My parents are mad (lighthearted)

I'll also never forget the look on DH's face when my dad waltzed in with DH's takeaway pizza slung under his arm like a book, so he had a completely bald pizza. He spent the next 10 minutes trying to scrape the topping from the inside of the box.

God I miss my parents, not only were they the nicest people on the planet, they were comedy gold.

One of mum and dad's window in their house was tiny. My dad was absolutely paranoid about 'a very tiny burglar' getting in and stealing their extensive collection of Whimsey ornaments. I told them on many occasions that this was highly unlikely on account of the fact that the window was approximately 10 inches in diameter and on the top floor of the house.

3cats that is so sweet! ('they all think I'm in my 70s'). My MIL is a bit like that. Clients say to her "Ooh- you wait till you're my age"... not realising she's already 15 years older than them

I have nothing to add but this is wonderful

My late gran used to flick on a random switch on her hob, then used the palm of her hand to pat each ring to find the hot one.
She had constant burn marks.
She'd never go past Channel 5 on her remote in case she couldn't get back to BBC1.
She'd save tea bags for the next cup by pegging them up on a little string above the sink.
She lived to 104; when I reminded her of her age and that she'd lived in 3 different centuries, she'd say "well don't be telling anyone else that; they all think I'm in my 70s!

In full agreement about the obsessive recycling!

The inlaws moved house and the previous owner had chucked absolutely everything into the recycling bin. The result was that the bin men refused to take it. The inlaws' rather charming response was to write formal letters of apology to the council and to the bin men themselves, explaining the errors of the former owner and promising that in future their recycling bin would be treated with the respect it deserves.

Clearly they treat this promise extremely seriously.

On one occasion when we stayed with them, DH carelessly and thoughtlessly placed a single small plastic bag full of the wrong type of recycling into the recycling bin. MIL is a very small lady, about 4'10". The recycling bin is, well, wheelie bin sized. Very large. MIL climbed into the wheelie bin to reclaim the small bag of the wrong recycling, and DH was not spoken to for the next 24 hours.

Modest Mouse modestmouse.com

MIL carefully fashioned a box of tissues to cover the separate caller ID that was by the hall phone as she didn't want friends or family to know she had it and was ignoring their calls.
Also turns off everything.
Uses tea bags at least twice yet is certainly not hard up.
FIL refused to take the sat nav on holiday in case someone stole it from his car. Instead it was locked in their safe at home (hidden and disguised as a shoe rack), whilst he relied on an ancient AA map book to reach the destination. In fact, so paranoid was he that sat nav would be stolen he never actually took it in the car and only ever used it as he walked to the next village.

RevoltingPeasant out of interest, who are "that mouse band"?

My Dad doesn't understand how to delete or use any punctuation when writing a text message. He also lets me know it's him twice per message. He'll send something like 'hi its dad are you free tomotow I mean tomorrow love you dad'.

DM is in her 60s, runs her own business and has an iPhone 6. However....

She is obsessed with closing all internal doors.

She makes her own curtains. These are often quite eccentric. For example, she made her bedroom curtains by buying some furry "bumble bee stripe" pattern material from the local market. Then instead of curtain rails, on each side of the window she hung several pairs of parallel hooks. You "draw" the curtains by hanging them on the top hook so they reach from the top to bottom of the window. Or, you can have them half-drawn by using the hooks halfway down, so the curtains start halfway down the window. Etc. this is apparently called "modular" curtains

She randomly makes up names for people. She calls her NDN dog "Leroy" despite the fact that that is not his name, and calls my sister's favourite pop group "that mouse band".

She wears long undies all year round and if she doesn't like a piece of art, will say "it makes me feel queasy".

I rant about this constantly so it serves me right if it outs me, but: my mum lights the gas hob with a match because the ignition has stopped working. Next to the hob she has a little cup with a box of matches in it. The dead matches go in the cup, so that next time she is lighting the second or third ring, she can use the dead match as a spill instead of wasting a whole new match.

