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?

Oh, mrs r you have reminded me...

My mum used to play dead and would eventually awaken as a 'zombie' and terrify the life out of us before breaking into fits of giggles. I am still terrified of anything zombie related.

My brother, from when he was about 5, used to delight in pulling our mother's leg by telling her fibs, as she was ridiculously gullible. Cue my mother congratulating a not-pregnant-just-fat woman on her pregnancy.

When my brother got a new friend at school who was Mexican and called Ricardo, my brother told mum the boy's name was actually 'Avocado'. She believed him Poor Ricardo was always too shy and polite to correct my mother, and everyone else thought it was funny, so the poor kid endured being called 'Avocado' for YEARS

Baby, my dad still does the 'zombie walk'.

He also used to open the loft hatch with a boat pole every night and shout up "Goodnight Boris", Boris being the minster that he let live in the water tank up there - he did this when I was a toddler - my sisters I would lie there in the dark, rigid with fear for hours.

He taught me to count to ten in swahilli (or so he said) - should have known better but at school I demonstrated my multilingual prowess to an ashen faced teacher and a classroom of kids falling about pissing themselves.

He also started a blaze on the railway embankment behind our house - we were baking potatoes in the old coal bunker. The wood and straw was damp so on went a container of turps - there were 3 fire engines out and the very alarmed horses in the field at the back of the embankment had to be caught by police handlers and be given a new home.

Played 'Jaws' in the swimming pool except he was the only one who knew when it was game on. You would never know when you would be hoiked under by your ankles.

Why I let my DC go to stay with him I will never know.

Oh, he was in the garden when I was a tiny baby & was throwing me into the air and catching me. My mus says she (as anyone would) yelled at him to stop it as he would drop me. He didnt stop and he did drop me - face first onto the slabs!

He also dropped me down an old well when we were visiting an old stately home - he didnt mean to but as usualy he was trying to be funny & showing off.

My dc are not going to his this summer holidays!

I was given coffee from the age of one onwards to keep me warm. (When I finally quit it a couple of years ago, the headache was a monster and lasted for three days. I'd not gone a day without coffee in living memory.)

My dad used to let me take my own trolley round the supermarket from the age of about eight onwards. I'd meet up with him at the end and pile all my crap on with his. When I got a bit older and more adventurous, he'd occasionally say no to something, so I learnt how to put the stuff I really wanted at the bottom and have a couple of things I didn't really care about on the top. I had a really insane amount of sweets. And he let me get The Exorcist when I was twelve. My friends and I watched it at a sleepover and one of my mates had to sleep with her mum for about a month afterwards because of the nightmares.

When I was about ten years old on holiday, my parents met a couple of blokes at the bar who for some reason had no place to sleep. They invited them back to our room to kip on the floor. All four adults when they got back were quite nicely sozzled (I spent those evenings in the hotel room watching Nick at Nite and gorging on MnMs and Mountain Dew) and these men might cheerfully have murdered us in our sleep, or nicked all our stuff, but happily they didn't. And bizarrely they met them again about five years later, only this time they had a place to stay.

My granddad used to try to give me and my cousins a spoonful of sugar each. For some reason me and my younger cousin said no every time, because somehow we had this idea that it was bad for you...but we still happily demolished a packet of Jaffa Cakes between us every visit.

I used to regularly climb onto our garage roof, despite the six foot drop to a concrete paved area below. All went well until the day I was sat chatting to our neighbour on top of the shed, when my foot suddenly went through. I was banned after that, but only because my dad didn't want to fix the roof again.

Dad once tried to saw off a tree branch as I was standing on it (in the middle of sawing off a higher tree branch). He also let one fall off into the neighbour's garden, literally inches from a prized statue she'd had from her father. Luckily they are very friendly with us and she had this look about her which said, "If you had hit it I'd have throttled you."

Oh, one sunday morning in winter he deiced the car door locks with boiling water then left all the doors open whilst he hustled myself and my sisters out of bed for our pre-paid riding lessons - the locks froze again and the doors would not shut so we went to our riding lesson with the doors lashed shut with washing line going through the door handles on the inside lashing the doors closed.

Dear god.....

