To ask what weird/stupid stuff you did as a kid

[Bantameggs]

I think I was a bit of a strange child although maybe I’m not the only one.

One of my favourite things to do aged about 5/6 was to steal a bar of soap and some scissors, find a corner to hide in and shave wafer thin slices of soap off until there was nothing but a big pile of soap flakes. I got into trouble every time but it didn’t stop me.

Our family car had two rear facing seats at the back and if I was sitting there I used sit dead still and make blank-faced unblinking eye contact with the people behind for as long as possible. I think I managed it for about an hour once.

Once aged about 10 I set out to drink as much water as possible just to see how much I could drink. I managed a few litres (I’m aware now that I could have killed myself)

I brought a large dehydrated dead fish I’d found on the beach to show and tell at school when I was 7. Unfortunately it was the last day before the summer holidays and I accidentally left it behind. I think they had to get someone to come in in the end to deal with the terrible smell.

When I was 12 I coloured my entire face in with bright pink lipstick. It took about two days to get rid of completely.

Was anyone else a little weirdo? I think I’m pretty normal now btw!

[MrsPilkington]

I used to pretend to be dead. Id set up a scene, maybe as simple as laying at the bottom of the stairs or I might upturn a dining chair like I’d fallen off it etc and lay in a contorted position and hold my breath if someone walked by to see if they’d panic. They didn’t.

[PrincessDaff]

This thread is amazing it has had me in fits of laughter all day!!

I was also a weird child. I used to eat bus tickets, other kids actually saved their tickets to give to me because I used to tell people that all I ate was bus tickets (I didn't even like them just an attention seeker I guess) They must have thought I was insane!

I used to swap my mum and dads perfumes and aftershaves thinking they wouldn't notice and I would be sat in my bed laughing my head off at the thought of my dad going to work in my mums perfume! They never mentioned it ever to me I did it at least twice a week it must have drove them insane!

I remember I wanted to be named Gloria (that is not my name) so had a headband and decided to write Gloria on it in marker pen and went to the local shop to see if I would fool the shop keeper. They must have thought I was a weird because they knew my mum and clearly knew my name was not Gloria!

[LadySray]

My best friend and I waited weeks untill we needed to fart at the same time so we could put our bums together and fart to see what would happen result-- big loud vibraty mega fart!

[Canuckduck]

I used to cut chewing gum up into little pieces and store it in boxes for later. I used to cook hot dogs on the radiator in my room after everyone had gone to bed. I played with barbies until I was 14 embarrassingly

[myheadsamess15]

I had a snail garden, all the snails had a red dab of paint so I knew who was part of my tribe. They had houses, a garden area etc and I would let them go up my arm.

I used to collect the fluff of my long hair car and then rub it together to make a blanket. I also collected a snip of his fur so I could clone him when he died.

I pulled my own hair out and had to wrap it around my fingers like a figure of 8 and then snap it. If I find lose hair on my clothes I still have to do it, it feels amazing.

I would day dream about my life and make it the way I wanted, I still daydream about my life now. It's much better than my real life and far happier.

I was a very strange child, but given the circumstances i'm not surprised.

[wanderings]

@grincheux That's so sweet about the magic carpet, and making up magic words to get it to fly!

It reminds me of a fantastic trick someone in my family did to "make" me fly when I was 6 or 7, which blew my mind, I could imagine him doing a similar thing with your carpet. He pointed out a chair some distance away in the garden, and told me I would fly from there. I was then blindfolded, turned round twice, led to the chair and helped to stand on it. He then lifted it up and told me I was flying very high (I couldn't see a thing, so I believed it), then told me to jump off the chair. It really felt as if I was flying... and not only that, when he took off the blindfold, I found I was in a totally different part of the garden, so I had flown!

(I did later find out that he had secretly moved the chair as he led me towards it, so I didn't start flying where I thought I did!)

[letsgomaths]

I often wondered what the insides of my trainers looked like, especially the part you can't see, inside the toe. I eventually satisfied my curiosity with a small mirror, and a torch, and saw that the textile inside looked very different from the leathery outside. I often liked to wear them without socks (see above), and I imagined what it would be like if they were inside out - the leathery surface inside, and the soft part on the outside. I also imagined that the logo would be inside, so I'd feel I was walking on the distinctive Reebok logo all the time.

