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!

Looking back, the raw sausage sandwiches that my auntie Floss used to give me appear very odd
I really like them and looked forward to them each visit!
Can't possibly imagine eating those now

@Howcouldyoubelieveme did your parents know?

@PlausibleSuit holy fuck that is batshit

@lyralalala

I had a friend at about 11-12 years of age whose house I slept at regularly. Her dad was ex army. He was very strict and had routines for them like they were in the army too. Showers were timed - 3 minutes, run out, next person in! Dinner was strained and uncomfortable with odd conversation. No matter what the meal was, even if you hated it, you had to tell them how lovely it was and thank them. Fucking weird. My kids would just say 'oh mum can we have pasta next time? I don't really like tuna bake me neither it's disgusting'. Everyone tip toed around her dad. He would drink drive with us in the car too.

Another friend, not weird, just much stricter than my house but as a child I was shocked. She had very limited tv time and wasn't allowed to watch the Simpsons. When I say limited tv time remember there was no unlimited Netflix back then, there wasn't that much available! I loved after school cartoons and watching music videos on a Saturday morning!

I was at a friend's house when I was about 6/7 and we found a porno/nudey magazine. Obviously had no concept of it at the time but it was a bit bizarre thinking about it now.

I had a friend whose mum was always ill and stayed in bed a lot, so we had the run of the house. The house wasn’t very clean so we used to tidy up, wash windows, etc. Her father used to come home and yell at them all, and slap my friend in front of me. He was a scary man. I don’t know what happened to the family in the end as I went to a different secondary school, but I found my old friend on FB singing the praises of her dad and no mention of her mum. Not sure what to make of that.

We were definitely the weird ones with regards to food.

I remember going to a friend's house and they got chip suppers and I was amazed that we all got our own individual fish and chips. At my house, we got two fish suppers to share between five.

Everything was like that. I'm still amazed by how little my parents eat, they'll literally eat one sausage, a spoon of mash, a spoon of vegetables and that's it.

Every time we go out to eat, they talk about the massive portions of food, if we go to someone else's house, they always talk about how much we ate afterwards...at some point, you'd think they'd realise that everyone else is eating a normal amount and they are the odd ones out.

I don't know if they have issues with food or something, but if I go to their house, I have to bring snacks for me and my husband because even if they give us double or triple the usual portions, it's still not enough.

I made friends with a new girl at school when I was about 10-11 and would go to her house occasionally, and met her mum and her mum’s bf (who she didn’t refer to as step dad). The bf was younger than her mum, and other than one incident where he drove for a day out and had serious road rage, he was really fun. A few months after I met, and after a phase where she’d been at my house more than I had hers, I went round and another guy was living with the family. I was told that this was her step dad, her mum’s husband, and father to her younger brother...and we weren’t to mention that the bf had ever lived there. This guy was really serious and quite intimidating (although as an adult I know he was a softy, just had a biker type image) so I daren’t even talk to him in case I accidentally mentioned something we’d done with the bf.

Another friend, who I was close to from maybe 13-14 until we left for university, had parents who didn’t seem to do anything. Her dad had a long commute and was out of the house 6am-7pm. Her mum worked 10-4 in an easy job. My friend, from probably around 14, was up at 5ish to do her paper round, then got ready for school, got her youngest sibling ready for primary school and walked them there, went and did her own school day, then went home and did some tidying up and laundry before (from the age of maybe 15 onwards) taking her younger sibling to swimming lessons. Overall she could be on the go from 5am-7pm while her mum did 10-4 then put her feet up. The middle brother, who was maybe 2-3 years younger, was expected to do most of the cooking from the age of 12-13. I’m all for teaching kids to be independent but in their house it felt like they had to do everything for their parents.

@disinterestedparty, are your parents as thin as you'd expect from their tiny observed intake?

