Utterly insane things your parents did when you were growing up

[GetOrf]

My gran thought that liquid paraffin applied to my skin as achild would stop me from burning (in the tropics). God knows why she thought that. I stank! And was wary of lit cigarettes. Needless to say it didn't work and I fried.

She bought a 6 foot long chest freezer from a shop which was going bust, and put it in the hallway. Our house looked like Iceland (Kerry Katona, not volcano) when you walked in. She bought half a cow from a local farmer to put in the deep freeze. We could have had fillet steak, but no, she kept that for best (?) and we ate the offal. Never did eat that fillet steak, it was probably still in the freezer when she died.

Would refuse to pay the council to remove old ovens or whatever, so would wait until the dead of night, we would dress up like burglars and would fly tip the oven (by hoiking it over a 6 foot wall into allotments, or shioving it down a rough path and pushing it into the sea over the harbour wall). Ilfracombe residents of the 80s - that oven on the beach in August was mine.

Same happened with hanging baskets - she would refuse to buy Busy Lizzies or lobelias or whatever to make her hanging baskets, so we would sneak into municipal parks at dead of night and nick 'em.

What eccentric or frankly insane things did your parents or guardians do?

My dad used to work on a fruit stall in Picadilly. Next to him was a newspaper stall and a hotdog stand, and just in front was a bus stop for those open top tour buses. I used to love going to work with my dad, I'd be given a hotdog, a can of coke, a bag of grapes or cherries and some comics and would then be put on the tour bus with dad's friends, the tour guides, and would spend the day travelling around London. It was fantastic!

Mathanxiety - we had to have a spoonful of malt too. But I loved it so much and recently bought some. Not for my DCS - I have some for a treat.

Kurri, you reminded me of one of DH's stories. He was helping his dad build a patio and dropped a paving slab on his finger. They went to A&E and sat and sat, on a Saturday night, watching all the drunks be wheeled in first. After about 3 hours, FIL examined the finger and said that all that was needed was for the blood building up under the nail to be released and he could do it himself with his drill. DH agreed to this and they went home, where, true to his word, FIL got out the drill and drilled a hole in DH's nail and a fountain of blood spurted out and relieved the pressure. He said it was great and it stopped hurting almost immediately, but just the thought makes me shudder!

jaffa - we "endured" clothkits, but OTOH it was the 70's . I am now in the process of "inflicting" newly revived Clothkits on DD . My parents do have photos of both my DB's, each aged ~4, in exactly the same polo neck jumper - there is a 12 year age gap, so I think DB2 is probably scarred by some of the hand me downs he was forced into. Fortunately for him, DB1 later developed the knack of wearing through elbows and knees so there were fewer things to be handed down (not that it stopped them being handed directly down to me at the time - I don't think I ever had a school sweatshirt without patches on the elbows )

My parents had a VW camper van so when they went to parties, rather than have a babysitter, they would take us with them and we would sleep in the camper van outside the party. My DM now swears this only ever happened a couple of times, but that's not how I remember it.

My stepdad used to do some really odd things that resulted in us getting lots of stick from our school mates. As we lived on a farm he used to get any dead calves from the farm and boil them up for the fox hounds to eat! omg. I just remember the smell of them being boiled in the garden and Im sure nowadays it would be against the law. We got called Gippos and a lot worse !! Fabulous for your confidence and Im sure this is one of the reason we no longer speak to each other...

LeQueen you will be writing a proper autobiography one day, yes?

Another clothkits survivor checking in.

Not my mum but my grandmother: she and my grandfather moved to Kenya in the 50s, with three DDs (including my mum) all under 10. He then divorced her for someone else, leaving my grandmother as a single mum, running a farm in the middle of nowhere on a mountain in Africa with the Mau Mau all around. She used to sleep with a gun under her pillow, and they had a few very close shaves before she eventually moved back to the UK.

We were not, on peril of horrible DEATH, allowed to touch the food in the fridge, so we used to forage outside for food when we wanted a snack (mum didn't starve us btw, she was just obsessed with us not ruining our meals). Fortunately we had a veg garden so we used to pull up carrots and parsnips and eat them after washing them roughly in the well, which was filled with pondweed and newts.
We also ate:
the young tips of grass
foraged our own pine nuts from the hedge
sheep nuts
random mushrooms

All 3 of us have iron stomachs now.