We lived in a block of flats when I was little, and there were about 10 children all aged around 6 - 11. I remember one of our neighbours piling all us kids in the back of his estate car, and driving full pelt across the car park then slamming the brakes on so we all tumbled forwards, then doing the same in reverse. We all thought it was brilliant.

We had a lilo made of some sort of rubberised canvas, it weighed a ton. Dad would blow it up and we would jump on it and slide down the concrete stairs. There was an open landing on the first floor, about 10 feet from the ground. We would beg a washing line from one of our parents and tie it to the railings and use it as a swing until it broke and dumped one of us on the nice soft paving slabs.

I never ever had sunblock on, I regularly burned until I blistered. Every single year. Every time, Mum would give me a long-sleeved shirt to wear to 'keep the sun off the burn'.

My Dad once accidently put a bag of fireworks on top of a not very well put out cigarette end in a cafe on a packed saturday. "careless shopper has early firework party in cafe" was the headline in the paper the next week. My DB had to hide under the table.

Another time he went out to fetch some spagetti for our tea, via the pub. On the way home he decided to scale the church. When he was arrested he pointed out the bag of shopping at the bottom of the church and asked them to deliver it home as we were waiting for our tea.

When I was six, my mum decided she would finally stop me sucking my thumb. She read me Struwwelpeter every night - The Story of Little Suck-a-Thumb who gets his thumbs cut off by the red log-legged scissor man. Then my grandma's brother came to visit and mum said "Yes, look at Uncle Joe's thumbs - the red long legged scissor man cut them off coz he kept sucking them." Uncle Joe had lost his thumbs to frostbite as a child. I never sucked my thumb again.

My grandma, who had the most amazing childhood (her mother sold her to a travelling circus in the US when grandma was nine, and they were deported) used to finish prayers at night "Amen, straw women wet the beds and started swimming" - I still like to add that silently!

When we were out grandma used to pick up really wealthy men and my mum and I had to literally drag her away from going off to posh hotels.

dad and his minature jam pots, anywhere he had breakfast (and he travelled a lot for work) he would bring back jam. Mum was forever opening cases of sticky jam clothes. Finally stopped when his mother died - he was apparently collecting them for her (although he never took them round).

My mad uncle used to let me drive his car. I was six.

I loved it when he went particularly fast round corners with neither of us wearing a seat belt. But he did put his arm in front of me. Yeah that would have really helped in a 40MPH crash. Happy days.

My mum used to serve avocados rock hard - I mean tooth breakingly hard and then she'd say she was going to write to the supermarket and complain. 'Just let them ripen Mum' I'd say. She wouldn't hear of it and fired off a letter. Amazingly she got her money back and a free avocado.

Not a parent, but a cousin used to let me light his pipe.

Go out, get pissed, pick you up off the hosts bed, sling you in the back of the car and drive home. Slowly

8 or more kids (and at least 2 dogs) in the back of a (Ffyfes banana) van - CHECK (no sofa's, just blankets and picnic baskets, bombing around Burnham Beeches and flying all over the place)

Blankets on engine so it will start in the morning, bursting into flames - CHECK (Que mum almost being run over by her own car when she stopped around a blind bend to remove blazing blanket and car hit us from behind)

My brother cutting open the same eyebrow three times in a month when mum braked sharply and none of us strapped in.

My mum making me and her matching dresses (I swear it was from curtain material, one was lime green with black sqiggles on, lovely!)

Home made wine/beer fermenting in the airing cupboard - CHECK (and bottles exploding over anything. Also dad used to mix it in the bath so no baths for a week or more (he worked long hours, 6 days a week so it had to wait!)

Driving from London to Cornwall at night, lying in the back (usually with back seat down) - CHECK (usually in convoy with other members of family, stopping every hour or so to switch the cousins around) I remember one year coming home and getting stuck behind a car crash and mum and dad in the front having a whispered argument (cos us kids were driving them mad!) and mum saying, when we get home I'm fucking leaving you, we were more gobsmacked at my mum swearing than the fact our family might be splitting up!

Dad and Uncle telling us about all the couple whose car broke down near Broadmoor Hospital, husban went for petrol, after an hour the was a banging on the roof of the car, police cars pull up and tell wife to get out of the car, walk towards them and not to look back. She of course looks back and sees an inmate of the hospital on the roof with her husbands head on a stick, while we were sitting outside the hospital - que my Uncle banging on the roof of the car! Que 7 kids screaming and crying all the way home and dad and Uncle going without apple pie for pudding!

