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Things from your childhood you are still salty over?

307 replies

MyCheeryPearlTraybake · 25/05/2025 15:29

Not winning a running race

OP posts:
Zov · 26/05/2025 14:36

My teeth being ruined by NHS dentists... In the 1970s and first half of the 1980s they used to 'drill and fill' for profit. I don't know anyone in their 50s and early to mid 60s, who hasn't got a mouthful of fillings.

UnctuousUnicorns · 26/05/2025 14:36

Being slippered across the arse in front of my sniggering brother and male cousins for something I did. not. fucking. do. Yay for seventies childhoods. I don't care about being smacked, clipped round the ear etc. That never bothered me; it was normal for our time. But that particular episode of injustice and humiliation has stuck with me for over thirty five years and counting. 😡

Shayisgreat · 26/05/2025 14:39

My friend owes me £1 from when I lent her bus fare when we were 12.

When I was 14, I watched Jawbreaker with 2 friends and we said that us 3 were like the 3 main girls in it. My friend insisted that she was the brunette character and I was the blond. She was wrong but wouldn't listen to me - she was much more like the blonde character and she had blonde hair. She just wanted to be the main character when I was clearly more like her. Wagon.

When I was 9 a girl told on me on class because she said I wouldn't share my book with her - it was mostly on her side of the desk! My teacher gave out to me for being selfish and said that the other girl was to be responsible for turning pages etc.

UnctuousUnicorns · 26/05/2025 14:42

Zov · 26/05/2025 14:36

My teeth being ruined by NHS dentists... In the 1970s and first half of the 1980s they used to 'drill and fill' for profit. I don't know anyone in their 50s and early to mid 60s, who hasn't got a mouthful of fillings.

How very true. 54 and my teeth are fucked, filled, cracked, extracted (a necessity in later life) etc. It's small mercy now that I now have a sympathetic and skilful dentist who has worked wonders on what's left of the rest, otherwise I'd be a snaggletoothed hag, afraid to open my mouth in front of anyone. ☹️

UnctuousUnicorns · 26/05/2025 14:46

Oh, and someone out there still has my copy of Wham!'s "Fantastic" that I lent her in 1983. I'd know it's mine by the picture of G and A from Smash Hits (or whatever mag it was) that I glued to the back. You know who you are.

Zov · 26/05/2025 15:40

UnctuousUnicorns · 26/05/2025 14:42

How very true. 54 and my teeth are fucked, filled, cracked, extracted (a necessity in later life) etc. It's small mercy now that I now have a sympathetic and skilful dentist who has worked wonders on what's left of the rest, otherwise I'd be a snaggletoothed hag, afraid to open my mouth in front of anyone. ☹️

Flowers Yep, par for the course for most people I know of our age group (early 50s to mid to late 60s.) Luckily, my 'smile' is OK, and the teeth you can see are all right, but any teeth that could be filled were filled. (In the 1970s/early 1980s.) I have lost about 7 as they were filled so much (and so often) over the years of my life that they just gave up the ghost and crumbled! Confused Several teeth are crowned, and I still have quite a few fillings.

VickyEadieofThigh · 26/05/2025 15:52

Daysofcake · 26/05/2025 14:23

Primary school nativity plays always seemed to cast the angels with girls despite this! My best friend got Gabriel and I was SO jealous of her…

To be fair to girls, the only part in the traditional nativity for a girl is Mary. If schools have to stick to casting boys to boys parts, etc, there's barely a look-in for most of the girls.

ThisOldThang · 26/05/2025 16:27

Andoutcomethewolves · 26/05/2025 14:29

My English teacher gave me a D for a project (literally the only time I ever didn't get an A in English) the day after I told her she'd spelled soldier wrong (she spelled it as solider). Cow 🤣

More seriously my parents moving country when I was 13 and taking me out of school, it did not help set me up with social skills 😬

My English teacher did similar after she told me off for abbreviating the date to something like '26th Sept 1993'. I pointed out that she'd also abbreviated it on the board and if she didn't like abbreviations she should have written 'Twenty sixth of September, Nineteen ninety three'.

TheHistorian · 26/05/2025 16:59

Persianpaws · 26/05/2025 06:16

How old were your parents?

I often wonder if my niece will feel the same one day. It’s great that she got to spend so much time with grandparents but I wonder if as she gets older she’ll realise that it’s because her mother was also still being parented.

My mother was 13 when she got pregnant with my brother (my dad was 15), she got pregnant again with me four months after giving birth to him. Shot gun wedding with special licence at age 14.

They were a disaster from the beginning. Her constantly cheating on him, think she thought she was entitled to sow her oats. My dad had a porn habit and misogynistic ideas about women. They had my sister (planned but not sure she's my dad's) when she was 20.

My mother has always had a lot of sympathy about her age and how 'brave' she was. However, we experienced a lazy, neglectful teenager as a mother who intensely disliked me. She's very manipulative and played us all off against each other. Very selfish and a total victim. Never grown up really.

We're now all estranged from both parents and each other. Some people should never be parents.

Lindajonesjustcantlivemylife · 26/05/2025 17:59

70s toy adverts made things look fantastic..cue bitter disappointment when toy didn't perform in the same way 😔

ButteredRadishes · 26/05/2025 18:07

ThisOldThang · 26/05/2025 12:40

Angel Gabriel is male?

What's that got to do with the price of bananas?

