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!

[Lilsginpalace]

A friend wasn’t allowed to watch “The Thorn-birds” or “The Borgias” on the telly as it was “Catholic rubbish”

[pallisers]

a bidet - I had never seen one before. Same family had a pot of caviar proudly displayed on the mantelpiece.

[FredaFrogspawn]

My dad took me to a big house where he had some business with the owner, a man living alone with staff.

We were shown into the drawing room where there were about 20 big lifdded time of all shapes and sizes on the floor. A fat elderly Labrador sat beside them.

The housekeeper made tea and the owner of the house came in. ‘Are you behaving, Sir!’ he snapped at the dog who sat to attention.

After greeting us, he opened all the tins and in each was a different delicacy - a loaded fruit cake or some delicate madeleines. I remember cherry bakewells and a fat chocolate cake. Everything was home made. He served us slices of our choices, all the time eyeballing the dog who was literally salivating but not moving a muscle. When he had finished showing up what was on offer and serving us our cake, he put the lids back on the time and commanded (to the dog) ‘At ease, Sir!’

The dog relaxed and fell asleep, looking understandably resentful.

For some reason, I’ve never forgotten that!

[FredaFrogspawn]

Lidded tins - sorry

[Otherpeoplesteens]

The bathtub in the servants' quarters in my schoolfriend's apartment was full of tropical fish.

[Whatisthisfuckery]

I’ve just remembered another one. Not so much weird, but funny.

One day I was round at my sister’s ex bf’s house early in the morning. The dad, who was not a very nice man, kind of waddled down the stairs doing a strange walk. I asked sister’s bf what was up with his dad, who could normally walk fine. ‘Oh, he’s just chewing his tablets’ he said. I was like wtf? BF then took me into the upstairs bathroom and showed me these enormous suppositories.

[FenellaVelour]

My friend from primary school’s dad was a poacher. Always had dead things hanging up in their garden/shed. He once gifted me the skin of a deer he’d shot. I hung it up on the wall of my play house 😬

[Ohyesiam]

I went to my friends house for a sleepover ( or staying the night as it used to be in the 70s) .
The house was big but not very homely. In the kitchen window there were some of her mums pants hung up on a tiny line.
The next time I went there was a different selection of pants. I mentioned it, because I realised there was no other washing , just these pants like bunting at the window.
My friend said her dad hung them up when he was annoyed with her mum to shame her.
He was the head master of a big local comprehensive.

[WillingSpringTime]

One of my primary school friends parents used to padlock the tv away in a cupboard and it was only unpadlocked for an hour a day. At first I thought it was really weird and had never know anyone else do it but actually, they just encouraged us to go outside and play on the farm instead which in hindsight was much more fun that being sat around and watching tv all day.

[Ohyesiam]

Oh and he wouldn’t let his daughter use deodorant. She pointed out to him that I had deodorant in my wash bag, and he said he was against it as some people put it between their legs ( again) .
I was very embarrassed.

[Buster72]

bathtub in the servants' quarters in my schoolfriend's apartment was full of tropical fish.

The servants had a bathtub?

[quickkimchi]

He explained that his dad worked late every night hence he was not home. I thought his dad was having an affair with his secretary, just like the characters on Dallas the soap opera. I had a friend whose dad was always in the office very late for years 'writing a book' that never seemed to materialise. My mum and I speculated that there was no book.

[Petronius16]

No water with meals. Must've been our house! Dad had ideas that it was not good for digestion to drink and eat almost at the same time. Decades later it's rare for me to have a drink at meal times - wine's an exception of course!

[katseyes7]

When l was 18 and at art college studying window dressing (as it was called then), we had 2 older (in their mid 30s, we thought they were ancient!) ladies on our course.
We were doing a project and one of them said she was going to go home to collect some of her 'evening wear'. She invited two of the girls to go with her.
Apparently she lived on a very nice estate (think premier division footballer types) where the houses cost a fortune. Both she and her husband had new cars. The girls said that the house was really nice downstairs, decent carpets, new big tv etc, but when they went upstairs to help her choose which clothes she was going to take, there were no carpets or rugs in the bedrooms (the bedroom doors were open), just bare floorboards. There wasn't much in the way of furniture, there were clothes on the floor and on the beds and on hangers on the back of the door.
The bits of the house that visitors would see were almost opulent, they had two very nice cars, but the bedrooms were extremely basic to say the least. They said it looked very much like 'keeping up with the Joneses'.
My mother had some strange ideas too. She had a clock on the kitchen wall which someone had brought back from holiday. lt was a Dutch style tile which had been made into clock. She had it on the wall still in the plastic box it came in. "To keep the dust off it" as she said.
Also, she had cream leather effect kitchen worktops. Which she kept covered with newspaper. My cousin once asked me why, and when l said that my mother said it "kept them clean" we both agreed that they'd get dirtier than usual with the ink from the newsprint! She also kept used tea bags on the worktop in a yogurt pot til they dried, so they wouldn't stain the bin....

