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?

I've just remembered something else wierd about my mum - she used to insist that I kept outgrown clothing as a 'spare'. Even though it didn't fit me.

One day, during a wardrobe clearing session, she did her 'keep them as a spare' routine and I said "I've just told you they don't fit. If I needed a spare pair of trousers, I wouldn't even be able to get those on. And why would I need a spare pair of trousers? I have plenty already."

She was like

What WAS that all about?

My mum used to cover my hair in TCP and leave it overnight apparently it gets rid of cradlecap

all baths were filled using fairy liquid and shampoo was also fairy liquid - and baths were only ever on sunday evenings.

when cooking sunday dinner at my grans house all the men would be given a useful job but NEVER in the kitchen so you would have men sat around in the living room cutting beans and peeling potatoes in a saucepan on their laps.

Hecate/Bathy I am still laughing at the jazz hands bedtime song.

And now I feel like I am the world's most boring mum.

My Dad used to enter lots of radio contests. (He won so many times that eventually he had to start using other names and then have my uncle of whoever go pick up his prize for him.) Once he was on the phone shouting out the names of the Seven Dwarfs as quickly as possible (to win a pizza) and he noticed that my brother was trying to get a stuck piece of toast out of the toaster with a butter knife. Dad didn't want to hang up or stop the contest, but he was worried my brother was going to electrocute himself, so he threw the phone book at him and knocked the butter knife out of his hand. It's just such a clear memory...I was probably four and DB was seven, which would have put my Dad at about 25. Seems so impossibly young now. :)

I already mentioned it on a different thread, but when DH was young his mum made a cheesecake which consisted of a biscuit base topped with grated cheddar.

She also got annoyed with baking fruit cakes because the cherries always sank to the bottom, so she threaded them onto string!

Covered my arm in honey when I sprained my wrist at four.

Encouraged me to jump from trees six feet into the air into my dad's arms. I have terrible depth perception...

We have a picture of me in the snow, circa three. Little red wellies, three layers of scarves, coat, jumper etc, bright red bare legs.

Hennaed my hair when I was little....that one's not so bad. Besides I was in the carneval every year :o

Are we not supposed to take teeth out with string?i worry dd will swallow it in her sleep when its so loose!
My mum used knit lovely matching jumpers for myself and sis in lovely complementing shades,ugh.she always worried about us being cold so we had to wear thermal vests all wear round.it wasnt until gym in secondary school when i realised other girls were in bras and cami tops that it finally ended.now if she minds dd2 she puts socks under her babygrow!
All house work had to be done on Saturday mornings,even when she stayed at home with us,we weren't allowed to play or go out until the place was spotless.
Someone told her never to leave wood in a skip so she used to ring my granddad and tell him where the skip was,and would he go and get the door/cabinet.the dining room in her house is still packed with strangers cast off bits of wood!

My mum and dad drove us all the way from the Lincolnshire coast to Newquay and back a again (several times, to visit aunt and cousin) in the back of a ford transit van on a settee with unsecured luggage/food items and a dog once!! Once we were spending Xmas there and we still believed in FC and that year all the presents including 2 mountain bikes were in the van along with the settee!!

We were very that FC knew we weren't at home that year

Oh yes- tie your tooth to the door with string. I always wanted to try that, but couldn't work out how to tie heavy duty string round a tooth

You use cotton not heavy duty string.

Ummm, why is that a bad thing? It's no worse than using a tissue and pure brute force is it?

It gets the job done anyway

[grin]@yank

Thats brought back memories of my mams key meters.

We only ever had one form of energy.

If we had no gas we got up and sat in front of the cooker freezing with ice on the windows eating cereal.

If we had no electric we sat in the dark making toast with forks on the gas fire in the living room.

Yes, but heavy duty string was all we had!

Oooooh just remembered. We went for a picnic in Mablethorpe for my dads 61st birthday, in NOVEMBER!! (last year)

One year mum and dad took me,my brother and a couple of our friends to Cadwell Park to watch the motor bike racing, only to take a TV, a generator (all bundled in the back of a transit van with us kids) to watch the grand prix!!

I was told to not rinse off all my conditioner and leave some behind. Disgusting practice though, just made my hair feel a bit icky all day.

My dad used to take us for adventures in the woods, all he ever brought with us was a long bit of rope and a handkerchief. The rope was tied to a tree branch for us to swing about on, and the hankie to wipe the mud from our faces and hands. We used to slide about in the mud, and often had to throw our clothes in the bin when we got home!

