To ask what the weirdest thing you experienced or saw at someone else's house when you were a child?

One of our neighbours growing up had a full length glass door for their bathroom. Although it was frosted you could still see in and the toilet was directly in front. Their bathroom was face on as you got to the top of the stairs.

I never wanted to use their loo

@DisinterestedParty I think eating like that used to be fairly normal. My grandparents were exactly the same, and when I was a kid our portions even in our own house were a fraction of the size I serve my own family now. My grandparents were slim, fit and healthy and lived to be nearly 100. There were very few overweight people when I was a child in the seventies. I think increasing portion size is largely responsible for the huge increase in obesity nowadays.

Shameless placemarking so I can read later. 'Watch thread' doesn't work on my app.

The family over the road from mine lived in a very large Manor House , and the girls went to private school. They were nice and I would go to their house in the holidays and vice versa. Going for tea they would be “presented” to their mum in a formal sitting room and she would shake their hands and ask them to tell her about their day. I had to say what I had done too, I quite liked it actually as I was a chatty kid.

Then we would be dismissed to their dining room and we would be served (!) by staff and then we could go to their living room to play games or watch tv.

They were nice, but this was the early 90s, not the turn of the century!

They came to my house for dinner and we all just ate together and my mum still remembers that the older girl said “on my birthday I’m allowed to eat with my parents and you do it every day” with such admiration in her voice.

A friend's Mum was peculiar. If I ever went for tea the exact same meal and pudding were always served. And it was the exact same meal the Mum cooked every day apparently. The Mum also never once read my friend any children's stories because she (the Mum) hated reading anything that 'wasn't real'. Instead she would read newspaper articles or instruction manuals to my friend Even though they had a perfectly good bathroom the Mum used to strip wash and wash her hair in the kitchen sink because she was 'scared' of the shower somehow. When my friend sit with her first boyfriend and was really upset she came round to us because her Mum had got really stressed at her beung upset and had gone and locked herself in the bathroom away from her daughter. There were loads more incidents and looking back I suspect the Mum had Asperger's or autism. She also had a very monotone voice and constantly used the same phrases over and over too.

Slightly pushing the definition of childhood, but I went to a friend's house aged 16 or so firstly we were only allowed in the "conservatory" (which was how you entered the house and felt more like a solid room, but was actually made out of corrugated plastic sheeting) and they had grape vines literally growing inside it. You could pick the grapes off and eat them (I tried one - they were sour). You were allowed to quickly go into the house to use the toilet but nothing else. I have a weird feeling that we actually all slept in there, on duvets/blow up beds on the tiled floor The toilet was one of those really old fashioned ones with a high cistern and a chain. Quite often you'd go to use it and the previous person's mess would just be festering there, but you had to go on top of it because it took ages to refill. Apparently I was the only friend who had ever managed to flush it successfully and his dad was impressed :o Friend casually mentioned (another time) that there was a wasp's nest in the roof/window of his bedroom, like this was no big deal. I was terrified of wasps, and probably would have moved out :o

Reader, I married him and I could never begin to list all of the strangeness in that house. I think the most alarming thing is the many many portraits of DH and his siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews in various states of childhood which adorn the walls of many of the rooms (and especially the staircase) and stare creepily at you. Or possibly the coffee table which is a statue of a naked woman holding up a slab of glass Unknown visitors are still confined to the conservatory (which leaks) so they don't get to witness these treasures. Sad though as the house is full of their family history but crumbling apart. FIL was (sort of) keeping on top of the maintenance of it but died in 2018.

In childhood I was rather easily unsettled. I was afraid of the outside toilet at my cousin's house (it was ancient and full of spiders to be fair) and the one at my grandparents' house (more modern - Grandad had it built so he didn't trudge mud through the house when he was gardening). And I remember going to a sleepover at a friend's house and finding it weird that they didn't wear pants under their pyjamas - she found me totally weird that I wanted to :) I didn't quite trust the feeling of things not being "contained" and worried I might accidentally wet the bed if not wearing pants, since the only time I ever took my pants off was when going to the toilet or having a bath. One time at someone's house I accidentally knocked a full spare toilet roll into the toilet, and I told the mum and she made me pick it out myself which really upset me for some reason - I had thought that she would magically deal with it!

