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!

@HerRoyalFattyness I'm fairly sure you've just described my house now

@SpangleSparkle sadly the social services intervention bar is still very very low. I know of children living in neglectful situations and SS, schools and NSPCC do not care one bit. They don't even bother to visit the homes to check.

The weirdest thing I remember, and I've literally only just twigged what was going on here recently whilst reminiscing, was visiting my dad's girlfriends kids when I was about 5/6. She didn't have custody of them, Lord knows why. I'm not sure if they'd been adopted by this couple and she was allowed to have supervised visits, or if the man was her ex and he'd remarried, but the kids were tiny little red headed wisps(like their mum) and the man(and his wife) were very tall, dark haired, dark skinned. Their own two children were the same. The two little tiny red heads just didn't fit.

They lived in a cottage in the country, with a dormitory style bedroom for all 4 kids just full of toys. They had really cool stuff like coin collections, and a box full of fossils to look through, and in the backyard they had a weeping willow with a tree house built in it which I loved so much. I just wanted to live there. My dad wasn't with her for long and he met and married my stepmum, but I often think of those children. It was such a weird situation, us all popping round to visit her kids there. I wonder what the backstory was?

When I was in primary school - around 6 or 7 - there was a boy in my glass that had a crush on me. Everyone always teased me about it. He was a bit if alone and often got violent in class; throwing things at other students and the teacher.
At the time; my mum worked full time and my nan looked after me after school. Nan was friendly with this boys mum (they were about the same age - middle to late 50's) and the mum had mentioned that it was the boys birthday and he wanted to take a few friends to a theme park; would I like to go? To my disgust; my nan accepted for me. The mum and boy came to pick me up and I then realised that he hadn't invited anyone else; just me.
We get there and go on a few rides. He threw a massive tantrum bc we were too little to go on most of the big rides and started hitting and screaming at his mum. I was a very placid child and just kind of stood there, feeling very embarrassed. During the evening, he asked me to marry him and would I be his girlfriend. I said no and he got super mad. His mother used to placate him a lot - for an easier life, i guess - and said; of course she will. We ate and went on a few more rides; all the while he was happy that his mum said i was now his GF and kept trying to hold my hand.
When they eventually dropped me off home; i said thank you for having me, went straight to my room and cried. I was invited round many times after that but begged my nan to not make me. Thankfully she never did and the boy and I went to different secondary schools.

A few years after that - I was around 10 i think - we moved to our first house. A shoddy little road that was full of single parents with kids that were a lot older than me and off the rails. I will always remember these 2 sisters that lived with their nan. The older sister was very withdrawn, the younger quite outgoing. They used to go away every other weekend but never told anyone where to. All the other kids were super jealous that they went on soo many "holidays". I later found out that the reason they lived with their nan was because their father had murdered their mother with a hammer and they went away to visit him in prison.

My early childhood was in Ireland. When you knocked for someone to play out, you always waited on the doorstep. If you ever did go in, you were never allowed upstairs to the bedrooms, they were only for sleeping, and children were rarely allowed in the sitting room. I only ever saw the sitting rooms of my 10 aunties and uncles when there was a special occasion.

A weird one that I always remember was an aunt of mine taking me when she went visiting an elderly family friend. It was an old farmhouse in the country, very rural. They sat around the fire talking in Irish, I was so bored as I couldn’t understand a word and there was no tv or toys. On the way home I asked my auntie why his house was so dark, she said he had no electricity! I was so shocked, it was the 1980’s not the 1880’s!

My home was probably the wierd one. No working adult in the house, chain smoking mum, some issues with alcohol, a disabled brother who always wet the bed (mum did not change the sheets every day), I was always worried that the house stank so I wouldn’t invite friends around. When I was 9 a girl from Scotland joined my class and I made her my best friend. She was a spoilt bitch and wasn’t very nice to me but I slept at her house at least once a week. Her parents were so lovely. Her dad worked and her mum was a SAHM, the house was always spotless and I was so amazed that the beds were always made and my friend had clean socks and knickers, in her drawers, always, never ever ran out! They even had a jar that was always full of sweets and chocolate! I was so jealous of her ordered life which she obviously took for granted. They moved after a year and her dad stopped by to see me and my family when he was next in London, just a really lovely guy.

I once started over at school friend’s house - I must have been about 12/13. At breakfast the next morning they made toast - but every slice was burnt black - to an absolute crisp, then left to cool. A thick layer of margerine was then added. I went hungry. Then went home. 🤢

I love toast like this! But it has to be real butter!

