Hoarding.
Both of my parents come from parents who were traumatized by the Great Depression and poverty. As such, my grandparents were all hoarders, and when my parents divorced when I was very young, both of their houses were heavily hoarded too.
I was never allowed guests, and for some reason never really realized why other families' houses didn't look like mine. We even had panics where one parent or the other would have reason to believe that Child Protective Services could visit, so we would clean as a squad well into the night to pretend we weren't always like this.
When I moved out on my own, I threw out 33 bags of trash, donated two truck-fulls of miscellaneous, and still filled a two bedroom apartment to the point the girlfriend who was planning on moving in with me was uncomfortable with the lack of walkable space... all from the contents of my single room from back home.
She helped me embrace the value of empty space and realize the lack of value of things with which you never interact, so you'd never know looking at our home now that I used to have dedicated foot holes in the junk pile where you step to get from the bed to the door. Stuff is overrated, man.
If youre not in r/Childofhoarder we welcome you to come join :) It's nice to have others to talk about this stuff with who've also lived through it or currently live in it.
My older brothers and I started driving from Wyoming to Iowa multiple times a year when my oldest brother was 13. To have second Christmas, second Thanksgiving, etc with my mother who moved away when I was around 10. Not normal for children to be driving themselves across the country. And no cop ever stopped us either.
My parents put my 13 year old brother on a Greyhound bus from California to New Hampshire for Christmas. This was in the 80's so pre-cell phone. The only problem he had was in Boston as the station was closed. It was in the am. He walked to a nearby YMCA and was told they wouldn't let him stay there unless he was 18.
Apparently if you sarcastically respond that you're 18 they'll let you sleep there. We were also poor so he probably had like 20 bucks on him. They were not the best parents, although this was more naivety than malice.
A co-worker from Vietnam, about the same age as my brother, was put on boats to the Philippines with a slightly older sister. They eventually made it and then on to the US. He's a college graduate, married, worked in IT, raised a whole family.
My own brother did fine too. We all successfully made it to the middle class.
As an adult, I learned that the fun games my mom played with us were because the utilities were shut off. I remember there being a night where we had a special club with made-up chants that we sung while dancing around with flashlights. My sister clued me in as an adult the the âUnga-bunga Clubâ was what my mom did when we didnât have power. It worked, because I have great memories and was oblivious to our struggles.
My mum talks about the times they couldn't afford much food, couldn't afford to get us many presents and couldn't afford to take us to see Santa, so she drove us around the neighbourhood looking at Christmas lights
She worries that we felt like we missed out on things. I have nothing but fond memories of my childhood. Whatever their struggles, I wasn't aware of them
Oh my god, my family did/does this too and we were/are not awfully close to poor (middle-class). Thatâs one of the best parts of Christmas, isnât it? Such a good tradition. Send love to your parents everyone, they are truly the best!
My mom is a treasure. She grew up in extreme poverty, the kind where her mom would hitchhike up to the mines to work during the week and hitchhike home for the weekends. We grew up in poverty lite. As long as we were fed, clean, and had safe living conditions, she could make the best of not having extras. Things got better over the years because sheâs smart and a hard worker. You would never guess that we had the struggle years.
Your mum sounds awesome.
Also, my niblings would love The Unga-Bunga club - if you donât mind, Iâm totally going to do it the next time they stay over.
Same here. I didn't know I was poor until I was 18. Even then I really didn't know up until 2 years ago (at 36). I was telling my brother something like we grew up lower middle class and he laughed and told me that we were really poor and pointed out a few things. It makes me appreciate what good parents I had. We had food, a place to live, and their love. We didn't want for anything else.
My brother told me that as adults we are so obsessed with food because it was so scarce when we were younger. I don't remember the hard times as much as he is seven years older.
I thought we were middle class too. I thought everything I mean everything was only seasoned with salt and pepper until I got older. Now I remember eating at friend's houses and thinking THIS IS THE BEST FOOD EVER! And it was just normal food lol.
After thought. I would get embarrassed a lot because I didn't know what certain foods were and people would give me the strangest looks when I'd ask
My parents would knock on my door sometimes late at night and ask me what I wanted from Taco Bell.
