Things that you used to do as a child repetitively and now think "WTF?!"

and my mum used to give us the raw bacon rinds to chew on that she'd sliced off the bacon.

and did anyone else ever stroke the smooth sections between the ribs of their socks?

eat savlon

eat birthday cake candles

leave bogeys to dry on bedpost and then pick them off and add to secret stash of "diamonds"

pick holes in the plaster of the wall next to the bed, through to the brick

chew the wooden rail of my bunk

When I needed a poo I'd go to the bathroom, lock the door, put towels under the door like draught excluders, take all my clothes off and do my business.

What??

My parents had 2 wardrobes with mirrors on the door in their room. I used to sit between them with the doors open (so they made a ^ shape) and and just stare at the reflections for AGES. It was strangely relaxing!

Another sponge sucking page eating crisp pate lover here..I also used to spend HOURS with a towel on my head staring in a mirror pretending to be a nun. At some point I must have decided nuns were the epitome of glamour

I did the knots thing too on our she, my dad wasnt impressed either

I used to melt candle wax on the radiator then rush downstairs in the morning before the heating was on to pick it off.

I stored fruit in a stool that had a lid you could remove. The fruit all rotted, no one could figure out where the stench was coming from for weeks-why? Why did I do that?!

Lol mistyshouse were they that easy to push out?

I used to cause major drippage all over the house by soaking paper (my dad bought reams of the stuff for us to draw on) in the bath in "perfumed" and then dyed water then hanging them over the radiators to dry.

I then sold the paper for 5p a pop. 10p for the dyed stuff. Looked quite pretty actually.

Ants are delicious; lemony and crunchy.

Aged 4.

me and my brother once spent a whole afternoon poking all the knots out from the wooden fence between us and the neighbours. it had more holes than swiss cheese when we were done. i don't know what possessed us but it was just so fun

my dad went MAD

I used to eat toothpaste sandwiches and couldn't go to the toilet unless I had the wash basket in front of me!

I used to lick sharpeners cause they tasted funny.

Chew fairy cake papers till there was no cake left on them.

and eat raw potato, which I did adulthood until dh said it was strange, I still miss it

Sitting in dark cupboards rubbing my eyes vigorously, until I could see stars and galaxies.

Making tableaux with Sindy dolls, which often involved car crashes or dinosaur attacks. I think the car crashes were inspired by watching 70s F1 with my dad at an impressionable age. Mum didn't like me doing it and I'd have to pretend that Sindy had just fallen out of her jeep on the Scalextric track during the course of normal play, and that her head had genuinely fallen off.

Eating crayons and being really disappointed that the different colours didn't have different flavours. This was really my friend's special habit, I just joined in.

Another flannel sucker here. Also, at some point I was told never to drink hot water from the tap so I now have a lifelong aversion to it - and a suspicion about "upstairs" cold water (even though all our taps are on the mains).

Didn't sew my fingers but I did push needles through the skin a lot - it's surprising how many and how far you can do this. Also, I occasionally dismantled pencil sharpeners and used the (amazingly sharp) blade to cut my fingers - quite painlessly, though I stopped this when I bled profusely on one occasion and rather alarmed myself.

Slightly off topic, but I was once told never to get bubble bath froth up my nose. I once did, by accident, when about 6 and was convinced I had about 5 minutes to live.

I hated the packed lunches DM made, especially the sandwiches. Dry brown bread, either with salami or sardine in tomato ketchup. So I would take them out of the lunchbox so it would look like I'd eaten them, bring them back home, and stuff them under the slats in the bunk bed. Where obviously they decomposed and stank. Until they were found. What a happy day that was .

It NEVER occurred to me that it might be a sensible idea to dispose of them at school/in a bin on the way home.

Incidentally, just found another friend who did exactly the same, except he put them inside an old grandfather clock. They were discovered when the pendulum stopped swinging! About a year's worth of mouldy bread had jammed it!

this thread is so funny! I used to love putting pins in my fingers, picking padded wall paper, making perfume out of petals on the field out side my house, and imagine s skateboard guy when in a car. also dipping my finger tips in candle wax over and over, till I could preserve my finger prints for future lovers.
I also stood up when wiping, made sure my favorite teddy had the best seat before I went to bed, and put my fingers in the fish tank so the fish would nibble them.

Did we all have the same undiagnosed vitamin deficiency or something? So many of these (wet flannels especially) are really familiar to me too!

I had odd pica

Paper ripped from the margins of old books
bath pearls and oil capsules - mostly for the dissolving capsules not the oil
soda crystals! just one or two bits, occasionally to feel the sensation of them dissolving on the tounge

I used to smell chairs... Walls... Doors...

I dripped candle wax on my hands so that it looked like white sores which I then peeled off satisfyingly.

If dinner was composed of mashed potatoes with pie,fravy and veg for example I would mash everything together and then mould the resulting mess into a flat round. I then divided the round into segments which I ate one by one . I still do this when im alone.

I loved to buy a caramac and then hold a piecebetween my fingers so that it melted. Then I would rub the melted chocolate over all of the fingers and lick it off each finger in turn. Made a little go a long way

Mmmm yummy paper still do

Mmmm yummy pencils.

Mmmm yummy pencil toppers (meant to stop me eating pencils) or any other random small piece of plastic.

Mmmm yummy Trill bird food - found in my first infant's class art cupboard.

It was the summer of 1972. I was the proud owner of a tricycle, a large! pale blue metal one with a square metal box/boot attached at the back.

Those were the days when children as young as 6 could freely roam the streets with nary a paedophile or speeding car in sight.

We lived in a a dead end Close/gardens and I trundled my way along the pavement out onto the road that lay ahead. One one side of the road there were houses and on the other there was open fields and woodland. Now sadly built on with houses with gardens the size of postage stamps!

So I gaily pedalled my tricycle along. One could be gay back then, it was but an innocent word which didn't convey the homosexual meaning it does today, and I was gay and merry it must be said.

The cool breeze blew in my face, my freckled face as I had back then, my wonky fringe cut by my mother parted as I gaily trundled along.

And then I discovered my meaning in life. A flattened hedgehog. Completely flat, just like a big round pizza. Only back then we didn't know what a pizza was, there were no Dominoes or Pizza Hut when I was a child.

The hedgehog was dried out and I lifted it up like a frisby and carefully placed Mr or Mrs Tiggywinkle in the boot of my tricycle.

I was busy that summer holiday and collected quite a few flattened hedgehogs. In some small way I felt I was rescuing them and felt proud to drive them around in my tricycle carriage.

Alas, like all childhood good intentions my enjoyable pastime of collecting dead hedgehogs was spoilt by my father discovering my precious load in the boot of my tricycle when he decided to give it a safety check over.

My mother was called into the front garden and I had to stand there, a silent tear trickling down my face as mother stood with a bin bag and father emptied the hedgehogs one by one inside.

The disapproving looks from my parents indicated I had let them down but in my child's heart I knew that somewhere in hedgehog heaven I was loved and appreciated.

Eat a Jaffa cake very slowly nibbling all the chocolate off, then peel off the orange jelly disc and then finally eat the spongey biscuit base last. Could never eat a Jaffa cake normally!

Cross my fingers every time I walked under a signpost