M&D, being farmers, were unsentimental to the point of pathology. Once when having lamb for sunday lunch, I asked whether it was one of ours. 'Yes,' says mum, 'it's actually your pet lamb, Cindy'. Cue me in floods of tears while M, D and DB fell about laughing

Every New Year's Eve (which was a massive piss-up with friends in a huge house in Scotland, lots of small children staying up for hours then falling asleep in heaps like puppies, and MUCH youthful experimentation with abandoned drinks) D would dress as a woman and leap about wildly.

After a few years mum asked him to stop. Not because it bothered her, mind, but because he was ruining her bras.

Oh, and GetOrf, just back to your original post, when we were in Turkey on a family holiday, a local told mum that covering herself in raki and pepper would keep the mosquitos off. She did so obediently every night and stank like a tramp for 5 days - certainly kept dad off!

The local must have pissed himself laughing afterwards.

Just some quick ones off the top of my head before the school run...

I wasnt bought up with my parents singing nursery rhymes, I was bought up with them singing extracts from Cheech and Chong.

We had Hide the Thimble and Hide the Polo (it took us ages to figure out dad was actually eating them instead of hiding them

They came home with a goat for a pet once - then when she died, didnt have the heart to tell us, so told us she had gone to a local farmer and we could call them. That took me years to realise it was dad with a fake accent on the other line.

We were another with the transit van, in the back and being thrown from one side to the other getting covered in soil in the mean time.

Grandad went everywhere - and I mean EVERYWHERE in his wellyboots, the school, the bank, his sons wedding, I think he was buried in them in the end.

The food fights we'd have when mum and dad would bicker over the most innane stuff, followed with the dog stuffing himself with everything he could get to.

Dad came home with a tortoise when he was only supposed to get bread- which escaped.

Anyone remember a song which involed a baby being washed in the sink then went down the plughole? That was one of my dad's favorites to sing to me when I'd hurt myself.

Grandad teaching us how to drive the tractor - we were 4.

Mum learning to drive the transit van, then running it straight into the apple tree - all you could hear was the thumps of hundreds of apples falling onto the van roof.

Dad dressing up as the grim reaper, then knocking at my nans window whlie she was watching tv. Nearly gave her a heart attack.

My mum was 8 months pregnant with me, and she and her brothers were watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre, when one of my uncles burst into the room wearing a mask and brandishing a revving chainsaw - mum nearly gave birth to me on the spot.

I seriously need to start doing stupid things like this with my kids before they get too old...although I did make flour bombs one morning and threw them at them to get them out of bed, thankfully they saw the funny side of it. Ditto snowballs, which would result in us spending 4 hours outside in jammies having snow fights until we went in for breakfast. Oh , and I laid down in the middle of the shopping centre because I didnt want to go to Maccy D's, so the kids dragged me there much to their and everyone elses amusement.

Have just been catching up with this thread. The Grandad making his own glasses almost made me pee myself.

Reading this and bf doesn't mix though. Poor DD can hardly stay latched on because of my laughing.

My Brothers and I are all 90's children but I dont think we did too bad. Nothing to rival some of you!

I think my Nan was probably the MIL from hell for my Mum! She had 3 cake tins that sat on a shelf behind her kitchen door, every time we went to see them it was a quick hello then ..."Can we look in the tins?". Cue 3 kids slowly devouring the entire contents over the next hour! And pick and mix was like a bottomless pit. It didn't matter if you ate them all in an hour, we always got a second lot! My Mum put a stop to this after my brother had his first filling at 4 y/o.

My Nan and Grandad (Dad's side) used to take 2DB's and I on holiday every year to Devon. My Grandad had a campervan thing that had seats that folded down into a bed in the back. He would assemble the bed, and let us 3 kids sleep all the way from Kent to Devon. No way could a seat belt fit round us all, so we didn't bother! The great thing is we were still doing this when we were 9, 10 and 11!! And all way to big to lay comfortably side by side!!

My Nan (the same one as above) has a stables (she's still going at 72!). She taught me to ride 'properly' on my own at about 4 y/o. Her idea of teaching balance is that you have to earn your stirrups so she started me off without a saddle. So she sat me on a scatty shetland with no saddle, smacked it on the arse and just shouted at me to hang on... I did! and 'touch wood' have never fallen off in my entire riding career!

