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

We walked into the living room and in the corner by the fire was a footstool. It was a real elephant's foot with a leather upholstered top and I was so horrified I ran screaming out of the house and refused to ever go there again.

OMG I now remember going to an older relative's house as a child, and they had an elephant's foot WASTE PAPER BIN! I was totally astonished when they assured me it was real. It had toenails. I wasn't so much horrified, more just baffled that you would go to such lengths to make such a weird bin, when you could just make one out of wicker or plastic.

Great thread btw @BillHadersNewWife

For all my funny memories though I'm gutted for those who experienced a shit upbringing

It was indeed the 80s, would have been around 1988.

As a teenager attended a party at my friends house because her mum and her mums girlfriend were out. We got drunk, someone found all their sex toys and there were looooads.

@Fishfingersandwichplease ha! These parents were just quite strict and a bit prudish. I do understand where you're parents where coming from though

cold rice pudding. Lots of corned beef as well

Can you give me their address? They're favourites of mine

Stabilos....were we friends?? Grange Hill,was banned in our house as parents were teachers and didn't want to cone home to watch a programme about school!!

Friends from boarding would invite me to their house for the weekend occasionally to save being in school all weekend .
One friend told me her mother really didn't approve of me because of my tarty clothes .
I don't know why she told me , I was so ashamed. I could hardly look at her mum after that.
Despite what people imagine about boarders I had no access to cash and hardly had any clothes .
I didn't go back and it really soured our friendship .

I went to my friends house when I was 8-9 they had a pet owl that was allowed to fly around the house- bird shit everywhere.
Then her mum took a load of dead mice out of the freezer chopped them up on the chopping board and said I could feed the owl like it was absolute treat. I declined.
Then she started making spaghetti bolognese cutting the onion on the same fucking chopping board.
I cried and had to be taken home

I went to stay over at a friend’s house when I was in my teens. It was a very large, modern open plan bungalow with pale carpet throughout. On the floor the parents had laid walkways of clear plastic runner everywhere, including the bedrooms, and woe betide you if you walked on the carpet. They also had a bookcase full of those faux leather, “gold” leaf reader’s digest books. I went to take one off the shelf to look at but was told not to in case I broke the spine. The books were for decoration not reading.

Was this in the 80's @barkandcheese? I feel like it was a theme of 80's and I wonder why? Possibly a time of plenty and people not used to having plenty wanted to keep possessions looking brand new

Years ago I had a fling with a guy I knew. Went to his and when he turned on the hall lamp it was a wall to wall shrine to princess Diana!
I made my excuses and left.

I used to go to my best friend's house regularly when we were teenagers. We got to the age where we would go to parties, discos etc and used to get dressed up. Her mum would always tell her she looked fat and then my friend would run screaming and crying back upstairs to her room and id just be left standing there. (my friend was a size 8!)
I often think about how we come across to our children's friends because we sleep in seperate beds in seperate rooms. And I also feel very anxious and unsettled when we have other people kids round so we definately aren't a fun family for them to visit

My friends' stepdad used to eat raw sausages, he'd sit with a bag from the butchers cutting the links and eating them (not envy). God knows how he didn't get food poisoning, raw pork ffs!

When I was around 12 or 13 me and a friend went to another friends house. When we arrived he was there with about 3 or 4 lads and his dad was out. They'd discovered his dads 'porn' tapes and decided to put one on ... it transpires his dad had very illegal tastes, I won't go into detail but it was very real torture of a woman and I will never ever forget the her screams. It was horrific.

Another friend of mine. We went to her dads a lot when we were about 14/15. Her dad would always have a quick shower, come out in a dressing gown and sit with his legs wide open to deliberately expose himself to us. I have no idea why we would still go visit him and although we exchanged awkward glances I don't think we ever discussed it at all. I just felt heartbroken for her.

Just remembered another odd one but this was from last year, not childhood

We were flat sitting for someone we know and they had one whole wall worth of bookcase and every single book was about Hitler. There are hundreds of them

One of my friends parents had a large toucan which they kept on a perch on their kitchen counter. It was much larger than a parrot and I never saw it fly off the perch. I felt a bit sorry for it.

I had a boyfriend in high school (lived in the US at the time) whose parents were super ridiculous fundamentalist Christians. How the hell we wound up dating, I don’t know, but he broke up with me because when I told him I believed in using childcare and wouldn’t be a SAHM. For context, we were 16.