Dad also used to take us for picnics in the rain - we'd sit under the slide in the park eating our sandwiches. Must have looked so odd, but we thought it was great.

We also had fairy liquid as soap/shampoo when money was tight.

My dad was a builder and he used to have a big old station wagon with all his tools in the back. If he wanted to take me or db or dsis anywhere we would jump in the boot and spend the entire journey having a great time trying to avoid the saws, hammers, drills and other miscellanous dangerous objects moving/flying around

Dad is also a great one for practical jokes, and would hide under our beds and grab our ankles and other such terrifying things. One time when db was about 9 he hid in his wardrobe as he knew db was a scared of the bogeyman. Dad then came roaring out and db apparently curled up in foetal position and said "Oh shit oh shit oh shit" about a hundred times. They didn't punish him for the swearing funnily enough

Late 60s/early 70s - My dad used to drive a Reliant Supervan, because the 3-wheeler was classed as a motorbike & sidecar ... he didn't have a car driving licence.

I'd be in the back, sitting on old sofa cushions, with no form of seatbelt whatsoever.

It had magic windscreen wipers! If I yelled "Vuvvoom", the wipers would come on. If I yelled "Vuvvoom squirt" then the washer would come on too.

It was years and years later before I thought to ask my dad how it worked - they were operated by buttons down by the pedals. Apparently I would invariable Vuvvoom in the middle of a junction or just as he was changing gear.

these are great!

Remember that top gear car football stunt? Well my family did that in the early 80's on a beach carpark woith a beachball beacuse it poured down with rain and they were bored.

Also grandad sometimes picked me and some friends up from primary school. We all sat in the "boot" part of his estate car. I especially remember the occassion when we did this and it was my turn to take the class fish home for half term!

that really made me lol getorf

This thread is hilarious. I can't think of anything my parents did, but my Grandad did hand paint my Mums old escort estate bright blue. You could see all the brush marks on it.

A couple more...

Until I was 2, we lived in a house right on the road (very little traffic) and way before I could walk I learned how to escape and would go crawling/toddling along the road to visit various neighbours. My mother regularly took ages to notice I was missing and would find me happily hanging out with the old lady nexy door, being fed unsuitable food and having a lovely time.

My parents also never had babysitters when I was small, but had a roaring social life, so would just cart me along to all their parties, where I sat and played happily by myself while all the adults smoked their heads off and got very drunk. Then it was back into the hammock in the back of the car for the trip home... Some of my earliest memories are of my mother swanning about at parties in giant, flappy 1970s style caftans drinking Dubonnet.

We only ever ate fillet steak, as the bloke down the road used to keep cows and would kill and butcher one every 2 weeks or so. He priced all the meat the same, so it was however much per pound, whether you wanted the tail, the feet or the fillet. Until I was about 6, I thought all beef was fillet .

We used to regularly go sailing with my grandfather, who was a great sailor, but really terrible at getting around to boat maintenance. Most trips ended with the engine failing at the critical point when we were trying to navigate back between raging reefs on each side into the incredible tricky lagoon entrance. It was almost invariably nearly pitch black by this point as we would have left it too late to leave where ever we'd been. Everyone would start yelling and jumping around on the deck shouting completely unhelpful and contradictory advice as my grandfather sat at the tiller smoking his pipe and calmly sailing us through the practically unnavigable gap. We'd then usually drop half the stuff over the side as we tried to get back onto the dock and I'd be sent into the water to get it back.

One time when we set out on the boat, we got into the channel, up went the sails, and out jumped about 15 rats which had set up home inside the mainsail and eaten massive great holes through it. Over the side went some of the rats and my grandmother, who was trying to get out of the way. The rest of the rats scurried about the deck while everyone leapt about, yelling and trying to bash them with oars, boathooks etc. It took bloody ages to dispatch the rats and retrieve grandma, but we still went sailing with the tattered sail that looked as though it had taken a direct hit from a cannon ball.

All my family nuttiness inspired by saving money

• Spending quite some time in a car to find a Scottish castle. Driving up to the gate and then, on seeing the admission prices, saying "I think we can see it just as well from here" and driving off again.
• Market food bargains. Broken biscuits, chickens with limbs missing, misshapen chocolates, cracked eggs... Del Boy eat your heart out
• Holidays in guesthouses and being instructed to eat as much as possible for breakfast so they didn't have to pay for lunch.

cogito I think we were separated at birth