I think we might have been the weird house for some of my friends - one of my teenage friends went on and on about how we had (occupied) guinea pig hutches stacked up in the kitchen and how unsanitary it was, and how I was once cooking him a sausage and it fell on the floor and I just put it back in the pan. My thought process was that the heat would kill any germs anyway. I thought my mum was obsessed with cleaning/tidying but in hindsight, our house was an utter tip most of the time. She was probably going on about cleaning to try and get us to keep it in an acceptable state

@disinterestedparty, are your parents as thin as you'd expect from their tiny observed intake?

I made friends with a new girl at school when I was about 10-11 and would go to her house occasionally, and met her mum and her mum’s bf (who she didn’t refer to as step dad). The bf was younger than her mum, and other than one incident where he drove for a day out and had serious road rage, he was really fun. A few months after I met, and after a phase where she’d been at my house more than I had hers, I went round and another guy was living with the family. I was told that this was her step dad, her mum’s husband, and father to her younger brother...and we weren’t to mention that the bf had ever lived there. This guy was really serious and quite intimidating (although as an adult I know he was a softy, just had a biker type image) so I daren’t even talk to him in case I accidentally mentioned something we’d done with the bf.

Another friend, who I was close to from maybe 13-14 until we left for university, had parents who didn’t seem to do anything. Her dad had a long commute and was out of the house 6am-7pm. Her mum worked 10-4 in an easy job. My friend, from probably around 14, was up at 5ish to do her paper round, then got ready for school, got her youngest sibling ready for primary school and walked them there, went and did her own school day, then went home and did some tidying up and laundry before (from the age of maybe 15 onwards) taking her younger sibling to swimming lessons. Overall she could be on the go from 5am-7pm while her mum did 10-4 then put her feet up. The middle brother, who was maybe 2-3 years younger, was expected to do most of the cooking from the age of 12-13. I’m all for teaching kids to be independent but in their house it felt like they had to do everything for their parents.

We were definitely the weird ones with regards to food.

I remember going to a friend's house and they got chip suppers and I was amazed that we all got our own individual fish and chips. At my house, we got two fish suppers to share between five.

Everything was like that. I'm still amazed by how little my parents eat, they'll literally eat one sausage, a spoon of mash, a spoon of vegetables and that's it.

Every time we go out to eat, they talk about the massive portions of food, if we go to someone else's house, they always talk about how much we ate afterwards...at some point, you'd think they'd realise that everyone else is eating a normal amount and they are the odd ones out.

I don't know if they have issues with food or something, but if I go to their house, I have to bring snacks for me and my husband because even if they give us double or triple the usual portions, it's still not enough.

I had a friend whose mum was always ill and stayed in bed a lot, so we had the run of the house. The house wasn’t very clean so we used to tidy up, wash windows, etc. Her father used to come home and yell at them all, and slap my friend in front of me. He was a scary man. I don’t know what happened to the family in the end as I went to a different secondary school, but I found my old friend on FB singing the praises of her dad and no mention of her mum. Not sure what to make of that.

I was at a friend's house when I was about 6/7 and we found a porno/nudey magazine. Obviously had no concept of it at the time but it was a bit bizarre thinking about it now.

@Howcouldyoubelieveme did your parents know?

@PlausibleSuit holy fuck that is batshit

@lyralalala

I had a friend at about 11-12 years of age whose house I slept at regularly. Her dad was ex army. He was very strict and had routines for them like they were in the army too. Showers were timed - 3 minutes, run out, next person in! Dinner was strained and uncomfortable with odd conversation. No matter what the meal was, even if you hated it, you had to tell them how lovely it was and thank them. Fucking weird. My kids would just say 'oh mum can we have pasta next time? I don't really like tuna bake me neither it's disgusting'. Everyone tip toed around her dad. He would drink drive with us in the car too.

