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!

I would start showing off when by myself to keep all the viewers enthralled. (I would pretend I was being filmed and had my own entertainment show).
I would sneak a large plaster to school, sneak off and put it over my eye. There was a girl who had to wear one so I had to too. I had no idea what the reason was either.
The teacher asked me why I was wearing it and I told her my dad said I can only use one eye at a time or he would batter me.
Pour milk and salt into clean jars and shake until it churned into butter. My dad would always use it too.
Toast one side of the bread. Spread with butter and sprinkle brown sugar then back under the grill. It was deliciously butterscotchy tbf.
Eat scoops of baby formula.

Shut myself into the storage cupboards with the lights off and it was pitch black. I'd stay there for hours.

I would do this with the inbuilt cupboard in my bedroom. I would line the bottom with pillows and sit with a blanket and nap, even when I was a teenager.

I would often burn things in the fire as a teenager too when my parents weren’t home. Sometimes I would even cook sausages in there just hold them in and eat them a bite at the time (they were definitely still raw)

I would also shit my eyes and push them / rub them to get the swirly patterns.

Those who like shaving soap could probably earn a living in YouTube doing that now!

Crying at some of these.

Once when I was about 10 I was playing on our farm with my brother and his friends and I decided I could definitely jump off the top of the hay rick, which was about 30 foot high. I slid off the edge and immediately regretted it, hurting my leg pretty badly when I landed.

For quite a long time I was obsessed with the footprints that people made when they walked on grass. I used to spend my entire break time at school in the summer transfixed by watching people’s feet leave marks .

I also went through a stage of eating flour. I’d just nick a bit out of the tub and shove it in my gob. Until one day when I went too far, and put too much in and almost choked to death, I fell on the floor unable to breathe and really thought that was it. Luckily it dislodged.

Oh and I had a big collection of soaps and bath pearls from the body shop. I stuck a small numbered sticker on each one and catalogued them in a notebook.

So many things...

I ate dried pasta, spaghetti & lentils. This was not approved of by my parents so I had to pick moments to nab some in a little plastic bag. I ate it as a snack at school. It was remarked upon by the other children. I thought it made me cool & edgy. They didn't.

I also stole cloves of garlic & Oxo cubes. I kept them under my pillow & nibbled them at night.

I really wanted a pet but my parents wouldn't let me. When we went on a rare day trip to the beach I found a mussel in a rockpool & brought it home in my bucket, hidden amongst the shells I'd collected. Once home, I acquired an old margarine pot, filled it with water, added a bit of salt from the grinder & released my pet into it's new home. The smell after a few days was enough to get my mum to raid my room.

I had a vivid imagination & almost convinced myself that I was at the centre of some sort of Truman Show style experiment & when we were driving in the car there were loads of people rapidly changing the scenery to trick me into not realising we weren't actually going anywhere. This was obviously the only reason we'd never been abroad & holidayed in the same place each year - they already had the scenery made so it was efficient. I got nervous when going new places/taking a different route & told myself it was because I was worried that the scenery/location was untested & what if they realised I was on to them...?! Also the reason why I got concerned if we deviated from our routine at all - what if "they" didn't know where we were supposed to be going & couldn't get the scenery/location ready in time?!

Also in the car, & I still do this one, I'd imagine that we'd drive our left side wheels up onto the pavement when we passed a dropped kerb & couldn't come off the pavement until the next one. I'd get really annoyed if there were obstacles like parked cars or signposts & imagine crashing into them & either flattening them & carrying on or it being a major accident & having to explain to the police that it was the parked car owner's fault for being in the way. I'm more relaxed about obstacles now & just tut & try to figure out a way I could've gone down then up, instead of up then down.

If anyone annoyed me I'd imagine I was actually hiding at a distance with a crossbow & I'd shoot them & feel smug as they looked around confused about where it came from while they had an arrow sticking out of their neck.

Err... Somewhat more light-hearted... I went through a phase of insisting on lying on the sofa with my legs over the back & my head dangling down to watch TV. That's when I wasn't on the floor with my legs straight up in the air & my hands on my lower back/elbows on the floor, still watching TV upside down.

One more... I'd buy chocolate buttons with my pocket money & stack them neatly inside the little Duplo drawers I had. When it was their turn to be eaten I'd take one at a time & place it on a piece of tinfoil in the radiator, watch it intensely until it melted, with occasional poking to test it's level of melted, & then eat it with my finger & lick the foil clean. I hated the taste of the foil but it needed to be clean for the next one. Obviously.

'Oh and I had a big collection of soaps and bath pearls from the body shop. I stuck a small numbered sticker on each one and catalogued them in a notebook.'

Love this

I did it with my rubber collection

My friend Linda always had a cold sore on the corner of her mouth. I used to try and make one with a squished sellotape and felts.

I was desperate for a cold sore like hers.

Used to pack up my bag with a flask with cornflakes and milk in and go on a bike ride with friends.

When I was a baby I am told I used to get fag ends, dip them in fag Ash and suck them like a lollipop. Apparently quite addictive.

I remember pretending my house was a hotel/holiday camp.

I'd have 'activities' set up in the garden and lounge for my guests and walk round making sure everyone was enjoying themselves.
I'd also check guests into their rooms, meaning that my poor DF had to be checked into his bedroom every few days. I was most upset if he dared to enter his bedroom without checking in.
I also made him carry a key!

I'd walk around the garden wielding a rake like a knight.

I would also tie scarves from the middle of the bannisters and abseil down or climb up as much as I could.

I really wanted a broken ankle so would use two golfing umbrellas as crutches and lots of toilet paper as a cast. This has backfired massively as an adult, I've broken my ankle 3 times!

