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!

My mum moved towns as a child but kept in touch with one school friend. When I was around 11 I went to stay with this friend without my parents (which is a bit weird in itself - I had only met her once before, but she was lovely and I guess it was seen as a holiday for me and a break for my parents). She lived with DH and toddler DS. Not long after I arrived her DH said that I was lucky he was wearing clothes because he usually wore nothing at home (why would you tell an 11 year old that?). One morning I was in bed and DS came charging into 'my' room to see me... closely followed by my mum's friend who was totally naked! My own parents were very much always clothed so this seemed very odd to me. Nothing untoward happened, but it made me feel very uncomfortable.

I also remember going for tea with my best friend at the time (aged around 12) and her dad taking the piss out of my weight (I was a chubby preteen and very sensitive about it) - he'd say things like "You're a big girl aren't you!" and "Oh I'm not sure if we've got enough food in the house to feed you!" No wonder I've struggled with eating related issues all of my adult life! What a pillock!

A group of us stayed at my friends house must of been around 11/12 and her mum put us all in this attic/storage room as she didn’t want downstairs a mess, then came up at 7pm and made us all lay down to go to sleep! This was perfectly normal to our friend, she absolutely screamed at me for going to the toilet at 10pm because I had my chance before getting in bed! I never ever stayed there again, then the next day her dad in the front room kept driving this RC car into our feet and if we moved them found it hilarious we were “scared” I’m not going to lie as an adult now I can see why the friend I had then is now very very odd.

This thread is absolutely jaw-dropping! I knew people were weird, but if even half these posts are true...?! My own contribution is tame in comparison - I remember when I was 10 or so I came downstairs at a friends house, after bedtime, to get a drink of water, and caught her parents settled in front of teletubbies.

I went into my friend's house when I was about 11? There was cardboard all over the floor, not as carpet or lino, just flattened cardboard boxes. You had to push them out of the way to open any doors. In the kitchen was a coffee table with a butter dish left out, with an opened loaf of bread and a jar of jam. No problem, you might think, but we were in Australia and the butter was like a puddle and the bread was mouldy. She made a jam sandwich, picking the mould off and slopping minging runny butter and jam on the bread. There was a knife lying on the floor that she picked up, wiped on her jumper and used that. There was cups and plates lying about covered in God knows what, she tipped whatever crap was on the plate onto the floor and used that plate. The dogs ate the crap from the floor.
She had a pet mouse which escaped, never found it (amongst that debris that's no surprise!)
My mum was relatively tidy round the house, so going into a house that was so disgusting was quite an eye opener. Very odd.

I remember in the 80s being invited to a friend's house when I was 11, and their house was incredibly posh. We had burger and chips for dinner around a huge, beautifully laid table for 12, just me the girl and her parents. I remember being shocked because they ate their burger with a knife and fork. It was the first time I felt quite common as they looked really disapproving when I picked mine up with my hands!

When I was about 10 I was invited to sleep over at a friend's house. After tea, friend's mum gave us both a glass of milk. I told her I didnt like milk and asked for a glass of water instead. She refused and insisted I had to drink the milk, saying my friend had a glass of milk every night after tea and every morning before breakfast and that as I was staying over I had to do the same. I repeated that I didnt like milk and then we went off to play. Later when getting ready for bed, friend's mum came upstairs with the glass of milk and told me I had to drink it before I could go to bed and reminded me I would have to drink one before breakfast in the morning. I absolutely despised milk and the thought of having to drink it made me feel ill so I again told her I didnt like it. We went back and forth for a few minutes her insisting and me refusing before she eventually rang my mum to come collect me.

Not weird but it was just funny for me really. Also didn't have a clue what their bidet was for and had hysterics when told it was for washing bottoms!

We were definitely the weird family, loads of us in a tiny house, no tv usually, a couple of times we had a tv for a while but we rarely had it on unless we knew there was a programme we wanted to watch. No carpets in the house. Huge gardens with loads of random stuff in them, caravans and bits of random vehicles and sheds made out of random stuff. Had a pony living in the garden for a while. No doors inside the house apart from bedrooms and bathroom. Parents slept in the living room. As a teenager if I wanted friends for sleepovers we had to camp in the garden. My dad didn’t work but also didn’t do anything round the house or for any of us kids. My mum did literally everything. My mum was (still is) very warm and welcoming and we frequently had random people staying with us for weeks on end. My mum frequently rearranged all the furniture, the house was very cluttered and chaotic. We grew a lot of our own veg and always had home cooked meals, rarely had processed food. Very rarely had a dining table but ate all meals together sat around on the floor/sofa. Never had a microwave which lots of people found odd! In my mind my best friend was the odd one, she had a tv in her room, a huge, neat, modern house, and when I stayed for tea we had pizza and chips! Her parents both worked, her ponies lived in a stables down the road and not her garden, and I could sleep over in a guest bed instead of sharing her bed!

Forgot to add that was in the 90s/early 2000s

@HaggardMumofToddler me too!!!

Not me but my daughter who went to tea at her friends house when she was about 11. After eating, they carried the plates to the toilet where they scraped the food off into the toilet before taking them back to the kitchen to wash!

Oh and suggesting they both strip off and have a jacuzzi bath together as that's what she (the mother) does with her friends.

