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?

Grans not grand

My mother has many foibles but the memory I hold dearest was when the goldfish is our garden pond succesively suffered demise at the hands of fin rot until we were left with one solitary fish.
I remember coming home from school one day to witness my mother administering "first aid" to the remaining, but sadly afflicted sole survivor.
This she attempted by placing the poor soul in a bowl followed by making rudimentary, and futile, attempts at administering 'mouth to mouth' by blowing breath into it via a straw!
The poor fish, who unsurorisingly did not live to tell the tale, probably thought it was being inflated to death!

Calma, hilarious story abnout your root perm and the electrocuted spaniel.
God, I love this thread. It just keeps on giving.

Ok my turn:

My brother had a thing for climbing trees but wasn't so able at getting down again. I remember one scene when he was about 7 yrs old, screaming for help from the top of a great oak tree, Mum appeared: "If you fall out of that tree I'll bloody leather you!" Of course he did, and she did! I would've considered the fall punishment enough.

My Dad was the local vicar and used to go to the Working Men's Club on a Sunday afternoon to play dominoes - he met a bloke there who would "Get vicar owt he needed" We would often come home to a brace of pheasants on the gate post or a Property of X Colliery stamped coal shovel.

There was a pub next door to our house with a swing in the garden, Dad used to take me round to play on the swing. One day it hailed and I stood outside too frightened to open the door and alert Dad's attention and too scaed to go home one door as we lived on a lane with no pavements and my mum would've done the afformentioned leathering if I had gone alone. Those hail stones bloody hurt!

We used to regularly get locked out when the wind caught the backdoor with the yale lock. Mum used to post Brother aged 6 through the tiny pantry window-head first. First time it went like this:
"In you go - you're good at climbing!"*Please note the first story
"But Mum there's nothing to land on"
"Yes there is there's a shelf there"
"No Mum there isn't"
Mum lets go of brothers ankles.
CRASH!
"Oh I could've sworn there was a shelve!"

Probably many more - I love this thread

I was going to say that my Dad was quite normal, but I've just remembered his attempts at home-brewing ginger ale, beer and wine ? one of which resulted in a rather messy explosion in the airing cupboard, much to Mum's annoyance.

But it was my Mum who was renowned for her madcap ideas, albeit always to practical ends.

The day she decided to home-make some continental quilts (as they were known in those days). Having made the 'cases' she sealed herself in the bathroom wearing nothing but a pair of knickers and a plastic shower cap so she could do battle with forcing the feathers into the cases.

Yy to collecting manure ? from the large area of common land at the end of our road where people went horse riding. Not so mad in itself, but the comic aspect was once when a friend of mine was staying with us for a couple of weeks and mentioned in a letter home to her parents that we'd ?been on a manua [sic] hunting expedition?, without telling them what it entailed. It was only when she returned home that her mystified parents found out that 'manua' was actually manure for our garden, rather than some kind of exotic plant that had mysteriously started sprouting in the Home Counties.

The day she invented an automatic-timer-dog-feeding-bowl (they hadn't been invented then), which involved a saucepan lid, a long piece of string and an old-fashioned alarm clock ? the type with a large wind-up key on the back which revolved when the alarm went off. At the appointed time, the alarm went off, the key turned, which wound the string round the key and the lid lifted off the dog's food bowl. (This was for a one-off occasion, our dogs were never left by themselves for any length of time.)

She bought a Mini Traveller van which we (Mum, the dog and I ? not Dad) used to go 'camping' in. Yy to making curtains to hang at the windows and having Lilos in the back to sleep on. Yaay ? happy days.

I've got to print this thread before it disappears - I've only read about half of it so far.

Another couple of weird flashbacks:

Collecting seaweed on the beach with Dad - because the garden slugs don't like it.

Dad coming home one day with a bag full of oranges he had found washed up on the same beach. There must have been thirty in the bag and he was very pleased with himself despite the fact that noone fancied eating them... and he didn't even like oranges himself.

When I had friends to stay for sleepovers Mum embarrassed me (and my poor friends) by screaching "Last wees" up the stairs. She meant light's out now, settle down. I was bloody 14!

