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?

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.

Eating rice with ketchup

Secretly playing my mum's Abba records whilst pretending to be the singer using a brush as a microphone

Pretending the moss lumps in the garden were the islands my dad went to when he was away (didn't know at the time my parents were separating)

This is the strangest one- writing official looking letters to neighbours accusing them of things/pretending they were in trouble and then spying to see if I could catch a glimpse of them reading the letters. At the time I even came across a book that had official looking letters you could photocopy and write the name of your 'victim' in. So must not just have been me that had this rather cruel but highly entertaining pastime.

I also used to make potions in the bathroom, suck on flannels like someone else said as well. I would collect worms and or snails in the garden and then race them. I used to skate on my dads lps when he was at work. My mum only told him a few yers ago he was like whhhhaaaatt!!he said he wouldnt have flipped thanks mum

I used to, when I was excited, put my hands together so the fingers were crossed together and rub my bottom teeth on my left thumb.

My skin used to blister and I used to pick the skin off. It used to go hard too. It hurt but I still did it.

Surprisingly I have no scars from it.

And I used to talk to my magazines. I am an only child so I thought they were my friends.

I used to suck flannels too.

And eat books, especially in the bath.

I also used to get myself to sleep by pulling my eyelids up by the lashes to make a very faint sucky sound

Oh and I used to stir snails with my finger and lick the slimey mess off my finger afterwards

I used to peel the dried PVA glue off my hands after arty things at school. I do it even now, if I use it at work.

I used to scrape the soap when in the bath. Once I gouged a hole in it and got told off by my step dad.

I used to drink the cream off the top of the newly opened bottle of full fat milk.

I used to cut the crust off white bread, sprinkle sugar on top and roll it flat with the rolling pin before spreading jam and choc spread on and then rolling it up like a swiss roll.

Eat dog biscuits or uncooked rice. Crunchy .

Sew through the very top layer on skin on my fingers and stitch them together in Home Ec class. A few of us did that though, I wasn't the only daft one.

Another child-of-the-70s finger sewer here. I'd never heard of anyone else doing it until this thread.

I also used to refuse to have my arms under the duvet when my parents tucked me in at night, even on the coldest nights. This was because I would suck the thumb of the coldest arm, and gently pinch the skin of my upper arm until it was warm... and then swap arms if I was still awake. It was the best and most comforting way to get to sleep until I was about 12 or so.

Also sucked flannels, and wiped bogeys on the underside of the breakfast bar in the kitchen; parents were regularly furious about this.

Cross my fingers every time I walked under a signpost

Eat a Jaffa cake very slowly nibbling all the chocolate off, then peel off the orange jelly disc and then finally eat the spongey biscuit base last. Could never eat a Jaffa cake normally!

It was the summer of 1972. I was the proud owner of a tricycle, a large! pale blue metal one with a square metal box/boot attached at the back.

Those were the days when children as young as 6 could freely roam the streets with nary a paedophile or speeding car in sight.

We lived in a a dead end Close/gardens and I trundled my way along the pavement out onto the road that lay ahead. One one side of the road there were houses and on the other there was open fields and woodland. Now sadly built on with houses with gardens the size of postage stamps!

So I gaily pedalled my tricycle along. One could be gay back then, it was but an innocent word which didn't convey the homosexual meaning it does today, and I was gay and merry it must be said.

The cool breeze blew in my face, my freckled face as I had back then, my wonky fringe cut by my mother parted as I gaily trundled along.

And then I discovered my meaning in life. A flattened hedgehog. Completely flat, just like a big round pizza. Only back then we didn't know what a pizza was, there were no Dominoes or Pizza Hut when I was a child.

The hedgehog was dried out and I lifted it up like a frisby and carefully placed Mr or Mrs Tiggywinkle in the boot of my tricycle.

I was busy that summer holiday and collected quite a few flattened hedgehogs. In some small way I felt I was rescuing them and felt proud to drive them around in my tricycle carriage.

Alas, like all childhood good intentions my enjoyable pastime of collecting dead hedgehogs was spoilt by my father discovering my precious load in the boot of my tricycle when he decided to give it a safety check over.

My mother was called into the front garden and I had to stand there, a silent tear trickling down my face as mother stood with a bin bag and father emptied the hedgehogs one by one inside.