Slightly pushing the definition of childhood, but I went to a friend's house aged 16 or so firstly we were only allowed in the "conservatory" (which was how you entered the house and felt more like a solid room, but was actually made out of corrugated plastic sheeting) and they had grape vines literally growing inside it. You could pick the grapes off and eat them (I tried one - they were sour). You were allowed to quickly go into the house to use the toilet but nothing else. I have a weird feeling that we actually all slept in there, on duvets/blow up beds on the tiled floor The toilet was one of those really old fashioned ones with a high cistern and a chain. Quite often you'd go to use it and the previous person's mess would just be festering there, but you had to go on top of it because it took ages to refill. Apparently I was the only friend who had ever managed to flush it successfully and his dad was impressed :o Friend casually mentioned (another time) that there was a wasp's nest in the roof/window of his bedroom, like this was no big deal. I was terrified of wasps, and probably would have moved out :o

Reader, I married him and I could never begin to list all of the strangeness in that house. I think the most alarming thing is the many many portraits of DH and his siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews in various states of childhood which adorn the walls of many of the rooms (and especially the staircase) and stare creepily at you. Or possibly the coffee table which is a statue of a naked woman holding up a slab of glass Unknown visitors are still confined to the conservatory (which leaks) so they don't get to witness these treasures. Sad though as the house is full of their family history but crumbling apart. FIL was (sort of) keeping on top of the maintenance of it but died in 2018.

In childhood I was rather easily unsettled. I was afraid of the outside toilet at my cousin's house (it was ancient and full of spiders to be fair) and the one at my grandparents' house (more modern - Grandad had it built so he didn't trudge mud through the house when he was gardening). And I remember going to a sleepover at a friend's house and finding it weird that they didn't wear pants under their pyjamas - she found me totally weird that I wanted to :) I didn't quite trust the feeling of things not being "contained" and worried I might accidentally wet the bed if not wearing pants, since the only time I ever took my pants off was when going to the toilet or having a bath. One time at someone's house I accidentally knocked a full spare toilet roll into the toilet, and I told the mum and she made me pick it out myself which really upset me for some reason - I had thought that she would magically deal with it!

I think we might have been the weird house for some of my friends - one of my teenage friends went on and on about how we had (occupied) guinea pig hutches stacked up in the kitchen and how unsanitary it was, and how I was once cooking him a sausage and it fell on the floor and I just put it back in the pan. My thought process was that the heat would kill any germs anyway. I thought my mum was obsessed with cleaning/tidying but in hindsight, our house was an utter tip most of the time. She was probably going on about cleaning to try and get us to keep it in an acceptable state

A friend's Mum was peculiar. If I ever went for tea the exact same meal and pudding were always served. And it was the exact same meal the Mum cooked every day apparently. The Mum also never once read my friend any children's stories because she (the Mum) hated reading anything that 'wasn't real'. Instead she would read newspaper articles or instruction manuals to my friend Even though they had a perfectly good bathroom the Mum used to strip wash and wash her hair in the kitchen sink because she was 'scared' of the shower somehow. When my friend sit with her first boyfriend and was really upset she came round to us because her Mum had got really stressed at her beung upset and had gone and locked herself in the bathroom away from her daughter. There were loads more incidents and looking back I suspect the Mum had Asperger's or autism. She also had a very monotone voice and constantly used the same phrases over and over too.

The family over the road from mine lived in a very large Manor House , and the girls went to private school. They were nice and I would go to their house in the holidays and vice versa. Going for tea they would be “presented” to their mum in a formal sitting room and she would shake their hands and ask them to tell her about their day. I had to say what I had done too, I quite liked it actually as I was a chatty kid.

Then we would be dismissed to their dining room and we would be served (!) by staff and then we could go to their living room to play games or watch tv.

They were nice, but this was the early 90s, not the turn of the century!

They came to my house for dinner and we all just ate together and my mum still remembers that the older girl said “on my birthday I’m allowed to eat with my parents and you do it every day” with such admiration in her voice.

Shameless placemarking so I can read later. 'Watch thread' doesn't work on my app.

@DisinterestedParty I think eating like that used to be fairly normal. My grandparents were exactly the same, and when I was a kid our portions even in our own house were a fraction of the size I serve my own family now. My grandparents were slim, fit and healthy and lived to be nearly 100. There were very few overweight people when I was a child in the seventies. I think increasing portion size is largely responsible for the huge increase in obesity nowadays.

One of our neighbours growing up had a full length glass door for their bathroom. Although it was frosted you could still see in and the toilet was directly in front. Their bathroom was face on as you got to the top of the stairs.

I never wanted to use their loo

I'm afraid I'm a one sausage kind of person. I'm not tiny....I just eat very often. So I will have one sausage and a spoon of mash because an hour ago I will have had a bowl of porridge or a bag of crisps or something

I had a friend who wasn't allowed to even drink water with asking permission. No extra food, ever, even the apples were rationed per child and with a set time for eating.

