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

Surely if you run short of loo roll you use kitchen roll/baby wipes, even facial wipes before resorting to cardboard tubing.

I'm not sure this poster understands the level of poverty on some of these posts.

I have a few...
I went to one friends house to call on her to go to the park. I met her dad for the first time and had chills up my spine. A few weeks later he tried to commit murder/suicide by locking the kids and his wife in the car in the garage and turning the engine on.
Another friends dad was odd too. Always around and asking me if I wanted to pet his ferrets. Once he walloped her. I had stayed over and during the night her little sister had wet the bed, my friend took the blame and this grown ass man hit her so hard she flew backwards. After that I noticed all the bruises on her.i told my mum and was never allowed round there again.

@SchadenfreudePersonified no, but from reading this thread I'm sure there were other mums like this, sadly.

Remembered another one. A friend from secondary school would sometimes invite me to her house for tea. She had a couple of much older brothers and was a slightly indulged child. We were allowed to have "ice cream floats" ( school of ice cream on top of a glass of cola, lemonade or cherryade) with our meal. As soon as you'd finished with a glass, plate or item of cutlery, her mother would whisk it away and clean that part of the table. Her Dad used to come in from work and use the shower (we didn't have one in our house, so that in itself made them 'posh'), but after he'd got clean he'd just sprint naked to his room to put fresh clothes on.

I remember my best friend from primary school who was living with his much older sister and his mum. They had a lovely house which was pristine but his mum and sister pretty much left him/us to our own devices all the time. He had access to any films or TV he wanted (thankfully it was pre-internet) and watched loads of sexually explicit and violent stuff on video. He wanted to replicate the sexual stuff (in a childish way) and his mum thought it was funny. She had glamour shots of herself all over the walls and told deeply inappropriate stories and jokes which I didn't understand. I remember my dad driving me home from a sleepover and I recounted a joke or a story and asked if he could explain it to me because I didn't understand what it meant. I didn't go back after that... We went to different secondary schools but I met the boy again when we were both at university and he was extremely odd and unfriendly. I'm not sure what became of the mum and sister.

He did have a basketball hoop at the patio area and I thought that was the coolest thing ever, though

Tilda

You mum isn't called Dorothy, is she?

This thread has made me wonder if my house was the (slightly) weird one. My friend's mums were mostly nice and welcoming, offering snacks etc, but in our house there was no such thing. Mum was not very motherly, and had clearly told us three girls that she'd actually wanted boys. As kids we wouldn't have dared go in the kitchen between meals, and mealtimes were, as I guess for many of us 'of a certain age' were 'eat it or go without'. Of course we ate whatever we were given as otherwise we'd go hungry! She had a locked cupboard for chocolate and biscuits etc, just for her, although we would never have dared to touch it (didn't want to get smacked with the hairbrush). We did have a lovely mild mannered dad but mum ruled the roost. I remember being jealous of most of my friends and cousins as they had nice mums.

I've remembered another one, from when I was about eleven: at one house with several children of varying ages, I noticed that the older children's bedrooms had bolts on the outside of the doors, about half way up. On my suggestion , we spent an afternoon playing the Crystal Maze, complete with being locked in. I was fascinated by why the bolts were there; were the children sometimes locked in their rooms? When I asked, they told me it was to stop the younger children going into those rooms, when they were very little, and years later they hadn't bothered to take the bolts off.

Not long after that, at another house of a large family we knew well, one of the teenage sons had a pair of handcuffs, which he kept idly playing with, while watching TV. They were not toy ones, but real ones that could only be opened with the key, as he demonstrated on himself. I was amazed that anyone not in the police could get hold of them; he told me he got them from an army surplus store. He asked (gruntingly and teenage-like) if I would like to wear them; I secretly really wanted to experience it, just for fun, but I was afraid he might not let me out, so I said no. But he later put them on his brother, who didn't seem to mind, and kept him locked up for half an hour. The adults shrugged, said it was boys being boys, and mentioned that in their own youth they might have tied each other up to play cowboys and Indians.