But the weird thing was that his parents had an entire shrine to Rush Limbaugh (google if you don’t know who he is, he’s basically a woman hating racist homophobic nut, thankfully I’m pretty sure he’s dead now). Literally like an entire bookshelf in the lounge displaying all his books and like 8 A4 sized framed photos of him.

Sadly, ex bf was well known in school to have kissed a few boys (I was there for two of them, apparently he was just ‘messing about,’ but it was obvious things going on with him were a lot more complicated than that). He is now a fundamentalist preacher in a right wing church, married (to a woman!) with like 5 kids, which is quite sad actually.

PM

When I was a child (1950s) my Mother took me for the first time to the house of a friend. We walked into the living room and in the corner by the fire was a footstool. It was a real elephant's foot with a leather upholstered top and I was so horrified I ran screaming out of the house and refused to ever go there again.

It was and still is beyond my comprehension how anyone could think that was acceptable.

In the early-mid 80s, when microwave's were just becoming very popular, I had a friend whose mum cooked all weekday dinners from frozen using it. She kept a selection of frozen foods (eg. chips, burgers, fish fingers, veg etc) and a list if what they had in. Everyone eating was given the list and asked to tick what they wanted- she then put the food straight from the freezer on to each plate and microwaved it. She had a list on the fridge of how long each combination would take but inevitably some parts of the meal were practically cold and others were unbelievably hot and everything had an odd texture.

i went and stayed the night with a girl from primary school, sometime in the early 80s. we had tea, and when her dad came home from work and had eaten, everyone went to bed. at 6.30pm all lights out, no talking allowed. i was baffled. and bored!

it was a weird family all round. her dad used to beat her with a belt for minor indiscretions, and she was a kleptomaniac. she was once chased through the gift shop at Hatfield House by a teacher who spotted her stealing a rubber. she also stole from a dinner lady, and we each had to stand in the headmaster’s office and say whether it was us. she apparently just said yes, it was me. she was given The Slipper and then went home and was beaten with a belt by her father.

her father was the local vicar.

Come to think of it, I’ve had some weird friends over the years. One friend had a step-dad who didn’t work, he just used to record himself singing Johnny Cash songs in the kitchen and he’d play them back to himself so that’s all you’d hear when you walked in the house. She also had at least ten cats, her Mum worked for the RSPCA so she’d bring loads of cats home and insisted they stay indoors. The house always smelt like cat piss, it was only a small three bed semi.

Had another friend with very old parents, they were in their early sixties when we were 13/14 which was old compared to everyone else’s parents. Her Dad was a raging alcoholic and she was so embarrassed by him. They had a lovely house and her Mum was very kind but the Dad used to sit there making inappropriate shitty jokes, clearly pissed out of his mind. My friend was mortified by him.

I don't think this is the first dog poo post but I recall going to a friend from school for tea and there was dogshit literally everywhere - several piles on carpet in living room, kitchen etc. and the smell was horrendous. Add in the mix thick fag smoke and I was just pleased I wasn't staying for tea.

Another friends dad was absolutely rabid about people wearing slippers in the house (in that they had to) I remember my friend getting yelled at proper shouting because she hadn't got her slippers on and it happened more than once. It was just a bizarre thing.

Was a little later on in life and was staying round my boyfriends. We had separate rooms (we were 16, so can kinda understand).

The parents had a special living room which was full of very expensive antiques etc. No kids were every allowed in there except for Christmas Day or birthdays. I was there one birthday and we were allowed to sit in silence and watch a Jackie Chan film. The parents didn't even use it themselves, it was always vacant and smelt funny.

The same parents used to get slaughtered on red wine at the weekends, like beyond pissed and you'd regularly hear them heaving their guts up in the bathroom. One night I couldn't get to sleep as the dad was chucking up and when I thought the coast was clear I was going to pop downstairs and use the non-vomity toilet. As I crept out I heard a massive BOOOO and his dad was standing there, stark bollock naked, in front of me waving his arms and legs around. Everything was moving. He then tried to kiss me and said 'you're a good lass' before running back to the toilet to chuck up again.

I never told a soul

I had a friend in secondary school whose parents were rather lax, I’d never have been allowed to do the things her parents allowed.

They once left us all (about five 14 year old girls) alone in their house for the weekend with a case of beer, a bottle of Jack Daniels and £50 for a take away. I got alcohol poisoning and had to call my Mum in the early hours to collect me, she was furious and I was grounded for a month.

Her younger brother slept in their parents room despite being about 11/12 at the time which we all thought was bizarre. She dropped out of school at 15 and we never heard from her again, nobody knew why.