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.

We played that at Brownies and at school.
My dc certainly played it at Brownies too.

I don't remember many injuries at all, more often the runner tripping than them treading on someone.

They would fit a couple of soldiers with a machine gun in case of a land attack. I grew up in Lincolnshire, and there were loads of pill boxes, bunkers small airfield all over the place. I saw a program a bit ago and it was defences against an attack. The coast has long flat beaches so a good place for landing craft. I used to deliver papers past a large house not knowing what it was. Years later, when the secret documents were released it turned out to be the planning HQ fir Bomber Command, where they planned the Dam Busters raid amongst others.

Yes, and the blue egg shaped collection boxes we took home from school.

My DH had fond memories of going on one of these when he was under 4. So in the 50s. Last year we visited the town for the first time in 50 odd years, and it was still in the playground. There was one mother with a toddler daughter using it and he got quite weepy with the memories it brought back. He was a bit embarrassed, old man watching a young girl in a playground isn't really a good look, but he had a chat with the mother about how his mum did the same with him 65 years before. A touching moment

My daughter bought her first house in Salford about 10 years ago. It was built in the 30s, and been in the same family since. Small garden with raised beds with stone/concrete walls. She wanted them removing, so we set to work the foundations of these low walls were really deep, and the blocks were thicker tgan you would expect. As she got to know her neighbours, who had also been there for years, she found tgey were made from the walls of the air raid shelter that all the houses had in their gardens

Same here!

We drove to south of France from Cherbourg every summer and we’d have to find cars from certain regions.

Sometimes we’d have a map of Europe and have to find cars from certain countries.

We’d literally spend an hour looking out for one particular type of car/plate/country 🤷‍♀️🤣

The green corrugated garden sheds people had. Several of my elderly neighbours had them in 70s gardens. Turns out they were Anderson shelters from the war, repurposed.

Apparently it is a thing in the USA to spot and take a photo of number plates from every state. Hawaii and Alaska are the hardest to find.

I've remembered another childhood enigma which I never found out at the time. An adult would do a trick of rapid paint strokes over a piece of paper, and a word (such as my name) would magically appear. I suppose it was prepared in some way beforehand, but I never found out how. I suppose I could Google the answer, but does anyone else remember this?

I also remember the magic pens: one pen would write with "invisible" ink, and would change the colour of other pens. That was always a mystery.

Candle wax

Another enigma was actually about a piece of office equipment from the 1980s: the microwriter (see picture). My dad used one: the idea was that the buttons would sit under your hand, one button for each finger (two for the thumb), and you would get each letter by pressing different combinations of the buttons. There were mnemonics to help you remember them: for example, P was "press all". My dad said that with practice, you could type really quickly, and you only needed one hand. I wonder why these never caught on?

Yes to dogs running free

Getting on the bus to a town about half an hour away from home, aged 9 ish, with a couple of mates (no parents, no mobile phones, just 10p for the phone box). We’d go with £3 ish each, that would cover the return bus fare plus a portion of chips and a new lip balm/hair bobble/sparkly nail polish from the chemist shop.

Solid plastic “dummies” on cord necklaces that all the girls used to wear and trade with each other. Basically a large plastic marble with a disc and loop at one end - they’d be banned as a choking risk these days.

Glitter jelly sandals. Awful things that rubbed your feet to pieces but we all wanted a pair!

Also playing in the foam offcuts that a local factory used to throw in a skip in the yard (a bit like a giant foam pit that you’d see in a trampoline park). Any of us could’ve easily suffocated.

Stuck In The Mud was definitely a popular game at my school. We also had a weird one where we would congregate around the benches in the playground and someone would stand in the middle and shout out a random food. You had to run to a different bench depending on whether you liked it, loved it, hated it or had never heard of it. And try not to get tagged, so you didn't have to go in the middle. This being an international primary school, there could be some very peculiar foods thought up!

Another one I had was being dyspraxic, I couldn't sense whether I was lying straight for years. I used to lie on the carpet and Mum would stand over me and nudge me with her foot to straighten me up. I used to love it - so much so that occasionally, as I got older, I would deliberately lie crooked so she would straighten me out....

The enigma of the parachute games at school. I remember one called “Mushroom”: when the teacher said this word, we were supposed to hold the parachute up. She would say other words beginning with M:
Monday.
Maths.
Mushy peas.
Mrs Smith.
Mushy peas (again).
on one occasion; “I can’t think of any more words!”

At my primary school, the usual punishment for any child who dared to move after the bell had been rung was to miss the next playtime. I was far too well-behaved to break rules like that, but in my last term. I got caught out by “I haven’t told you to line up yet!”. Once I had got over the shock of this, I was oddly proud. I think I saw being made to miss my play as a rite of passage, and grinned as I sat in the punishment area (outside the staff room), looked at pityingly by teachers surprised to see me there.

Did that at our guides. Loved it.

Weren’t the dummies something to do with Gatecrasher?

Mine is from my old school in the 80’s/90’s. If you saw someone wearing Kickers you would ask them what shoes they were wearing. When they replied “Kickers”, you would then kick them in the shin.

🤍🤍🤍 I’m so sorry

You find it weird? Love, there’s predators quite literally everywhere these days! They’re not shoved in asylums anymore, they’re left to exist in communities! Not to mention how much, much more populated we are now than 67 years ago!

Indeed. You know what’s weird @Bikergran , your comment is. Also your inability to realise how different the world is now! Do you live in a silo?

I grew up in a mining village and we had a coal house at the top of the path (brick built, shed sized), and the houses along the lane all had them (this was at the back of the houses, think Coronation Street but a wider, accessible road). Ours had a hatch in the roof & the other houses had little wooden doors on the road side, as well as a full size door on the house side. The coal lorry would come and fill them up with coal via a chute.
Right up until we sold my parents' house seven years ago we would fill the coal scuttle from the coal house (always had one bucketful in the house and another full one waiting). Most of the others along the lane were used as wheelie bin stores as noone else still had the open fire.

School Santa was a woman for years.. why didn’t any of us question it? We accepted her with her cotton wool beard as the real deal.

Why didn’t we get sunburn? I don’t once remember having to put on suncream.

Who decided on the formula for how many % you and Barney from class 2 had of a successful relationship? You know where you use the letters of your name?

why were toys and cartoons SO amazing in the 1980s? Keypers, glo worms, woodland fairies, popples, Super Ted, Family Ness, Banana Man, Puddle Lane

There were several old gravel pits near my childhood home in the 70s, and at least one of them had quicksand in. A horse got trapped in it and had to be rescued by the fire brigade.

It was so that you didn’t get a cold in your kidneys. Which you also got from sitting on cold concrete or benches outside.