My friends family used to put sugar on their salad

I once started over at school friend’s house - I must have been about 12/13. At breakfast the next morning they made toast - but every slice was burnt black - to an absolute crisp, then left to cool. A thick layer of margerine was then added. I went hungry. Then went home. 🤢

I love toast like this! But it has to be real butter!

My early childhood was in Ireland. When you knocked for someone to play out, you always waited on the doorstep. If you ever did go in, you were never allowed upstairs to the bedrooms, they were only for sleeping, and children were rarely allowed in the sitting room. I only ever saw the sitting rooms of my 10 aunties and uncles when there was a special occasion.

A weird one that I always remember was an aunt of mine taking me when she went visiting an elderly family friend. It was an old farmhouse in the country, very rural. They sat around the fire talking in Irish, I was so bored as I couldn’t understand a word and there was no tv or toys. On the way home I asked my auntie why his house was so dark, she said he had no electricity! I was so shocked, it was the 1980’s not the 1880’s!

My home was probably the wierd one. No working adult in the house, chain smoking mum, some issues with alcohol, a disabled brother who always wet the bed (mum did not change the sheets every day), I was always worried that the house stank so I wouldn’t invite friends around. When I was 9 a girl from Scotland joined my class and I made her my best friend. She was a spoilt bitch and wasn’t very nice to me but I slept at her house at least once a week. Her parents were so lovely. Her dad worked and her mum was a SAHM, the house was always spotless and I was so amazed that the beds were always made and my friend had clean socks and knickers, in her drawers, always, never ever ran out! They even had a jar that was always full of sweets and chocolate! I was so jealous of her ordered life which she obviously took for granted. They moved after a year and her dad stopped by to see me and my family when he was next in London, just a really lovely guy.

When I was in primary school - around 6 or 7 - there was a boy in my glass that had a crush on me. Everyone always teased me about it. He was a bit if alone and often got violent in class; throwing things at other students and the teacher.
At the time; my mum worked full time and my nan looked after me after school. Nan was friendly with this boys mum (they were about the same age - middle to late 50's) and the mum had mentioned that it was the boys birthday and he wanted to take a few friends to a theme park; would I like to go? To my disgust; my nan accepted for me. The mum and boy came to pick me up and I then realised that he hadn't invited anyone else; just me.
We get there and go on a few rides. He threw a massive tantrum bc we were too little to go on most of the big rides and started hitting and screaming at his mum. I was a very placid child and just kind of stood there, feeling very embarrassed. During the evening, he asked me to marry him and would I be his girlfriend. I said no and he got super mad. His mother used to placate him a lot - for an easier life, i guess - and said; of course she will. We ate and went on a few more rides; all the while he was happy that his mum said i was now his GF and kept trying to hold my hand.
When they eventually dropped me off home; i said thank you for having me, went straight to my room and cried. I was invited round many times after that but begged my nan to not make me. Thankfully she never did and the boy and I went to different secondary schools.

A few years after that - I was around 10 i think - we moved to our first house. A shoddy little road that was full of single parents with kids that were a lot older than me and off the rails. I will always remember these 2 sisters that lived with their nan. The older sister was very withdrawn, the younger quite outgoing. They used to go away every other weekend but never told anyone where to. All the other kids were super jealous that they went on soo many "holidays". I later found out that the reason they lived with their nan was because their father had murdered their mother with a hammer and they went away to visit him in prison.

@HerRoyalFattyness I'm fairly sure you've just described my house now

@SpangleSparkle sadly the social services intervention bar is still very very low. I know of children living in neglectful situations and SS, schools and NSPCC do not care one bit. They don't even bother to visit the homes to check.