A friend didn’t have a flushing toilet. Had to fill a bucket and pour the water into flush. They also put toilet paper into the bin next to the toilet.

No Hoover either, had to sweep the carpet with a broom.

She had to share a bed with her sisters.

She did have some toys but they were kept in boxes and packaging and all displayed around their bedroom.

The mum just sat in the living room all the time and watched telly, she just watched children’s programs.

I went to a friends house and was only allowed to go in the “front room” as children wasn’t allowed in the living room . Even my friend 🤦‍♀️

Remember going round a friends house in the early 90s and her dad was obsessed with Sam Fox. Photos everywhere and I remember they had one of those mirrors with a photo of her printed on it. The mum seemed pretty embarrassed by the whole thing, even though I was too young to know she was a page 3 star. I just thought she was some naff singer.

My first boyfriend had parents who were divorced but lived in the same house. It was an awful atmosphere. His dad ran some sort of mens rights organisation but his mum was very sweet and kind. Both of them refused to move out and let the other one have the house, so they had apparently been in a stalemate for years. Boyfriend ended up being an abusive knobend too.

I once went to a house where the girls had dozens of dolls and a beautiful dolls house but they weren't allowed to play with them which I thought was weird

Hmm...I'm afraid we were definitely the weird ones in my school friends' eyes. Saying grace (always painful when 'outsiders' were round, I can feel myself going hot in the face at the memory), exceedingly religious texts and calendars up on the walls, no TV, not able to play on Sundays...or indeed mix much at all with aforementioned outsiders; I was never allowed to go for sleepovers to friends who weren't in the same religious group as us. This was in the early 00's

RIP Franco stinkycatbreath

I remember going to a friend’s house after school when I was about ten and her parents were scarily strict. We were watching Blue Peter in the sitting room when her dad came in and went mad that we were watching television. He turned it off, disappeared for about five minutes and came back with a piece of paper which said: “This fries children’s brains!” and he stuck it to the screen with sellotape. Absolutely batshit.

Back in the early 1960s when I was at my first school - a strange little private establishment - I had a very jolly friend who lived in the same town as me. She'd been to tea at my (at the time fairly conventional, rather suburban 3-bedroomed) house and eventually, I was invited to hers. Her family lived in a huge Gothic style Victorian house set in large gardens which mainly consisted of fairly oppressive and very dark green shrubbery. The outside didn't really prepare you for the complete and utter tip that was inside and I'd never, ever, seen dirt quite like it, let alone the general state of collapse of both structure and contents. My friend and her brother and sister had complete free run of it though and we could slide up and down the (almost certainly unsafe) bannisters, and do pretty much as we wanted. I never saw her mother who was 'unwell' and lived in her own part of the house but her father was very nice and clearly loved his family although as he was a local solicitor, was out at work most of the time. Apparently 'someone' came in to do basic cooking and housework. Not that there was any sign of this!

On my first visit, having run about the house like wild things for an hour or so, my friend suggested we got a snack to keep us going until teatime. So we went into the dirtiest kitchen imaginable - I'd never realised that you could turn a cooker literally black! - she grabbed two dirty glasses and filled them with cold water and then invited me to help myself to as many biscuits as I wanted. From a large and clearly marked sack of Spiller's Dog Biscuits.

I just remembered that I had a friend whose house I went to.
House was massive and family clearly not short of money, but was a fucking tip, piles of stuff everywhere. Dirty washing dumped on the living room floor, shitty nappies on the kitchen counters etc.
Upstairs separate toilet was missing some floorboards, but her dad had laid down a plank of wood like a gymnastics balance beam to make a route across where there was a hole. (door was also missing). I just held onto my wee until I got home later. God knows how they bathed, as there were bags of stuff in the bath (and also no door) but friend never smelt and her parents both looked clean too.
Not so much weird as just dirty, but friend obviously found it normal, although her room was very tidy and clean with expensive furniture etc!

I went to school with the daughter of a famous 'hell-raising' musician of the 1970's. Her house was just fantastic. Full of memorabilia and art. Their living room was split down the middle with one half painted in her mum's choice and the other in her dad's. There was a cupboard with calendars from each year signed by all the Beatles. The garden had ornaments and sculptures that her Dad had done. It was amazing and so much more interesting than our boring magnolia home!