To ask about stuff from your childhood that is strange in retrospect?

[TheCatOfAthenry]

My late grandfather used to poke us in the head with a pocket knife and say "bees bees bees". He used also give us coffee and home-brewed beer in our bottles from the age of about 10 months.

Unrelated, he used also come out with statements like "a minute is a very long time" and "nobody can hear you scream if you're lost in a chasm."

When we were ill, the crystals came out. They hoped to undo my scoliosis before the orthopaedic surgeon saw me. Had abscesses treated with funny poultices and homeopathic sweeties. One particular cure involved massaging your own nose and coccyx simultaneously. (For one condition, the school got involved to ensure I got real medical care.)

We had the archangel Michael's sword carved on our front door. We were taught that if we told a ghost to go away three times, they would. I have yet to utilise this information. And we went to Catholic mass for good measure.

Spent many a night in public houses - Dad's a musician. Was reared in a cloud of tobacco smoke. Holidayed in caravans and essentially ran wild on a halting site every summer.

Mainly nice memories. Lots of lovely people around us. I grew up into a very skeptical medical doctor, but I still enjoy all sorts of people. Get out the guitar from time to time, but only enjoy crystals as decoration these days.

Would love to hear others' retrospectively strange experiences.

The poets about the school trips has reminded me of a couple I went on.

Trip to Paris at about 15. We were allowed out in the evening on our own.
Ditto Holland, we were in a small seaside town. We went to the off licence and bought beer and then a takeaway pizza from the shop next door. Ate and drank on the beach. We were 16.

My husband spent one whole year of primary locked in the teachers cupboard everyday as this particular teacher didn't know how to handle him; he was an ' enquiring and questioning the logic' sort of child. He even got left in there during a fire drill.....! He still talks about it now but his parents are still unaware it happened 🙄

Asking what was for dinner and being told “bread and pullet”

Getting dropped off by my parents at my grandparents on a Monday and then collected again on a Friday. Every single week.

Being allowed to watch Hellraiser when I was three scarred for life

Mad games teacher sent us as 9-10 year old girls for cross country runs in the freezing air (Northumberland in the winter). She then refused to let us drink any water because "you will just put again all the weight you have lost". Crazy lady.

put on again, rather

icelolly that's awful

Just remembered - at the age of seven I had trouble sleeping and was given a relaxation tape.

The B side was all about how to succeed in the workplace. I think it may have been specifically for teachers, but I'm not sure now...

Changing tv channels, or switching the tv on and off, by adjusting knobs on the actual tv. No remotes controls existed then.

Only having two sales a year January and July. You were pleased to get a small discount.

There’s these little 3 wheeled pick up vans in Italy....my uncle would come pick about 8 or 9 of us (primary and early secondary age) up from youth club in one and drive us home to the next village. This was in the early 00s!

Sugar sandwiches were lovely, with crusty bread rolls and proper butter. Yum.

My DM was another mum ahead of her time, me and DBro were so sick of pearl barley and quinoa as kids! We just wanted chicken nuggets like all the other kids (daily mail sad face)

"The past is a different place. They do things differently there." sadly.

Trip to see popular new romantic band with geography teacher and 3 other 14 year olds. he had "a beer" in the bar and went straight over a grass roundabout on the way home.

Communal showers in PE

Being told by head of maths dept I had suitable assets to be a page three girl. I have an economics degree.

I'm in my 30s so my childhood was 80's and early 90s.

My dad used to take me to work. He worked in a manufacturing factory and was quite high up. The workers used to give me sweets and teach me how to use the machines (welding machines and saws mostly)!

I also used to travel in the back of my dads van, along with his tools and ladders.

My nan used to send us (the grandchildren) to the shop with a note from her to get her bread, milk, papers and cigarettes.

Mum was a big fan of letting you learn for yourself so I had a mini toolbox (with real toys) for my 6th birthday, was taught how to handle sharp knives (and help with dinner) at a young age and had the job of picking my sister up from school and walking her home (I was in year 5, she was in the infant school over the road, all around half a mile from home).

I loved doing all these things but think it would be viewed as neglectful / bad parenting now.

I love the funny ones but these sort of threads always make me sad as there are so many people with stories of abuse and neglect both at home and at school I'm glad people share them though, even the sad ones.

OP, could the "bees bees bees" thing be an in-joke you forgot the origin of? My grandad and I used to touch our pointer fingers together a bit like ET and say "BZZZZT!" loudly... it's because one time as a very young child we went on a walk, he touched an electric fence and I touched him and got a zap!

