. As if this had any interest or value whatsoever.

And we did it, And it was kind of almost just about fun.

A few times a dog actually got in our school building. Schools weren’t very secure back then. If a fire door was opened when it was warm a curious dog could wander in. We also had a few trapped pigeons.