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.

That is so terrible. Im so sorry to hear that.

It is very common now to carry a flask or water bottle into school and have it on the desk. But I definitely recall in the 90s if you had a bottle of water with you in your bag, and dared to open it and sip it on a summers day In class, teacher looked at you like you were the local scum.

When dh was little they had a dog and he used to roam about. Everyone knew him and he would go back home for his dinner.
My mum has a photo of me with a monkey on my knee. It was taken in Spain and the monkey is dressed in dungarees and trainers 😵

Sounds made up and hilariously true at the same time. But I believe you. Sounds like an adorable dog.

When my DCs were little and I took them and their friends trick or treating, a random dog joined us. He came to every door with us and waited patiently whilst my DCs knocked on the door. Finally we told him we were going home and had to close the door on him!

The Bumps! Forgotten those. As a boy, getting kicked in the back as you came down was part of it! Eggs and Flour at secondary school...all over your head.

Grass fights for days after the park was cut and throwing the seed heads as darts on some types

Honestly getting through a 70's childhood has made me quite resilient! Strangely I quite like that although some stuff was shocking awful by today's standards! I guess our GP's must've thought we were all a bit soft too, at the time!

I have an old family picture of a monkey like this sitting on a relatives shoulder

Yep me and my Db did this too but we thought we were cleverer than other kids because we wrote down the colour of the cars too .

At about the same time , the early 80s we had a dog that was allowed to roam free so much so that she knew how to knock on the front door by lifting the letter box flap with her nose .
Our cat would stretch up to the window in the front door so he could peer in and we could see him and let him in .

I've got a photo of me in a pushchair with one of those monkeys. Would have been early 1970s in the UK - either England or Wales.

Ha ha, we used to live behind the school we attended as children. Our dog was a known escape artist. According to my Mum, she would often get calls from the school telling her our dog was there (again). So does that explain the mystery of the random dogs at school? 🤣

We sometimes got random cows in the school grounds fields close by.

My brother had a photo took with tiny monkeys - he must’ve been about 9 months old (wtf mum?) and they were sat in his pram!

It would’ve been 1976, NE England.

@3luckystars You need to read The Chimneys of Green Knowe!

Elastics games with songs: "England, [jump 180 degree turns] Ireland, Scotland, Wales; inside, outside, inside, scales [jump onto the elastic]" etc

Handball, played as multiple games at once by a whole section of the playground that was painted as a grid, about 30 kids at a time

Skipping with multiple people as a voluntary game, i.e. outside being made to (fail to) do it in PE.

Girls playing horse games, galloping round the playground having exciting adventures and neighing (ok that one was a bit weird and probably only done in places where everyone had read The Silver Brumby).

Now it seems to just be the boys all playing football and the girls all sitting down nattering so they don't get their clothes dirty... (and my son sitting up a tree...)

Does anyone remember coal bunkers? When I was a child every house had one, and the coal man would come every week with coal in a sack to fill it.

You didn’t imagine it. We had a photo of my two brothers (I wasn’t born yet or was a tiny baby) at the seaside with a dressed up monkey. Was late-Sixties or early-Seventies. I have the photo somewhere I think.

I had a few I-Spy books and loved trying to complete them. If you completed one, you could send it off to Chief Pow Wow and he’d send it back with a certificate!

Did anyone live in one of those areas where there were random WWII concrete buildings in the fields? We called them bomb shelters but they barely fitted one person in and were sort of open at the front so would have been totally useless in a real bomb… also who on earth would need a bomb shelter in some random field?! It was clearly something else. Anyone have any idea?

I used to do this! Had a special little notebook just for collecting car registration numbers! The ice cream can was a good one to trade 😆

We used to go out on our bikes all day. You either knew the roads or had to carry a local map with you as there was no other way of finding out where you were! We totally relied on our watches to know what time to come back!

if we went out as a family, if there were too many kids, some of us would travel in the boot. I think this only became illegal in 1989! You would see loads of kids in the backs of cars making gestures at the drivers behind them!

Wow! Are your toes unusually widely spaced out by any chance?

Yes! Do you know how that worked?

That’s right ! How can that possibly work ? I’d forgotten the chant - this would have been in the late 60s for me.

I still have a coal bunker in my back garden! Coal fire long gone now though and its full of random crap!

We’d play pub cricket on long journeys which involved counting the number of legs on the pub signage i.e. Red Lion, four legs, Horse and Hounds multiple legs. I don’t remember the rules but it kept us entertained.

At school, there was a craze for French Skipping at playtime which involved a very long piece of elastic, three people or two people and a chair. Loved that game as I was quite good at it. Happy days!

When Woolworths still existed, they had a summer scheme going where if you collected up empty soft drink cans for recycling they’d give you 2p. It took nearly all summer but by the end I had enough for a Fruits of the Nature miniature bubble bath.