What's the weirdest thing you've done that you look back and think 'WTF did I do that for?'

[BarbaraVineFan]

I'll start - when I was in my first long term relationship at the fairly advanced age of 24, my partner and I used to regularly cook our dinner, then take it up to bed on a tray and sit there watching TV eating our dinner like Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory! No discernible reason, there was a perfectly good telly and sofa downstairs 😐 I have no idea why we did it! Anyone else got something similarly weird to share?

Ditto. Not so much what was I thinking as was I thinking at all?

I can just imagine the two of you now, stolidly working through that phone booked and every S Goddard in it...

If that were a scene from a film, Adam Ant would have been outside waiting to use phone.

😂😂 this is amazing

This is a bit of a long story and it happened many years ago when I was an idiot and a people pleaser, but also very trusting. I was accompanying a youth hostel trip for a bunch of 12 teenage SN pupils that I taught. It was the second year of running the trip and me going on it. The leader of the trip was, let's call him Mike, a slightly older bloke who was brilliant with the kids and both of us were quite good work friends, planned the trip together and so on. The youth hostel was a bit basic but was in a lovely place and we had a good time as the kids were hilarious and most of them had never been away from home before or walked anywhere - it was all outdoorsy stuff. They loved it. Anyway I was 28 or so I think, so old enough to have some sense, but I trusted Mike implicitly and we had fun with the kids together. I didn't ever get pervy vibes from him and he was married and knew I had a boyfriend and we had even had some evenings having a meal as a foursome. So that's the context about why I was so stupid.

Now, the showers at this youth hostel were in a sort of old cow sheds that had been converted. One of them was nicer than the others, sort of a family shower room. One evening near the end of the week when the kids were in bed, Mike said the nice shower was free for once, so I'll have a shower first, then you. Somehow I expected it to have a changing room bit like the others did, so just sort of pottered in with him, in the spirit of youth hostelling as I imagined it. Mike called to me to come in and he was already in the shower, so I kind of thought as he came out, he would be wearing a towel and I'd strip off once he had gone. God only knows why I let this continue as he was stark naked in the shower right by me, I was hovering close by with my clothes on. I wanted to be the cool colleague I suppose. It all happened so quick, but he called to me to get in the shower while it was hot as it takes ages to warm up. So I stripped off and got in while he was still in there! I assumed that at worst we would sort of pass each other as he got out. That shower was nowhere near as big as I thought it was and as I stepped in I expected him to get out but he didn't...and although I didn't look I could feel this enormous erection waving around. Oh my God, I suddenly realised what was happening and he sort of went towards me, I can't really remember but I said 'get out, then!' Thank goodness, he did at that point and sort of went as if that was what he had always intended to do, though I don't think it was. I stood in the shower then, knowing he was just the other side of the shower curtain and hoping he wouldn't try for another go. When I finally got out, he had gone.

I really wasn't sure what happened there, if he was really trying it on or if he just sort of went with an opportunity that presented itself. I just felt so so stupid that I'd been that trusting and gone along with something because I didn't want to appear a bad sport. Maybe I thought it was a youth hostel thing, sort of wholesome like nudist beaches or scandinavian things? I have no idea but I was shaken by it and I couldn't look at him the same again. Funnily enough when we got back, his wife sought me out at a work end of term thing a few weeks later and asked me how the trip was, and made some comment like 'Mike can be an idiot sometimes - was he okay?' as if she knew about what happened and was checking out my reaction. I laughed and said it was all fine. He thanked me profusely and gave me a pair of earrings (obviously chosen by his wife I think) and I avoided him from then on. I didn't tell my DP of the time as I realised how stupid it made me sound and in fact I kept it to myself for years until I told a friend as a funny story. It is a funny story in a way, but one that has bothered me as such a weird thing I did. So when other women get themselves in odd risky situations with men, and I feel at all judgmental, I remember Mike in the shower.

Blimey @muckandnettles I’m not sure that was the vibe this thread was giving. Sounds awful though.

My uncle stopped for a young woman who had broken down on the dual carriageway pre mobile phone times @Nutterjacks and offered to give her a lift to the garage which he knew was closing soon but they had time to get there. The exit slip road they needed was closed, so he had to go on and go round and by the time they got there the garage was shut, so he said I'll drive you home so you can ring someone from there. He could tell she was getting more and more worried as the journey went on and he was trying to sound sane and was not an axe murderer (which may have made it worse) and when they got to his house (yes she still went with him) she looked incredibly relieved to see my aunt.

