How the other half lives, what and when you learned

[tomorrowalready]

Reflecting from another thread made me realise it was not until my 20s I found out some people expected to have a private bathroom. I went to university then and shared with another mature student who had been married, divorced and said she found having to share a bathroom with unrelated people unpleasant. I had always taken it for granted as had live in jobs and rented bedsits before. She was a lovely person and also the first person I knew who had a glass of wine every evening and she introduced me to many new things - cooking with garlic, sherry, owning and using a car for shopping for example.

So what did you take for granted that surprised other people you met?

@ragged

There's a 'Freebies' page on our local facebook. I like giving stuff away. Delivering stuff to others has made me find a lot of social housing in my town that I wasn't aware of, previously. Some grotty blocks of flats or rough clusters of houses.

Wondering around one courtyard-centred group of flats, I came across a giant pile of human turd in one corridor. Just WTF is wrong with people? Imagine living in a place like that, where your neighbour or a visitor thought that was ok to dump their bowels like that.

So yeah, I took it for granted that wouldn't happen, there wasn't such financial hardship and anti-social behaviour, in my sleepy town.

My parents were the first of each of their families to get their own house rather than social housing and my school was quite mixed in terms of background so I’ve always been fairly aware of how people live but I’m in Guernsey where obviously a lot of people move from other places in the world and apparently a woman I know had been here three years before she knew we had poor people. She lived in a nice area and it wasn’t until her little girl went to school that she saw anyone who wasn’t also well off / at least comfortable. Guernsey actually has a pretty big poverty problem and a hidden homeless problem (a lot of couch surfers rather than people on the street).

@jasminoide

Just to show that the other half aren't all that, my dd had a tea party once and one of the invitees was very wealthy. I brought out ice cream and jelly at the end and said girl exclaimed "oooohhh, you've got a proper ice cream scoop!" as if it was something really special. It was a bog standard metal one, nothing fancy at all. I bumped into her mum at the school the following week and she thanked me for having her daughter and then said in hushed tones she heard we had a proper ice cream scoop and enquired where I had purchased it from the local carboot sale. It was most bizarre!

That is so cute. I love how children get such joy from the little things 🍦

I didn't realise other people had blankets rather than newspaper on their beds for additional warmth.

Grew up late 70s/early 80s in a nice home but definitely not wealthy (mum made lots of our clothes, one UK self-catering holiday a year, never wanted for anything but definitely not loads of spare cash, mum budgeted really carefully, never wasted anything), and I just kind of assumed this was ‘average’ and most people my age would have grown up in similar circumstances.

College was an eye opener. Whole bunch of private/boarding school people, lots of second homes, people who went skiing every year, someone rumoured to have a title, people who had literal roads as the driveways their massive houses!

And also … people (more than one, which I remember finding particularly shocking) who’d grown up with no indoor bathroom, people who’d had to have cereal or bread and butter for dinner regularly, or nothing at all.

It all made me feel truly thankful for my family and childhood - we never had too little and we never had too much. And, incidentally, everyone at college was lovely and we all got on great, so it was also definitely a lesson in judging the book and not the cover.

Finding out that other people;

Had carpet that was thick, soft and went to the skirting boards and into the doorways.
Weren't just allowed to wash more than once a week, they had showers that magically made the water come out at the right temperature and they were expected to use them every day.
Had heating in all the rooms, not just a gas fire in the living room that only went on in the evening whilst you were told that you didn't need heating because the immersion pipes ran through your room.
Had curtains that were wider than the window downstairs or curtains at all in their bedrooms.
Had lampshades.
Had toothpaste that didn't take the lining of your mouth off and even had stuff meant for children. See also 'have a dentist's appointment'.
Were allowed to take food or drinks. Especially milk.
Could leave food and come back to it later, rather than knowing if you didn't shove it all down as quickly as possible, some bugger would take it off your plate.
Didn't instinctively duck if their mother moved her arm quickly.
Had more than one pair of shoes and a coat that kept them warm and dry.
Didn't have a yardstick propped up by the sofa ready at all times. Or a dog that would cower if a stick was picked up and a child who would immediately try and get between the dog and that fucking yardstick

I come from a 'good' family, privately educated, etc. but even my eyes were opened when I went to a schoolfriend's house. They were extremely well off, with a beautiful house with grounds and, yes, a tennis court! Anyway, there was a nanny, and children used the 'back' stairs instead of the rather grand main staircase, children had to knock on the drawing room door before entering, and meals were taken with Nanny in a room off the kitchen. They also had a Morning Room where we did our homework. I adored their way of life!

In my experience, working class or poorer families being more willing to give to charity, help out homeless people on streets or generally help someone else in a dire situation, maybe it’s just that they can empathise a bit more.

I grew up in a working class family. Terraced house until we upgraded to a semi when i was in my teens . We had enough food, sat at the table for meals, went on holiday abroad etc
Then i went to uni.
I got invited to a friend's 21st birthday at her home. Black tie. Drinks in the drawing room. Dinner in the dining room, an aga in the kitchen, a walk around the estate the next day after breakfast....it was literally like Peter's friends. I was so enormously out of my depth in every single way.

You grew up in the 70s? Really?

Some of the things you mention seem to point to someone much older than you are.

I was working in the 70s, having finished uni.

Some of the things you talk about- drinking wine, using garlic - were around long before the 70s.