Daughter didnt go back again. A few years ago (about 6 years later) the father got outed as a paedophile and sent to jail for abusing a young girl. Eek!!

@Bowerbird5 you can here funnelwebs puffing?

Hear

I used to go to my friend's house quite alot especially between the ages of 6 and 8. We lived a few doors down from each other. Anyway her house was soooo messy and dirty. No where to comfortably sit, the kitchen was a warzone and the garden was totally overgrown. I quite liked visiting as we used to play dress up using the theatre costumes her mum had made and her older sister was really fun. However, the weird thing my friend did regularly was ....piss in her wardrobe. I remember being quite shocked by this. She even said I could follow suit if I liked - I naturally refused. Her sister would shout downstairs to her mum - N has weed in the wardrobe again!! This whole family were extremely intelligent, social and well liked, but lived like feral cats. I have no idea why she would do that.

I remember going to my primary school friends house early one sunday evening as mum announced it was nearly bath time and not to miss their turn. I then found out all 5 kids in the family shared the barely 3 foot or so of bath water, oldest child had the privilege of using it first. As this was just a weekly event ( still 'normal' in many households today ) the youngest child must have come out of the filthy water dirtier than they went in. Stank too.

I also remember going to my friends grans house and she regularly gave us raw sausage to eat and the red rind off edam cheese to chomp on. The mind boggles.

I sometimes walked home with this kid from school in the 1970s. We were about 9 or 10. We would get to his house and I would continue home. One day he said wanted to show me a toy that he had and we were both walking up his garden path when the front door flung open and this woman came running towards us holding something. She had such a grim and determined expression on her face. I started to run and she threw a full bucket of water over him. He just stood there drenched, his arms by his side, not reacting.

As a kid I was stunned, not really understanding what I was seeing. She grabbed him by the collar and marched him inside shouting at me to go home. This all happened in seconds. I went home completely confused and never mentioned it to my parents and the kid avoided me after that. I once asked him if that was his mum and he said yes but didn’t say anymore and I sensed not to ask.

HRTFT as too long. Our neighbours all wore their coats/jackets indoors all the time - even in summer. I’d go in and they’d be scrunched up on the couch all in their coats with arms folded as if we lived in Siberia. I’d be in shorts and t shirt

@aroundtheworldyet I thought GHDs we're straighteners? I don't want to straighten my hair, just dry it... also my DS has hair almost to his waist, so his needs drying too, not straightening (though it's like a poker already)

Going to a friends house to see their cat on the kitchen unit licking the food in the saucepans that they were about to serve up!

Not being allowed in a friends house at all. We had to play in the garden, and if I wanted the loo I had to run home. It wasn’t just me, none of her friends were allowed in the house.

@bintang
They are! It was so long ago I’ve forgotten why I said you should get them!

@minou123

I know someone who grew up LIVING IN BEAMISH!!

One weird thing I remember was that my friend had parents who lived in different houses. I had never come across that before. I must have been early primary school.

I remember someone once saying they found my house strange because my dad just sat in the chair all night. I thought that was just a dad thing.

I made a new friend when I went to secondary school and her parents started asking me to stay over on Saturday nights (this was in the 70s, no such word as sleepover).

This was unusual for the time. No one I knew did it. But my parents were ok about it. But not ok at all when they realized the invitations were purely so my friend and I could be used as babysitters for her very disabled younger brother.

I'd forgotten about that until this thread jogged my memory. I remember being so relieved when my mother said she didn't want me to go again. The poor boy was quite scary.

The same friend dried her first sanitary towel and kept in the airing cupboard as a souvenir.

Then there was a boy near us who lived in a huge house and went to Eton. His dad had a Rolls. The poor lad had his own flat inside the house and lived there all alone. They had staff who looked after his meals, laundry etc but no one seemed to care about him. He was an only child and I wondered why they'd had a child at all. Even at 12 I wasn't fool enough to envy his money and luxury.

Had friend as a teenager whose family were (and are) lovely, used to let me stay with them as long as I liked during school holidays. Rather posh with a large detached house, separate cutlery for first and main courses, etc. Friend and sister made to have lovely manners.

So I was surprised when we had a Sunday roast, people finished eating, and friend, sis and mum all picked up their plates and licked up all the (delicious, home-made) gravy! Mum was embarrassed and asked me not to tell anyone!

My mum wouldn't let me watch Why Don't You... because the kids spoke with regional accents. I never even asked about Grange Hill!

The lady who lived beside us as kids in the late 80's early 90s' would go through our bin and take whatever she wanted. My dad was sadly unemployed for a while after being made redundant when I was 6 months old so it really was rubbish that she was taking as my parents both used to alter things for as long as they could to keep fitting us etc.

My mum got really annoyed and started making sure that what she did put in the bin was proper rubbish. (this lady was in her 70/80's then and was properly eccentric - I think it'd be dementia now) and started cutting up everything that she put into the bin - this lady then removed the net curtains from our bin that had been cut to literal shreds and put them up at her windows.

Sadly when I was around 7/8ish and we (my brother and I) had been put to bed I kept going down to my parents to tell them I could smell smoke and it turned out that next door (the old lady) was on fire after she'd fallen asleep whilst smoking and the neighbours the other side had gone in to rescue her. She didn't make it - poor love. I often think of her and her daughter/grandson.