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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask what the strangest thing is that you've seen in a family home/life...

888 replies

purpleworms · 03/01/2019 12:06

...that to them was completely normal?

I have just seen someone asked this on an AMA on their Instagram. Their reply was walking around fully naked in front of parents/siblings/any family members.

While this is obviously okay for some, if it happened in a home I was visiting I'd be Shock but that's just because it's not the norm in my family.

I'm racking my brains but I don't think I've ever noticed anything! But people have such different ways/customs within their home lives and routines. We all regard our own as normal without ever really knowing if what's normal to us is strange to others!

OP posts:
Greyeye · 07/01/2019 08:52

That poop lady!!!! Unbelievable!!!!

IrmaFayLear · 07/01/2019 08:54

I guess some people don't read much. I have the opposite problem: I know a lot of words but am occasionally surprised at their pronunciation as I've never heard them said out loud.

I'm still weirded out by people's takeaway/Indian/Chinese restaurant habits. What about tapas? Are you non-sharers the types who go, "Oh, I only like the [insert most premium tapas item] so I'll have that" and leave everyone else with the patatas bravas and some tomatoey stuff?

ShirleyPhallus · 07/01/2019 08:55

Screamish Grin

holasoydora · 07/01/2019 08:57

A Disney room.

AnnAbbieLian · 07/01/2019 08:59

I could tell you stories but I won't because discretion is the better part of valour :P

ShirleyPhallus · 07/01/2019 09:03

IrmaFayLear

I suspect the non-sharers are also the picky eaters so would be likely to only want the blander dishes like patatas bravas and chicken croquettes and wouldn’t touch anything more exotic

Seniorschoolmum · 07/01/2019 09:08

I had to visit the local (happy crappy) vicar a few years ago. He had chickens running in and out of the house through the back door. There was chicken poo everywhere and he had two small children playing on the carpet in all the poo. They were the filthiest children I had ever seen. I nearly called social services. Shock

LearningMySelfWorth · 07/01/2019 09:08

@ShirleyPhallus not true, I don't often share because I like the really spicy stuff and my family don't, if I've not got something really spicy I'm happy for people to try whatever it is. We usually taste each others mains, but only really share sides, unless we've agreed to share as a group or a couple of people have decided to share something. It varies order to order tbh, and we order chips with a chinese and indians, because some of the family/friends don't like rice or noodles

If we go somewhere where the idea is to share we do, but we make sure that whoever has the most restricted diet or palate gets more of what they actually like than anything else. When I'm with people who all share or don't share I follow their lead, it's really not a big issue to me.

Seniorschoolmum · 07/01/2019 09:08

Happy clappy

BarbaraofSevillle · 07/01/2019 09:13

The non sharers frustrate me because we have an excellent tapas restaurant nearby who do a stupendous tapas feast deal that works out at about the same cost as 2.5 tapas but you get at least 4 tapas per person worth of food and it's a really great balanced mix with no duff dishes.

But hardly anyone will have it and would rather pay more for less food just so they can have their 3 dishes that they eat all of to themselves with no sharing.

Roussette · 07/01/2019 09:13

I just think sharing food brings you together, my lot love sharing platters, tapas, shared takeaways, meals where you are just brought a selection of dishes. It's very convivial and fun.
'Ooooh, try this, it's delicious. Dad, you'll love this it's quite spicy. I'm not so keen on that dish, but DC2 you'll love it.'
That type of thing.

But we all eat anything really, we have no food intolerances, and we've always done it, so that's probably why.

Justanothernamechange2 · 07/01/2019 09:14

Ah i have another one.

At a current friends house they "dont do" joint couple presents. So at xmas and birthdays my friend and her sister and both their husbands all buy her mum a separate present. Friend+husband and sister+husband have been together for 12 and 9 years so theyre not new relationships etc. I always find that weird. People get presents and cards signed off from me+partner.

Hope that makes sense.

FortunesFave · 07/01/2019 09:16

Rousette what you love about the sharing is what I hate. I don't want to hear about how much someone likes or doesn't like something.

Eat it or don't.

I know that sounds miserable but I am a recovered anorexic and part of my issues stemmed from people making a lot of noise whilst eating and discussing the food in what seemed an over interested way.

food has always been quite a private thing for me....and I know it is for other people with eating disorders.