Dad was very big on charity shop 'bargains' but didn't have much taste... He would go off alone when we were shopping and come back with a back of lurid coloured/hideous patterned shirts and announce "But it's YSL/Calvin Klein etc" "Yes Dad it's 'designer' but it's still horrendous!" One day Mum tried to donate a load of his shirts to a church jumble sale - Dad appeared and bought them back!

When I was 13 my mother had a six month affair with my then 16 year old boyfriend.

My father left home.

I used to be able to hear them in the bedroom next door having sex.

Insane? Fucking indeed.

FabbyChic

fabby

I vividly remember being got out of bed on several occassion by mum and dad. We used to get told 'we are going to a pajama party!!!'

We thought this was fab.

Now I realise they couldnt get babysitters and so dragged us out of bed, shoved us in the back of the transit van and drove off to get pissed somewhere in North London.

Mum once got coconut oil to cure our flaky scalps (might have been nits). She put it in the bath and on our heads. She used a whole bottle. Me and my DSis were greasy for weeks

They used to take us on weekends away. Three kids, two MASSIVE dogs in the back of a minivan with a week's worth of camping equipment.

Anyone else's dad let them drive the car when they were 5?

My grandfather taught my DF & his siblings to swim by throwing them into the sepentine in Hyde Park. My Uncle still fears open water!

My dad also has this thing about teaching kids to "not trust anyone" passed down from his father. Like the other day, my nearly 2 yr old was walking around proudly with a packet of crisps and showed Grandad, who then snatched the packet ala Gary Lineker style & ate them all. The said "See DGS, never trust an adult, however they are" FFS! His other saying is "you gotta keep your guard up"

I was about 13 and DB 11 when, during a family holiday abroad in a country where we spoke not a word of the language, Mum and Dad decide to go to see an opera. Now DB and I were not fans of opera and parents decided no to spend money on tickets for us kids but instead gave us the cash to go and see a film. Thankfully film was in English and subtitled for the locals. Of course film ended Hours before the Opera but that was OK, DB and I had been given the car keys to we could wait in the car, parked in the middle of town, for Mum and Dad.

said Grandfather also had a thing for TCP. Like the Dad character in "My big fat greek wedding" with the windolene!

TCP was used for everything - from gurgling sore throats away, cuts, grazes, the dog's fleas, nits, all their bedding & underwear was washed with it, floors mopped, teenage zits - worked great as the big yellow patch of skin that you now had disguised any little red spot that might have been there before!

and any kind of stomach complaint was cured with Andrews Liver salts in flat 7up (NOT fizzy 7up or lemonade - had to be flat 7up only!)

Not particularly outrageous but my dad told us that the icecream van only played the tune when they had run out of stock, i think that this was a common 'mum + dad white lie' in the 1970s, but it appears that my folks thought it hilarlious when , on more than one occasion, i went up to the van and asked to see the icecream man's ORGAN

izzywhizzy your dad sounds amazing , your stories have brightened up my night.

On outings with my auntie, we used to park up the car, which was a red ford, but can't remember which model, but it was very very popular at the time, and then we'd go and do our thing, return a few hours later and my auntie had forgot where she's parked and she had no idea of her reg number, so we'd be going round these big car parks trying all the cars that looked like aunties car . I don't believe she didn't know her reg number now, I think it was just to push that bit of entertainment for us. Also, on the way home from town with auntie again, there was this long, huge steep hill we'd drive down and to make us laugh, auntie would zoom along at certainly illegal speeds, she must've been going at 90 mph, so that we'd 'take off' at the top of the hill and to make us laugh she'd swerve the car from side to side of the road. It's lucky we're alive!

My nan (rest her soul!) used to work in a hotel when I was a young girl and she'd steal lots of lovely treats like cakes and biscuits and juice and essentials like bleach and toilet roll because we'd never been able to afford them. Crooked, or what?! She'd bring a stolen treat everytime she came round. Gosh, what you do to support your family, eh? I'm certain she didn't do it because she could, just because she had to.

When changing lightbulbs, my mum would fall down on the floor and pretend she'd been electrocuted, just to get a laugh, and other times, we'd just be sitting watching tv and all of a sudden, she'd start to 'have a seizure'. All pretend again. Weird!

Also, in my childhood, I remember meeting many drag queens through the work my mum did. So strange!

