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To ask what you thought was weird as a child (lighthearted)

136 replies

scalt · 01/01/2026 08:22

What things do you remember from childhood that you thought were weird, even though they're perfectly normal to adults?

Bicycles staying upright, even though they only have two wheels.
How you stop noticing certain sensations (such as the clothes on your body) after a while: I remember pondering this aged four.
Puddles not being there the next day.

OP posts:
EstoyRobandoSuCasa · 06/01/2026 23:37

Talipesmum · 05/01/2026 23:48

oh yes, these! I knew they were supposed to say To Let, but i couldn’t understood how anyone took them seriously as they so obviously looked like the comically rude word “toilet”.

When my friend was about eight, he saw a TO LET sign that someone had graffitied to read TOILET. He thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen in his life!

And one of the funniest things he heard as a child was the Elton John song, Bennie and the Jets. It sent him into hysterics, much to his family's bemusement, but he didn't like to explain why. He thought Elton was singing about a woman with "electric boobs".

EstoyRobandoSuCasa · 06/01/2026 23:44

I'm not sure why I'm posting all about my friend today, but at primary school, he had a teacher who used to intone, "woe betide the boy who hasn't done his homework" and "woe betide the boy who didn't bring his gym kit" ... you get the idea.

My friend assumed that Woe Betide was the name of a boy at the school and secretly admired him for his rebelliousness. He looked out for him for years but never found him.

GiveUsACoffee · 07/01/2026 00:07

I distinctly remember learning a new word at nursery, and thought it was delivered by God, so new for the whole world

soundsys · 07/01/2026 00:39

Allthesnowallthetime · 01/01/2026 22:50

Why it's "aren't I" rather than "amn't" I when we don't say "are I not". Maybe some pendants can explain!

Also, at friends' houses, adults would instruct me "say when" when pouring a drink. I thought they meant me to say the actual word "when" and didn't get it at all. Only years later did I realise that it was a shortened way of telling me to "say when to stop pouring".

I also couldn't understand why I and my sibling had to go to bed so much earlier than the adults, especially at weekends. My mum told me that she and my dad needed time together. Had no idea why they needed time without us!

Life seemed very complicated.

In Glasgow we do say "amn't" and I will continue to defend it as completely logical and sensible!

scalt · 07/01/2026 06:58

@EstoyRobandoSuCasa I liked the phrase "woe betide", although I didn't mistake it for somebody's name. I first saw it in the Ladybird book of The Sorcerer's Apprentice. "As my apprentice, you must keep my cauldron filled to the brim, and woe betide you if I find it empty!"

@MonaChopsis With "traffic light men", I was fascinated by traffic lights from a young age, and in my time, there were still some on the black and white poles, which had the word "Stop" in the red light. I was amazed to learn later that lights do actually detect where the cars are, and change the lights accordingly. When I was older, I could spend ages watching them, and predicting when they would change.

Another childhood thing which I pondered deeply was wearing shoes on bare feet. I liked the feel, especially of trainers, noticed even at age five that I stopped "feeling" them after a while, and it was odd that my parents didn't approve of being sockless, yet at school, we were made to put shoes on without socks to walk to the assembly hall for PE, which we did barefoot.

I often wondered what it was like to be in a cage, locked up like an animal, or Hansel. I found out when I crawled into a dog cage in somebody else's house, and one of the older kids saw me there, and locked me in. He thought he was being mean, but I loved it!

OP posts:
Horrace · 07/01/2026 08:40

TroysMammy · 01/01/2026 09:52

Seeing people sitting on a beach in swimwear on a boiling hot day smoking a fag. Didn't that make them feel hotter? As a non smoker and late 50s I still can't get my head around this.

Oh my Gosh. Me too.
I thought I was the only one

EstoyRobandoSuCasa · 07/01/2026 09:58

As an adult, I like the simple, powerful language of The Lord's Prayer, but it doesn't half confuse children. I thought that God was forgiving us for stepping off the pavement on to people's gardens and when we said "deliver us from evil" I pictured someone being posted through a giant letterbox. I have also heard of children reciting "Harold by thy name" and "lead us not into Thames station".

Allthesnowallthetime · 07/01/2026 23:04

@soundsys yes! You are absolutely right!

scalt · 08/01/2026 08:29

I remember thinking it was weird that teachers always asked questions, when they already knew the answers, Many years later, I discovered that Pippi Longstocking says this when she goes to school.

OP posts:
GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER · 08/01/2026 08:35

whatthesigma · 01/01/2026 13:06

I always presumed this meant dilute with as much or as little water as to your own individual preference? To your own taste?

Yes, of course that’s what it actually means. Only at 7 or whatever it was, I didn’t understand that meaning of ‘taste’.

Nevermind17 · 08/01/2026 08:41

My brother convinced me that if we collected all the bones from a chicken, we could put them together and the chicken would come back to life (I was about 3 or 4 years old, and he was 5). We used to hide the chicken bones from dinner to make our chicken. One day he rescued a carcass from the bin.

We never got round to reanimating the chicken, and I’d completely forgotten about it until over 40 years later DM said “Your brother was a strange boy. I can remember being terribly worried about him after I found a pile of chicken bones at the back of his pyjama drawer”. 😂

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