The weirdest thing I remember, and I've literally only just twigged what was going on here recently whilst reminiscing, was visiting my dad's girlfriends kids when I was about 5/6. She didn't have custody of them, Lord knows why. I'm not sure if they'd been adopted by this couple and she was allowed to have supervised visits, or if the man was her ex and he'd remarried, but the kids were tiny little red headed wisps(like their mum) and the man(and his wife) were very tall, dark haired, dark skinned. Their own two children were the same. The two little tiny red heads just didn't fit.

They lived in a cottage in the country, with a dormitory style bedroom for all 4 kids just full of toys. They had really cool stuff like coin collections, and a box full of fossils to look through, and in the backyard they had a weeping willow with a tree house built in it which I loved so much. I just wanted to live there. My dad wasn't with her for long and he met and married my stepmum, but I often think of those children. It was such a weird situation, us all popping round to visit her kids there. I wonder what the backstory was?

But yes most of my memories were my friends lovely stay at home mums who made porridge for breakfast and brushed our hair and helped us with homework and gave us cuddles.

One friend had a sink in her bedroom which i found really wierd! It was for washing her face and teeth before bed.

Another one lived on a farm and in the morning she fed her 3 kids plus all of the farm hands, her giant kitchen table groaned under the weight of toast, every topping, every cereal, bacon, pastries etc etc. The toast was cooked on an aga with a little flipper thing and there was cartons of orange and apple juice everywhere... we only ever had squash at home and i used to eat until bursting, while friend (used to this) would just have a bowl of rice crispies.

Other friend lived in a literal mansion andnit had 1 sitting room for family and 1 for formal occasions. We always ate at the big table in the kitchen but they had a posh dining room that was for christmas and dinner parties only. They had a kids bathroom and an adults bathroom. I lived in a tint tiny council house.

That friend hardly ever came to ours but always commented that my house was so warm! Old stone country houses are hard to heat!!

Not saying my parents were horrible but they were both always at work so a lot of benign neglect going on.

I have a few:

I never realised that a 'stay at home' parent was a thing! All 3 of my closest friends at primary school had lovely maternal stay at home mums.

My mum wasn't (and still isn't) maternal and as such kept us all at a hit of an arms length, she worked full time from home so we were expected from a young age to get ourselves up and dressed and make our own breakfast and lunch etc.

First time on a playdate with friend A. Her mum had asked me my favourite sandwich in advance, when she collected us there was a little picnic basket on the back seat with a chocolate spread sandwich for me and a lemon curd sandwich for A plus a little carton of juice.

We then went back to hers and her mum baked cakes with us and her mum and dad sat and watched and clapped as we put on some shite dance show as 8 year olds do. It was amazing! I practically lived at As house from 8 until 11, which was odd as me and A had very little in common and weren't really great friends, however i used to sit and chat with her mum and dad for hours, i used to read anything and everything and so could sit and talk about WW2 or the queen or the romans etc etc

I also remember her mum used to kiss me goodnight! I still remember the last time i went over, me and A had a massive row as she was moaning about something and i remember scrraming at her that she had the life that everyone wanted and she was rude and ungrateful and a brat...

That evening when they were driving us back ftom wherever it was they had taken us, A was asleep and I was drifting off but I think they thought I was asleep and I remeber them talking about me. Her mum was saying how she didn't want me to go home and her dad was saying something about how you couldn't just take someone elses kid. I still remember her mum saying 'I can see how her life will go with that family, it's such a waste'

They talked about me longer but I can't remember what else was said as I started drifting off but i prayed for a long time that they would adopt me.

Another friends mum walked in to her bedroom to say goodnight to us stark bollock naked wearing nothing but a towel around her head to dry her hair. I was horrified!!!

I fear we were the odd house growing up.
2 massive rottweilers, 2 Burmese pythons, a cockatiel that told the dogs to fuck off, 3 goldfish, and 2 hamsters!

The house was always clean though, (looking back it probably stank with all those animals and that's why my mum spent most of her time scrubbing and cleaning) and my mum always made an extra meal for my brother because without fail he would drop his first one all over the floor.

