Random childhood stuff you have no explanation for.

[Wheelchairbarbie]

This can be either something that a lot of us will remember like "where did white dog poo go", or something specific that happened that you can't explain.

Maybe we can also all explain each others wired stuff!

I'll start. How come most people I know remember that now and then a random dog would get into the school playground and just run around and everyone would get excited and run to the windows? Where did these random dogs come from, were there just more strays back then?

My kids haven't experienced this at all.

I remember Micky Flanagan saying in his stand up show... "Families used to get a dog for Christmas, then one day had enough so opened the front door and booted it out. So dogs would just be wandering the street with you as kid". Or words to that effect so maybe they were random dogs no one wanted anymore?

Dogs were left to roam and go home when they wanted feeding on my estate as a kid, they met into a pack and roamed together. I have very fond memories of being on the field doing a science thing with water and a dog came to play with us...we gave the dog our water and ran back in for more..teachers wanted to know why and chased it off the field. It was a beautiful border collie. It was mid 70s, and fields were generally open, small fence around, easily jumped. The campus was open anyway, anyone could walk down into school grounds.

Until it was made illegal, people used to let their dogs out all day in the UK. It was the norm back then!

Up until at least the early 80s dogs were left to roam during the day, in the same way that cats still are today. They would often congregate in packs, go to the park, and then head home for their supper.

Hmmm I was in school in the 90s and 2000s though? 🤔

There was a whole Alan Ahlberg poem about it:

https://www.scribd.com/document/494867558/Dog-in-the-playground

Having produced lots of white dog turds along the way. 😄

A few times a dog actually got in our school building. Schools weren’t very secure back then. If a fire door was opened when it was warm a curious dog could wander in. We also had a few trapped pigeons.

Collecting number plates.

When my mum wanted us out of her hair she would suggest we went out into the front garden and wrote down the number plates of passing cars. As if this had any interest or value whatsoever.

And we did it, And it was kind of almost just about fun.

Schools weren’t as locked down as they are now, even in the 90s, so if there was a dog out it would more easily get into a school. My daughter’s schools both had fences around them. My schools you could easily get into.

I have no explanation why im an orphan.

White dog poo is caused by bone content in the dogs food - back then, dogs were given bones quite often - and there was less concern about picking up poop.

Come look in my back yard before we've poo picked each day and there will be several white dog turds because mine eat a raw diet and so there's plenty of bone in their food.

What?! 🤣🤣🤣

This really made me laugh. I can’t imagine my DC doing this.

That's fun! I love how my kids are interested in mundane things.

I remember on family holidays it would be 1st August and the new letter on the number plate would come out so we'd excitedly count H-regs or whatever letter it was. Until we reached 100.

OMG that's triggered a memory! I think one summer I had a notebook and on our journey to our holiday I wrote down as many number plates as I could. I have no idea why 🤣

Definitely. We used to try to be the first to spot a new plate. D deg car whoop.

This takes me back to the depth of lockdown, when having run out of all other ideas, I sat my kids at the end of the driveway and got them to tally up the numbers of different coloured cars driving past. I think blue won.

The number plates thing, on journeys as a kid we looked for number plates that could spell words, either accurate or with a big of imagination, probably to stop the 'how much longer ' whines lol

The gates that would lock the drive way entrance to our school (which was right next to the playground) would stay wide open all day and the two other footpath entrances that lead into the playground as well. It’s crazy to think about it actually as we could easily just walk out of school at any given time!

We would frequently get random dogs causing mass hysteria at playtime. I remember vividly running into the bathroom and standing on top of the toilet seat holding the door closed because a (friendly) Alsatian chased me in there!

I remember playing rounders, losing all the balls, playing with an orange, then stuffing the orange with grass when it inevitably burst.

I just don’t see any grass stuffed oranges being used in rounders anymore and it saddens me.

I’m sure I did this too! I used to have a book, 50 games to play on a long car journey or something like that, always came with us on holiday and we’d work our way through it. There were definitely several number plate games.

I remember my nans dog would just wander around the town on its own. Go out at 9am and come back like 6pm. No one found this weird! The dog warden bought him home one time because apparently he had gone into Safeways and tried helping himself to some food.

Otherwise he just... wasnt home? I often wonder if he had a job...

Yeah I used to do that

I thought everyone did this 🤣 my kids wouldn’t do it now though

We used to play a different car numberplate fame. It went on for months. You started with a registration with the only number in the registration was a 1. Once you found a 1, you could start looking for a 2 and onwards until you got to 999.