Bees bees bees
When i was about 4 or 5 my mother would mix dried pulses, beans, lentils etc and my 'job' was to separate them back out again. At 8 or 9 i'd walk any and all neighbours dogs, would be gone for hours with them, woods were often littered with porn mags. Then at age 12 or 13 my friend and i would ride her ponies, we'd be gone for hours and nobody knew where we were (never had to tell anyone where we were going). Can't imagine letting my dc go off unaccompanied on a horse without knowing where they were and what time they should be back. Regularly saw a flasher outside the school gates, when i told my mother she told me to look the other way.

Oh and being hit with a slipper for being naughty.

@BayLeaves it sort of was. I was terrified of bees and he did it to give me a fright.

I grew up in the 70s and my memories are fairly standard stuff:

• no sun cream, my shoulders would regularly get burnt to a crisp and peel terribly (although that was oddly satisfying).
• no seatbelt in the back, my younger sister (9ish) used to kneel up and flash her chest to the lorry drivers behind.

In the late 1980s, my sister's junior school headmaster regularly used to take her and her friend camping. My parents were sort-of friends with him, but even at the time, I thought it was a bit odd. I raised it with my mum recently and she just shrugged it off.

I do have other odd memories from my childhood (my mum wasn't one for raising my self esteem 😕) but I don't think that's specific to a bygone era.

Loving these stories. My Nana was very eccentric. She used to give me frozen raw sausages to eat and raw potatoes. Let me taste all the booze in the cabinet. My parents found me paralytic once with a curly wirly straw in a bottle of Cinzano.
I ended up with a drink problem from early teens.
Catholic school too,had some guys come in one day showing us plastic bullets which were fired by British soldiers. The they did a collection for them 🙄
My parents both worked and from age 10 I used to have a key made my own tea and had house to myself for a couple of hours till they came home.
They had porno mags under their bed which me and a friend used to read.

Frozen raw sauasages!

My parents were artists and ran a life class from home, so I was often expected to bring trays of tea and coffee up to naked people.
My dad also took me away for the weekend with his mistress once, I suppose to cover for her existence to my mum. It was awful. But he's not a nice man, so that's one reason for the weirdness.
I too never had clothes or sanitary protection in my teens. Just never occurred to anyone I might need some. I got the distinct impression I didn't quite exist for my parents. I remember my dad asking why I was borrowing his sweaters in winter and I said because I was cold. he asked why I didn't wear my own and when I replied that I had none he looked a bit surprised. And my mum asking if I'd been OK at a uni interview because I'd gone off in a light blouse and it was snowing. I ended up buying a job lot of antique clothes from the house of an old woman who'd died, and wearing them throughout college. Some people thought it was stylish, most thought it was odd.

My mum used to frequently bathe us as kids, in Savlon (like Dettol) which technically is a disinfectant. I think there always used to be something on the back about the quantities for bathing or "midwifery" but in retrospect I think . That was probably meant for post partum ladies with damaged undercarriages not two normal kids once a week.

Not massively bothered. I quite liked the smell of it and actually my children are fucking filthy a lot of the time... maybe I should get some too...

that is fairly common! I don’t do it regularly but I’ve given my boys a bath with a splash of Dettol if they’ve come back from playing football covered in mud and grazes and my dad does it after playing rugby for the same reason!

A friend when I was at school took me to her grandmothers house once and when we went in her grandmother made a cross with holy water on my forehead. She used to do it on the forehead of anyone who entered her home. I thought it was nice like a blessing but she was mortally embarrassed and begged me not to tell anyone!

Having to have a piece of bread with my dinner. My father insisted on it. I have no idea why, the meals my mum cooked were generous enough portions.

I got hit by a slipper a few times, too.

Not being allowed to read at the table and desperately reading whatever was interesting on the Cornflakes packet! I guess lots of people have that rule.

About 9 of us getting into my mum's car at once. No seat belts and some "sitting" in the boot.

Oh and on the Enid Blyton thing, I read loads of her books, I used to buy second hand copies for 5p a go at the local market.

But the local county library service wouldn't include her books in their reading scheme (similar to the summer book challenge but it was an all year round thing with different levels you could achieve over time).

We used to have Dettol baths after swimming.

Our physics teacher had a friend who worked at a nuclear power station, and he arranged school trips there (for the oldest 2 years in the school). This wasn't a visitor centre experience - we got to go right into the power station, see the rods suspended above the core, try out handling radioactive material behind glass using grip things. All wearing protective gear (which had to be left on the 'factory' side of a divide) and a radiation exposure monitor.

It was AMAZING. Can't imagine that happening now, and I feel very privileged to have had that experience.