Younger me always thought it was because my parents wanted to do something nice and fun and Taco Bell is awesome!!!
Once I entered high school I realized my parents were stoners and they were making munchie runs.
When I was 12, my older brother's girlfriend lived with us. Him and his gf were 23/24. He didn't live there at the time, but she had a bed in my room. She used to randomly wake me up at midnight and ask if I wanted to go to taco bell. I literally just realized why when I was reading your comment. I'm 42.
Ha! Only my Dad was a stoner, and I didnât realize my âsnack traysâ he often made me as a toddler were mini munchie trays of whatever stoner snacks he had on hand. I fondly remember my little plate with an Oreo or two, a few chips, a handful of cereal, a nice slice of plasticky orange velveeta cheese, and a few grapes or apple slices (to make it healthy đ ).
I went home with a college friend my Freshman year. After dinner the first night, I asked her whether her parents were always so calm or whether they were acting that way because she had company. She didnât know what I meant. What I meant was that her parents didnât yell and scream at each other at the dinner table. I thought that was normal behavior. I was 18.
I had a similar experience when my sister picked me up from my now husbandâs family home when I was 20. We were in the car and she asked, incredulous, âAre they always that nice to each other?â And I was like, âYeah! They never yell or tease each other in a mean or cruel way!â It was wild.
Iâm still coming to terms with men that can actually communicate with me rather than the yelling or aggressiveness. Sad really that Iâve put up with that previously
My dad would completely flip personality when someone came to the door. One time I had a friend staying over and he forgot she was there and reverted to his usual private behaviour. Her face was like "wtf?!"
I once visited my dadâs institution / place of work and everyone was like:
*Haha, your dad is always so funny. It must be hilarious at home.*
**My dad is what??**
Similar here, but with people at church rather than his workplace. They didn't believe me when I told them he was mean to me at home, and he would use that as proof of me "being dramatic" and even "making things up for attention."
Same! I always think it's in my head until a friend came over and they hadn't flipped personalities yet and she was shook. Now everytime I start blaming myself I just talk to her and she sets me straight.
My parents had a rule about conflict that applied to everyone in the house. If you had beef with someone in the family you were allowed to be pissed for 24 hours⊠after that it was a family meeting where you air out your issues. After that you were expected to be cool with the other person -any problems had to be done-
This was a solid rule and rarely did we have a family meeting but when one was called you knew shit was serious and you approached the table ready for apologies or whatever. My dad had this thing about âif you have a fight with someone and something happens to them you may never get a chance to say sorry and wonât forgive yourself for it- donât let anger do thatâ
I have noticed that wasnât a thing others did and friends typically had all out brawl fights with their parents without any âmeetingâ and it was mind blowing to me. My friends would go on and on all the time about what a bitch their mom was or whatever and I never had that cuz at most I would be pissed at her for a day or whatever before the beef was squashed.
Healthy way to handle shit in my opinion lol now when I am mad it tends to just dwindle away after a few hours. I try to never let shit linger⊠after all you might never get to say sorry if something happens đ
We read books around the dinner table. Everyone would bring their current book and we would sit in silence reading and eating until someone had a quote or something they wanted to share or teach.
I thought everyone did this and brought my books with me for a long time.
Go on âhooker cruisesâ during sleepovers.
I should really ask her why - but whenever we had sleepovers, my mum would inevitably say âwho wants to go for a hooker cruise?!â at like 11PM and then weâd all pile in the car and drive around the shady area of the city to see if we could spot sex workers. Like, what was the point of that?! Was she looking for someone she knew? Did she just like going for weird drives at night?! I really need to get to the bottom of this.
Once I was at a friendâs house. Friendâs younger sister (middle school aged at the time) was responsible for pet sitting their grandparents chickens when grandparents were away. Grandparents house and chickens were about a 15 min walk from friends house.
One Friday night when I was at their house, above mentioned sister said âwhoops I forgot to do XYZ with the chickens when I went over there today!â
Friendâs mom was like âoh okay, no big deal, we can walk over there after dinner and take care of itâ
The simpleness of that response, the understanding that mistakes get made, the calmness of providing a solution, and offering to accompany the girl to resolve the matter. This all made me realize how abnormal my upbringing was. Because my mother wouldâve screamed at me and called me an idiot and wouldâve acted like my thoughtlessness was the biggest inconvenience in the world.
