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?

We were regularly rubbed with vicks LeQueen, and never went out without a vest

My dad had a series of 'vans' that he converted to use as caravans for our holiday. These were old laundry vans which he kitted out with wooden cupboards, seating, beds (mum added gingham curtains and painted then (usually) light blue with emulsion. My dad made a big double bed above the cab and cut a hatch in the top so when going down mountains in switzerland we could hang out the top. That was great.

I had the half head fringe. One year I wanted flicks, like farrah fawcett I suppose, and mum cut 2 little feathery bits on eaxch side of my massive fringe. The rest of my hair was long straight and ginger.

Smoked constantly - we loved to play with the butts in the ash tray.

Nicked corn - like massive big bags of corn on cobs whenever we passed a field.

Bought a goat to school for show & tell.

Wore flipflops all year round (my mum went barefoot everywhere in the summer. Into town etc.

Dad used to pretend to be an aeroplane in the supermarket arms out and plane noises
He once played leapfrog over a concrete post age 60 and fell in front of a bus, the driver got out to shout at him for being a bad example. Me and mum had to walk off for laughing and the shame
Mum when driving and braking, flings her arm out across the passenger - apparently a throw back to the no seat belt days, now she just clobbers you in the chest and winds you
Nan - once offered a visitor some biscuits, visitor said no and nan replied " good, you're fat enough already"

Oh I forgot this one!! Making me sing every time I fell over " pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again"
Until I fell over in a busy town centre and smashed my face. Stood up howling, nose pouring with blood and started singing.... Mum said the looks of disapproval were glaring at her

When bro was born and I visited in hospital mum told me that he'd brought some bubbles with him as a present for me. She'd already told me where babies came from so I found this very strange - especially as the still had the "Taylors" price-tag.

Piling in a parent's car with my friends. There would always be about 7 or more of us, so 2 sharing the front seat, four squashed in the back with another lying across them, plus often a couple in the boot space if an estate car. The thing was we weren't small, this was when we were teenagers!

My mum cutting deep 'V's into my ingrowing toenails to 'relieve the pressure' which actually made it 100 times worse.

When I was really small, going in to my Gran's garden and nicking the stale bread she'd put out for the birds off her lawn, cos going back home for lunch was too much hassle

Taking sugar sandwiches to school for lunch in reception class 'for energy'

Blu, I am howling at your teenage porch building DIY story.

my dad has a still set up in the Bathroom. He didn't much like it the day I called the police because one of the local kids ran away with our kittens.

brighthair - that's so funny

Another one with a dad with an ancient Landrover here - all the kids in the street piled in the back, with one or more dogs, in order to go to the big adventure playground.

Dad worked long hours during the week, and generally spent quite a lot of time with me and my brother at weekends. Sometimes he had to work then too, and he just used to take us with him. At five, I had quite a sophisticated knowledge of sawmills, builders' merchants and earthmoving equipment. He also did house maintenance-type jobs, and one particular old lady used to play board games with me while he fixed her windows or whatever.

On the way back from these trips, we would often come past a big field, where we would stop and look for hares and other creatures, for no particular reason. Even now, if I happen to be with him and driving in that area, we always drive past slowly to "hunt for hares". I don't think I have ever seen a single one.

It did get more silly - accidentally letting my brother play with live explosives, destroying gamekeepers' traps while walking the dog (not that I disagree, but quite dangerous), and getting us to aid and abet him stealing a historical artefact from a Civil War battlefield we weren't supposed to be in.

When my brother and I were small and there was a big occasion that we had to get dressed up for (like a wedding) Mum would get us ready and sparkly clean.

Then she would sit us on the very high mantlepiece so we could not climb down and mess up our clothes.

We just sat there for up to half an hour until she lifted us down.

We were about three and fours years old!

My grandmother was interesting. She did actually shoot at would-be burglars through the letter box with a Baretta pistol. She was 72 at the time and lived in a remote cottage.

Where the hell did she get a Baretta pistol?

My grandad broke his glasses frames, and refused to have them replaced as it would be 'too expensive'.

Instead, he whittled a pair out of balsa wood, and painted them green 'so nobody can tell they're made from wood'. [hmmm] You could.

That was meant to be whittled and

Mind you, this was the same man who refused to have his hair cut, because the barbers was too dear. He'd trim it himself occasionally with nail scissors. It looked like a white bob for years. Highly embarrassing.

According to DH, his dad used to clean his teeth with Vim, and glue his crowns back in with Evostick. (By the time I met him he'd taken up cleaning his ears out with hair grips)

TheMagnificentBathykolpian your family sound great

CB radio - anyone remember these? Dad suddenly produced one in our living room - a big grey box with a mouthpiece attached to a big grey wire..you had to bellow into it "breaker breaker, it's walnut" or some such silly name which was your CB name (mine was walnut) and speak to random strangers.. Any random stranger who happened to answer! The early 80's answer to facebook I suppose.

Everytime I bumped my head my gran would whip the lurpack out and smear it on my head because 'it brought out the bruise'. No it bloody well didn't, it just left me greased like a chicken for the rest of the day.

Mum had us hand-painting our caravan while we were on holiday in gloss paint, top half pale green, bottom half dark green. It was purely on a whim as she had bought some cheap paint while out shopping. We were staying in a large field with a pond at the time, and the gnats kept getting stuck in the paint!

We had huge water fights that went on for days....once, we were staying at nan's house while she was away for a week, and one started by dad putting us all into the water butt. Nan's entire house was drenched (us three kids were outside with the hose, mum and dad inside with buckets and jugs) and her luxurious swing seat was dripping wet...the carpets were still damp when she came back home

Dad built an ostrich nest out of sticks in our field at the back of the house, and filled it with large painted beach boulders for eggs. He managed to convince the neighbours that the ostriches were roosting in the trees at the bottom of the field!

6 of us kids, siblings and neighbours, eldest possibly 7, and a small tin boat with a small outboard motor, out on the Thames Estuary. The boat was too small for all of us and the neighbour who was driving, so we'd take turns to hang off the back, one each side of the outboard motor, gripping with our finger tips, obviously not a life jacket in sight, as he drove us through the warm water outfall of the nuclear power station. I was 4.

My father used to put a lit paraffin lamp under the bonnet of the car during winter to stop the windscreen fluid freezing (perhaps antifreeze didn't exist? or unknown to him? he was born in 1908 ...)

MArking my place, got to go to a meeting (when I've stopped laughing) but will come back to tell you my bonkers stories asap

I don't think my parents did anything particularly insane...I do remember there was a tape we often listened to in the car sometime in the '80s (I was born in '78) that went something like "Four minutes to midnight, four minutes before we die, three minutes to midnight" and so on.
Sometimes we listened to Mary Poppins songs though.

We used to live at the top of a hill and during winter, the road would get all snowy and icy so our car couldn't make it to the top.
My dad used to get me and my brother to sit on the bonnet (to help the front wheels grip better) and my mum was to push from the back!

We also had no car seats and seat belts, going rounds bends was great fun

My grans' remedy for burns was butter, and for sunburns we would be forced to cover ourselves in yoghurt, I'll never forget that yucky smell and feeling

My family were very odd, so I've just tried to forget it all, luckily I have a bad memory.