I coloured in lightbulbs with felt tip pen to make different lights.

I threw a garden party at my nans house. Charged everyone to get in, provided crisps and fizzy drinks and had games with prizes.

At one of my primary schools they'd ask the children whose birthday it was to get on the stage so everyone could sing. I decided to get up and happily listened to everyone when it wasn't my birthday, since mine seemed so far away. The following weekend I had a Halloween party and the parents turned up with presents thinking it was for my birthday

I was odd.

'I'd also check guests into their rooms, meaning that my poor DF had to be checked into his bedroom every few days. I was most upset if he dared to enter his bedroom without checking in.'

@cheesenpickles omg I used to do exactly the same chewing/spitting/sandwiching thing with KP Skips. Total vom 🤮

This thread has had me in stitches!

I used to narrate my own life in my head. It was years before I grew out of that. I also used to sit up at night and act out playing with friends in bed. I love this thread 😂

This thread is awesome!

I used to drag my leg behind me whenever we went shopping, to make people think there was something wrong with me

Me and my sister also used to play horse and carts by bending our mattresses in half to sit on top and ride the horse

This thread is amazing.

I used to pretend to be a deer. I'd make my cat pretend with me too. The 'game' was just literally hiding in the tall grass being deer.

On the rare occasions that my parents would go out, all eight of us kids had this 'game' where we'd turn off all the lights in the house and run around screaming.

I'm dying at the poster above who pretended to be disabled and lagged behind her mum. I just imagine people seeing the poor child struggling and the mum snapping, 'Hurry up!'

During evenings and holidays when everyone was relaxing and doing their own thing, I'd ask to have my eyes covered up so I couldn't see what everyone was doing, and I'd have to be content with sitting and hearing and wondering; I liked the "not knowing". It had to be someone else who blindfolded me - it wasn't the same if I did it myself! I'd give them strict instructions that I must not be able to see ANYTHING, and that they should test this by asking me a question about something in the room, such as how many fingers they were holding up. I loved the moment of watching the scarf appear in my vision, and get bigger and bigger, before turning black. Amazingly nobody tried to tease me while I couldn't see, but one person would always say "say goodbye to seeing, wanderings!", and spin me round and move my chair, so I wouldn't know which way I was facing, and make me guess before allowing me to see again. I'd try to break the record for how long I'd stay blindfolded - my longest was over two hours before I got bored.

Not sure if this has been covered yet! ...

But did anyone else pick all the chocolate of the kit Kats with your nails, then eat the wafer, then eat the chocolate (which was in loads of little bits!!) (Why didn't I just buy a dairy milk and save myself the trouble!!)

I've been reading this thread pissing myself over how bonkers you all are then I realised I was a little weirdo too...
I used to pretend my hands were rabbits having a bath whenever I washed them I'd act out whatever I was watching on tv, so if characters in a film were running, I used to run around the room in a circle. I wondered
why the moon always followed us home, and not other people in their cars.
And my toy box had a hole in it so instead of opening the lid I'd pull my toys out that way and pretend it was a prison break.
Also made a "horse" out of the back of the sofa,which I'd saddle up with a pillow and sit on for hours

I used to put PVA on my fingers and peal it off. When I got a bit older I'd dip my fingers in melted candle wax and peal it off. Come to think of it I used to peal off my mums sunburn too (not envy) I weirdly liked to peal things

Me, my sister and my gran formed a committee in our Wendy house and our first task was to raise money to enable my parents to go to the cinema. We did this by collecting random pieces of junk from round the house and my parents buying it back. When we proudly gave them the £5 we had raised (completely over our heads that we were just giving them their own money back) we were very disappointed that they didn’t go to the cinema and instead when asked admitted they spent the money “raised” on a packet of fags.

I watched Blue Peter where they were drawing faces on eggs and they said you have to see how long you can look after them without breaking and treat them as real people. I stole an egg out the egg basket, drew a face and took it to school in my pocket. It survived the whole day but as soon as I got home it fell out my pocket and smashed on the living room floor so I hid it under one of my mum's tops and denied all knowledge even though the smiley face on the egg was so obvious.

Another one from Blue Peter. They were doing science experiments with an orange. The orange floated in water with the peel left on, but sank if it was peeled. I filled up a whole bath of water and tried this out. My mum went mad

In the long, hot summer of 1976, I collected ladybirds in a little box (the circular ones that cheese spread triangles come in) and put them in the freezer for the winter. My GM found them a few hours later.

I had “pet” snails in a run if outbtigerher from stones and twigs etc.

I’d eat tissues and kitchen towel

I grew up close to 2 busy London railway stations - Victoria, then Clapham Junction - and would regularly take short cuts across the sidings. How I never got injured, i’ll never know.

This thread is brilliant. Must nominate for classics!

It’s also made me realise that kids have far too much tech (TV and games/YouTube etc) so they don’t have time for inventing such awesome stuff.

As a kid me and my brother used to “climb” the walls and have races - we had narrow hallways and could shimmy up them, legs and arms across the hallway and push up. If that makes sense.

We had an old pond in the garden and would put things in like books/ornaments and hope they’d come out looking old. We had plans to take them on antiques road show and make a fortune 🤣

We had this funny raised/textured wallpaper in the downstairs loo. I would spend hours pressing down the patterns with my fingernails. So satisfying!

I used to make my shadow look like I had boobs by folding my arm in a certain way?!

I was given old make up and one night smuggled an old lipstick into the car and put make up on, before going out for dinner. I can still remember the look on my mum's face 😂. She frogmarched me into the bathroom and scrubbed my face with paper towels.