The disapproving looks from my parents indicated I had let them down but in my child's heart I knew that somewhere in hedgehog heaven I was loved and appreciated.

Mmmm yummy paper still do

Mmmm yummy pencils.

Mmmm yummy pencil toppers (meant to stop me eating pencils) or any other random small piece of plastic.

Mmmm yummy Trill bird food - found in my first infant's class art cupboard.

I dripped candle wax on my hands so that it looked like white sores which I then peeled off satisfyingly.

If dinner was composed of mashed potatoes with pie,fravy and veg for example I would mash everything together and then mould the resulting mess into a flat round. I then divided the round into segments which I ate one by one . I still do this when im alone.

I loved to buy a caramac and then hold a piecebetween my fingers so that it melted. Then I would rub the melted chocolate over all of the fingers and lick it off each finger in turn. Made a little go a long way

I used to smell chairs... Walls... Doors...

I had odd pica

Paper ripped from the margins of old books
bath pearls and oil capsules - mostly for the dissolving capsules not the oil
soda crystals! just one or two bits, occasionally to feel the sensation of them dissolving on the tounge

Did we all have the same undiagnosed vitamin deficiency or something? So many of these (wet flannels especially) are really familiar to me too!

this thread is so funny! I used to love putting pins in my fingers, picking padded wall paper, making perfume out of petals on the field out side my house, and imagine s skateboard guy when in a car. also dipping my finger tips in candle wax over and over, till I could preserve my finger prints for future lovers.
I also stood up when wiping, made sure my favorite teddy had the best seat before I went to bed, and put my fingers in the fish tank so the fish would nibble them.

I hated the packed lunches DM made, especially the sandwiches. Dry brown bread, either with salami or sardine in tomato ketchup. So I would take them out of the lunchbox so it would look like I'd eaten them, bring them back home, and stuff them under the slats in the bunk bed. Where obviously they decomposed and stank. Until they were found. What a happy day that was .

It NEVER occurred to me that it might be a sensible idea to dispose of them at school/in a bin on the way home.

Incidentally, just found another friend who did exactly the same, except he put them inside an old grandfather clock. They were discovered when the pendulum stopped swinging! About a year's worth of mouldy bread had jammed it!

Another flannel sucker here. Also, at some point I was told never to drink hot water from the tap so I now have a lifelong aversion to it - and a suspicion about "upstairs" cold water (even though all our taps are on the mains).

Didn't sew my fingers but I did push needles through the skin a lot - it's surprising how many and how far you can do this. Also, I occasionally dismantled pencil sharpeners and used the (amazingly sharp) blade to cut my fingers - quite painlessly, though I stopped this when I bled profusely on one occasion and rather alarmed myself.

Slightly off topic, but I was once told never to get bubble bath froth up my nose. I once did, by accident, when about 6 and was convinced I had about 5 minutes to live.

Sitting in dark cupboards rubbing my eyes vigorously, until I could see stars and galaxies.

Making tableaux with Sindy dolls, which often involved car crashes or dinosaur attacks. I think the car crashes were inspired by watching 70s F1 with my dad at an impressionable age. Mum didn't like me doing it and I'd have to pretend that Sindy had just fallen out of her jeep on the Scalextric track during the course of normal play, and that her head had genuinely fallen off.

Eating crayons and being really disappointed that the different colours didn't have different flavours. This was really my friend's special habit, I just joined in.

I used to lick sharpeners cause they tasted funny.

Chew fairy cake papers till there was no cake left on them.

and eat raw potato, which I did adulthood until dh said it was strange, I still miss it

I used to eat toothpaste sandwiches and couldn't go to the toilet unless I had the wash basket in front of me!

me and my brother once spent a whole afternoon poking all the knots out from the wooden fence between us and the neighbours. it had more holes than swiss cheese when we were done. i don't know what possessed us but it was just so fun

my dad went MAD

Ants are delicious; lemony and crunchy.

Aged 4.

Lol mistyshouse were they that easy to push out?

I used to cause major drippage all over the house by soaking paper (my dad bought reams of the stuff for us to draw on) in the bath in "perfumed" and then dyed water then hanging them over the radiators to dry.

I then sold the paper for 5p a pop. 10p for the dyed stuff. Looked quite pretty actually.