Seagullsandsausagerolls · 27/05/2025 05:46

Btowngirl · 26/05/2025 07:12

Being made to do textiles at school instead of wood and metalwork like the boys. I’m only 33 😅

I'm in my forties but we'd no option for Textiles I'd have loved that. Woodwork and metal work were awful. I get the reasoning behind it but choice would have been brilliant. Our teacher most definitely resented us females in the class.

scalt · 27/05/2025 07:01

With the "Angel Gabriel is male" enigma, many children might be surprised to learn this: angels often played by girls, and often look feminine in pictures. I was surprised that Gabriel was a male name, I was confused with Gabrielle.

A very minor childhood injustice: at my youth group, we often played Keeper of the Keys, in which one child had to creep up and steal a bunch of keys guarded by a keeper, who was blindfolded, and pointed at any sound they heard. Only those who were successful in stealing the keys became the keeper. The only time I was the thief, someone else made a sound as I crept forwards, so I got pointed at. I never got to be the keeper!

ThisOldThang · 27/05/2025 07:09

ButteredRadishes · 26/05/2025 18:07

What's that got to do with the price of bananas?

A now grown woman still being salty about the injustice of not being picked to play a male angel.

It just seems like a strange thing to hold onto.

BungeeCord · 27/05/2025 07:35

ThisOldThang · 27/05/2025 07:09

A now grown woman still being salty about the injustice of not being picked to play a male angel.

It just seems like a strange thing to hold onto.

Perhaps this is not the thread for you?

scalt · 27/05/2025 07:39

There was a time when only I had head lice, and only I had the treatment with the really horrible smelly lotion. (It was in summer, in the garden, and I hoped the neighbours would hear my screams, and come to my rescue.) Soon after this, my mum heard the advice "please treat all the family", so I had to have it again when somebody else got head lice! It wasn't fair!

I used to get screamingly angry about whole-class or whole-school punishments, when I was eight or nine, and I once made my feelings known in assembly, in front of the whole school (to a stunned silence, and a teacher took me aside to calm me down), and I'm still angry about some of those. But there was one occasion when I managed to beat the system, which at the time I was hugely proud of. I knew that the dreaded "practising lining up" was going to happen instead of playtime, so I asked my teacher if I could finish my work in the classroom at playtime, without saying why, and I begged and pleaded. Eventually, she allowed me to, as long as somebody else stayed as well; I persuaded a friend to join me. So I was doing something useful and fulfilling, while everyone else was doing the pointless practising lining up.

InMyOpenOnion · 27/05/2025 07:40

ThisOldThang · 27/05/2025 07:09

A now grown woman still being salty about the injustice of not being picked to play a male angel.

It just seems like a strange thing to hold onto.

There weren't any boys at my school so Angel Gabriel was always a girl 🤷‍♂️. But as the PP said, maybe this one's not for you. It's a thread about raw moments as seen through the eyes of our childhood selves.

BungeeCord · 27/05/2025 08:03

I'm forever salty that when I was a teenager my parents made me and my close in age sister clean the whole house at the weekend in exchange for our £5 pocket money (their bathroom, the bathroom we shared with our two younger siblings, all the hoovering, dusting and mopping) plus wash up after dinner every night, make dinner once a week each and do the Sunday roast (one did the cooking and the other washed up). My younger brother and sister were never expected to do this, of course.

TheGhostOfPatButcher · 27/05/2025 08:34

ThisOldThang · 27/05/2025 07:09

A now grown woman still being salty about the injustice of not being picked to play a male angel.

It just seems like a strange thing to hold onto.

Hope it doesn't blow your mind too much that I also really wanted to be Peep Peep in a school production of the Look and Read classic The Boy From Space, seeing as I am neither a boy nor an alien. 😆Instead I got to be Mr Bunting. The remit of gender accuracy policing clearly hadn't yet extended to early years casting in the 70s.

HurdyGurdy19 · 27/05/2025 08:47

My mum used to threaten to send me to boarding school, if I had misbehaved.

Well, I was desperate to go 😂. I'd read Mallory Towers and The Twins at St Clares, so I knew I'd have an amazing time.

She never followed through, so I never had the thrill of a secret midnight feast, or a trunk with my clothes in it, or a tuck box.

ItsBouqeeeet · 27/05/2025 08:49

Hurt my best friend's bully and being put on report for it. School had refused to do anything about his verbal and physical attacks for years but when I retaliated, I was punished.

I still death glare when i see him now 😂

UnctuousUnicorns · 27/05/2025 09:11

I read EB and used to wish I'd gone to boarding school too. 😅 The school I went to actually stopped taking boarders a couple of years before I started there, but I wouldn't have been able to board even if it hadn't, as 1) it was only ten miles from home and 2) my parents couldn't possibly have afforded it (I passed the 11 plus and entrance exam so got in for free). Too bad. 😅

Overthemoon13 · 27/05/2025 09:17

In infant school I painted an amazing picture for a competition. Of course I forgot to put my name on it and someone claimed it as their own. It won first prize. Never got over it 🤣

Wrote to Santa every year asking for a play kitchen - never got one.

DiscoBeat · 27/05/2025 09:23

Not being allowed to grow my hair long. It's curly and it was deemed unruly because my parents tried to treat it like straight hair. My son has beautiful long hair (suits him and his rock band friends!) and I've shown him how to look after it, with the right products for his curls.

LesMisSaigon · 27/05/2025 10:34

@ThisOldThang I guess they had to make do with a girl playing The Angel Gabriel as no real angels were available!