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?

[tomorrowalready]

@Grellbunt

I do occasionally comment to my kids (now that they are slightly older) that they should be aware that there are people who don't have xyz or who wouldn't consider multiple holidays in a year normal etc. It's a tricky one as I don't want to induce guilt but equally I don't want them growing up too spoilt!

@Grellbunt, I appreciate that it is a tricky point for well meaning but affluent parents . Of course your children should not feel guilt for having and enjoying whatever you give them and of course it will be the norm for them. And even if they watch TV or read about people in different or difficult circumstances it' s practically impossible to understand unless you have lived it. But I think the problem for poor young people now is so much worse as the pleasures and sheer thinginess of our acquisitive society are thrown in their faces day and night. So many are so aware of how society is stacked against them unless they are exceptionally lucky I think it fuels a lot of the rage that results in violence in the streets.

[Ifitquacks]

@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.

But obviously the whole point of this thread is that these weren’t things that the OP had in her household. Not that they didn’t exist.
I grew up in the ‘80’s. I didn’t know what garlic was until I was in my teens because meals were freezer food. I know garlic existed before the ‘80’s and were common in other circle.

[RampantIvy]

I admit to finding a recent thread about having no money for several days a week a real eye opener. I know that a lot of people have nothing or very little in their bank account just before payday, but having absolutely no money at all for 3 or 4 days a week, and it being considered normal by a great many posters was really sad and depressing.

[LordOfThePings]

I’m loving this thread!

“ I also remember going to a house and asking where the rest of it was.” I remember reading this on here about 10 years ago, but the person telling the story was the mother of the house. I’ve since been very conscious that my children have friends who live in humongous houses, so I always invite their friends out instead of inviting them to my small mid-terrace for play dates.

I realised at about 25 that butter and margarine are not the same thing. I had a party with a friend and during the afternoon the neighbours were helping with food, but needed more butter. I went to fetch it from from the supermarket and bought the ‘butter’ that I always got. I’ll never ever forget the horrific look on all their faces and awful when I pulled out a tub of cheap margarine. But it was the way my friend chastised me publicly for it that sticks in my craw - even now, many many years later.

[carlywurly]

I had never lived in anything other than a detached house until university. I thundered about in our student terrace until next door let me know I was disturbing them. I was mortified at how oblivious I'd been.

I thought everyone bought their food from Sainsbury's and marks and spencer, I didn't set foot in an Iceland until I was about 30 and then tried to pay with a platinum American Express card, (which wasn't accepted.)

I genuinely feel it's only really been in my late 30s onwards that I've really considered how my privilege has impacted my outlook. We weren't loaded by any stretch, but my dad's job meant I was exposed to plenty of experiences as a child that I thought at the time were available to everyone.

History is really repeating itself for my dcs but I talk to them regularly about how much other people's lives differ and actively chose for them not to go to private schools which has given them a circle of friends from a mix of backgrounds.

[Lalliella]

My friend’s house had a bidet. Me (in my head): what the fuck is that?

[Lalliella]

Also at the bidet house I was given spaghetti bolognese. I’d never had a meal that wasn’t “British” before!

[tomorrowalready]

@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.

Yeah, I realise that , whatkindofdaughter, in fact the friend who introduced me to so many things was slightly older and not froma very well off family but better off than mine. She once told me that her mother would prepare potatoes 3 different ways for an ordinary meal. Whereas our diet was very restricted, same thing on the same day week by week and I was aware from a young age due to the death of my mother. We actually had a good wholesome diet eg a piece of fruit every day but few luxuries such as ice cream. We all knew the price of everything and the cost in terms of Dad's working long hours, daily shopping and preparing food for 6 or 7 people with no fridge and basic tools. Maybe that's why so many of my observations are about food.

[borntobequiet]

Even among a fairly middle class set of parents when my kids were at primary school in the 80s, I was unusual as I cooked curries from scratch, used garlic and wine for cooking, made my own soup and ice cream. Most people cooked traditional English/British food with a roast on Sunday (tbf we mostly had a roast on Sunday too).
(I was also unusual as a single parent.)

[5zeds]

Weirdly I come from a very comfortable background, but was stood in a queue at M and S yesterday next to the magazines and realised I’d NEVER just bought myself a magazine and that there were people who just had piles of them and bought the on a whim.

[sandgrown]

@MrsPelligrinoPetrichor I got married on a freezing cold October day . The Yorkshire pudding starter was very well received though some of the guests from elsewhere were waiting for the rest of their dinner ! My teenage son who was actually born over the border in Lancashire would live on Yorkshire pudding I’d he could.

[Arsebucket]

Being poor and growing up rurally for most of my life meant that I’d never had a take away - apart from the occasional bag of chips.

I was invited to a friends house when I was 13 and they were getting a Chinese takeaway.

I was absolutely belittled for never having tried Chinese food, not knowing how to look at a takeaway menu, and the horror that I didn’t know how to use chopsticks. I also thought I would be expected to chip in as i’d always grown up being told that take away food was very expensive, I cried in their bathroom that I only had £4 on me.

It was such a different world, over a fucking takeaway.

[Arsebucket]

I still remember just staring at the menu not knowing what anything was and my drone and her parents laughing at me for that.

[Arsebucket]

fucks sake, friend, not drone

[borntobequiet]

Also worth mentioning that within the last ten years an acquaintance of my son’s remarked to him that she couldn’t believe he was from a single parent family (he’s a successful professional with his own business).

