To ask what the weirdest thing you experienced or saw at someone else's house when you were a child?

[BillHadersNewWife]

Inspired by a Reddit thread...there were some absolutely weird things that people experienced or saw at their mates' houses as children.

There was a man who said he hated eating at his friend's house because they weren't allowed to drink water with a meal.

There was someone who said their friend wasn't allowed in any other room but the kitchen and their bedroom.

That kind of thing! I'm thinking myself and can't really dredge much up. There was one friend who lived in a huge mansion...think National Trust style place...and it was empty!

Just room after room with less furniture in the place than in an average semi!

Normal-ish family...I think they were broke due to having 5 kids and privately educating them all!

I had another friend (when I was at high school) who had no carpet in their house and rats running around.

It was similar in our house.
In some homes they are a menace.
In ours they were a delicacy . . .

It was the early 80s and I was 10 or 11. A primary school friend invited me round for tea. We got a bit bored playing with her toys so she asked if I’d like to see her dad’s shed. I was a bit bemused as we went into the garden to look at a shed, but she obviously thought there was something in there worth showing me. When we went in, it was floor to ceiling decorated with page 3 and other similar pics and calendars. Don’t remember seeing any tools in there either.

Another friend in the early years of secondary school was banned from watching Grange Hill and East Enders, yet her parents let her do a paper round alone in the dark which involved walking across a common where a young girl had recently been attacked. I never understood that at the time.

A school friend who was overly close to her older brother, if anyone's seen the episode of friends - they were like that

I had a friend whose mum always served baked beans or tinned spaghetti cold with salad cream and who would never be seen in anything other than tweed skirts and brogues, all year round.
A friend of my parents would remove every cushion and seat pad off the furniture if you visited and would vacuum around you during the visit even when you hadn't had anything to eat (my mum always said you'd be lucky if you were offered a cup of tea!)
The plastic runners protecting the carpets were commonplace in the 50's and 60's as were plastic covers on dining room chairs as I remember.
And curtains made of strips of coloured plastic in doorways to, I think, keep flies out of the house?

Thats pretty common among older people in my area, ChocChipWookie

In my friends grandparents house,
We was allowed to sit on the stairs, But never in the front room...

Occasionally we was allowed in the kitchen
I always wondered what the front room was like

@Somanysocks totally agree with you - normal for the seventies. Anything weird, you just didn't comment, it was just something you hadn't seen before but maybe that was your fault...best keep it to yourself.

Was best friends with a girl from aged 11-15.

Her Dad would bath with the door open so we'd all see everything when we came over to stay for the night (she had the biggest bedroom so we'd always be at hers) but friend insisted he'd always done this.

I stopped going because it made me too uncomfortable being 15 years old and seeing my friends Dad's knob floating on bath water as I passed the door 🤦🏻‍♀️

I do remember going to a friends house who was from Pakistan. The house was like a souk! Scarves everywhere, wall decor, etc. Her mother was shocked I wouldn't drink tea (I was 11) and surprised how much Dairy Milk I shifted!

I was friends with a 10yo (I was 12) whose parents were in their 50s/60s and quite old fashioned to boot. She once phoned and asked me to go over one morning, then it became apparent she hadn't asked her parents and she was terrified she would be in big trouble. I remember hiding around a corner while she said good morning to her dad and then hastily hustled me out of the door of the flat. Poor kid.

Later on, I dated a guy who was the eldest of 5 children. I remember recounting the weirdnesses of his family with amazement; they all travelled places for days out together and actually spoke to each other! They appeared to like each other and played board games, a lot! The mum appeared to enjoy the company of her children! My family and I were in agreement that they all sounded terribly strange. They're my parenting goal now

Best friend used a fridge as a wardrobe. Was brand new as well. 7 kids in a 3 bed flat; parents slept in lounge and kids just in whatever bed they fancied that night. The mum swore like a trouper: I lived a street away and heard her from my house. Always other kids staying over too. I stayed over loads and l loved it.

She probably thought my house was odd as we let our bird fly about all day. But funny enough the bird only poop in one particular place which was covered in kitchen roll and then changed after each poo.