[Softskin88]

Oh my! Loads of memories to recount on this one! I was grateful for my painfully ordinary upbringing.

1. A friend from school getting smacked over and over again by her father for being “rude” (I can’t remember what she said to him but looking back the degree to which she was being smacked was wholly abusive). I was occasionally smacked as a child (nearly everyone was back then) but I’d never seen anything like this. It happened in front of me as if I wasn’t there.
   

1. When I was about 10 an American family lived down the road and I used to play with the eldest son who was a year younger than me. He had a 4 year old sister and a 2 year old brother. Their house was a 4 bedroom detached house but the three kids all slept in the same bedroom while the parents had another and there were two spare rooms. More bizarrely, the house had a huge lounge that was just packed with junk while the (much smaller) dining room was used as both a lounge and a dining room. Very odd.
   

1. Another friend from school had parents with a 1930s obsession and when she got home from school she was required to go and get changed into 1930s clothes. There was no TV in the house, only an old Radiogram and all her books and toys were from that era. All the decor, phone, appliances etc were vintage. The parents were nice but a bit formal.
   

1. One friend lived with her father and grandmother. When I went round to play (on at least six occasions), the grandmother did everything (cooking the tea, interacting with us etc) while the father was always sitting in an armchair in the lounge, smoking and watching television. I don’t think I ever saw him stand up on any of the occasions I was there.
   

There were also houses that were always a mess and houses that were like show
homes.

I learned early on that people are interesting!

[PlausibleSuit]

I had a friend at primary school whose dad had A Chair in their living room. Some kind of leather recliner I think.

No one was allowed to sit in The Chair, even if the dad wasn't in. One time, when I was about 7, I sat in it. Just because, I think. The entire rest of the family went all quiet and panicked-looking. The mood was horrible for the rest of the afternoon. When the dad came home about two hours later, the first thing my friend's mum said to him was, 'Plausible sat in your chair.' Then she apologised to him, as though something truly terrible had happened. He went all quiet and purple and angry and I was quickly bundled off home. My friend stopped speaking to me at school after that.

[ikeakia]

PrincessHoneysuckle

My daughter is that monster. She will chug a can of tomato soup COLD.

[slipperywhensparticus]

They turned the food into a face I was taught to eat everything no matter what my mom threw on the plate ,(burnt offerings were a regular occurrence) I was confused how do you eat a face

[MondeoFan]

Loving this thread

[Grumpbum123]

My neighbours wouldn’t let me use their loo at all and had naked photos of them all over the house

[Stinkycatbreath]

I remember my mated dad used to sit and eat his dinner without his top on so he didn't mess up his top. He was a lovely man too but just very eccentric.

[pigdogridesagain]

This thread is fantastic, really has made me laugh.

[SillyUnMurphy]

Being given the option of cold or hot baked beans.What sort of monster eats them cold?!

You've just reminded me of a friend I had at Primary school who used to bring in cold baked bean sandwiches for lunch. Other than that she was so sweet. Unfortunately her dad was in the RAF so she didn't stay at the school long.

[Nannewnannew]

When I was a teenager I went to a friends house. Her father was a baker who made celebration cakes at home. When I walked into their front room there was a cake on top of the television( they were enormous in those days) which had been placed there to allow the marzipan to harden before icing BUT sat on top of the cake was a cat! Nobody batted an eyelid. 🤮

[BlackSwan]

Went over for a new years party at a friend's who was house sitting for other friends... the kids (my friends) showed us photo albums which they had found on the bookshelves, with pics of the family who owned the place. Except in all the family photos, everyone was naked. V weird. No one told the adults.