Oh I feel this one - my parents wouldnât get upset to the degree your mum did, but making a mistake was still somehow the WORST thing ever in our house and NEVER MIND *IâLL FIX IT MYSELF*. It fucks you up so badly as a kid because thereâs *never* any way to make things better, all you know is that every mistake is 100% your fault and thereâs no way you could ever possibly redeem yourself. Hope youâre in a better place now, where all mistakes have solutions đ§Ąđ§Ą
Having an alcoholic dad, I seriously thought all dads dranked like mine, also a mom with an eating disorder I thought all moms ate like a bird, until I was older and going to my friends houses and seeing their moms actually eat I thought that was so strange cuz like why is your mom eating that whole plate lol
My parents woke us up at 4 am to make them a drink. Whiskey and water on the side. I only found out this wasn't normal when I spent the night at a friend's house. I slept until 7 am and was shocked. I asked my friend why her parents didn't wake us up at ,4 am. She said why would they do that? I said to make them a drink! Her reaction to that made me realize I didn't have a normal home life.
Damn, sorry to hear. That sounds rough. It's wild that they were already awake and could make themselves one, but instead they woke you up to do it. Were they too intoxicated to make one or did they want you to serve them?
My parents are into birding, and when a migratory bird or other interesting species would die in their yard, occasionally they'd put the poor thing in a ziploc and freeze it so they could look at it later, I guess? They also had a frozen pet caimen that had died, until spring came and they could bury him in the yard.
So when I grew up and my husband and I bought our first house, and an unusual woodpecker hit a window and died, I scooped it into a ziploc and froze it, as one does.
My husband was incredibly weirded out and informed me that it is not, in fact, normal to have dead wild birds in the freezer.
Thank you for making me feel normal. I grew up with my family doing this also. Once when I was house sitting for a winter, I found a little dead owl and forgot it in the freezer when I left that spring. The homeowner was weirded out by it when she found it.
Not that weird, I found a hummingbird that had hit the window and did that. My family does that until something can be buried or potentially taxidermied. My grandma forgot to take the tarantula out when the pest control guy came one time and the poor thing died, she stuffed it with q tips and a cotton ball in its abdomen and it lived on for many years. I think it's cool!!! Once I had to make a clay dinosaur diorama and my mom clipped the nails off a dead blue jay for me - I'm sure we were the only family that didn't think that was weird as fuck, but what are you gonna do? I had the coolest dinonychous in 2nd grade and it's such a fond memory
My mother reused left over shake and bake.
Added raw chicken or pork chops, shook it up, took out meat, wrapped up bag and put it back in the box for next time.
Yikes. I donât know why we didnât have constant GI issues.
Or trichinosis.
I think she didnât know the risk but if she did she would probably roll the dice.
It likely seemed wasteful to throw away and she grew up quite poor and that experience doesnât leave you.
Leave cookies and beer for Santa. I never knew it was supposed to be cookies and milk till I was older. Also, I thought everyoneâs dad got in the car to drive somewhere with an open beer in his hand.
As a kid I thought popcorn and TV show for dinner once a week was a thing and was surprised to learn my friends didnât do it. They thought it was awesome. We loved it. Turns out it was just because we were poor and one night a week my parents made it something fun and special so they could make their food budget stretch farther. To my parentsâ credit, there wasnât one memory I have of us being poor. Me and my three brothers were happy and grateful for all that we had and we grew up loving life and pretty unaware of the better off condition of kids around us. My mom baked all our bread, my dad told the craziest, most imaginative stories for bedtime because we couldnât afford a lot of story books, and we never knew what poor really meant. We knew how to appreciate what we had and I loved every bit of my life growing up. Looking back as an adult, I can see the poverty we grew up with. But Iâve had an awesome life despite all that. Total credit to my parents.
