Strange things you used to enjoy doing as a child

[DiamondsInTheMud]

As im doing the housework, i remember how much i used to enjoy cleaning the toilet when i was little... Used to beg my mum to let me clean it, she didnt always let me, which im guessing was guilt as it shouldnt really be an enjoyable job??

Did anyone else find weird things enjoyable/a treat when you were little?

Some of these are reminding me of things I did!

• sucking the back of my hand/arm to make a bruise/love bite
• putting on something to make reins and pretending I was a horse

I also liked eating the black dog biscuits out of the big sack of mixed biscuits. They must have had charcoal or something in them. My mother reluctantly let me so (hopefully) there was nothing too bad in them 😬

Sweeeoing standing water from the back of our house

I made perfume out of rose petals and water in a jar .
Kept snails in the coal bunker.
Kept ladybirds in a jar.
I pretended i was a gymnast and tried to do a back flip and winded myself.
I pretended i was a librarian and made the old fashioned library book plates they used to stamp in the front of library books and "stamped" them (actually handwritten)
My friend and i used to write letters to each other - every day! After being at school together all day ... we hunted down the most unusual/colourful writing paper we could find.
I used to eat the baby disprin in the bathroom cabinet because they tasted nice!

Trying to make butter by keeping milk in a jam jar and shaking it ... Kept it in my wardrobe and it just went off.
Sliding down the stairs in a sleeping bag being a caterpillar

I used to take apart chocolate bourbon biscuits and melt the icing against the radiator, and put smarties on top of the radiator until the middle was melted (I used the lense of a broken pair of cheap sunglasses for this.)

I used to chew blue tack because I wasn't allowed chewing gum! And colour blue tack with felt pens. Obviously not the bit I was going to chew!

A couple of friends and I also used to be obsessed with making little coat hangers from paperclips. My school desk was full of them.

Toasting bread in front of the electric fire as well - it usually ended up half burnt!

sapphire - another radiator cook! I am pleased to see you!

Other stuff i did: if the duvet fell off my bed (i had my own bunk beds and slept on the top bunk) in the middle of the night, I'd take the pillow out the pillow case and sleep in the pillow case. It made me feel cosy.

I used to swallow cherry stones. I liked the smell of exhaust fumes.
I used to "have to" sing the theme tune to that tickle town cartoon whilst getting into bed (something along the lines of "look it's tickle town and there's the river tum, tickle on the what? Tickle on the tum").
I'd also pretend that my duvet was a ball gown (whilst lying in bed) and sometimes stare up at the ceiling to the convince myself the ceiling was really the floor.

I used to play with marbles but not as marbles, I'd select a certain type to be deer or horses and another type would be trying to capture the deer/horses.

I loved chains of any kind. Walking to school there was a road full of chain-linked fences, I had to swing them. Another time I remember an elderly lady telling me off for playing with the chain and padlock on the gate to our local park, saying "you see, metal's very dangerous..."

I was fascinated by the arrangement of gutters and drainpipes on my grandparents' house, where one roof section would drain into another, and there was a single drain in the garden which would collect them all. Since I wasn't usually outside if it was raining, I rarely saw it in action, but I loved dropping a ball into a gutter from an upstairs window, and letting it make its complicated journey to the bottom.

I loved blindfolding myself at home and just hearing what was going on around me, to the bemusement of everyone else. I also liked science experiments from Usborne books involving blindfolding, such as guessing objects by feel, or pointing at someone clapping to test my directional hearing; I was delighted when we did that experiment at school. (I also kept wanting to be blindfolded while my presents were wrapped in front of me, but I don't think my parents trusted me not to peep! So my DH indulges me in this now.)

Every summer we used to reenact the Olympics in the garden. This would easily take up all the summer holidays what with planning and doing all the events, rehearsing the open ceremony, making all the medals out of milk bottle tops...

I remember going through a phase when I was really into home economics and baking of making up cake mix just so I could eat it raw.

I thought of another - my grandma always wore nude tights/stockings, and whenever she used to babysit us I used to spend ages 'plucking' them - I used to think she had a second skin or something so would pull the fabric up and let it ping. She must have had the patience of a saint to let me do it, not to mention if i laddered then (I don't ever recall doing so).

Oh, I'd completely forgotten about melting Bourbon biscuits on the radiator!!! Even better was the gas fire that had a little ledge - riskier though.

I ate paper. I didn't swallow it, just ripped a strip, chewed it for a bit then squished it inside an old pillow case. Like some sort of giant child-wasp

Also loved peeling PVA glue off my hands. (Still do (teacher) and even better is leaving the glue pots for a few days and peeling it out. Comes out WHOLE. No one is allowed to wash glue pots in my classroom...)

Love all these, and bringing back so many memories!!

I also used to eat paper and rubbers, i remember getting in trouble in primary school because i was ripping corners off the pages of my school jotter!

My brother and I loved clue-by-clue treasure hunts (Usborne books again), and would often make them for each other. "To find the next clue, put a record on." As we got older, they became more elaborate, for instance the clue would be where to find a cassette, which would have recorded instructions.

Sneaking out to the garden and hiding when it rained. I remember once even dragging my duvet out there and sitting underneath it. I just loved the sound of the rain and being out in it, although not necessarily getting wet! As I got older, I’d let go into the caravan when it rained as I loved the sound hitting the roof - I would often fall asleep in there!

Bagel your memory of pretending to be a horse has just reminded me of a 'documentary' I watched recently about a woman who liked to pretend to be a horse, would get into a harness, run about in a stable, pull a little cart with people on etc... It wasn't you was it?
My parents won a bottle of posh squash in a raffle when I was five, they kept it in the little cupboard under the ornament cabinet and I kept drinking it on the sly. It turned out I was necking rose wine

Oh god the 'potions'!!

I was obsessed! I'd lock myself in the bathroom and mix up a huge load of shit. For what purpose or end I can't remember. I do remember it always had a base of talc and just enough of my dads contact lens cleaner to make a paste. Then shampoo, conditioner, body lotion... whatever was around. I'd mix it in an ornamental soap dish with the end of my dads razor (not the sharp end!) The motherlode was if there was a bath cube that wouldn't go amiss as it would set off a major reaction....

Then I'd wash it away....

The shipping forecast.

I always used to eat birthday cake candles. That was always the highlight of birthdays for me. I was an odd child.

I've remembered some more;
Playing with the button tin for hours.
Doing the needles through the fingers thing without bleeding.
Rose petal and water "perfume"
Keeping pools coupons and junk mail in an old briefcase and shuffling them about and putting them in some sort of order. I used to call them my documentaries and privacies.
Catching sparrows with the the top of the round, plastic laundry basket that was propped up with a stick. I used to attach string to the stick, lie in wait for the sparrow and tug on the string. never used to hurt them or anything horrible. I just wanted a closer look and always let them go.
Our dog used to get acne; yes I did.

As a toddler I used to love the little bit of plastic in the collars of my dad's shirts, the bit that keeps the collar stiff. I called them floppy bits and would beg for them to be saved when he had an old shirt so I could just flip it all day.

I also ate toothpaste.

I was weird.

I used to put a mirror under my chin so all I could see was the reflection of the ceilings... I then walked around the house trying not to crash into anything..

I used to climb a certain tree in the park everyday and just sit and people watch. I also used to mark how many days in a row i'd been by sticking a tally of leaves on a branch.