[WeMarchOn]

@jinglet same, I have major sensory issues and wash my hands a lot.
As I child I wouldn't sit on grass or sand I would scream

[amandacarnet]

I remember for about a year playing horses with my best friend. We cantered, galloped, neighed and pretended to put horseshoes on each other's feet. Looking back I don't understand how I literally did these few things for hours and hours at a time and not be bored shitless.

[JasperTheFriendlyGhost]

Oh, i forgot about my imaginary children . I must only have been 7/8 and I had two kids, Rosie and James. They used to turn up in my school in the middle of class regularly and i would always tell them to go home and stop distracting mummy when she’s learning

[JasperTheFriendlyGhost]

When the grass of the school field was cut, me and about 30 other kids collected big piles of grass and made giant birds nests on the ground. Well, we thought they were bird nests but they were just giant rings of grass . We used to make mazes with them too.

Also, there was a gap between a shed and the wall in our school yard and that gap would be called the ‘burny boiler’. About 5 of us would be ‘on’ and we had to run around and find the other kids and literally drag them to the burny boiler while all chanting burny boiler .

[grincheux]

Yes! I too was a flannel-sucking, hair-chewing, horse-being bread-squidging bath-sliding weirdo child, but there was more I wish I could say this list was exhaustive but...


I'd pick (or bite) the skin off the soles of my feet, put it in a pile to dry out, then chew it.


I'd have a meltdown if I didn't have a ball of loo roll squashed up in my knickers before we left the house (I think this came from hating the feeling of being sweaty but who knows).


I drank Heinz Italian Dressing, and used to sneak childrens cherry Panadol out of my mum's bathroom cupboard because they were delicious.


I'd make my dad make little books out of scrap paper then dictate stories for him to write down for me to illustrate, invariably involving me as some kind of princess/mermaid/ballerina.


I had an imaginary grown up brother called Justin and his wife was called Sheila, and they had a billion kids and she was always pregnant.


I once dug some soap off a bar in a swimming pool shower and put the bit I'd scraped off up my bum, just to see what would happen. Predictably that only happened once.


I'd rub my fingers round the classroom carpet to make them go numb and silvery.


My dad brought a carpet back from a business trip to...somewhere carpety, I forget - and told me it was magic and flew back by itself. My parents then let me spend two whole days sitting on this carpet making a list of every magic word I could think of to get it to fly.


I wrote a letter to the Care Bears begging them to be my friends.


I'd cut off or pull out chunks of hair to roll up and make hairballs.


I couldn't sleep with my toenails or fingernails on show as they'd be extracted by the monsters.


If I spun round in one direction I had to spin the other way to untwist myself and simply couldn't get on with my day until I felt even.


I told my reception class teacher that I had a wicked stepmother called Lucy who lived with us - "us" being my happily married parents and I. There was never a Lucy.


And sometimes when I found myself with nothing to do, I'd fold my eyelashes into my eye so I could spend a few minutes having to get them out and then enjoy the relief of no longer having eyelashes in my eyes.

[greenpop21]

I tipped all my DM's perfume into the bathroom sink and added rose petals from the garden to make my own perfume.....amazingly I don't remember getting a massive telling off. Maybe I've blocked it out lol

[Hally2020]

Some of these have had me laughing out loud!!

I too stuck thorns on my nose, made perfume out of rose petals and made mud pies. When our local park had its grass cut we used to collect the cuttings and map a house out with them. Rooms,grass bed, sofa and even a loo lol. Loved plastering copydex on my hands and peeling it off to. Brilliant memories, wouldn't have changed my childhood for anything😊

[LostaraYil]

I used to sit out in the sunshine for ages trying to burn my verrucas with a magnifying glass. Also collected snails and kept them as pets in a shoebox under my bed.

[Cherry4weans]

@applebru my daughter thought foxes were imaginary like unicorns and fairies until she was 9 or 10. I'd try to show her but she would not look or tell me it was a dog.

[MarthasGinYard]

My brother and I used to melt vinyl 7" and make bowls and ash trays.

We also used to pop monster munch packets under the grill add a safety pin and make badges....

[PlinkPlink]

Poster above reminded me of making 'false' nails out of blue tack. Obsessed with it.

I also used to make mini bows and arrows out of paper clips and elastic bands (for the bow - anything worked as an arrow).

[AppleBru]

When it rained in the car, I'd look out the window and pretend I was in a music video

Yup!!

I used to eat half of each Malteaser in a bag and would only eat the other halves when all had been done. Wtf.

I told everyone my mum was actually a Fox. Like a real fox.