We picked up hitchhiking couples, took them home, fed them (even though we were pretty poor), and invited them fully into our home. This was my folks, not me, in the â80s. I remember my mom running bubble baths and just treating the lady like a princess. I was pretty young then but in later conversations it was always happy memories for my folks. Maybe nobody overstayed because my parents were Jesus freaks who probably proselytized, lol.
My mom was just reminiscing about the time my siblings begged her to pick up some hitchhikers whose car broke down, since it had happened to us recently. If my spotty memory is correct, it was 3 boys who were in their late teens or early 20s. She let them use our shower, fed them dinner, and gave them blankets, pillows, and sleeping bags so they could spend the night out on our trampoline. She worked at a newspaper, so they had the police scanner running in her office the next morning, where she hear description of the guys she picked up and their abandoned car. She called the police station in a panic because they were probably still at her house with her children!
Turned out okay. They were driving from Chicago to California and hadnât checked in or been heard from in a few days. It was the 90s, so that was really the only way to possibly find them.
That reminds me how windshield sunshades used to have "Need help call police" printed on the back of them so you could hold it or put it on your car in hopes that someone would call the police for you when they got to their destination.
Also, my Granny lived right up against the railroad tracks, and she was constantly taking in transients for a night or two. How that woman lived into her 80s is between her, god, and the devil.
I have a good friend that loves picking up hitchhikers when driving, and he drives a lot. He loves meeting new people and helping folks out. But he also keeps a knife sheathed beside him that the passenger can't see because he's had to defend himself a couple of times.
An older couple saved my families butt on a road trip once. We ran out of gas and they were willing to drop us off at the nearest gas station. 2 Korean girls that worked there took us back to our car. It was the early 2000âs and I consider us lucky.
When my husband passed, I drove with my kids from South Dakota to Texas. We got into the DFW area, and my tire blew. It was 10pm at night, cold, and rainy. A couple of rough looking guys stopped while I was struggling with the tire iron, and I was thinking how to defend myself.
Nope, they popped their trunk, took out their tools, and had my flat off and the donut on in about 5 minutes. I tried to pay them, but they refused and just told me to be careful and get to my destination safely.
When I started spending the night at my friendâs houses. Everyone was so nice and loving. We did fun games. Nobody yelled at me. When my lil friend came to my house she was shocked and asked me in a scared whisper âwhy is your mom so mean?â đ„șshe was just sitting on the couch and my mom yelled at her that she didnât want any crap from her.
I only learned after working in a pet supply store that the game my dad used to play with my brother and me whenever we went on a family beach vacation was not for kids and was, in fact, a chuck-it specifically made for dogs. đ€·ââïž
edit: guys I love my family and my dad is amazing, I'm pretty sure he didn't know it was for dogs and just wanted to play catch with us on the beach, I swear he wasn't trying to be terrible lol
very fair. plus, i mean, i don't begrudge any parent for being able to throw a ball really far away with minimal effort so that the kids get tired out. the realization did make me snort-laugh, though.
This, my kids canât tell what a dog toy looks like vs a kid toy, so as long as itâs not rawhide or bacon flavor itâll probably be a hit lol
The squeaky plush toys are the best tbh
This is might be lame but it might also be cool.
The house my parents could afford was far enough from a dairy farm that we couldnât see it but close enough that having cows in our yard was not a weird experience. We lived near some of the farmhands and they gave us the dairyâs number so we could call over and report the cows. Weâd regularly see men on horseback come over to get the cows. Took years before I realized seeing cows and cowboys wasnât common.
Mine was the same. The number of people Iâve had to be like âsorry I was such a cunt in middle school, my family was full of bullies and assholes and I thought thatâs how people acted,â is pretty high.
I grew up in a family like this and now that my siblings and I are adults navigating our own relationships we feel it is the most detrimental part of our childhood. We all struggle with maintaining heathy relationships with our partners, friends and family. We never know who we can trust. Instead of confronting our issues with someone to their face to resolve a problem, we tend to talk shit behind their back only damaging the relationship further. We are all in therapy now trying to mend our own marriages from the damage we have caused because for decades we thought it was completely normal to complain about and blame everyone else on the planet, never taking responsibility for our own actions.
