Meet the Other Phone. Flexible and made to last.

Meet the Other Phone.
Flexible and made to last.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Chat

Join the discussion and chat with other Mumsnetters about everyday life, relationships and parenting.

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

411 replies

BarbaraVineFan · 10/08/2023 19:20

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?

OP posts:
Namechangedididittoo · 12/08/2023 19:37

Used to sneak out of the house aged about 13/14 and meet up with a man of around 26 in his car and he’d drive us to secluded places 😳

JusthereforXmas · 12/08/2023 20:00

Mommybunny · 12/08/2023 18:55

I did something very similar, weirdly also with a German guy. I’d arrived in Berlin from the US to meet up with some Irish friends and stay in their flat for a week. They’d given me their address and I made my way to the flat (this was the early 90s, before Google Maps or mobile phones) and kept ringing the bell without them answering. I went to a pub nearby to ask if anyone knew my friends and where they might be. No one did but by the end of the night they still hadn’t arrived at home and this guy, I think his name was Volker, offered to put me up for the night on the floor of his nearby flat. I went as I had nowhere else to go and like your friend he was thoroughly decent. I finally hooked up with my friends the next day - they'd gone out on the piss and had gotten mixed up about when I was arriving - but every so often I do look back on that and wonder what I was thinking in doing that.

I spent the entire latter half of my teens train hopping and following strangers home to stay at theirs in strange cities... never got raped, murdered, attacked or anything did often leave with new friends and gifts.

99% of people are simply decent people. Thats even how I met DH.

Closest I ever came to getting raped was actually at my mams house when someone broke in and pinned me down until they realized Id secretly raised an alarm and people where on their way. Years of hitch

JusthereforXmas · 12/08/2023 20:01

years of hitchhiking and strangers and I was least safe AT HOME.

MakeMineABourbon · 12/08/2023 20:03

Elzibells · 11/08/2023 18:50

A woman in my previous office job was upset and came over to my desk to tell me. I couldn't be bothered getting out of my chair to hug her so instead I just hugged her hand against my cheek...makes me absolutely cringe. Why did I do that??

This is so frikkin funny!!!

Godmyback · 12/08/2023 20:03

Thank you to the person who did the "you slag" post. I read that this morn and couldn't breathe I was laughing that much.
I feel sometimes like I'm Miranda in that TV programme and I constantly do cringe worthy things.
I've accidentally said "love you" when saying bye on the phone to my kids school secretary. Obviously forgot who I was speaking to.
When I was younger, through primary, I would only draw churches and brides in pictures for a few years and I'm not even religious. I don't know why I did it.
I totally get the eating in bed too. I know it's repulsive but my and DH eat a late dinner on the bed with our legs crossed like kids. Uncomfortable yet brings happiness.

namechg · 12/08/2023 20:09

LardoBurrows · 12/08/2023 17:22

When I was about 20 I was at a party at a house and after drinking a lot and being rather drunk needed the loo. There was a downstairs loo and I joined the queue and by the time it was my time I was busting for a pee. As soon as I was in the loo some man started banging on the door telling me to hurry up, all while I was trying to pee as quickly as possible while being drunk and a bit uncoordinated. Anyway I suddenly got really angry at banging man so I opened the casement window, climbed up on the loo seat, over the cistern and out the window, leaving the door locked. Then strolled round the corner and back into the house and carried on drinking while people kept banging on the loo door and shouting "hurry up". God know why I did it, just seemed a good idea at the time.

Influenced by episode one of Skins? Same thing happened from an upstairs bathroom.

Pliudev · 12/08/2023 20:23

My mother sent me to ballet lessons when I was at primary school. I don't remember liking ballet much but it obviously made an impression. I used to try to fall asleep in a ballet position thinking that, if we were burgled, the burglar would be so impressed he would take me with him when he left.
Why??

Partyatno10 · 12/08/2023 20:26

Me and my friends got caught "smoking" behind the bike shed at school when we we're 14-15. Got dragged into the heads office and told off and told to give in the cigarettes. So my friend handed over the cigarettes, but they weren't actual cigarettes we'd been smoking, we'd been smoking the fake cigarettes that you blew on and talc powder came out of. The head was like wtf. Weird kids

aveline161 · 12/08/2023 20:44

Busubaba · 11/08/2023 19:40

Showing my age - my first partner and I had a television before remote control TV's became fashionable.

