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!

A friend at school I got on with so well had a strange mum, in modern day terms maybe she was shy, had anxiety, maybe autistic. She had very rigid rituals - plastic covered the main walking areas, the sofas, the dining chairs and there was a rug covered in it too. I really remember the smell of it!!
Whenever I was over, she'd only talk to me via my friend ie
"Katie, would your friend like a drink?" Whilst I was stood right there
"Katie, tell your friend about the rules with shoes"
"Katie, make sure your friend uses the downstairs toilet, not the upstairs" etc etc

She served dinner really specifically- arranged on the plate with precision and we were not allowed to talk whilst eating, or make contact- more 'Katie, make sure your friend doesn't misbehave at the table or else she won't be coming back around'

Her cooking was honestly delicious though and I remember desperately wanting more of the chocolate fudge cake she gave us once for pudding but never dare ask of course!

I spoke to my friend about it and she just shrugged. At home, my own mum said I was rude to discuss it as it was obviously the way she liked to do things and who was I to question a grown up?

I had a childhood friend whose mum worked with my mum. We ended up at the same secondary school and by the 6th form were in the same group of friends. Parents were separated and mum very sensible, her house completely average and normal. Her ex-husband came back on the scene when we were 16ish, I think he’d been in prison but it was never mentioned. Anyway he was a drug dealer. Bought a massive 5 bedroom executive home type place and grew weed in the attic and would host parties for all of us. It was so bloody weird. The house had no furniture in it at all, in none of the many rooms...

Another friend’s mum clearly hit her, and having had 15 years of extensive safeguarding training since being a teacher I am aghast that nobody noticed or seemed to care. She used to come to school with black eyes and chunks of her hair pulled out, and cuts and bruises and we didn’t question it. I had a sleepover at her house once and realised From the terrible atmosphere that her mum was not nice and always made excuses to not stay over again after that.

Is this thread destined for Classics?

My best friend's mum wasn't allowed jam etc (due to sugar rationing )in the war. So we used to love piling round her house because unlike our parents (this was 60s , era was still quite austere and we had to scrape the jam on very very thinly). My friend's mum used to say 'Have as much butter and jam as you like, we weren't allowed it in the war' . We used to take it a bit literally and our slices of bread almost dripped jam.

@MorrisZapp oh my God you just reminded me , as a child our hairdryer that my mam had since before meeting my dad was kept in the original box in a sideboard in our sitting room and had to returned after use . The weirdest thing I saw in a friend's house was I needed the loo and the friend said they'd no loo roll the mam said it's ok there's loads of newspaper there to use . I was horrified 😂

As a teenager I went to my then boyfriends house for tea. I was about 17 from memory.
His parents were quite lovely aside from the fact they referred to themselves as 'Mum and Dad'.
'More tea Dad?'
'Thank you Mum, biscuit?'

It was bizarre. I dumped him.

When I was about seven I had a friend I used to play out with sometimes. She had to stay outside after school and wasn’t allowed inside until bedtime, apart from to have her tea, because she had a baby brother and he wasn’t to be disturbed. Even when it was really cold outside, she wasn’t allowed in. I never saw the inside of her house.

My friends dad used to just be asleep in random places, once in the middle of the kitchen floor and the family all just stepped over him like it was the most normal thing in the world. The first time I saw him lying in the hall, I thought he'd fallen down the stairs and died, my friend thought I was insane. We lived on a street where kids were always in and out of each other's houses, the parents knew we were about, but he still thought "this'd be a nice place for a nap... nothing more peaceful than a gang of 9yr old tramping over me..."

I've remembered another.
My mum took me to see her very old great aunt and uncle. They lived on a farm.
The house and there was no running water, no electric, no central heating etc.

Anyway I was one if those annoying children that wanted to pee all the time and asked to go to the toilet. I remember my mum looking at me and in her eyes I could see she was desperate not to visit the loo.
I soon found out why.

We went to a barn, in the middle was a door suspended from the ceiling. Not sure why, because there was no cubicle attached to the door!.
When you opened there was a cardboard box with a hole cut out. Then a trench had been dug through the floor of the barn. Newspaper hung from the back of the door.
I didnt need the toilet after all.

@barkandcheese My Mum had that bloody plastic stuff all the way through downstairs, if it flipped up and you trod on the reverse side, it was like standing on nails .

I remember being pretty shocked when I went round to my best friend’s house when I was 8. She shared a room with her brother who was 10 and every single surface in the room was covered top to bottom (including the ceilings) in massive posters of topless women. Proper page three style glamour girls. I didn’t know where to look or what to think.