We may well be an odd family to visit: DH and I have separate rooms. One of our spare rooms looks like a hoarders room as we still haven’t unpacked boxes from moving in (3 years ago), but the rest of the house looks lovely lol

My great-great-aunt had an actual elephant's foot umbrella stand. It stank but she loved it so there it stayed until she died. I remember my grandad prising it out of the carpet with a garden spade and a great deal of satisfaction

I had a ( warm, loving) but very basic council house life.
When I was mid to late teens, I got invited to friends houses which were much , much grander than mine.
The first one I went for tea and her mum treat her like a two year old...we were 15. it was so embarrassing
Then the sleep overs, huge houses, plenty of dosh, again mum spoke to Dd like she was 8 we were 18
My room was her brothers room, he was at college..there were no curtains at the windows and it was freezing

Mum never Put in an appearance in the morning, not even sure if friend did..couldn’t wait to get back to my halls
Same happened in an even bigger country side house..again no sign of mum in the morning

My mum would’ve made my friends so welcome..there’d have been a big cooked brekkie in the morning and she would’ve treat me like an adult.

Weird. Just weird. All these women grew up to be dysfunctional in one way or another.

@Patroclus it's not uncommon here to be fair, but this couple were young, like late 30's young. Assume they heard it from their parents.

A big stack of VHS tapes, all in order, of all the eurovision song contests. I was only very young but I thought "their dad is strange".

One thing I did learn from the last visit
I loved Persian cats.
This friend had two..they were adorable..again these cats weren’t really welcomed and lived outside

As soon as I had my own house, I got my first Persian.
I went on to have 5 over several decades and my daughter has had 3 with one half Persian

When I was 11 I was given a pint of strong cider (which I pretty much downed as I didn’t like the taste, but didn’t want to rude) at a friends house one Saturday afternoon. I had a good time that day.

Friends of my parents collected those Pierrot dolls. The whole living room was dedicated to this collection. They had sitting dolls, prints on cushions, music boxes, pictures and paintings on the walls. The colour scheme was set to coordinate with it all.

I had nightmares after each visit. Hopefully the memory of it won’t affect my sleep tonight!

We were the weird family. My parents had their own 3 seater sofa each but we had to sit on the floor, there was a banned tv list depending on how zealous my mother was feeling about her ‘faith’, the house was perpetually in a state of “being decorated” with rotten old carpet or no flooring or unpainted walls, and was filthy except when my Nan was coming round when we’d all be made to clean. My parents would generally find something I needed to be punished for (usually ‘showing off’) while my friends were round, and were happy to smack me or send me to my room, or both, so my friend would be awkwardly hanging around downstairs waiting for me to be let out, or until they were picked up.

I used to love going to other people’s houses as their parents actually seemed to like them and their houses were always lovely and tidy. I remember being given fish fingers at one friend’s house and not being able to eat them as fish made me sick, and her mum was lovely about it but when I told my mum that I hadn’t eaten them I was yelled at and made to feel so embarrassed at being so rude that I never accepted an invitation from them again.

I stopped inviting friends over around starting secondary school, when I couldn’t face the embarrassment. Unsurprisingly I didn’t have many friends, and have struggled to form friendships ever since. This was the mid 90s, so not that long ago really but my childhood was pretty archaic.

Best friend used a fridge as a wardrobe. Was brand new as well
This has reminded me, my best friends mum used a brand new dishwasher to keep old letters and post in. Absolutely hated the thing, I didn't think it was that weird because her mum was generally a little bit eccentric and we just laughed about it!

I had so many odd experiences. The kid whose house I was sent to after school who used to wee on the carpet in his mum’s room and blame the baby. It stank

The friend whose parents and friends of the parents drank cider from tea mugs and swore a lot. I was scared stiff. Pretended to be ill and went home

The friend whose mum had no food in fridge except for m and a sandwiches. I thought this was amazing and so extravagant.
Some of these are so sad though. And some disturbing.

I stayed at my friends house at about 12, i was amazed they had sinks in their bedrooms never seen that before.

More recently

I went to my freinds house, he was a renting a room from thr landlady. The house was vibrant and eccentric which i loved, but what really got me is she had a dildo as a door handle right in view of the main entrance, she had young kids (no prude, but maybe a little bit wrong)

I had a half-presian cat Dowser - she was a blue tortoiseshell, vicious as fuck, but adorable- so beautiful! Her hair wasn't particularly long, but incredibly thick, with very long guard hairs, and the softest coat I've ever touched - she was beautiful. . . . we lost her six years ago at the grand (very grand!) old age of 23 and three-quarters.

I was a student in Moscow in the early 1990s. There were plenty of weird toilet arrangements outside the city, mostly outhouses, but I was surprised when invited to someone’s city flat to find that the normal plumbed-in loo was full of dried leaves. I was too embarrassed to ask how one was meant to use it.

I had one friend who didn't have a television or telephone in the house. This was in the late 1990s. The family weren't poor, but did have quite an alternative lifestyle. I thought it was very strange at the time!

Another family all stood up when the national anthem was played on TV, and insisted that I did too, because if I didn't I'd be disrespecting the Queen.