My partner sourced three bamboo canes and taped them together so that we could cuddle up or be laying down watching the tv and use the stick to change channels on tv rather than get up!

I laugh at the madness of it now

Ha ha we did this at a university house in the mid 2000’s that just had a crap old tv…there was a b&q at the bottom of the road and I remember taking the trip to buy the bamboo. It was genius. Hello to any of the 4 other girls I lived with 😂

Efrogwraig · 12/08/2023 20:45

FrenchandSaunders · 11/08/2023 19:01

I attempted to smuggle some GnT cans into a theatre …. security opened the bag and removed the two at the top. I then told him he’d missed two and proceeded to rummage around the bag .. handed him the cans.

My friend just stood there saying WTAF are you doing 🤦‍♀️🤣

Howling with laughter. 😂😂😳😬

BluesandClues · 12/08/2023 21:04

Did this have a beautiful stand alone birth centre that was closed down and staffed by community midwives? Hospital begins with a W?

BluesandClues · 12/08/2023 21:10

My teenage rebellion was joining a local church, and playing in their band. Sixteen years old, and ended up playing in my local town centre on my battered old instrument. I felt not a jot of embarrassment!

Mainly as I had no street cred at all, I don’t think I would do this nowadays. 😬

HarrietPoole · 12/08/2023 21:17

CringeyCrispys · 11/08/2023 18:50

Name changed for this. As an 18 year old I had a boyfriend my (very controlling) parents hated. On Christmas Day I was absolutely desperate to see him to swap presents/profess undying love to each other in his van. We arranged to meet on the corner of a neighbouring street that evening, and I told my parents I was going to a friends house up the road for Christmas drinks. My dad was absolutely insistent he gave me a lift despite it being literally a street away. (I’m certain he knew I was planning on an illicit tryst with my banned boyfriend).
so after much protestation, into the car I get with my dad who drops me the 2 seconds to my friends house. I get out….and he waits. And waits. I find myself walking up the driveway of a girl I barely fucking knew from school on Christmas Day knocking as my dad continues to watch. She opens the door understandably totally bemused what on earth I’m doing knocking on her door on Christmas night while I mumble something about wanting to wish her a happy Christmas. I’m sure she thought I was on glue or something, it says so much about how conditioned I was to not stand up to my parents that I didn’t just tell my dad that I was 18 and if I wanted to see the boyfriend he disapproved of I bloody well would. Anyway after a couple of minutes of absolutely painful chitchat with the girl I knew and her family, I said happy Christmas cheerio and bombed it down the road red faced to meet my boyfriend. I look back 20 years later and still feel so fucking embarrassed at what on earth they must have thought.

Beautiful!

HarrietPoole · 12/08/2023 21:24

MorrisZapp · 11/08/2023 22:10

My mum collected Cordon Bleu magazines, we used to make extravagant bleugggh noises looking at them.

Before the internet or proper telly I used to obsessively read cookery books whenever I ate. My favourites were The Dairy Book of Home Cookery and all of Delia Smith. I can picture her squidgy chocolate log to this day, 'a bit wicked, as it contains no flour', and her frosted grape cheesecake.

I'm a very basic, unimaginative cook despite this deep encyclopedic knowledge.

I still have my mum's 1970s copy of the Dairy Book of Home Cookery. Smells of (fifty year old) flout. I love it.

KennedyClan · 12/08/2023 21:30

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn by MNHQ for breaking our Talk Guidelines.

kennycat · 12/08/2023 21:50

Robinbuildsbears · 11/08/2023 18:42

My husband and I are equally disorganised and impulsive food-wise, I dread to think how many trips to the local co-op we do each week.

Probably one of the weirdest things I used to do was when my now husband used to visit me on university accommodation, I would drop my fob out the window for him to come up rather than walk 4 floors down and then up to meet him.