They have a teapot with a rather blocked spout (tannin, scale etc) and it takes a long time to pour each cup. One day I started pouring the tea and was taken aback to find the tea positively flooding out. "what's happened to the teapot?" I gasped. It turns out that it was a second teapot, identical to the first, but new, which they got because the first one was blocked. but they hardly ever use it. They keep it in a cupboard. For special occasions. And use the blocked one. (honoured to be a special occasion though)

When my mum comes to see me she brings a little pack of "interesting" things that she has saved up to discuss with me. Last time it was:

The order of service from their parish priest's funeral (to be fair, I did know him);
An advertorial in a local paper which was a local solicitor pointing out that death is complicated if you are not married and have a family (she thought it was an article, but it was not, and had no actual advice in it);
various things about various children's concerts;
anything in any press about anyone who went to my school (to be fair we did not go to a very high powered school so this is actually worthy of comment)

I love this thread. There is something so cosy about it.

I'm a bit worried that I actually understand some of these things, though. (I'm 44.) "wrong time of the year for twigs" means that you prune the plants in winter before they grow and if you cut them at Easter you're cutting off the growing tips. However. Ignore me.

My parents have a very annoying dribbly shower. you stand in it, cover yourself in shampoo and soap, and then take about 45 minutes trying to get it off by distributing individual drops over water one by one over your body, centimetre by centimetre. This despite having had the bathroom done relatively recently.
I was horrified (and yet somehow not at all surprised) to find out from my sister that there is nothing wrong with the water pressure, and the new shower was fitted with a really good shower head that produced powerful jets. It was taken off and replaced with this one that barely seeps water "to prevent flooding the bathroom if water escapes". I absolutely screamed with simultaneous amusement and frustration at this.

Ddad always locked doors at 10. If Dsis and I were late we were locked out, despite still being able to see him through the kitchen window and repeated knocking, he would ignore us, as the door CANNOT be opened after 10 because things happen (I have never found out what these 'things' are).

We would then end up wearing all the spare coats and sleep in the greenhouse or porch (luckily alcohol meant a good nights sleep)

And, back.in the dark scary days when MIL was still driving [shudder], she could only drive on a set route through their (very small and quiet) rural town. This set route avoided all roundabouts ('they stress me') and any right hand turns in front of on coming traffic ('I just never can tell whether to go, or not').

So, if she offered to drop you in town, so you could have a drink, you had to arrange to meet friends in a pub that was vaguely on her 'route' or face a hike across town.

She also refused to reverse the car or do a 3 point turn. So when SIL started riding lessons I was puzzled why it wasn't at any local stables, but was somewhere 15 miles away...turns out, it was the only stable with a large enough yard for MIL to just drive fully around it, without having to manoeuvre it, or reverse, in order to drive out again.

She also wouldn't ever drive at night, as she couldn't co ordinate steering and dipping her headlights at the same time. On the one occasion, I know of, where she had to drive at night, she took along 10 year old SIL to dip the headlights for her, from the passenger seat.

I was once in the back seat, SIL in the passenger seat, and MIL driving. A pheasant ran out into the road, MIL screamed...took her hands off the wheel and covered her face with them...causing young SIL to grab the wheel, else we would have gone off the road.

There was a huge collective sigh of relief when MIL finally hung up her car keys, for good in 2009.

My MIL is very generous with our DDs, and always spends a lot on them at Xmas and birthdays. Generally she buys them clothes, which is fine because she knows their taste. But, for reasons only known to herself, she can only ever bfung herself to buy them clothes that are the exact correct age for our DDs...

So when DD1 was 9, MIL would only buy her age 9 clothes. This was despite the fact DD1 was already 5ft 4 and waaaaaaaay too tall for age 9 clothes. I casually mentioned that DD1 needed at least age 12-13 clothes, to fit her. But MIL couldn't compute it at all.

DD1 and I thought the problem would resolve itself when she turned 12, as luckily she was also an adult size 12 (she's 5ft 8)...but no. MIL determinedly bought her a sweater from Next (age 12) which probably would have fitted DD1 about 3 years ago?

By the way, MIL does physically see DD1 every month, and is perfectly aware that DD1 is head and shoulders taller than she is.

My Dad is Unable to rest if there is any sort of problem with the house like a leaky shower, it has to be sorted immediately.
A few years ago in winter storms dad needled the roofer CONSTANTLY to get three tiles replaced. There were people locally who had lost their whole roof...

