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!

The family cat of a friend of mine which had died, been stuffed by a taxidermist, and placed back on the hearth rug by the fire.
It was weirdly fascinating in a macabre way.

@bintang
You need GHD’s
Off topic!!

Elspeth I've read all of these now and yours takes the biscuit! For anyone that missed it!

My Great Aunt lived in a big house where lots of the grounds had been sold off to make a new housing estate. When we visited we would play with a girl who lived in the estate. We were about 8-10. She had an odd voice and a skin condition so wore a cap all the time and hid her face. She lived with her Grandad.

We played with her on and off for a year or so. I would go to her house and watch Byker Grove. Her bedroom was full of toys and dolls. Her grandad would go and have tea with my Auntie.

We didn't see her for a while then an article was in the local news about her and her 'grandad'. Apparently she was a woman in her 40s who had been posing as a child with this man. They had moved several times before they got to us and moved away after. They even bought school uniform for one of the local private schools and she would trot off to the bus stop.

The weirdest things I can remember were having a friend whose parents smoked that seemed horrifying to me.

And aged 6 a friend who wasn't allowed to see his real dad and his mum and step dad, whom he had to call dad hit him every time he complained.
I remember asking them if that was true. And they gave him such a thrashing neighbours intervened
We were living abroad on a company compound the stepfather was fired and they left soon after
These days I feel sick wondering what happened to him

When I was 7 my Aunty brought back a giant lollipop from Disneyland, big deal for me in the 80s. I saved it for a sunny afternoon and started to eat it in the garden.

Next thing I knew there was a girl watching me from next doors garden. A family that had just moved in. She went to get her mum, who beckoned me into their house (she didn’t speak English) so I had no idea why.

Once inside the kitchen she took my lollipop and her big meat cleaver. Then chopped my lollipop into two pieces on a big chopping board- on the floor- covered in a mountain of raw chicken 🤮

She gave me back half the lollipop and I crossed back over into my garden and put it straight in the bin. My mum worked in catering so I was aware of hygiene and how unsafe raw chicken was. I cried about that lollipop. Bitch!

Had a friend who's mum and dad kept the Christmas tree and decorations up year round. Similar to a previous poster also had a friends mum who wouldn't let them/me have anything at all to drink with food or for about an hour before serving!

Friends Dad cutting the unicorn birthday cake with a fag in his hand. Not judging just wierd.

A friend’s dad always used to go on about how wearing knickers in bed was dirty

Never saw/heard anything else of note and the family seemed fine otherwise but always thought it was weird. Seems many times weirder now I type it.

Would have been about 7-11

hiphiphoorayback did we have the same friend

i grew up in a large house with 1 sibling. DM & DSD were medical professionals so worked long hours. my sibling is a lot older than me so did most of my childcare and school pickups, around their college/uni schedule.

i had a friend who lived in a 3 bed house with 2 parents and 5 siblings. her dad was a teacher and her mum didnt work. their house was full of random bowls and dishes and nothing matched. the christmas tree wasnt decorated "themed" all one colour and had dough decorations and things they had made all around the house. they were even encouraged to help put it up. their mum attended every school nativity and sports day and helped out at brownies. she home baked fresh bread pretty much daily. if you were at her house come 5pm an extra plate was set at the table for you. there was clutter everywhere but the house was clean. they were allowed the heating on whenever they liked and someone was always playing the old piano in the corner of the dining room. there was always noise from her siblings playing but i dont remember fighting or squabbling. they had 1 tv between them all so instead they all read or played board games or did crafts. going there was such a sanctuary from my empty, sterile, cold house. i used to be fascinated by them though, it was just so different to my life.

another friends dad used to have a bookshelf full of hitler books and would make trips, on his own, to hitlers house in austria.

another friends parents were alcoholics. after work they would go straight to the pub. when younger she would join them but, as a 10 year old, she was left alone. every evening, until around midnight. she would make her own dinner and get herself ready for school the next day and put herself to bed. they also never gave her a key, they would just leave the patio door open at the back of the house 24/7 . she would have to ring them every hour, on the hour to let them know she was ok. back then mobiles werent really an everyday thing (early 90s) so she would have to ring the pubs landline and the barmaid would shout over her mum. i remember once we were out playing and she lost track of time. her mum came thundering back from the pub and gave her an earful and demanded she get in the house...then went back to the pub. they spent the whole weekends in the pub as well but would demand she go up for her dinner so they could eat together.

