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 grew up on a council estate in a mining village. My best friend lived across the road from us and they had an electric kettle which was obviously faulty. Her grandad used to tell us to feel the kettle to see if it was warm. We got a mild electric shock and he thought it was hilarious! He did it every time and we never thought of refusing . My friend and I thought it was quite funny (we were 8 and her sister was 6) but when I told my mum about it there was a huge fuss and the kettle disappeared.

I always put out cutlery and plates for fish n chips. Doesn’t everyone?

Cutlery and plates for fish and chips is normal.

My Mum also talked about sugar butties being a luxurious treat (probably 1930s) and sometimes gave them to us as children in the 60s. She was from Liverpool. I had West Indian friends in the 70s who had condensed milk sandwiches and condensed milk in their tea which I quite liked.

Not weird or from childhood but on the bidet point, a builder friend fitted one for a Muslim customer. The chap drives a taxi and he's picked my friend up a few times. Each time he tells my friend how happy he is with "my bum washer". Tickles me

@SillyUnMurphy - I agree! The funny ones are great, brilliant idea for a thread OP, I’m enjoying reading those. But some of them are making me feel sick, it’s horrifically sad. I’m sorry for those who had less than loving upbringings xx

Re. weird family eating habits...my DD was invited to a birthday celebration at a really swish new icecream place in town. It serves big, luxurious sundaes...you know...three flavours and loaded with your choice of toppings...sweets, nuts, cream etc.

Well...there was DD...the birthday girl and two other little girls she'd invited, plus the Mum and Dad and the little brother.

Everyone ordered and then it became clear that the expected thing to do was pass your dessert around the table so everyone else could try it.

A sort of revolving dessert circle.

DD was disgusted.

She didn't want to eat from a glass everyone else had eaten from! But what could she do? She had to force herself to or it would spoil things.

The worst thing to her was that the little brother was allowed to keep his to himself because "I only like this one"

That family must do this all the time but it's amazing it didn't occur to them that non-family members wouldn't find it nice!

When I was about 10, I was spent some time at a friend's house after school. We were messing around with her mother's make up and things, I know we shouldn't and I would be horrified if my daughter did the same.
We came across a pair of very lacy crotchless knickers. Neither my friend nor I could work out why such a piece of clothing would exist. I even went home and asked my mother about them. She went very red faced and changed the subject immediately.
The mother in question was lovely but outwardly very conservative.

School friend when we were about 9-13 years old had two older brothers who were adopted, and she was their parents’ only biological child. She used to say all the time, and in front of them, that she was their parents’ ‘miracle child’ and they only adopted her brothers because they thought they couldn’t have children. Her brothers always struck me as sad and detached, and their parents clearly favoured my friend considerably.

Another friend, similar ages to above, was adopted and her parents very clearly favoured their two biological children. Her clothes, toys and bedroom furniture/accessories etc looked like it had all come from the worst dregs of a charity shop while her older brother and younger sister had lovely new-looking things. I had also heard them introducing their children to their new neighbour as ‘my son A, my daughter B, and my adopted daughter C.’ My mother was always disgusted at her parents and how they treated her, and looking back she was a very screwed-up child

A friend and I had a sleepover over at a mutual friend’s house when we were about 10. We had all known each other and all our parents for years. Once in bed the friend’s mother came in and told my friend and I give her our knickers so she could wash them so they’d be ready for the morning. We both pointed out we had overnight bags with clean clothing but she would not have it. We both felt uncomfortable and pressured, and she wouldn’t leave the room until we handed over our knickers.

All those people who ate "raw" sausages - are you sure it wasn't liver sausage?

"Raw" sausage meat is apparently actually cooked - it's been boiled or summat! (Or so I was told by a uni friend who used to eat it. Her family was vair' posh and she farted five-pound notes, so to speak, so I was quite surprised that she had even heard of sausages . . . )

I went back to a friends house for tea as a child. Her mum picked us up from school and nobody spoke in the car. We gets to a long driveway with massively overgrown gardens on either side. We pull up to a huge Victorian house standing in its own grounds, looked like it was falling to bits. The inside of the house was dirty and smelt funny ... like herbs that had gone off. All their furniture was old and mucky. The mum disappeared and the friend stood there in this silent massive house, shrugged her shoulders and said “what do you want to do?” ... it was like she’d never had a friend over before! I asked if we should play in her room so we went upstairs and all she had was functional furniture, no toys or anything. We ended up heading for the garden which was absolutely immaculate with peacocks etc!! So weird when the house was a bit of a shithole. Maybe they were renovating?

I once asked the mum what her job was she told me she did autopsy’s...thing is she always went to work wearing mini skirts thigh high boots and a fur coat and was picked up by various men...it’s only looking back with the eyes of an adult that I’ve realised she was probably a prostitute

Faffing about with the dead, anyway, I suppose . . .

Sounds strange but I grew up in an awful house so the weirdest thing I saw which was so bonkers to me I remember it so clearly even though I was only about 5.
I went round a friends house for the first time after school.
The house was clean, there wasn’t empty bottles everywhere, it was quiet. We played in the living room with Barbies.
Her dad came home from work and I literally wet myself but he didn’t shout/hit/scream. He walked over to her mum and kissed her! Said hello to us and asked us about our game! It was like being in the twilight zone, I was so confused and weirded out I never went back!

On my French exchange (1984, Vichy grin) we had dinner one evening and once we’d finished the main course we turned the plates over and had pudding off the other side of the plate - within the ring on the bottom of the plate.