Same Nan (I'm seeing a pattern here...) bought me smirnoff ice all night thinking they were lemonade. Didn't realise until I was completely pissed. I was about 9!

DB's and I used to have sword fights round Nan and Grandads, with real swords. Nan had them as ornaments!

On the holidays mentioned above, we would pitch up the trailor tent at this campsite, and us kids would have pretty much free reign all week! My youngest brother was bought a pen knife the first holiday at 5 y/o, and was allowed to use it unsupervised! He did make a lovely walking stick one year by peeling all the bark off a long stick he found. I did most of the cooking if I wanted, cue me making bacon and eggs alone on a camping stove in the middle of a tent! My middle brother was in charge of the BBQ! Around 2pm, that was Nan and Grandad's wine down time. Us kids knew that this meant we had to bugger off until we were callled in for tea. This campsite had a brilliant rope swing that meant you landed in the pond (not a lake, a pond, probably about 4 feet deep!! Full of mud!). We'd spend all afternoon launching each other into it! The pond was no where near our tent and we were probably about 5 6 and 7 when we started doing this!

We had fantastic holidays with Nan and Grandad, and i'm sure we were supervised more than what we thought, but I do feel sad that my Kids probably wont enjoy all of what we did.

My dad worked on a cruise ship for several years after my parents divorced (he's a musician). When the ship was back in port in the UK mum would drive down to pick him up, and us kids would have the run of the ship while they caught up on gossip. This meant: sitting up at the bar skiving gallons of fizzy pop from the friendly barman; exploring people's cabins, the gym, the massive unmanned swimming pool, the engine rooms; trying to hold conversations with the Greek crew; chasing each other all over the ship, completely unsupervised, while my parents nattered blithely away with no regard for what sort of danger we were in.

My nan had a swearbox with a sliding scale of badness, ruthlessly enforced by me and my brother. The Cats Protection League did very well out of her She rode a pushbike everywhere for years until one day she told my brother that she was getting a Honda Goldwing. He was so excited and told all his mates at school about his supercool nanna. For weeks, every time we went round there, she built him up about the imminent arrival of this massive motorbike (nanna is about 4'10" and made of pipecleaners). When the day finally arrived, she led him, breathless with excitement, through to the back of the house and ceremoniously unveiled...a moped. Then pissed herself at his obvious disappointment.

My mum and auntie used to drive me to the top of a nearby (ish) mountain so we could collect sheep droppings. I can't actually remember what they wanted them for, presumably the garden. The farmer was apparently a distant relation and wouldn't mind us nicking his sheep's shit. One day we were out collecting (me in school uniform still) when farmer appeared on horizon. Mum yelled "run" and cue panicky scarpering back to the car. Unfortunately, my auntie (who was 12 years older than my mum) didn't make it before the farmer and his dog caught her. Turns out the farmer wasn't distant relation after all and was not best pleased (flaming mad in fact). Mum got out of car to plead auntie's case -have no idea what was said, but damn me if sheep shit collecting didn't become even more regular after that ....

On holiday one year in disneyworld with mum, auntie, and younger brother. Auntie just following us round unquestioningly, hence joined us for the queue to Space Mountain (nasty rollercoaster ride conducted in pitch dark). Auntie spent entire ride saying the lord's prayer, mum spent entire ride crying in laughter.

One halloween, I was at home with my auntie and mum. Mum goes off for "bath". Auntie and I innocently watching tv when there's knock on window. Have no idea why she opened the curtains but she did - horrible halloween scary face with vampire teeth pressed against the window. Twas of course my mum, but auntie only realised this after nearly dying.

Actually, writing all this, I'm beginning to realise why lovely auntie had bit of a drink problem... She had a dental plate with the two "fang" like teeth (can't remember proper name for them) on it, and would often slip it out of place so it looked like she had real fangs. Very disconcerting for small children and local shopkeepers. Auntie was mad about animals also, and got her own back on my mum sometimes by encouraging local moggies and dogs into mum's house, so mum would return from work to perhaps find a dog sleeping in her sitting room, or a cat snoozing under her bed. The last pets she owned were a yorkshire terrier (horrible snippy thing) and a boxer, she babied them like you wouldn't believe, even to the extent of tucking them in at night. She used to do that to us as kids too (well, she did it whenever she could, even after I had my own children she would do her nightly rounds of tucking in the dogs, me and then the children).