One of my friends had a mum who ran a bat sanctuary in their back garden. It was for wee injured bats. When I stayed over we fed them over our breakfast. Only wee injured bats eat - live maggots! So you had to get a maggot out of the enormous maggot dome and crunch its brains with tweezers before feeding it to the bat.

My favourite inmate was Zeebee. He only had one wing.

I once babysat for a family when I was around 13. There was 4 girls and the eldest was only a year or so younger than me so it was odd. They were very religious and had lots of religious paintings etc. Otherwise the house was very plain. They were also doomsday preppers and had a room in the basement filled with all sorts of dehydrated food, barrels, water, fuel. They also had a pool but none of the girls knew how to swim! It was all too weird. I only went a few times and then told them I couldn’t come anymore.

I used to live going to my friend's house and staying over on a Friday as her mum was at work. The neighbour an elderly man called Franco would look after us. He was a Polish Jewish man who had survived Auschwitz and despite watching his mother,father and brother die he just loved the world. I remember he loved telling stories and looking back I realized that the stories were his own experiences with a few less gory additions for children.They always had a moral ending and he would play dominoes while he told them. Franco shaped my moral conscience. He died when I was 13 and I broke my heart crying needing a week off school. Hd had nobody in the world, my friend and her mum had no other family either and they found eachother. My goodness that is the first time in 20 years Ive mentioned him. God bless you Franco.

My dm had a friend down the road who we used to visit. She had a young son who was described as ‘hyperactive’ in the language of the time. His mother would tie a rope round his waist and loop the other end round the washing line, so he could run up and down the garden on his leash without escaping.

Not as a kid but as 20-something.
Boyfriend's parents had divorced very acrimoniously.

BF and I were going on a camping trip with his brothers, hid father, father's girlfriend. We had a 25hr drive to his father's place (which i found out later was girlfriend's father's house). As I arrived I asked to use the loo and they SHOUTED ' No'. We were given directions to McD's about 8miles away. Came back and another brother arrived and his girlfriend asked to use the loo-and was allowed. I was banned as I had never met the homeowner before.

Then getting back into the car, the father slammed the car door on my fingers,....and we had to go back to McD to wash the blood off and try and reduce the swelling.

Why I continued on to the weekend away, I have no idea.

When I was about 9 a friend came round to my house and was amazed when I helped myself to a tangerine from the fruit bowl, she was never allowed to help herself to any food without permission which was often denied. So I then said she could have any piece of fruit she wanted which also amazed her. Every time she came round after she would run to the fruit bowl for some fruit. I got a bit annoyed about this and mentioned to my mum who shook her head and said she was a guest and could help herself to what fruit she liked.

I went round to her house on Sunday afternoons and at 5 the family sat down to eat and each always had a small piece of pumpernickel bread on a plate in front of them on which you could put a little bit of chopped up onion or tomato with maybe a tiny piece of cheese or gherkin. That was it. Her DM was German and had been a child during the war (so I guess had experienced the severe rationing at the end of the war). I asked my friend about this meal and she said it was how you eat in Germany.

My friend developed bulimia when she left home to go to college and she died in her early 40s.

I realise now that her bulimia partly stemmed from the food restrictions and rules.

“ The dad slept downstairs on the snooker table “

OMG this has pushed my giggle button I am howling 😂😂😂😂

I remember a family up the road who had a huge pig in the back garden. The garden was just mud as you can imagine.
I remember my friend (from pig garden family) asking her Mum was was for dinner and she slurred ‘I dunno, shit with sugar on’.
I was so shocked, my Mum was a polite jelly and ice cream type Mum so I’d never heard anything like it in my life!

So many sad stories p

I had friends who didn't have mains electricity their parents had to start the generator when they wanted lights on.

I had a female friend who taught me how to snog when we were really very young. Too young to be honest. I don't know where she learned it. Certainly no internet then.

Not as a child, but I saw the most unusual toilet cistern in someone's posh house: it was transparent, and contained live fish! And yes, the water level in the cistern dropped when the toilet was flushed, but only to about half full, and was clearly designed to prevent any casualties. I asked if the fish seemed to mind their water being changed so regularly; the homeowner told me that those fish had lived longer than any others they'd had.