Another friend, not weird, just much stricter than my house but as a child I was shocked. She had very limited tv time and wasn't allowed to watch the Simpsons. When I say limited tv time remember there was no unlimited Netflix back then, there wasn't that much available! I loved after school cartoons and watching music videos on a Saturday morning!

Looking back, the raw sausage sandwiches that my auntie Floss used to give me appear very odd
I really like them and looked forward to them each visit!
Can't possibly imagine eating those now

I was the kid everyone found my house weird. I brought a friend over for tea, she said afterwards it was odd.

My brother laying flat on the floor drawing war scenes and and making 'war' noise, the sounds of explosions, calls to comrades you name it.

Then my mum arrived, she'd been to the flea market and bought half of it, she showed us what she had got then lay on the settee with a fag and a cup of tea and started going, "ooo, ahh" really loud as if she was in terrible pain and gripping her side.

My dad worked evenings so had gone out.

My friend said it was really weird that me and my brother just ignored my mum, she thought we should be calling an ambulance but we were used to it.

Another time in my 30s I was visiting a friend, we were attempting a chinese duck recipe that said the duck should be as dry as possible.

Well it had just been defrosted so we decided to use a hairdryer on cold in an attempt to replicate the duck being hung up outside.

My friends children were quite used to us doing weird things but one of their friends walked through the kitchen and stopped dead. My friend just turned to him and said, "what are you looking at? Doesn't you mum dry duck with a hairdryer?"

I went to a friend's house for tea many years ago, and when we finished eating, she and her sister both chanted "Thank you mummy for a very nice meal, and please may I leave the table?

We used to have to do that, then we moved and stopped eating round the table as a family.

My lunch sandwich box always had a few extras, or an extra apple.

I grew up in a loving home with always enough to eat but I can remember from school a little girl (maybe 7 or 8) who would ask to go to the toilet and raid the other kids' lunchboxes. Only as I got older did it occur to me that she wasn't getting enough to eat at home. I always pack a few extras in DD's lunchbox and tell her to share if someone is still hungry. I just can bear the thought of a child being hungry.

I went to senior school with a girl who’s aunt appeared to live with her and was identical to her mother except with bleached white blonde hair, her mum had dyed jet black hair. Both wore loads of mascara that made them look like they had spiders as eyelashes. I was round there once and the aunt was on her dads lap, stroking his neck while her mum was sat on the other sofa. They all used to pick her from school everyday as well. Her dad was a very large, loud overbearing man. If anyone asked her about the family dynamic she laughed about it. I got the impression she quite liked the attention she got for having an eccentric home life, which in itself was a bit sad.

We would definitely have been the weird ones growing up. We had no TV (70s and 80s) and weren't really allowed to do anything. We always had really gross clothes because my parents thought vanity was a sin. I remember going to one girl's house and her mum had a bottle of babycham on the shelf and I'd never seen alcohol before. Another time I went to someone else's house and my mum said I could never go again - I'm not sure why - she'd been removed from her mum's care and lived with her grandma and I think they were very poor. All my friends had single parent families and I think that was because back then they were also unusual in our little village - we were the odd ones out together.
I think of us as incredibly normal and average now. We have two teenagers. But DD says her friends think we're really weird because we eat meals together, we talk to each other about anything and we watch TV together etc. They only go downstairs to get their food. But one of the friends came to stay over the Christmas holidays and I could hear her raving about our Christmas tree because hers was "like a show home" and she said to DD that it represented how warm or family is compared to most. They all like coming here even though we have the smallest house so I don't mind our being the weird ones in that regard.
I think my childhood was quite messed up in a lot of ways but I think my parents genuinely cared about us (even though they never said so, not once) so we all got through it. All my siblings and I are very different from them (and constantly tell our children we love them) but my parents have said that they think we're doing a much better job than they did.