Dad and/or Uncle braking hard while driving home in the dark and yelling "oh my god, somethings is pulling us back!" - yup, 7 kids screaming and crying and no apple pie again.

I have a really vivid memory of bonfire night at my grandad's, fireworks had been set off, BBQ started, my Uncle standing near bonfire eating a whole french stick filled with sausages and onion when one of the "used" fireworks that had been chucked on the fire, shot out of the bonfire and straight between Uncles legs! I swear he jumped 3 feet off the ground!

14 kids aged 4 to 16 "sleeping" in three single beds pushed together.

Dad and my Uncles (8 of them) taking turns to lie on the coffee table under a drainpipe while another poured beer in the top. It was full of bird's nests, spiders webs and leaves, ew ew ew!

Smuggling us into Farnham airshow hidden in the boot covered in blankets.

Playing in the field across the (very quiet, country) road with my brothers and cousins (eldest around 9 or 10, my brother the youngest at 2 or 3) making haybale houses while parents were in the pub down the road.

Walking up to the pub, about 8 houses away, to buy mum's fag's, old lech man behind the bar giving me a bar of chocolate to share with my brothers (crammed it all in my mouth on the way home, of course!)

Going to work with dad in the bakery and spending hours sliding down the flour shoot, how hygenic!

Again going to work with dad and going off for ride in police car with cops whose station was behind the bakery and who dad fed breakfast of bacon and egg baps every morning (I was about 6- 9 years old!) (The cops used to give my dad confiscated goods in return for the breakfasts, usually coats, VCR's, his (and Uncles) first CB radios, etc.,)

Loads more but will stop now!

This thread is fab. We used to go to sleep in the estate car and all roll around and have my brother in the moses basket next to us. I dont remember ever seeing a child car seat. Did they even have them?

I remember my parents 30 birthday party complete with kegs of beer and gate crashers. They got a bit more sophistcated in the 80s and made keathal coloured cocktails they seemed to drink every night.

We also drove the car quiet often from the age of about 8, were regularly sent out to play and didn't return till supper time.

Were told lots of tall stories about their time spent with native americans (they had not been to America) but mostly used to explain the passing of smoking herbs.

Oh i also suffered from homemade clothes and was sent to the school christmas party when i was 11 as Jane Eyre in a cordrouy dress with a high lace collar. Everyone else was a punk or something 'cool', my mum must have pissed herself when she dropped me off.

There was also the time we got a 'climbing frame' that was actually a massive scaffold tower my dad and his mate erected in the garden. Not lethal at all for a 7 and 4 year old.

caillard, i think you must be from the same area as me as that was always the tale word for word told about broadmoor when i was growing up. still jump a mile if there are any strange noises on the car if its stationary:)

sent out to play with everyone else from the street from breakfast til dark. used to go all across fields, woods, build dens...had to be home before dark. was 4 at the time, ages ranged in street from 4-18 years. the older of the group all smoked.

allowed to play races across our road totally unsupervised, usually me stationed at corner to shout if there was a car.

at weekends when 8 and all thru summer mum gave me a box of sandwiches and i peddled my bike across the woods, up a country lane, spent the day alone with my pony, had to be back before dark. my sister have gone off ponies by then.

before i had a pony, my sister had to share hers, and she would sit in th saddle, me behind the saddle and i had to hold my arms out to the side, and she would make it gallop to see if i would fall off. she did this through the woods. again, we were both left all day alone.

when under 5, mum used to give me a note, and i would peddle my tricycle along the road, cross road, down a hill all about 1.5 miles through a housing estate so busy with cars, to deliver the IOU note to the shop, collect her cigarettes and peddle back. this stopped when i started school.

they both smoked heavily, and would sit in the non-smoking section of the plane, going back for many cigarettes during the flight. i flew alone for most trips, as if there was space they sat down for AGES.

Kippersandjam - I grew up in a little village 3 miles South of Maidenhead.

marking my place for later. Loving this :D

just found this- calliard, yes, def same area:)