[KeptTheBeachesShipwreckFree]

I used to sleep with my hand under my head but one night I had this idea that if my underarm was "open" then snakes would crawl out from under my mattress and tickle me with their tongues . Since then, I've only been able to sleep with my elbow tucked under my head. The problem is that as I'm getting older it's causing a problem with my shoulder and I often wake with a painful joint and an achy neck on that side. No matter how hard I try though I always wake up in that position!

[WeMarchOn]

I would purposely rub my elbow up and down on a brick wall so I could form a scab to pick 😳

[Banj0girl]

I used to play with my belly button, that is when I had one ! I sucked 2 of my fingers; I used to eat soap suds and toothpaste if it wasn't mint.
I giggled at swear words and used some naughty ones, not as bad as they have today though. I told school I had permission to leave early to help my parents get ready for out holiday. I got away with it as well.
I remember asking my Mum what S**t meant as I saw it written on the pavement, but she did not know as she was Dutch. I told a lot of bullies they were prostitutes to try and get rid of them. Their mothers turned up on our doorstep and they were worse than their children !

[jinglet]

Some of these have made me howl with laughter! I'm a fellow child-weirdo and am so relieved I wasn't alone in my quirks! I'd:

Bite hard into the wood on my bunk bed- loved the pressure against my teeth,

Thread a sewing needle through the top layer of my finger tips and let it hang there because I was cool,

Only eat from matching crockery- my parents had a stainless steel set (from the 70s) and even though food and water tasted weird on it, I'd eat it because it looked good,

Pick and eating scabs, soil, crumbling plaster, bogies 🤮,

Pick scabs and throw them into the fire and remember being mesmerised with how quickly they went up in flames,

Have a wee in our cellar- liked the feeling of relieving myself in a quiet, dark place. I once washed my hands in the wee as well to see what it felt like 🤮🤮,

Rub PVA glue onto my hands and then pick it off. Also, dip my fingers in hot candle wax and do the same. As an adult, I love a melted candle thrown into a cold glass of water to see what shapes/patterns it makes- waiters must love me at restaurants!

Freak out if things weren't symmetrical at home- e.g. my mum had two dressers in the living room displaying her precious ornaments. I used to cry if the dressers weren't a mirror image of the other- she thought I was weird. I was/am!

Pour shampoo down the toilet/drain but I'd draw patterns with it on the toilet/sink first,

Put tights on my head and pretending I was in a shampoo advert,

Wash my hands with fairy liquid and act out the whole 80s advert- I still remember the 'mild green, fairy liquid!' jingle!

Want to beat the car in front so would put pressure on my bum to make the car go faster or if I wanted my dad to turn left/right- I'd tilt my body l/r to turn the car myself,

Be petrified of stepping on the pavement slab lines,

Jump on cushions/furniture and be deadly scared the crocodiles would eat me if I missed and fell into the river!

Do experiments like pouring sand/flour and cement down the bathroom sink to see what would happen- my mum would have a massive go at me, that's what! I also, along with a cousin, threw the entire washing line of clothes belonging to a lady living close to us in the canal outside her house to see what would happen. The weird thing is, she watched us throw the entire lot in and watched everything sink before she come out to bollock us! I ran home and hid under the bed and denied all knowledge!

Mix talcum powder with water and use this as foundation. I'm of Asian origin so you can imagine what I looked like!

Colour my nails using felt tip pen/use nail polish to paint 'henna' patterns on my hands,

Eat bars of twix and kitkat by nibbling the edges, then gently lifting and eating the top caramel/wafer layer until there was nothing left to eat but the biscuit/inner-most wafer! And then sucking on this until the biscuit/wafer disintegrated in my mouth!

Cry if I was given sugar paper at school for craft purposes or if I had to dry my hands with that nasty green paper in the school loos :(

So many more things that aren't coming to mind. As an adult, it's clear I had sensory issues that weren't picked on as a child!

[Anfield11]

I used to suck tomatoe purée straight out the tube or would make a sarnie with it, still do it now.lol.
Used to pick all the neighbours rose petals off their bushes and put into bottles of water to make perfume with it. Used to smell lush.lol.
Whenever my Nan was driving us in the car and she would go between a parked car and a moving one she’d tell us to ‘breathe in’ which we all would, as though us breathing in would help the car fit through the gap ok.
Xxx

[Noodledoodlesandspud]

When I was younger while in the shower I used to pretend I lived in a forest and was showering under a waterfall and if (imaginary) people came by I had to hide. I used to put the plug in and swim under the leaves (shower curtain).