When I was about 10 I went to a new friends house. She lived with her grandparents in a little house that did have an upstairs but all that was up there was my friends bedroom. She told me when I got there that I had to use her toilet in her room if I needed to go, that the downstairs bathroom was only for adults, all fine and good and I was rather impressed she had her own loo.

When the time came and I needed to go though I realised I hadn’t seen another room up there or a toilet anywhere.. the toilet was halfway up the wall in a little cupboard. There were no steps or even a ladder to get up to it and you had to stand on a wooden trunk type thing to reach it. She showed me how to get up there, climbed on the box and used her arms to sort of hop up into it. Even as an adult I’m only 4ft11 so I couldn’t do this at all and she had to literally push me up into it by my butt... I closed the door and there was no light in there or a window so it was pitch black, and when I came to get back out it was so high up I was too scared to try and get down. She had to make me another ‘step’ out of books.

Not as a child, but I saw the most unusual toilet cistern in someone's posh house: it was transparent, and contained live fish! And yes, the water level in the cistern dropped when the toilet was flushed, but only to about half full, and was clearly designed to prevent any casualties. I asked if the fish seemed to mind their water being changed so regularly; the homeowner told me that those fish had lived longer than any others they'd had.

So many sad stories p

I had friends who didn't have mains electricity their parents had to start the generator when they wanted lights on.

I had a female friend who taught me how to snog when we were really very young. Too young to be honest. I don't know where she learned it. Certainly no internet then.

I remember a family up the road who had a huge pig in the back garden. The garden was just mud as you can imagine.
I remember my friend (from pig garden family) asking her Mum was was for dinner and she slurred ‘I dunno, shit with sugar on’.
I was so shocked, my Mum was a polite jelly and ice cream type Mum so I’d never heard anything like it in my life!

“ The dad slept downstairs on the snooker table “

OMG this has pushed my giggle button I am howling 😂😂😂😂

When I was about 9 a friend came round to my house and was amazed when I helped myself to a tangerine from the fruit bowl, she was never allowed to help herself to any food without permission which was often denied. So I then said she could have any piece of fruit she wanted which also amazed her. Every time she came round after she would run to the fruit bowl for some fruit. I got a bit annoyed about this and mentioned to my mum who shook her head and said she was a guest and could help herself to what fruit she liked.

I went round to her house on Sunday afternoons and at 5 the family sat down to eat and each always had a small piece of pumpernickel bread on a plate in front of them on which you could put a little bit of chopped up onion or tomato with maybe a tiny piece of cheese or gherkin. That was it. Her DM was German and had been a child during the war (so I guess had experienced the severe rationing at the end of the war). I asked my friend about this meal and she said it was how you eat in Germany.

My friend developed bulimia when she left home to go to college and she died in her early 40s.

I realise now that her bulimia partly stemmed from the food restrictions and rules.

Not as a kid but as 20-something.
Boyfriend's parents had divorced very acrimoniously.

BF and I were going on a camping trip with his brothers, hid father, father's girlfriend. We had a 25hr drive to his father's place (which i found out later was girlfriend's father's house). As I arrived I asked to use the loo and they SHOUTED ' No'. We were given directions to McD's about 8miles away. Came back and another brother arrived and his girlfriend asked to use the loo-and was allowed. I was banned as I had never met the homeowner before.

Then getting back into the car, the father slammed the car door on my fingers,....and we had to go back to McD to wash the blood off and try and reduce the swelling.

Why I continued on to the weekend away, I have no idea.

My dm had a friend down the road who we used to visit. She had a young son who was described as ‘hyperactive’ in the language of the time. His mother would tie a rope round his waist and loop the other end round the washing line, so he could run up and down the garden on his leash without escaping.