That's quite normal at village feasts in France where you might be catering for 50 -100 people and it's all done by volunteers who want to minimise the washing up. The plate is slightly dished, so you will have your soup in it first. The bread comes next so you can wipe the plate. Then cold meats or cold fish, then the mains... And yes, of course you have to wipe the topside of the plate clean with bread again before the cheeses, then you turn it over. (Sometimes out in the sticks they even serve coffee in your Duralex wine tumbler.) But I've not heard of people doing it at home.

I always put out cutlery and plates for fish n chips. Doesn’t everyone?

NO!

You eat it out of the paper (or the polystyrene these days).

Why would you use a plate and cutlery?

Two I can think of:

One very ‘old money’ mansion belonging to my primary school friend’s parents. They had so many rooms (and garden rooms) I never did see them all, despite going over regularly. The mother had the class, the father had the money (basically a mafia guy). By then the marriage was faltering and she just seemed wholly repulsed by him. I never saw them in the same room at the same time in 6 years. Despite them always both being home. Also the mother had a thing for harp music, so made all 5 kids learn to professional standard. Harps everywhere!

And then there was my mum’s mate, who’d I’d visit with her. They’d chat, and I’d ‘read her bathroom’. She had white tiles and a basket of coloured markers for people to add drawings or write sentences or whatever they liked. The walls were covered solidly! She had many bohemian friends, so some quite instructive stuff! I remember I could never quite find the courage to add anything myself- too well trained by my ‘showhome’ mother. I still wonder what on earth they found to natter about!

SchadenfreudePersonified

My poshest friend (went to Benenden and her Dad owned an entire street in Primrose Hill type posh) used to eat the most awful food. She said it was because at boarding school, they used to feed them badly...cheapest tinned beans and bargain sausages sort of thing.

And regarding fish and chips..NO to eating them from the packet! You can't eat a bloody fish with your fingers!

Schadenfreude another one who always puts out plates and cutlery for fish n chips I'm afraid! (Only out of the paper/polystyrene if eaten on the pier/beach). Never thought it was odd!

The one that I most remember was a friend from school. He lived with his "uncle" who was clearly a hoarder. Literally whole rooms piled high with newspapers, boxes and national geographic magazines. Once one room was full they'd just move on to the next room. The last time I saw him you couldn't get upstairs as every bedroom was full. My friend had moved his bed in the living room and was camped there. He told me the roof was falling in upstairs but it was ok because the piles of things were holding it up?! They no longer used the bathroom but washed in the kitchen sink. There was a loo downstairs but it had no seat and was pretty horrific so I didn't ever drink much when I was there. Always felt quite sad for him.

Ok, this will be very outing indeed but who cares.

When we were kids we spent most holidays and weekends all going to work with my dad, crammed in his van or in the back of the car going round various garages while my dad fixed the car washes. It was very boring indeed but my parents insisted.

Anyway, one year my sister’s birthday treat was to take a friend with us, the treat being that we could take our rolaboots and skate round on the smooth tarmac behind the car wash.

God knows what that girl thought of our Weird oppressive authoritarian family.

I made a new friend at secondary school and was delighted to be asked round to her house for dinner and a sleepover. My mum took me round and when we walked in I became aware the house was pretty messy, dirty and cluttered and I saw my Mum screw her nose up ever so slightly. In the lounge I saw a knife on the carpet in the lounge and politely went to pick it up only to find it firmly adhered to the floor like it had been superglued. The mum told me not to worry and leave it.
After dinner I needed a wee so went to the separate toilet which clearly hadn’t been hoovered for a long time as all around the skirting and on the floor was basically little fragments of toilet roll of varying colours (skid mark colours). When the Mum made us lunch the next day the cat got up on the work surface and proceeded to actually step on the bread she was buttering and licked the ham. She finished making that sandwich and gave it to ME.
The Dad was forever in his armchair with a cup of tea welded to his hand. That’s where he sat when he got home from work and basically all weekend. He didn’t seem to move and ate his dinners only after everyone else, including the Mum, had eaten. We would sit at their picnic bench to eat dinner and my arms would literally stick to the table from years worth of grime. I saw the Mum get out the Hoover once and she literally did one straight line through the middle of the lounge with it and then put it away. It was weird to me because my family home was very clean and I’d never seen a house like this.
They were actually a really nice family and there was no neglect with the children, just the house.

When I went and stayed a few weeks later that bloody knife was still on the floor.

Love this thread, but am horrified by the terrible home lives that some people experience.

This one's from my own house (on a typical suburban estate). My parents always had a few old clocks, and I didn't pay any attention to them. Recently discovered that the old clock in the kitchen is one from Nazi germany...it has an eagle of the Third Reich on it!

For the record, my family are not Nazis. Turns out my grandad was was in Germany at the end of the war and "liberated" this clock from a Nazi submarine factory. It's still keeping perfect time, according to my dad.

When I was around 7-8 , I would have sleepovers at my now; ex best friends house. Her dad used to tell me he would put me in the washing machine when I was asleep at night :/

when I was junior school age about 11 I called for my new friend on the way to school and she was just having her breakfast it was bowl with a slice of white bread and half milk and half water and she was eating it like Weetabix yeuk

Not when I was a child but collecting my own child after a play date.

The parent invited me in while my child got there shoes etc and on the wall in the living room was a life size picture of the parents, completely naked but in a soft porn kind of pose so nothing was on show apart from a little arse cheek.

Did they just had one between them, then, @ispepsiokay? Arse cheeks, I mean?

While there are a few funny anecdotes on here, I feel quite disturbed after reading so many stories about child abuse. The sexual abuse ones in particular are harrowing and due to my own experiences as a child, I’ve found them quite triggering.