@NeverDropYourMooncup

My parents always had a very tight budget and food in our house was very carefully budgeted for and planned, with my mum making everything herself. I went to a friends after school and she lived in a post office/ general store. When I walked in her dad said help yourself to anything you want - so I could choose any chocolate bar I wanted. Then when it came to dinner time I had a frozen ready meal (which I didn’t know existed) and had a baked potato with cauliflower cheese! It was the most exciting meal I’d had! I can’t imagine buying a “ready made” baked potato now!

I had two from when I began work as a teacher:
V poor area, visiting a family at home, children had mattresses on floor but no bedding of any kind. Adult coats used as blankets. Second one, had moved to work in very privileged area, first time I'd come across non working mothers who used a nanny so they could play tennis or go out to lunch. One mother complaining about having to provide something for her child (she didn't work, very nice country lifestyle), saying to me "I only have help with the house on Tuesdays and Fridays". At the time I was working full-time time and had three children and no help beyond after-school care!

Great thread. My parents were very aspirational and sent my sister and I to private school where, on reflection we were the only children with 'salaried' parents. Everyone else's either had companies, inherited wealth or some kind of private practise.
I went to my first birthday party in 1980 in a huge house with it's own bar (optics and everything!). Everything was lavish beyond my comprehension, they even had those mini cans of coke and all the food was M&S. Range rovers, private reg's the works.
Went home and told my policeman dad about how they were so rich that they had at least 20 video recorders. Turns out the dad was pirating videos and a later, it came to light that he was a pornographer. Since then, I've always been fascinated by how gangster types try to project respectability and would love to know how much the kids knew. As far as I was concerned they were just posh.

When I went to a friends house, whose parents both went to university (mine both worked from 11). We had a tiny bowl of minestrone soup for lunch and then a single slice of Welsh rarebit, using a fresh loaf. It was presented beautifully but I was left ravenous.

@MyMummyHasGotABigBottom. My DD got a scholarship to a private school and my ex didn’t want her to go as he thought the other parents would be snobby . Some were a bit but the majority were parents who worked hard to send their children. The mum with the biggest home etc was really good fun and threw herself into PTA. I joined and they were very thankful for my help ! My daughter was the “poorest” of her friendship group and we had the smallest house and old cars but they remain firm friends almost 30 years later so don’t worry.

I went on a trip around Asia and spent a week or so visiting a friend I'd met at uni that was originally from Hong Kong. They lived in a flat but in a very affluent area. I remember being shocked that they had a house helper that lived in their flat, in her own little set of rooms! We could get our own food from the kitchen but often my friend would just ask their helper to do it, she would make all the meals and set out stuff for breakfast every morning, my dirty laundry magically disappeared and turned up again neatly folded on my bed...it was incredibly strange for me and felt weirdly like an invasion of privacy.

They also had a cook come and make them dinner 2 days a week!

I had a privileged upbringing but we always had to pull our weight in terms of housework and we'd often hear "go make your own food, I'm not your personal chef"

@MagicSummer it is offensive in relation to people...it is a word used to describe objects usually. An oriental lamp for example. As a far Eastern Asian student told me about 15 years ago at uni.

Can't believe people don't know this. You don't use oriental to describe a person.

@whatkindofdaughter

You grew up in the 70s? Really?

Some of the things you mention seem to point to someone much older than you are.

I was working in the 70s, having finished uni.

Some of the things you talk about- drinking wine, using garlic - were around long before the 70s.

Nope this feels right, I was 70s/80 s child

But working class northern

Some of the things you talk about- drinking wine, using garlic - were around long before the 70s.

That's the op's point, that she hadn't been exposed to it because of her background (I think!)

In other words oriental is used for inanimate objects not people. You should say Asian instead.

But such a bizarre reaction ...oh sod off to hearing that for that poster.

. I had always lived in council estates and had no notion of life in “bought houses”. The family moved to much more mixed area when I was mid teens (although we were still schemies). Boyfriend was posh (as in lived not only in a bought house, an architecturally designed bought house!). Went for Sunday lunch and was absolutely shocked to discover some people don’t clear their plate! Even at school dinners we had to finish all the food on the plate!

His mother was aghast. “You’ve done well! How do you keep so slim eating all that?” (Not said in a complimentary way). Every one of them had left a bit of everything on their plates. Even now I feel I have to eat everything or there will be a skelp coming....

some of the things you talk about- drinking wine, using garlic - were around long before the 70s.

But nothing like as commonplace as they are now. My mother wasn’t English, and had a Cordon Bleu diploma, so we ate a far wider range of foods in the 1960s and 1970s than anyone I knew. I think you are displaying the same kind of surprise at how other people live as other posters on this thread.

Another one. One of the students in DD’s hall of residence was from a very rich Dubai family. When he started university in self catered halls he was completely flummoxed. He didn’t know how to cook or clean because they had staff at home who would do this for them. The worst thing was he used to buy meat products and stack them sideways on the top shelf of the fridge where the blood seeped out and ran all over everyone’s food. He never realised it was wrong. I don’t understand why he wasn’t challenged.

I took for granted knowing how to take care of an illness. (Btw, there are absolutely no doctors or nurses in my whole family for generations! Not our thing 🤷🏻‍♀️) I have had to help and coach friends when they have been ill.

One flatmate had a terrible urinary infection and was very poorly and made herself something with lots of tomato and lots of cheese. yes, she threw up..... I had to go shop for more reasonable food for her.