My dad was obsessed with model railways, so we had model railroad all over the house. He was furious when we had our cousin's round and we used a toy Godzilla to stomp all over one he had painstakingly built for us we had fun and my mum just shrugged and asked what he expected kids to do.

There were also incidents of playing catch with snooker balls and raw eggs... We would jump off the bunk beds, and if our play fighting got too rough the dogs would stand in the middle of us. We knew not to do anything stupid around the dogs.
Apart from when I thought it would be a great idea to show off in front of my friend and ride one of the dogs around the living room like a horse.
My mum went mad at me. My poor friend was sat there in stunned silence as my mum is telling me how stupid I had been because the dog might have got upset and hurt me. Of course, looking back, my mum was right, but my poor friend didn't know what to say and never came back again!

I've just remembered I used to stay at one friends house. Her dad had a very think Scottish accent that I struggled to understand.
Every morning hed walk around the house in y fronts singing some bizarre Scottish song every so often asking me what I thought of his singing or so my friend told me.

I've been reading thinking how do you eat it without plates and knives and forks the gravy/peas/curry would be everywhere..... then I realised most probably aren't from the north!
My friends dad used to send us to the chip shop with a plate and we'd order, pass the plate over and they'd put it straight on the plate!

blubberball l'm weird too, then. My rabbits live in (what would be) my dining room.

Actually, I think that I am the weird one. We have our Guinea pigs in the kitchen 😬

l posted earlier that until was about 10, l shared a bedroom with my parents. We lived in a two bedroom flat, and my grandma had the other bedroom.
When my grandma died, her body stayed in the house, in the bedroom. l remember my mam saying we had to have all the curtains in the flat closed (no idea why!) and that we couldn't have the television on. Once the bedroom door wasn't shut properly and l peeped through the gap. My grandma's body, covered with a sheet, was silhouetted against the light from the window (closed curtains again) and the thing l remember most is that her feet were stuck straight up, and l wondered why - mine weren't like that when l was in bed. l was confused too - l heard my dad telling one of the neighbours "We've lost XXXX's (my mothers) mother." l wondered why he'd said that - she wasn't 'lost', she was still in the bedroom.
l wasn't allowed to go to the funeral. lnstead my cousin's girlfriend took me out for lunch. l was delighted, l'd never been out for a meal before. lt was only at the Co-op café, but at the time it felt like a huge treat.
After that, l was thrilled to finally have my own room. lt wasn't til many years later it dawned on me that l'd been put to bed in the bed my grandma had died in. Thank goodness l didn't realise at the time. l think it would have spooked me.

I think in the 70's/early 80's a lot of people still treated kids very different from adults. What I mean is they might be kind and loving, but they did not feel the need to moderate their behaviour. If it was fine in front of your own kids, it was fine in front of other people's kids.

Of course there were creepy men who might be naked to be pervy. But in other cases it was similar to if you had a friend's dog visiting. You would look after and be kind to the dog, but it would not occur to you to change how you are dressed or undressed in front of the dog.

@sam221. For some reason a tear came to my eye just thinking about how much your parents love you to have done everything they could so you could fit in x

WHAT was going on with all the nudity, though? DH was scarred by a friend's mother walking around, bush ahoy. She is still friends with his mother but thankfully stays clothed when she visits

I have no idea really but my kids have never mentioned nudie parents so maybe it was a 70s/80s thing? Weird.

Blimey, my childhood was very uneventful in comparison! Some friends had messier or tidier houses than mine but happily I didn't witness any actual squalor. It's heartbreaking.

I had one friend whose parents had a huge Victorian house. Her bedroom was on the top floor and they could call her down by means of an intercom. But...she couldn't contact them via the intercom. And they could have it switched on without her knowing. So she basically never had any privacy in her own bedroom. I remember feeling very bad for her. They also gave their dog homeopathic medicine (this was mid-eighties and not Brighton) and I remember even aged nine or ten thinking that was one of the most batshit things I'd ever heard of.