Things that you used to do as a child repetitively and now think "WTF?!"

[ConfusedPixie]

The hot chocolate thread got me thinking about this. For some reason, I used to tip a full glass of water onto the carpet, the same patch of carpet, every single day. No clue why. I was asked to stop, but I just did it anyway

I ate chalk too, like the chalk kids draw with. Both of these things happened until high school age?!

Anything utterly random and repetitive you may have done?

I did so many of these DH thinks I'm a total freak now!

Used to tear off & eat corners of paper, sook on a flannel, peel paint off of the staircase, lick batteries (!!!), peel lips and skin round fingers (still do - at one point I peeled so much skin from my lips that I tore the skin off a big patch of my chin!), narrated everything in my head, had to count my steps, had to check which page I was on every time I turned a page in a book (still catch myself doing this sometimes actually)

I still peel glue off my hands, I have a special bottle just for me! Haven't been doing it for a while as cant move my fingers properly anymore

I also did the cleaning if the bathroom tiles

What an absolutely amazingly wonderful amount of time we all had in our hands... I miss that :(

Am crying with laughter at these!

Another key-licking glue-peeling bogey-wiping finger-sewer here!

And yy to picking all the chocolate off a milky way and rolling the insides into a ball!

But the weirdest one I remember, from when I was about four, is that I would empty all the toy cars out of their bucket, put the bucket on my head, pretend to be Princess Diana, and say the word "actually" over and over again. I think it was because the bucket made everything sound so nice and echoey. No idea what the princess Diana thing was though.

queen turnoffthetv I did the crisp thing too!! Used to to it with hooka hoops! I've never admitted that to ANYONE before lol

*hoola

Slight variation on the Milkyway thing - I too used to eat all the chocolate off first, but I would then roll in in to a ball in talcum powder as if it was Turkish delight. I also did this with the caramel off Twix's or anything similar. Oh and always in private sat on my bedroom floor - I would have been mortified if I had been caught .
Only used baby talc though, other stuff just tasted wrong!

Also remember the sucking water through the flannel in the bath and lying on my front in the bath letting the water just flow in and out of my mouth, weird.

Also used to love eating butter when we had jacket potatoes, would cut off and eat lumps as if it was cheese. My favorite meal is still sausages and Jacket potatoes with cheese, mmmm.

Our stairs had solid walls on both sides and the skirting board at the top went across the walls on either side, sticking out of the wall by at the most an inch, I used to walk out over the full drop of the stairs with a foot wedged on either side, pretending I was in the circus. Very dangerous and never got caught. I used to also climb out of my window onto the extension roof and climb down the side of the house. Was about 8 or 9.

Why was I surprised when I discovered my daughter climbing her wardrobe?

I also used to run down the road to my friends house, but had to jump from various bits of the pavement, drain covers etc in a particular way, if I got it wrong I had to go back and start again.

I also made potions out of the various products in the bathroom cabinet.

I used to toast bread and stuff on the electric fire. But one time I stuck a metal skewer thing I had been using for toasting into the actual element and gave myself a really painful, violent shock. Never told my parents.

I used to narrate everything too like this: she walked home a different way this time through the park instead of beside the road, this time she knew everything thing had changed for her, since getting her powers she could do anything this went on until i got home, a whole 30 minutes.

I would also get a needle and thread and sew through the bits of skin at top side bits of my nails as i couldn't feel it and like the little holes afterwards. weird.

Also claiming a bush near my house was a sabre tooth tiger a la Power rangers, and ride on it every day, shouting Sabre tooth tiger rahhhhh!!!

I used to play games with my fingers.
There were two families. Left hand:
Middle finger was Mammy
Fourth finger was Daddy
First finger was Auntie
Thumb was Ciaran
Little finger was Sally.
The right hand was the same but with different names for the children, can't remember what. I used to invent little scenarios for them. I did actually have toys in case anyone is wondering!

Occasionally, I would change it and make my hands "walk" along surfaces using the index finger and middle finger. In this case, the left hand was "Good Sue" and the right hand was "Bold Sue" ( In Ireland, Bold = naughty) My sister had "Good Mandy" and "Bold Mandy"

Smarties: Someone up thread used to sort them before eating them. I used to sort them, then:
Most frequent colour = men
Next most frequent = women
Next most frequent = boys
Next most frequent = girls
Next most frequent = small boys
Next most frequent = small girls
Next most frequent = babies.

I used to sort them into families then. There was always a couple with no children and a single man.
Then all the Dads would go to work, they all worked in the same place which would be attacked by a monster ( me) and eaten.
The Mums went to sewing classes ( I wasn't a feminist then!) and would get eaten by the same monster which would then eat all the children at school and the babies in playschool.