My friends family used to put sugar on their salad

I've remembered another one, from when I was about eleven: at one house with several children of varying ages, I noticed that the older children's bedrooms had bolts on the outside of the doors, about half way up. On my suggestion , we spent an afternoon playing the Crystal Maze, complete with being locked in. I was fascinated by why the bolts were there; were the children sometimes locked in their rooms? When I asked, they told me it was to stop the younger children going into those rooms, when they were very little, and years later they hadn't bothered to take the bolts off.

Not long after that, at another house of a large family we knew well, one of the teenage sons had a pair of handcuffs, which he kept idly playing with, while watching TV. They were not toy ones, but real ones that could only be opened with the key, as he demonstrated on himself. I was amazed that anyone not in the police could get hold of them; he told me he got them from an army surplus store. He asked (gruntingly and teenage-like) if I would like to wear them; I secretly really wanted to experience it, just for fun, but I was afraid he might not let me out, so I said no. But he later put them on his brother, who didn't seem to mind, and kept him locked up for half an hour. The adults shrugged, said it was boys being boys, and mentioned that in their own youth they might have tied each other up to play cowboys and Indians.

This thread has made me wonder if my house was the (slightly) weird one. My friend's mums were mostly nice and welcoming, offering snacks etc, but in our house there was no such thing. Mum was not very motherly, and had clearly told us three girls that she'd actually wanted boys. As kids we wouldn't have dared go in the kitchen between meals, and mealtimes were, as I guess for many of us 'of a certain age' were 'eat it or go without'. Of course we ate whatever we were given as otherwise we'd go hungry! She had a locked cupboard for chocolate and biscuits etc, just for her, although we would never have dared to touch it (didn't want to get smacked with the hairbrush). We did have a lovely mild mannered dad but mum ruled the roost. I remember being jealous of most of my friends and cousins as they had nice mums.

Tilda

You mum isn't called Dorothy, is she?

I remember my best friend from primary school who was living with his much older sister and his mum. They had a lovely house which was pristine but his mum and sister pretty much left him/us to our own devices all the time. He had access to any films or TV he wanted (thankfully it was pre-internet) and watched loads of sexually explicit and violent stuff on video. He wanted to replicate the sexual stuff (in a childish way) and his mum thought it was funny. She had glamour shots of herself all over the walls and told deeply inappropriate stories and jokes which I didn't understand. I remember my dad driving me home from a sleepover and I recounted a joke or a story and asked if he could explain it to me because I didn't understand what it meant. I didn't go back after that... We went to different secondary schools but I met the boy again when we were both at university and he was extremely odd and unfriendly. I'm not sure what became of the mum and sister.

He did have a basketball hoop at the patio area and I thought that was the coolest thing ever, though

Remembered another one. A friend from secondary school would sometimes invite me to her house for tea. She had a couple of much older brothers and was a slightly indulged child. We were allowed to have "ice cream floats" ( school of ice cream on top of a glass of cola, lemonade or cherryade) with our meal. As soon as you'd finished with a glass, plate or item of cutlery, her mother would whisk it away and clean that part of the table. Her Dad used to come in from work and use the shower (we didn't have one in our house, so that in itself made them 'posh'), but after he'd got clean he'd just sprint naked to his room to put fresh clothes on.

@SchadenfreudePersonified no, but from reading this thread I'm sure there were other mums like this, sadly.

I have a few...
I went to one friends house to call on her to go to the park. I met her dad for the first time and had chills up my spine. A few weeks later he tried to commit murder/suicide by locking the kids and his wife in the car in the garage and turning the engine on.
Another friends dad was odd too. Always around and asking me if I wanted to pet his ferrets. Once he walloped her. I had stayed over and during the night her little sister had wet the bed, my friend took the blame and this grown ass man hit her so hard she flew backwards. After that I noticed all the bruises on her.i told my mum and was never allowed round there again.

Surely if you run short of loo roll you use kitchen roll/baby wipes, even facial wipes before resorting to cardboard tubing.

I'm not sure this poster understands the level of poverty on some of these posts.

Exactly what I was thinking @HollowTalk

@HollowTalk yep, and even without poverty some people don’t use those things. We rarely have kitchen roll (my partner occasionally buys it but we usually use cloths), only have reusable baby wipes, and I don’t think I’ve ever bought face wipes in my life. I guess in an emergency I’d use a cloth wipe and wash it how we washed our cloth nappies when the baby was small, but that of course relies on me having a decent functioning washing machine which not everyone can afford.