I’d throw my keys out the window to
my now husband when we were at uni. Why would you traipse down all those stairs to let them in??

SnowWhiteAndTheTwoKids · 12/08/2023 22:02

I was once invited to a pretty swanky party, there was this guy there who had once been someone important in the music industry. He was bragging about how he doesn't feel any pain. For some ridiculous reason, I took up the challenge and said: "I bet I can make you feel pain." Then, with a flourish - and without invitation - I stabbed my finger in his ribs very hard saying, "The finger of pain!" He screamed and through gritted teeth mumbled that I should never touch him again!

4kids2cats · 12/08/2023 22:14

I STILL have that Dairy Book. Bloody love it. Full of great recipes!!!

OhcantthInkofaname · 12/08/2023 22:22

S0upertrooper · 11/08/2023 19:34

Around 1985 I was 16/17 and had a Saturday job in Boots the Chemist as it was known then.

My married female neighbour (probably late 40s/early 50s) came in for condoms and I said, laughing at my own 'joke', "Will that be the small size?"

I still cringe at the thought but to be fair, there's no way I'd buy condoms from a 16 year old I knew and saw on a daily basis. She could have bought them anywhere.

I might have said: do you know Mr neighbor?

CClaire · 12/08/2023 22:29

Elzibells · 11/08/2023 18:50

A woman in my previous office job was upset and came over to my desk to tell me. I couldn't be bothered getting out of my chair to hug her so instead I just hugged her hand against my cheek...makes me absolutely cringe. Why did I do that??

😂

CClaire · 12/08/2023 22:38

namechg · 12/08/2023 20:09

Influenced by episode one of Skins? Same thing happened from an upstairs bathroom.

I did this when I was a young teenager. I was ‘in love’ with my big brother’s friend who happened to come to the house when I was having a poo in the cloakroom toilet by the front door. He then stood next to it while he fielded 20 questions from my mum. So I climbed out the window, rang the doorbell and pretended I’d been out 😆

CClaire · 12/08/2023 22:40

(This was many moons before Skins sadly)

CrawlingFromShitshowToAfterglow · 12/08/2023 22:43

@CringeyCrispys - I really relate to this! My controlling parents hated the boyfriend I had when I was 18. My parents had actually never met him but knew of him. Anyway, my boyfriend used to live in a different town and one day came up to meet me in my town. We agreed to meet at the station.

I told my parents I was meeting a friend from sixth form called Tasha, who lived in the neighbouring town and was catching the train in to see me (there was a girl by that name in my class who did live in a neighbouring town, but my parents had never met her).

Anyway, my dad insisted on dropping me to the station, despite my (feeble) protests. When we reached the station, my dad told me to go and get Tasha because he'd like to meet her. Obviously, he guessed what I was up to.

I dragged myself out of the car, not knowing what to do. My boyfriend was waiting outside the station. I walked past him, hissing: "don't look at me, don't talk to me, don't follow me."

I still don't know how the idea struck me, but I walked into the station cafe. There were a group of students about my age sitting there chatting. I approached one of them, explained the situation and asked her to pretend to be "Tasha" and come outside with me.

She actually did it! She walked with me to my dad's car and past my boyfriend who was still standing there with a wtf expression his face. My dad looked relieved and disappointed not have caught me out. "Tasha" said hello to my dad and we waved my dad off. Once he'd driven away, I thanked her profusely. She returned to her friends and me to my very confused boyfriend.

Sorry this is long! It just brought back a very suppressed memory from 1997! I still get anxiety when I think about it.

TheLemon · 12/08/2023 22:44

I had to go to work once on the weekend to answer an email (long before home working and I wasn't important enough to have a BlackBerry).

The office was deserted so I sat down on my colleague's - who I had a crush on - chair.

Then I sniffed it. I still don't know why.

HollieHobbie · 12/08/2023 22:46

Purplecatshopaholic · 11/08/2023 18:36

Getting married to my ex tops my list..

I feel there should be a 2 year thinking time for anyone who wants to marry. Post notice to marry, wait 2 years and no problems found, marry. I certainly wouldn't have married had I had 2 years notice. My ex walked away with half of my pre marital savings 😟