I've done so many it would make a long list. Taken lifts with strangers, put myself in unsafe situations etc. So not the weirdest examples but minor and mildly embarrassing:

A couple of vanity ones. I used to be quite vain and was always checking my hair/reflection in mirrors and windows, anything really. One occasion I was doing this in a disused bakery shop front window; looked beyond the reflection on instinct to see a group of builders looking back at me.

Another situation where I spoke to a boy at university who said he'd seen me in town on a particular day/place. I said I was sorry I hadn't seen him, and he said I had been looking at something (thankfully he was too polite to mention the reflection checking and I pretended to be unsure).

I don't do this anymore!

He was definitely trying it on with you @muckandnettles! I expect he gave his wife a carefully edited version to cover his back in case you said something. Thank goodness he got out when you told him!

It was the first thing that sprang to mind when I saw the title of the thread!

He's very lucky I didn't go back to work and say anything. His wife was probably worried about that more than anything. And yes, looking back I'm pretty sure there was nothing innocent from his side of things.

I am cringing so hard for you here!

This is absolutely brilliant!

I don't know. Someone posted about something that was clearly rape earlier in the thread

Why didn't you make the money then? Can't just blame him.

I licked a dead fish I found on a beach in Cornwall. Lots of times 🤮 My sister and I were arguing over who got to keep it so we cut it in half and I kept looking at my half and lacking it. God knows how I wasn't poorly.

Thinking about it I also used to lick the raw roast chicken before it went in the oven when my mum wasn't looking. We were never allowed breakfast on roast dinner days so it didn't spoil our appetites and I was starving every Sunday 🤮 Again I never got poorly.

I was a weird ole licky child

@Cheeseandlobster , I used to drink vinegar and spoon mint sauce into my gob! And I loved the fat on lamb 🤮 I'd be sick now if I tried it!

Hah, that would've absolutely made our day! 😆

Same friend and I were out on our bikes in the summer holidays, far from home. It started to pour with rain and we were out in the countryside, miles from anywhere. We found a house and knocked on the door. A very surprised, very posh lady answered, and let two very bedraggled little girls use her phone to call for a lift home 🙂

so many stupid things I’ve done are now popping up in my mind 🙈
left a party at 16 because everyone was trashed and had fallen asleep, had rang a friend asking them to pick me up but realised once I wandered outside I’d managed to leave my phone inside and nobody was awake or sober enough to answer the door. I wasn’t 100% sure where I was (had told my friend I would call him with the road name when I got outside!!!)
i got a couple of minutes up the road and there were a couple of workmen doing some sort of overnight road work (might have been painting lines, not sure)
anyway they asked if I was ok, I told them basically I wasn’t sure where I was and had no way of getting home/no phone and they ended up giving me a lift in their work lorry.
they were both fine but obviously could easily not have been, and I remember thinking afterwards how dangerous that was.

I used to eat mint sauce like that too. We were grim little buggers weren't we?

@Cheeseandlobster yep really grim! 🤣

😀 at the fish

I think you can be forgiven for licking the Sunday roast if you hadn't been allowed breakfast until then. How awful!

We didn't have breakfast on a Sunday mornings when going to mass, but we were back by 10am and had something then.

Ah I'm glad it worked for you but I remember seeing a documentary once where this bloke had had it done and got compensatory sweating on his face and torso. For me that would be even worse, so I've never looked any further into it.

Another one...I was quite a posh little kid and had an even more posh little friend who lived in a stately home (!) which had a country park that was open to the public. Aged about 8, we were nonetheless allowed to roam all.over the massive grounds of her house, but not allowed in the park. We used to climb over the wall (about 8 foot high!) rub dirt.on our faces and go up to random people saying we were poor and asking them for money!! Massive cringe now imagining these unsuspecting people out for a nice walk, being accosted by two well-dressed and well-fed little girls asking in posh accents for money...how awful of us.

I am also in the mint sauce thief brigade. It was always on the big table and had its own tiny special spoon .

I would take huge pleasure in having several spoons before everyone came into the dining room.

At my primary school Summer fete, my best friend and I won first prize in the fancy dress competition as the wicked queen and the mirror from Sleeping Beauty. It obviously went to our heads as we spent most of the Summer dressed up as them wandering around town. We got lots of bemused looks and a few foreign tourists asked if they could take our photos - this is one of the strange customs that English children do in their spare time! It was quite hot dressed up in all that clobber and pretty boring. Not sure what was going on in our heads?