Seeing as baked beans are a theme, i was also surprised when another friend’s mum served us spaghetti bolognaise for dinner “because your mum said it was your favourite”. Expect it was just a tin of cold baked beans on top of spaghetti. I had to do my best polite face and try to eat the lot despite finding it repulsive.

Just jumping on the mum and dads double bed and 1000 porn mags falling out.

Funnily enough Minou my brother went to Beamish and he said it was exactly like our old street, including the fucking freezing metal bath infront of the fire and Methodist embroidery all over the walls.

My mum was puzzled by this, and her friend explained that her son had to have the boxes arranged around his place at the table, so no-one could see him eating.

DS used to do this, though now he pretty much refuses to eat with anyone else at the table. He has autism.

I can't remember who said it now but for losing weight reasons it is better not to drink water fifteen minutes before or after a meal, maybe the dad was ahead of his time.

Patroclus
It is fantastic and they have done a great job. My dad was taken aback of how similar it was to his childhood home.

There was a little boy who asked his mum what the metal bucket hanging on the wall was for. The mum said it was washing clothes. My dad laughed and said no, it was the bath! He then regaled this little boy of stories of the family washing in front of the fire and sharing the bath water.

I bloody hope this thread isn't put in Classics. What a stupid suggestion. Most of the posts are heartbreaking.

A friend of mine when I was about 14 had a huge 3 storey house and her parents, who were both psychiatrists, used to climb up and over the roof with full climbing gear quite often when I was there. (They were lovely though.)

That's interesting, @CactusAndCacti, since I've worked with several clients with ASDs I've wondered if that lad might have been undiagnosed.

Mind you, it was about 1961, so there were probably loads of people with undiagnosed autism.

The boy and I went to different junior schools, so I didn't see much of him after that. My mum stayed in touch with his mum though, and they remained friends for a good few years.

My best friend all the way through primary school had what I thought were super cool parents. Allowed her to stay up all night and the mum especially used to take us out all day to big shopping centres and buy us presents. I’d go for dinner nearly every night after school much to my parents annoyance ( I think they were a bit jealous of the cool mum). Dad was always a bit odd and used to sit up in the loft which was just boarded but otherwise a normal loft space in a tiny 3 bed terraced. He had a desk set up with a computer. Only now as an adult so I realise her mum was so insistent on me coming over all the time as she was being badly beaten and he wouldn’t dare do that in front of me because my parents were police officers. Also not sure what the computer in the loft was for but he had a manual job even though my friend said it was his “office”. I daren’t speculate... My friends mum later confided in my mum when I was early 20’s and basically said if I hadn’t been there she has no doubt she would be dead. Needless to say they are no longer together. Really sad

For some reason all these things would seem perfectly normal if you were in the 1970's.

When l was young (up until l was 10) we lived in a 2 bedroom flat. My grandma lived with us. She had the small bedroom and l slept on a Zed Bed in the other room with my mam and dad.
My grandma died when l was 9. l don't know what would have happened if she'd lived much longer - l can't imagine sharing a room with your parents much past that age.
Also, one of my cousins' dad was ill for a long time. He slept in one bedroom (he was on oxygen 24 hours a day) and my cousin slept with her mother. But even after my cousin got married and she and her husband stayed over at her parents house, she had to sleep with her mother and her husband slept on the sofa. They weren't allowed to share a bed....

I had a friend whose house was immaculate, her mum was incredibly houseproud and was always cleaning, literally like the 90’s Mrs Hinch. One day my friend came round to mine and my dad was cleaning the horse tack in the sitting room. The next time I saw her mum she asked me, really seriously, if it was true that my dad cleaned tack in the house - honestly, the same way you would ask someone if it was true their dad was beating them or something.

So I think we were that weird family to them 🙈

I went round to 'play' after school and friends elderly Nan was sat at kitchen table plucking out the fish eyes with a cocktail stick and eating them. Bloody horrific. The rest of the fish was cooked for dinner......

Friend's parents saying grace before every meal

They also had a poster for the local Tory candidate in the window at election time. Blew my mind.

(Disclaimer: this was in Brighton)

This thread is reminding me of so many weird things! A friend of mine lived down the road from me so we were in and out of each other's houses a lot for a few years. She had a really gorgeous older brother as well, so I enjoyed going to hers. The only thing was that if she and her brother had words about anything, and they often did, they would start wrestling with each other. They were quite nasty with it and it usually ended up with a sort of stalemate where they were in some sort of headlock with each other, neither could move, and they stayed like that for ages, both bodies locked together. I would be sat there, wondering what to do, wondering if this was normal (I'm an only child so who knew what siblings did...) and then they would part and continue wrestling. So uncomfortable to be there for that, I used to dread it. He was so gorgeous though!