Ohh loving this thread. I clearly remember my dads old post office van with mattresses in the back that they would stuff us in and drive all the way to Cornwall overnight. Seems i'm not the only one who had an experience like that reading this thread - seems it was very common in the 1970's!

I also remember when dad had a car with a sunroof (do cars even still have sunroofs?!) them driving down fairly main roads in Wales with me and my borther standing up through the sunroof - what fun!! Think my mum drew the line at motorways though.

The home made wine was a winner, my sister and I used to hide bottles under our beds and get completely rat arsed.

They had an estate car too and used to sling us in the boot when we were going out, it was totally brilliant!

My dad 'made' us a sledge from the side panel of a petrol pump and extra strong gardening twine. It was a bloody lethal thing and we would shoot past everyone else in our metal sledge, sharp corners and all. We LOVED it. Thinking back I think we would actually have sliced someones legs off if we'd hit them.

My dad "made" us sleds out of the heavy duty plastic bags that wood (for solid wood burners) came in.

We would insert ourselves into said bag and hurtle down the biggest snowy hill we could find til we achieved terminal velocity/fell off - whichever came first.

On our (very rare) trips to the cinema we couldnt afford the cinema snacks so mum would basically take a cinema picnic....I vividly remember muching my way through a punnet of nectarines whilst watching "3 men and a little lady"

We had a rural upbringing. My mum loved horses and my dad hated them. So, to make life bearable Dad used to offer to drive the horse boxes for the horse mad set. Cue many trips in that little bed bit above the driver's cabin, it was like a sodding coffin. I was always last in the queue to sit in the front seats and apparently I would "upset the horses" if I was in the back with them.

I also remember that when granny and grand dad came to stay they got the back seats of the Volvo estate and my brother and I had to sit in the boot. Then we owuld drive 60 odd miles to an agricultutral show sitting in the boot and on the way back Dad would "help out" someone whose transport had broken down and we ended up inthe boot of the Volve estate with a goat. It was a prize winning goat, so that was ok then.

My mum and dad used to send us ahead when getting on the ferry, when the ticket collector asked us for tickets we told them our parents were coming with the tickets and we would walk on, of course they never had tickets for us.

My parents would book a chalet in but ins for us five, then our aunts would bring our cousins (7 of them) as day trippers, they would then all move into the chalet with sleeping bags etc for the remainder of the hols.

My mum hid all treats in the tumble dryer when we were teenagers, her theory, we were too lazy to put a wash in the dryer so would never find them.

followed this thread from its beginning but wanted to wait till my sister visited for confirmation that my dad would frequently fall to the floor and lie there unmoving - my sisters & i would be mildly amused at first and pile on top of him and tickle him, punch him (lightly) to elicit a response - nowt, and as the minutes ticked by the icy fear would descend with the realisation that our dad had had a sudden and fatal heart attack - cue my mum barging into the room to find 3 hysterical dc & my dad chuckling away as he picked her obviously very alive self off the carpet.
This was made all the worse by the knowledge that a close friend of his had actually collapsed forward onto the dining table in front of his wife and dc - they thought he was joking - he in fact has sufferred a massive heart attack and died there and then.
he is always asking my dc to punch him in the stomach and has had to be told off for frightening them with his theatrical collapses to the floor.
Old bugger.

This thread has brought back loads of memories. My whole (extended) family used to pile into the back of my uncles van to go out on day trips or for Sunday lunches. We would pull up at really nice places, slide back the door and shock everyone as 20 people climbed out. I used to always be green after my uncle had been weaving about to make us fall over.

When my uncle got his first camcorder our Sunday's consisted of lunch followed by recreating music videos. The best weekend was when we made a horror movie. We pretended to visit a haunted house were everyone started being bumped off. They even emptied the fridge and put my little sis in it for a scene where someone went to get a drink only to find another victim. I never questioned that other families didn't do this.

On another health and safety note my mums dp said the kids could play target practice one day. We made a huge target and placed it against the front door. Then lay on the corridor floor and used his air rifle to shoot the bullseye. Thankfully no-one ever opened the door or they would have been shot.

My GM had 101 sayings that I never questioned until met dh . These included that dipping your finger in the sugar bowl and eating it would give you worms. I was also led to believe the moon was the sun with its pjs on

Probably will remember more later