A family who ate baked beans with custard.

Another family with a creepy dad who kept trying to get me to undress to my knickers and "play with him in the paddling pool". I was about 12 and definitely post puberty... I kept making excuses, but he went on and on. Luckily, he gave up after a while.

Another family had an entire shelf, in their sitting room, full of sex manuals.

A truly fascinating thread. Some posts beyond heartbreaking, and others wildly amusing. All those in between have been captivating too. My reflections are bland in comparison.

A lovely girl I knew from primary school lived in a small three bed semi with several brothers and sisters. I can’t recall the children having any toys. The house was untidy, quite dirty in fact. The mother always talked to the children in an extremely loud voice. She seemed to spend all of her time sitting on the couch shouting demands. The dad would return home from work to cook the evening meals.

One time the girl invited me for a Sunday roast. I was already aware that the family only ate from plastic bowls whilst sitting on the couch. We were served just roast potatoes in gravy. I couldn’t get over how salty they tasted.

A wealthy family. The house was filthy. Clutter everywhere. The integral fridge stopped working so they replaced it. The new fridge went elsewhere and the other was just left. I opened it and it was full of rotting food.

We didn’t eat soup with pie. Instead we had mashed potato with grated cheese, onion, tomatoes grilled. It was plated in a ring and filled with tomato soup. I introduced my husband to this dish. He loves it and it is now something all my children enjoy.

We also used to have mash in tomato soup .
Once while eating it my cousin kicked off (she did it quite a lot) so my auntie smooshed her face in it .
Funny at the time but I suppose not so much now .

Well, that was an emotional rollercoaster of a read

Excellent thread.

Some absolutely fascinating and some very tragic stories here. I don't have anything particularly exciting to share, but I grew up on a council estate in the 1970s. Everyone knew everyone else. 40 years later I still remember who lived in which house. We never ever went inside anyone else's house as kids though. We would play out all hours and wander all over til dusk. But inside never. If it was raining we just stayed home. I DID go in next door once or twice. They had cream plush carpet, a home bar, and stable type swinging door downstairs. And Camp Coffee. I thought them the height of sophistication!

And Camp Coffee. I thought them the height of sophistication!

You'll be impressed with me, then - I still drink the stuff!

The BFs family who used cardboard tubes to wipe their arses were definitely not poor by any stretch, so please don't assume that is the case. I would not be poking fun at those who can't afford toilet roll...these people could afford it but just didn't see anything wrong with clogging the plumbing up with chunks of cardboard to save a trip to the shops.

On the subject of bog rolls running out, my friends brother used his socks and stuck them in the bin. I’d buried that memory until now. So grim.

With hindsight, I saw a few mildly odd things in my younger childhood (during the 80s) and one thing that sticks in the memory is a time when my brother and I visited the house of a friend of our parents and him taking us upstairs to his and his wife’s bedroom to show us what he had in his wardrobe. Basically, he had a suitcase full of knives and bladed weapons. I think there was also a handgun. My brother and I were fascinated. He told us not to tell anyone and we didn’t until years later. I believe he was in the army at the time.

Our house was definitely the slightly weird one.
I grew up in Belgium in a semi-rural area, in a fairly big detached house in a middle of a big garden. I lived there with my parents, grandmother and great aunt. I was very fond of my great aunt as we shared the same birthday and she absolutely doted on me. She was in her 80s then and enjoyed a glass of liqueur or bubbly wine a couple of times a week. She would always allow me to dip a biscuit in it and have it as a treat. Her bedroom was full of dark furniture and she had a bottle of orange liqueur in her bedside cabinet to help her sleep. She also had a big mahogany wardrobe with a small door at the bottom and when you opened it you found yourself face to face with a stuffed pheasant. When she passed away I was about 7 and the body was kept in her bedroom for a couple of days for people to come and pay their respects (Catholic family).
A few years later, my parents had a big argument and my dad violently attacked my mother while she was asleep. She stayed in hospital for weeks and I stayed with relatives while my dad was undergoing psychiatric tests. My parents decided to stay together but from this point on they kept separate rooms. I had to go through my mom's room to get to my room and my mom used to lock her bedroom door every night. They also bought a gun and took shooting lessons and got their shooting licenses. My mom always told me it was to shoot rats in the garden but she kept the gun and ammo in her bedside table. Of course, as a kid and a teenager, I used to show it to the few friends who visited.
But I also had a great childhood with a massive garden to play in and unrestricted access to thousands of books (some of them very inappropriate).