When I was about 10 I went to a new friends house. She lived with her grandparents in a little house that did have an upstairs but all that was up there was my friends bedroom. She told me when I got there that I had to use her toilet in her room if I needed to go, that the downstairs bathroom was only for adults, all fine and good and I was rather impressed she had her own loo.

When the time came and I needed to go though I realised I hadn’t seen another room up there or a toilet anywhere.. the toilet was halfway up the wall in a little cupboard. There were no steps or even a ladder to get up to it and you had to stand on a wooden trunk type thing to reach it. She showed me how to get up there, climbed on the box and used her arms to sort of hop up into it. Even as an adult I’m only 4ft11 so I couldn’t do this at all and she had to literally push me up into it by my butt... I closed the door and there was no light in there or a window so it was pitch black, and when I came to get back out it was so high up I was too scared to try and get down. She had to make me another ‘step’ out of books.

We would definitely have been the weird ones growing up. We had no TV (70s and 80s) and weren't really allowed to do anything. We always had really gross clothes because my parents thought vanity was a sin. I remember going to one girl's house and her mum had a bottle of babycham on the shelf and I'd never seen alcohol before. Another time I went to someone else's house and my mum said I could never go again - I'm not sure why - she'd been removed from her mum's care and lived with her grandma and I think they were very poor. All my friends had single parent families and I think that was because back then they were also unusual in our little village - we were the odd ones out together.
I think of us as incredibly normal and average now. We have two teenagers. But DD says her friends think we're really weird because we eat meals together, we talk to each other about anything and we watch TV together etc. They only go downstairs to get their food. But one of the friends came to stay over the Christmas holidays and I could hear her raving about our Christmas tree because hers was "like a show home" and she said to DD that it represented how warm or family is compared to most. They all like coming here even though we have the smallest house so I don't mind our being the weird ones in that regard.
I think my childhood was quite messed up in a lot of ways but I think my parents genuinely cared about us (even though they never said so, not once) so we all got through it. All my siblings and I are very different from them (and constantly tell our children we love them) but my parents have said that they think we're doing a much better job than they did.

I went to senior school with a girl who’s aunt appeared to live with her and was identical to her mother except with bleached white blonde hair, her mum had dyed jet black hair. Both wore loads of mascara that made them look like they had spiders as eyelashes. I was round there once and the aunt was on her dads lap, stroking his neck while her mum was sat on the other sofa. They all used to pick her from school everyday as well. Her dad was a very large, loud overbearing man. If anyone asked her about the family dynamic she laughed about it. I got the impression she quite liked the attention she got for having an eccentric home life, which in itself was a bit sad.

My lunch sandwich box always had a few extras, or an extra apple.

I grew up in a loving home with always enough to eat but I can remember from school a little girl (maybe 7 or 8) who would ask to go to the toilet and raid the other kids' lunchboxes. Only as I got older did it occur to me that she wasn't getting enough to eat at home. I always pack a few extras in DD's lunchbox and tell her to share if someone is still hungry. I just can bear the thought of a child being hungry.

I was the kid everyone found my house weird. I brought a friend over for tea, she said afterwards it was odd.

My brother laying flat on the floor drawing war scenes and and making 'war' noise, the sounds of explosions, calls to comrades you name it.

Then my mum arrived, she'd been to the flea market and bought half of it, she showed us what she had got then lay on the settee with a fag and a cup of tea and started going, "ooo, ahh" really loud as if she was in terrible pain and gripping her side.

My dad worked evenings so had gone out.

My friend said it was really weird that me and my brother just ignored my mum, she thought we should be calling an ambulance but we were used to it.

Another time in my 30s I was visiting a friend, we were attempting a chinese duck recipe that said the duck should be as dry as possible.

Well it had just been defrosted so we decided to use a hairdryer on cold in an attempt to replicate the duck being hung up outside.

My friends children were quite used to us doing weird things but one of their friends walked through the kitchen and stopped dead. My friend just turned to him and said, "what are you looking at? Doesn't you mum dry duck with a hairdryer?"

I went to a friend's house for tea many years ago, and when we finished eating, she and her sister both chanted "Thank you mummy for a very nice meal, and please may I leave the table?

We used to have to do that, then we moved and stopped eating round the table as a family.