[CouldBeOuting]

I was shocked to discover that even in 2001 (which was when I discovered this) there are people who have never learned to read and write.

I was a census officer and collecting forms in a relatively nice part of town; good sized semi detached and fully detached houses, large gardens, nice cars on drives etc. etc. I came across two families where I needed to complete their forms as they were unable to read and write. One was a family comprising of a couple in their fifties and their grown up daughter who lived with them and her pre school child. The daughter could read a few words but not enough to deal with the firm and the mother couldn’t even spell her name but she knew what letter it began with. The other family were a couple a similar age to me with school age children but they were “home schooling” 😯. Both families were absolutely lovely, owned their own (better than mine) homes but totally illiterate - I honestly didn’t think that happened in this day and age but I still come across it on a regular basis.

[RampantIvy]

How awful @Arsebucket. They clearly lacked any kind of social awareness.

[Backstreetsbackalrightdadada]

Didn’t have heating, had concrete floors, never had new clothes (though I remember one new jumper someone bought me at 12 and still have it!), never had squash, once was hanging with a friend at the weekend and my mum didn’t have 50p for me to have a burger so I was like “it’s alright I have these boots vouchers from Christmas to spend” thinking I could just cash them in, which wasn’t the case :( just pretended I wasn’t hungry - used to do that a lot. No snacks, ever! We didn’t used to get enough help on non emergency health stuff eg dentist because my mum couldn’t get the time off to take us, had really messed up teeth. Was once given £200 grant and legit thought I could live off it forever (I could’ve on that lifestyle!).

There’s a point… if you’re poor, you can use small amounts of money to keep you going JUST. But you need more money - and a disproportionate amount of it - to “pull yourself up”. Eg we didn’t get a computer/ any smartphones/ internet til we were adults, so every time we tried making applications to uni or jobs was at the library where the internet would cut and you’d lose the whole application. That took an hour walk to get there, paying for the bus wasn’t possible - but that hour took away from your time at the pc. And borrowing interview clothes or getting them from charity shops used to break me cos I knew I didn’t need them long term - everyone else turned up looking like someone from an advert. It was impossible - and the cost of train tickets!

As soon as I could legally get a job it helped though

[Backstreetsbackalrightdadada]

I mention concrete floors as someone else did above and it was the norm for us! Not bad but damp

[tomorrowalready]

@LordofthePings, I was the same about real butter and margerine, Stork then but still use Clover now. That was rude and nasty of your 'friend'.

@Lalliella, Our student house was a 'bidet' house too. It was owned by an Italian resaurant owner and I managed to get the tap stuck one day.friend had to go and fetch him. It was where I learned to make spaghetti blognese as well. With garlic and even home made garlic bread. The landlord once gave my friend the wine drinker a bottle of his home made wine which was like vinegar but she bravely imbibed it.

[Yrevocsid]

I grew up as a military child, my father was an officer fighter pilot in the RAF, therefore my childhood was boarding school and very large officers quarter houses around the world. I had ponies, attended hunt balls etc.

I went to York university where everyone was from a similar background to me (not military, but public schoolies mainly) and lived in a house that my father bought and rented out the other rooms to various student friends.

I was well into adulthood and working and living in London before I became aware that I had had a really privileged life. I made a friend at work, Sarah, and listening to her talk about her family and her life was fascinating to me, she was from the East End and had a nan and said tea for dinner and all these other things that I hadn't heard anyone say before in my circles. I started to feel a weird feeling, something like shame? Embarrassment? Envy? I wasn't sure. My parents were living in Germany at the time, I would fly over for Christmas and the summer ball etc but she and her family were so close, always at each others' tables and loved each other fiercely. It was so different.

I started to keep quiet about my upbringing as I quickly realised that in the UK there is something terrible that is accepted and its this:
It OK to Posh Bash people, to ridicule them for an upbringing they had that they had zero control over. But not OK to do the same to the lower classes/poorer people. Shit example but I wouldn't DREAM of saying, "Oi get back to Aldi!" if I saw one of my poorer friends in Waitrose but it seems its OK to say the opposite to me accompanied by loads of guffawing, rendering me embarrassed and uncomfortable.

[turbonerd]

Just taking what food you like from the cupboard.
That was NOT allowed at home. We were 4 kids, in a comfortable house (not UK so massive in comparison, which was a different kind if surprise when I lived in the UK!), but the last week before payday was such that Mum had to have firm control over what food was left.
When I visited a friend who could just Open the cupboards and help herself, I was aghast.

Buying take away more than maybe once a year. Just because you cannot be bothered to make dinner.

Buying a car that is New. With a car loan.

[Thisbastardcomputer]

Brilliant thread

[korawick12345]

@BlackLambAndGreyFalcon

Possibly outing, but I didn't realise until my mid-20s that most people have Yorkshire pudding as a side with their Sunday Roasts rather than served on its own as a starter as it was in my house!

How could this possibly be outing????

[Backstreetsbackalrightdadada]

And and the worst thing you could do that trapped people - teenage pregnancies. I mean at 13/14 - we had loads in our county, just trapped people into poverty that much longer, especially if they had shit partners along the way. I mean really smart kids but never had a chance at exams etc, or their kids were taken into care and it broke them. I got to uni on scholarships and no one else had teen pregnancies in their schools like that! Maybe half of us had had kids by 17? And two had multiple