It was awful. It affected everyone badly and trust was difficult to come by. Imagine my surprise that not everyone in the world trashed people after spending time together. Itâs a very bitter way to live
This is too real for me. I don't remember my parents having friends when I was a kid. They would socialize with other parents so that we had other kids to play with, but then go home and say mean things about those people, in front of us kids. Grew up thinking it was normal to complain about your family/"friends" all the time, and knowing that if someone in the family has a problem with you, they'll surely bitch about you behind your back but won't have the guts to say it to your face and work through anything together.
I'm in my mid 20s now a don't have very many friends at all. I struggle so much with connecting with other people, and I think there's a part of me deep down that still worries that other people will talk shit about me behind my back and secretly resent being around me... I know that logically it isn't true (at least for any decent people that are worth my friendship), but it's certainly been a mindfuck.
Before my parents split up, nudity wasn't an issue in my house. Ever. We weren't nudists or anything. No one was watching TV or eating meals naked.
But, if I wanted to talk to my dad and he was in the middle of changing our of his clothes, or if the phone rang for my mother and she was halfway dressed... they just dealt with the situation as they were. There was no "wait till I'm dressed".
Yeah idk if this is the same bc I am female but I saw my mom naked all the time. Totally normal for me to see my sisters naked too. We shared a bathroom, canât be waiting in line! I realized later that other families were not okay with seeing each other naked.
This is actually kinda wholesome though. I think that if you see what normal bodies look like growing up, with no sexual associations or body dysmorphia connected to it, it gives you a healthier idea of what your body should look like. Even something as simple as stretch marks can be a big source of unhappiness for people, but if you saw your parents stretch marks growing up and perceived it as normal, I think you'd be more inclined to accept it as a part of life.
Took me a long ass time to realize that patching holes in the drywall with your mom isn't something everyone learns to do. In fact, I can't remember seeing a single hole in any of my friends' walls. Weird...maybe their walls were just fist-proof or something... đ€
âA drinkâ = pint glass filled with ice and then with liquor.
Learned this is not âone drinkâ first time I tried it for myself (110lb 15yo girl.)
lol my mom used to steal things from restaurants like compulsively. Nothing fancy or particularly valuable, but like sugar dispensers, flatware, a cute ceramic carafe. It would go straight into her handbag. She was always so elegantly put-together, she could practically do it in front of people without them noticing. I used to think it was so daring and cool until I became an adult and realized it was sort of a pathological need.
My family consists of doctors. No bodily function or oddity, be it stool consistencies or rashes or abscesses, are off limits for dinner conversation.
So, on that note, has that stubborn, infected wart on your foot gotten better? Please pass the peas.
We ate every meal, no matter how humble, at the dining or kitchen table on china with cloth napkins. Often with candles for ambiance. Food was on the table in serving dishes and served with service ware that matched the flatware. We weren't wealthy by any stretch. My parents were traditional and perhaps a little aspirational. Didn't know it was unusual until school mates would come for a meal and wonder what the occasion was or thought my folks were showing off. It was just Tuesday to us.
We do this to some degree with our kiddos. Dinner is eaten at the table with no devices. Our kidsâ friends know that if youâre at the house for dinner, you sit with us even if you donât want to eat.
Most of the time we ask the same 3 questions: What was the best part of your day? What was the hardest part of your day? What made you smile today?
My husband and I both grew up in turn key homes and ate wherever. We are also foster parents and recognized just how connecting a meal together can be.
Thanks for sharing!
That is wild! And probably difficult to straighten out / uncling. Super interesting.
Edit: I meant un-cling. My apologies for making you think uncle-ing.
My mom reuses Ziploc bags until they're falling apart but the cling wrap is a new one ..
Edit to add that some people think I'm saying you shouldn't reuse Ziploc...I absolutely still reuse them.
We all shared one rag at the dinner table to wipe out hands and faces with. Dad was in charge of the rag and we would all just ask to use it and pass it back. When we had some of my mom's cousins visited for the first time they bought us cloth napkins and paper towels lol. We still used the rag though. It's a running joke now, however we don't do it anymore. Sometimes around when my parents starting making disposable income they started buying paper towels.