Divafever Thank goodness it's not just mine. We're starting to get worried that un-son will turn up at her funeral and contest the will. He's such a nice boy you know. (We have no idea how old he is, who he is, or anything about him other than sharing a name with my brother).

Anyone else got an obsessive recycler? If I stay for a few days she comes into the guest room and starts ferreting about in the bin to check I haven't mixed up the general waste with any recyling. She is convinced the council check every single bag and will know if a single incorrect item is in the wrong bin. She also unfurls any screwed up receipts, notes etc to check what they say in case they are incriminating and could identify me along with her rubbish. This irks the shit out of me as at my age I really shouldn't be getting interrogated on the contents of my shopping lists.

I just nearly fell off the sofa laughing at "it's the wrong time of year for twigs"

Dad thinks pizza is just cheese on toast and people are fools for liking it.

oh man this is amazing

crying at the disrespect for the dead tiler. And the stethoscope. Bless em

My mum irons tea towels. And boxer shorts "so the boys dont have crunchy underwear" WTF when her best friend caught her doing this she told her to find herself a job (DM works part time!)

FIL won't throw anything anyway. There have been two pots of yoghurt in his fridge since last September. I haven't touched them as I am just waiting to see how long they stay in there. Probably until SIL comes back from Australia
He also refuses to wear new clothes. Bought him a lovely new coat as his current one is absolutely ripped to shreds and full of wood splinters. It sat hung on a chair for weeks. When we enquired if he was ever going to wear his new coat he said he couldn't possibly wear it because he didn't want to ruin it, it was so nice this has happened with several other items of clothing.

I have seen him in his new coat recently. He says it's lovely and warm

Love this thread! My mum is pretty not bonkers so I don't have much to share.

But my dh's granddad joined FB a few weeks ago.

He posted on his status this morning that he couldn't get on FB to update his status, and then posted two statuses saying 'help me' I thought he might be dying or something but he is fine. It took a while for my mum to realise that you aren't meant to reply to private messages by writing the reply on your own wall.

My dad does the locking all internal doors every night and unplugging every appliance in the house too. I wonder was there some safety campaign at one time or another, considering so many of our parents do it !

I always laugh when my dad leaves me a voice message, he starts it with, Hello Tram, this is your father speaking, relays the message and ends it with a stilted, 'Goodbye and thank you, DAD !!! \ Its all spoken in a very 'proper' voice as if he is writing a letter rather than speaking.

He always says Thank you, when the ATM gives him his money.

Had a great laugh at some of these posts. My parents seem quite sane now.

Their big oddity is taking great delight (and lots of time) in over-complicating domestic admin. For example, three separate calendars in different rooms- one for medical appointments, one for family events and one for other things. Meaning if someone calls and invites them somewhere Dad is made to run around the house cross referencing calendars and there is then invariably a heated dabate about which calendar the new event should go on. There are also the lists of items in the freezer and loft- a printed copy of the list must be updated by hand when anything is added/taken out and the master copy on the computer is updated later.

My favourite is the fact that if mum wants to call us she will get dad to dial the number and get the right person to the phone then pass it on to her.

The mother in law has her loopy habits too- she always brings her own packed lunch and/or snacks if she visits us (I'm told she does this everywhere and it's not intended as an insult!). I think people assume she has some sort of food intolerance (she doesn't). Like another poster's mum, she also can't resist a 3 for 2, even if she doesn't want more than one. She will frequently bring me her 'free one' and gets quite shirty if I tell her we have plenty or don't use that product. She'll also bring us tat that she doesn't want in her house any more- the best yet was a bag of her old knickers that she seemed to think I might want when she lost weight.

As for the unplugging at night issue- I'm a bit worried as none of the older generation in my life do this but over the last few years I have started to become concerned if I don't unplug the kettle and microwave before I go to bed- I think I need to wean myself off this.

I Do have one strange demand. I do like the outside doors locked when I go to bed!
DP nearly didn't become DH when we went away to a cottage once and he left the door unlocked as he thought it was an ok thing to do.

I can still remember how ballistic I went. Totally ott. It's not like anyone has ever broken in while I was sleeping for eg.

So yes, you can leaveeverything plugged in as long as the effing doors are locked!

Thankfully he's never done it again!