FortunesFave · 07/01/2019 09:18

Shirley not a "picky eater" no. A recovered Anorexic. I eat a lot of foods. I like all kinds. I just struggle eating in company and discussing it openly.

I also have OCD and don't like all the forks dipping into the shared dishes.

abacucat · 07/01/2019 09:22

I suspect the non-sharers are also the picky eaters so would be likely to only want the blander dishes like patatas bravas and chicken croquettes and wouldn’t touch anything more exotic

The opposite actually. I like the more unusual things that are never on set menus or deals. So I order and eat my own things as it means I actually get t eat what I want, rather than the things that other people want.

Chocolate50 · 07/01/2019 09:36

Yep. There's a lot of mental illness described on this thread.

Chocolate50 · 07/01/2019 09:42

I'm not talking about recovered anorexia because you would have issues with food after experiencing something so horrific. Its the chaoric and perfectionist households & habits - the one about not spending money because the family believe they're so poor but have quarter of a million in the bank?! Oh dear.

ShadyLady53 · 07/01/2019 09:52

Non-sharer here and not a picky eater at all. I think perhaps it’s more to do with my upbringing. In both my parent’s cultures’ you wouldn’t heap piles of different dishes together and take bits of each other’s foods and in the kind of restaurants I was brought up going to from being a toddler, you’d swiftly find you weren’t able to get a table next time you made a reservation if you were all eating bits off each other’s plates.

Motoko · 07/01/2019 09:54

Happy clappy

I think your typo was quite apt actually!

We have had chickens in the house occasionally, if one's been ill, we would bring it in to keep an eye on it, and treat it. But they tended to just sit in one place, and we'd put a towel down under them.

We also had to raise some chicks when they'd been rejected by their mums. They had a cage with a heater to sit under, but we did let them out sometimes, as they liked to snuggle up on us, and their poop was just tiny nuggets that could easily be picked up. It's very sweet having a chick sleeping snuggled up against your neck!

IrmaFayLear · 07/01/2019 10:12

When dm first visited df's family home, there was a goat asleep in her bed. Df's sisters had pet kids (little goats!).

ShadyLady53 - when in Rome. Obviously it depends on the type of restaurant. Although I'm sure even in the poshest of places they wouldn't bat an eyelid if you swapped bits of your meal for someone else to try. (In fact dh and I always do this and have yet to be banned from any highfalutin establishment.)

PerfectPeony · 07/01/2019 10:21

Okay so nothing terribly weird or life size clowns but:

I had a friend who wouldn’t spend £1 on something without calling up her Dad to ask... at the age of about 14.

One friend never went on holiday ever.. not even UK. But they’d get hundreds of Christmas presents.

My family wasn’t normal... locks on bedrooms doors as a solution for ‘blended’ family member to stop stealing. Confused

Roussette · 07/01/2019 10:28

Fortune that makes perfect sense. Everyone to their own of course Smile

lololove · 07/01/2019 12:52

Perfect Peony - we had the locked bedroom doors too - didn't work!

I've also never in my life been on holiday . I've been on day trips but never spent more than a night away (childhood sleepovers) from the house - I thought it was normal until I reached senior school and all the 'where are you going for this school holiday?' 'where did you go?' started. My parents just shrugged when asked why we didn't go away and blamed it on money - but then spent said money on filling the house up with stuff they didn't really want or use!

ChesterGreySideboard · 07/01/2019 13:06

One friend never went on holiday ever.. not even UK. But they’d get hundreds of Christmas presents.

I never went on a family holiday. My dad was self employed.

poundoflard · 07/01/2019 13:28

penny

Was the bath under the kitchen table?
I worked at a farm and in the kitchen under the table was a sunken bath. You just moved the table lifted a lid in the floor and hey presto the bath!
The place was filthy tho, I kept my shoes on to preserve my socks, the floor had never been hoover/swept by the look of it. There was a cat sitting on the ironing board in the kitchen that was always up, more like a shelf than and ironing board.
It seemed a very busy, but happy house with lots of grown up kids and their kids in and out.

Lovely really, albeit a tad weird.