Auntie's husband died when she was quite young so she returned to live with my gran. They had one of those relationships where they argued incessantly but where they couldn't bear to be apart for long, we always called them the female equivalent of steptoe and son, but they provided us with so much laughter and unconditional love when we were small.

My granny used to send my aunt outside the house at 1 minute to 12 on new years eve, so she could chap the door and first foot her straight after the bells. So she knew that her first footer would have black hair which according to her is lucky.

We went on holiday as a huge family one year. 3 chalets with different relatives in each. A wading line was hung the length of the chalets. My mother using matched burnt her initials into her wooden pegs so no one could steal them.

That's washing line and matches stupid autofill

LeQ - I fear my dd has encountered your uncle. The other day in the supermarket she said loudly and deliberately " you were really drunk last night mum". When I tried to shush her, she said "was that why you were hitting us?". The more I tried to shut her up, the louder and more outrageous she got.

When my dad used to do diy he would wear his operating scrubs. Then, "accidentally", he would pick me up from school/meet me in town/engineer the most embarrassing situation known to teenage girl still wearing them. I used to be mortified, he used to love it. He also used to sing Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights on every occasion he could, not in his own voice of course, but in a high "Kate-like" falsetto.

He used to do lovely things too like hide sweets he knew I liked (right up until I left home) under my pillow, or in the airing cupboard. Sometimes he would go out really early in the morning and leave me a list of chores. Nearly always I would get round to one of the jobs to find he had left me something (eg, money on top of the hoover, or under the iron etc).

Dh always used to sing the song "Love Grows Where Rosemary Goes" (think its called that), but would substitute dd's name for "Rosemary". He told her he'd written the song especially for her. She believed it for a while too. Dh wakes up every day with a different song on his lips, and sings it ad nauseum all day - he doesn't distinguish between public and private places, hence causing the dc (and myself on occasion) great embarrassment.

My dad was (it turns out), pathologically afraid of illness and especially hospitals. It took til I was an adult and he needed cancer treatment to work it out properly though - during my childhood I never questioned why we had to have 'home surgery' on, eg, a badly ingrowing toenail (he tried to cut the ingrowing bit out with kitchen scissors), head injuries etc.

He also believed in 'competitive eating' having seen a nature programme about baby lions(?!), so my sister and I were given our dinner at 5.30pm sharp and anything on our plates at 6 when dad got home was eaten by him. We learnt to eat very quickly. I remember us crying when he came home - I become a compulsive eater and my sister was bulimic in her teens

My mother is mentally ill so all the 'odd parenting' we got from her was down to that - I assume! - and isn't really funny anecdote territory.

Made me smile these .. thank you

My gran was liberal with whisky for teething children, also a wee toddy to soothe a childhood cough/cold/any ailment.

Gran cried wolf her entire life and routinely spread a 'poultice' over a nappy liner and I wld put this on her back and she put her vest n nightie over it and go to sleep.

She died 3 yrs ago aged 93 with not an arthritic joint in her body.

She told me when I was three that 'old nick' would be coming to get me if I didn't relinquish my dummy. How many 3 year olds know that old nick was the devil?

She hit us with the curtain thing - plastic covered spring - when we were bad.

Loved my gran and miss her every day.

This thread makes me want to do something wacky with the kids tonight. That's it - chocolate bars rather than organic raisins tonight :)

LeQueen How are you still alive to tell all these tales.
I'm looking forward to the autobiography as well.

I do remember my Dad letting me drive the car home around the back of the house. I was about 4 and I crashed it into the wall.

At about 10 I used to change his gears for him. I would have my hand on the gearstick and he would shout out 1,2,3,4 to me and I would happily change them, usually to a loud crunching sound.

One car had a dodgy exhaust and part of it regularly fell off so me and dsis had to run back and pick up a long hot metal pipe. Dad would then tie some more string around it

He also had great pick-up's for work and I loved riding in the back with the wind turning my hair into a birdsnest.