My boys just eat sweets, there is none of that malarkey!

They had dog biscuits as play food at my school and I used to eat them. Also ate a lot of paper too.

Me and a school friend has a summer long project of watching a peach stone rot. We genuinely had a great time.

Oh, so many of these did I do!

Copydex on the hands.
Self narration (still do this one)
Sewing needles through my skin - I once sewed 2 of my fingers together!
I couldn't eat pancakes normally, they had to be mashed up, rolled into lots of little balls and then eaten. I remember when I did this in front of DH and he was "What?!?!"

Love this thread, it's so 80s..

Sewing through skin on top of finger and leaving needle in there just liking to admire it
Counting steps in 7s obsessively
setting myself superstitious weird targets like 'if i don't reach that lampost in 5 seconds I will die before I am 18..'
Picking gunky bits off backs of ears where cheap non-gold earrings had been.
Only ever eating smarties in colour order
pretending to be a horse
playing the game where me and my sister lived in a flat, smoked, had a husband in prison and used to give our pretend kids £10 to buy sweets (loads of money in the 80s!)
Sniffing the stickers in the my little pony sticker albums - best thing ever.
Ah, happy days - weird and wonderful kids...

I made witches potions in my dads denture pot. I used to pour in anything I could reach whilst fitting on the toilet and chant mad songs. It was only years later when I said what I used to do that the penny finally dropped as to why his dentures always tasted weird

*sitting obviously lol

Mummyb I used to love the smell of MLP stickers!

I used to put a malteser in the holes of individual monster munch and eat them together, this only tasted nice with the smoky bacon ones though!

And I used to be a compulsive hair sucker, I remember doing it at school and the teacher told me a story about a girl who ended up with a hair ball in her stomach , not sure if that's what made me stop though.

Oh this is so embarrassing. My parents had built in wardrobes one side was my Mothers the other my Fathers. I would sometimes go and pee on the floor of my Dads wardrobe, as the floor was carpet it became a bit stinky so I blamed it on my little brother.

I sewed my fingers together to - guitar playing callouses were great for that but I did it on the palm of my hand at the base of my fingers sometimes too. Think I must have had harder skin there from holding a tennis racket.

Maltesers in monster munch sounds grim but then I liked

• liquorice comfits inside the wholes of polos and
• marmite spread on those pink wafer biscuits

Book eater here too. And oxo cubes!

Just telling my DC off the other day for flannel sucking - I realised actually I know what it tastes like - so I must have done it!
Reading this I remember eating loofahs too...picking the strings out of towels and candlewick bedspreads - and hair chewing
Making bread balls with white bread...
Dripping candlewax onto skin and peeling it off..and sewing fingers...
I used to EAT PVA glue and I think bostick too - definitely used to make fake scars on my hands and arms with bostick...
Eat opal fruit wrappers...
I used to (and still do) sort those shaped cheesey biscuits into the different shape and eat the one them in order...don't anymore but have some vague recollection of chewing these up and spitting them onto my hands before eating again...
I used to chew grass and eat buttercups - and the peanuts out of my mouse's food...
At my grandparent's farm used to eat the cow food - cow pellets, sweet beet and crushed barley ... and the 'good boy' chocolate drops for the guard dog ...
perhaps the oddest - used to beg my grandmother to give me a Cod liver capsules (bought for dog too) - and then squash it in my mouth so the oil ran out...it tasted vile but for some reason I would keep doing it...

My cousin used to "make Guinness" by taking a glass of Coke, drinking a mouthful but rather than swallowing would swill it around her mouth. She would then spew it back into the glass at speed, creating a froth.

She, my sister and I had a tradition that no matter where we were, we would eat a pickled onion on New Years Eve. We kept it up for years!

I tried to find out if it was possible to ride a bicycle with my eyes closed - it ended painfully!

Also used to get up in the night and go around the house - old victorian with cellars and attics - into EVERY room, including the cellar, checking for fire. Unplugging everything at the same time. Must have been a nightmare for my parents...

You lot ar strange!

I made potions in the bathroom. I would use up all mums expensive stuff then deny it.

I made perfume and tried selling it. It was water with dodgy flowers and leaves we had found.

I went down a slide on roller blades ro see what would happen. The scar on me forehead shows that.

I would dress my brothers up as girls and send them down when my mum was having Ann Summers parties. She never told us off as my brothers genuinely looked good as women!

I used to jump on furniture and then cry that the floor was lava. I would sacrifice siblings to the lava and use them to stand on.

I used to pretend there was a man running along side the road when I was in the car. He would run along the rails. i might still do this

When we went through a tunnel me and siblings would pretend to wash our faces, brush teeth and pretend to be asleep before we got through the end.