Odd/ strange things you did as a child?

[Thecatistheboss]

My mum found an old picture of me, around 6 - in the picture I had a piece of wool fastened as a necklace! I apparently insisted on doing it all the time, I used to walk around with various colours of wool around my neck 😂😂 I’ve no clue why!! I also used to write in colouring books, I’d never colour them in but used to write on the pages, no idea to that one either

I used to locate soft parts of the wall behind the wallpaper and pick parts off the masonry or whatever it was called and eat it. My little brother did the same. My dad had to get it filled in. I still like the idea of eating chalky powdery stuff though.

These are all great. I hope we get more posts. I have been reading them to my 10 year old and she has laughed so hard she can barely breathe. She loves them.

Me and my best friend, next door neighbour and partner in crime (specifically, genocide) decided to open an ant hospital. We took tons of perfectly healthy ants and installed them in a shoe box with no food or water. You can guess what happened to the poor creatures. She’s a nurse now.

You're all fucking mad 😁

So many weird things.. eating daffodil petals, keeping snails in the coal box (outside), eating paper, also making my books and pretending my dolls were my pupils, also made the books into library books, and marked them with a date as loaned, poking cow pats with sticks and storing them, making fires in the woods and then pinching mum's sausages and cooking them - not very well! Once after watching the Olympics I thought I could do a backflip and tried to do one off a plank in the garden, landed on my back and it really hurt!

Also once decided to make butter, stole some milk from the fridge, put it in an empty jam jar and kept it behind the sink in the bathroom. Of course it just turned into sour milk which stank!

I made fake horses out of cardboard. Cut the bottom out of a box large enough to fit round me, make a horse head from the spare cardboard and attach it to the front of the box. Attach a tail and reins. Make shoulder straps from string, attach them to the sides. Proceed to "wear" the horse, and canter around our village making neighing and trotting noises.

I was quite well known.

I used to have hundreds of little toy animals and I would line them all up and then “march” them around my room - so move the one first in the line forward one step, then the second one, and so on.

I’d spend hours just marching then round the room like this and going over obstacles, etc. My mum thought I was a right weirdo.

I also had an incredibly complex imaginary world that I played from about age 3 to about age 12, embarrassingly. I couldn’t even start to explain it, but it had so many rules and I literally just existed in it 24/7.

Looking back it all just seems so bizarre to me.

OMG me too! I came on here to say exactly this! I tore the corners of pages of books and nibbled them while I was reading. I have no clue why. People could always tell id been reading a book. I would love to have insight into why I did this. I don’t do it anymore.
I also used to make up stories in my head and would walk around the garden telling them aloud to myself.

I loved sucking bath water out of flannels. Putting my hand in pop so I could lick it off, and eating my scabs.

I would build a nest with grass cuttings and find nice smooth stones for my eggs. Then I’d sit there for most of the day

I used to eat slivers of my granny & grandpa’s bathroom soap when I crept up to their bathroom. It was blue & tasted delicious…. I can still vividly conjur the smell / taste, 40 years on 🤤

Me tooooooooo!

Sat giggling reading all these.

Here’s mine….

i also picked scabs - and still do! I drive my young grandchildren mad if I see a scab on them and I ask if I can pick it, of course they say ‘No, Nana!’ I have an old insect bite at the top of my left arm and I pick at it regularly, love when it gets a ‘crust’ and I can peel it off 🤦🏼

I also played at libraries (wanted to be a librarian), stuck 2 sets of numbers on my books - firstly in alphabetical author order and secondly in size order, my shelves were old orange boxes covered in leftover wallpaper. (Showing my age there! 😆)
I still love reading.

i also nibbled the fingers off my dolls, I had a black doll called Wendy and a doll with long hair called Elizabeth, I was very upset when I took Elizabeth’s hair down and found she looked like a long haired monk - the hair was only attached in a circle so left the crown bare!

For as long as I can remember I’ve always loved soft textured fabrics like fleece, well worn flannelette, the inside of sweatshirts material, some velvets etc. I must have got comfort from this sort of fabric when I was very young and I still rub it between my finger and thumb or on my cheek - if I can’t sleep I do this with a fleece blanket and fall asleep immediately - weird!

You had better keep.away from @Kittylickingplate as they ate matches!

Bogie stash. On the wall just below pillow level at the head of the bed.
I found my son's bogie stash when he was about 7 and it reminded me...but he was openly proud of his when challenged. Good lad.

Whydoikeeprejoining · 03/05/2024 08:28

I buried dead birds I found and gave them funerals.

Yes, I did too, mostly birds and mice that cat had killed, but the odd hedgehog roadkill, too.

Tights for long hair.
Hated dolls, would strip them naked and throw them in the back of my toy cupboard. When I played ‘school’ all the pupils were teddies.
I would not sleep with slippers in my bedroom.

Wow children are so weird!
I used to eat paper too, I'd rip off the bottom of the page and chew it.
I picked the pebbledash off my grandparents house outside wall.
I spied on neighbours and wrote it all down. Mostly by myself as I didn't have any friends.
Cut the cats whiskers.
I'm sure there's lots more!

BehemothWatermelon · Today 17:33

Cut the cats whiskers.

Hmm, are you my eldest sister? She did that when I was 4, then ran and told our mam it was me! She ran through and slapped me round the face!

Ha, we used to do the cow pat thing too. The satisfaction when it was crusty on the top but gave a big explosion! 🤣🤣

I also had an incredibly complex imaginary world that I played from about age 3 to about age 12, embarrassingly. I couldn’t even start to explain it, but it had so many rules and I literally just existed in it 24/7.

I played in my imaginary world well into my teens. Though it wasn't just one world, there was a lot of worlds.

Just remembered another one, I used to wash my hands with toothpaste because it made my hands smell nice. I don't know why my parents didn't wonder at the toothpaste getting used up so quickly. My brother must have noticed though, because he bought me toothpaste for Christmas once

I once pretended I worked at the hotel we were staying at on holiday when I was probably 5/6 years old and I stomped around in a huff pretending like I'd missed my break because I needed to shut the curtains in the lobby.
Next morning an elderly couple came up to the table as we were having breakfast and asked my parents if I worked at the hotel, I pretended to have no idea what they were talking about.
All these years later I'm still mortified about it.

Eating tissues…

Picking scabs.

I didn’t spy on neighbours but would ride my bike around the local streets and make mental notes as to what I liked or were “interesting” about houses, eg a heart on the top of a garage (wooden?).

I think at the end of the garage one year they held some sort of stall selling sweets. But I had a recurring dream after that for many years about a sweet shop/stall in that area. It wasn’t there though!