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 never saw other kids being hit in the 70s, but I now think my parents were good at keeping me away from dodgy families.

I do remember going home and telling my mum that in my friend's house (a really lovely family), they didn't have plugs and instead just had the wires sticking directly into the sockets. I was never allowed to go in her house again, which was tricky as she lived next door.

We were the weird house once. I remember having a friend round to stay overnight and it came time to clean our teeth for bed. My mum was in the bath and she insisted we were fine to both go in and clean our teeth with her in the bath. I was really embarrassed. She usually was good at gauging situations. I remember asking her about this as a teenager and she denied it had happened, but it had.

Oh just remembered one that happened to a relative.

Relative collected her grand daughter from school every day, one day she was asked to pick up another little girl and keep her for a couple of hours.

So she collected two 6 year olds and decided they might like ot make a cake, so she had them measuring flour and sugar etc.

6 year old friend said to granddaughter, "We have food at my house we don't make it"

Granddaughter seriously explained that they were 'too poor' to 'buy food', so they had to 'just buy ingredients'.

I wonder what the friend said to her mum when she got home?

This is a weird one to go in Classics...

Early 80’s I was 17. My parents and I went to dinner at another family’s house. No idea why as they weren’t really family friends. I think their daughter fancied my brother and maybe they were hoping something would come of it.
Anyway the dad was one of those brash loudmouth types and he started questioning me about my boyfriend at the time who (horror of horrors!) was black. He actually asked me at the dinner table in front of everyone if I had sex with my boyfriend. Mortifying for a fairly quiet naive girl.
My parents were outraged after the fact but didn’t say anything at the time possibly because they were embarrassed by my black boyfriend or maybe like me they were too stunned and polite to tell the twat to STFU.
Sometimes I think I’d love to be able to go back in time and have the wherewithal to rip the shit out of the racist asshole.

Fish and chips isn't in printed newspaper any more, so might as well go on a plate. OK, so no-one wants to eat ink, but wasn't half the fun finding a chip printed with news in reverse?

Well thanks for all the amazing stories! Thanks MNHQ for the classics!

Aged 10 or 11 I went to stay with a friend in a very tacky mansion. There was an adult dinner party we had to attend, business contacts of the parents sitting around a huge mahogany table eating pheasant, then my friend and I were made to have a very shallow bath together with the mother in the bathroom. I would never have stripped in front of my own mother at that age! The friend's mother made comments about who was plumper, who was more developed etc- so innappropriate! Lunch the next day was cold pheasant. It still had bits of shot in it.

Loads of accounts of people with horrendous childhoods including sexual abuse... In classics?!

I was invited to a friend's farm to play. We made pastry with her mum. When sorting ingredients, i spilled some flour on the kitchen floor. I was never ever invited back because of this error.

I was 6. It was a dairy farm. They must be pretty used to mess!

@ChewChewIsMySpiritAnimal totally agree. This in classics is disgraceful to the awful accounts of abuse in this thread

It's people's experiences though. Classics isn't just for penis beaker shit.
This is a thread full of social history.

@08NemophilistRebel. @53ChewChewIsMySpiritAnimal
MN might have a duty to report the rapes and more serious abuse claims to the authorities as they should be taking steps to raise awareness of these issues anyway. I'm not sure if their policies state this but there's a responsibility there anyway

Agree that its social history, a record of memories, good and bad, and deserves to be kept.

When I was about 12 I went to a friend's house and she told me that she knew when her parents had been having sex because they would come out of their bedroom wearing THEIR parents (my friends grandparents) old pyjamas. How f*cking weird. Her dad was very odd looking back.

Also remember going to a friend's house when we were young teenagers and her house was FREEZING and the cupboards were empty. Literally no food. Her dad had recently left and her mum was, in retrospect, seriously struggling with three kids to look after on her own. I remember having a sleepover there and being so so cold in the night.

Life is full of shit stories, of lives that are fucked up.
Classics is just recording a thread that is fascinating and probably very interesting for future readers.

This site is full of harrowing stories. So classics can be a cross representation of those stories.

Why should we only save the stupid/funny threads.

I do hope our children would have less harrowing stories to contribute in the future.

Yes it is just that some of the rapists and abusers might still be alive, they might still be abusing and they will have gone onto abusing more children. There is therefore a responsibility on the publishers of this information. Everyone that has this information actually including the people reading and writing it. Hence why some people are flagging it

• Life is full of shit stories, of lives that are fucked up. Classics is just recording a thread that is fascinating and probably very interesting for future readers.

This site is full of harrowing stories. So classics can be a cross representation of those stories.

Why should we only save the stupid/funny threads.*

Totally agree with this

Ah bold fail. Apologies!

@Chocolate50
I literally never heard such a strange argument for something in my life.

If I read something on the internet from a stranger it’s my responsibility to report it?! What planet are you living on.

Wtf is wrong with mumsnet at the moment. Proper bat shittery going on.

Well, let's just leave the debate and add more stories? Far more interesting!

It’s not up to anyone to report rape/sexual abuse years after the incident.

This may have bought up some very difficult feelings and memories for those that posted what they witnessed. I think if anything they need support with that. It’s absolutely terrible what has been witnessed by some truly harrowing how does a child makes sense of that

They certainly will not be the only ones aware of what was going on and she was a children at the time and didn’t understand. Let’s not put such huge responsibly on someone who was a child at the time and may still be traumatised by this

My neighbours mum used to come round with black eyes, carrying one child usually. The other would be stuck in the house with the violent dad, while he ranted and screamed through the door. We would call the police and she would never press charges. Like a lot of people on here I imagine, I remember the incident but not the names of the people/dates.

I agree that it is a record, and one that should stay. There are plenty of awful things in history, we should never forget them or repeat them.

I remember staying at a friend's house and we came down for a drink in the middle of the night. To my horror there were hundreds, maybe thousands of slugs on the kitchen floor. She carefully stepped between them to get to the tap where as I was paralysed. I'm still irrationality freaked out by slugs 🤯