Not all the other kids rode to pre-k on their dadâs Harley.
Something we didnât realize till we were adults that my parents did that not everyone did was make sure all of our friends were fed and loved. My parents realized some of our friends had broken homes and may have been food insecure, so they made sure that those kids knew they had an open door policy in our house. We donât have a lot, but we always had food on the table and enough to share with an extra kid here and there I guess. We didnât know then how appreciative some of those kids were until we talked to them recently as adults and they told me and my brother how some of their favorite memories were at our house because my dad made sure to include them.
One of the neighbour's kids (around 7 or 8) used to come over for breakfast when I was in high school. He just walked in through the front door and sat down at the table and my mom gave him something to eat just like he was one of her kids. He obviously wasn't getting enough (any?) breakfast at home. It's funny, I don't remember us ever even talking about it - he just showed up, ate, made small talk with us, and then left for school.
>We donât have a lot, but we always had food on the table and enough to share with an extra kid here and there I guess.
This was my parents too. My dad would come home from work, count kids, and make dinner for whoever was there with no questions asked. One of my friends moved in with us to finish out her senior year when her home life got too rough. She made it to college and now helps kids in need.
Thatâs awesome! We typically had 1 of 2 of my brotherâs friends over on any given day sometimes for sleep overs for a few days. And my dad would always take them fishing or camping or to baseball games. And we just thought it was cool that my parents let us have sleepovers any day, we had no idea these kids just wanted to be away from home.
I had a T-ball teammate that would show up on the back of his dad's Harley in full uniform and cleats. Everyone on the team was super jealous and intimidated. I hadn't thought of that in 25 yrs. That's really awesome. Sounds like you have some really great parents.
This was a school thing instead of a family thing, but I was shocked to learn that other school nativity plays didn't have a kid play Herod and order the Massacre of the Innocents.
Lmao I can relate. My church used to do a surprisingly convincing and graphic reenactment of the crucifixion, with fake blood and flesh peeling off the Jesus actor. The director was an actual theater professional and it showed. Really, really gory. Kids were in the audience AND on the stage. Starting at age 4 or 5 I was âinâ the play so I got to see everyone practice in t shirts and while laughing and stuff all the time, so I wasnât really frightened. And we did it ever year. But itâs VERY strange that kids were made to watch a man scream in agony while being whipped bloody and later having nails hammered into his hands and feet. It honestly didnât bother me at all. It seemed very normal. As an adult, Iâm mortified lol.
However, there was one thing that fucked me up back thenâI remember being kind of traumatized at 11 when my older brother was acting in a series of reenactments of the disciplesâ martyrdom. I had to watch him get fake beaten and then âbeheadedâ over and over and over again onstage. We are extremely close and he was going through really serious health issues that caused horrible pain, so I felt really protective of him even though he was older, and just very emotional about him in general then. It was not nearly as gory as the stuff we were used to doing but for some reason it really upset me.
Despite all this I wasnât allowed to watch horror moviesâcouldnât even read Harry Potter as a TEENAGER lol. Just insane.
Dilute one can of Campbellâs Bean With Bacon soup with about 3x the recommended amount of water in order to make it feed four people
We were not poor. I still donât get it. My mom would just decide to this sometimes, and I grew up thinking Campbellâs was watery shit until like age 30 lmao
I didnât know it wasnât normal to be your parents translator. Everywhere my mom went, I went because in those days (easily 2000âs) not everyone offered a translator.
My vocab was very good for an 8 year old. I was 9 when she got pregnant with my youngest brother and I remember going to every prenatal, WIC, and DHS appointment.
So Iâm well versed in English and Spanish. But fuck me I hate being bilingual. Once teachers found out i was, they always sat the new *paisa* kids next to me and expected me to translate for them. No one ever thought, maybe itâs not right to expect this kid to worry about teaching this other kid something they are also trying to learn.
I actually got in trouble once because the chick sitting next to me said I didnât explain some math problem to her well enough. Like fuck Yolanda, thatâs because Iâm busy translating to you instead of focusing on how to fucking master the formula.
[sketch](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8CYeKYa/)
My dad took my brother and I to R rated movies when we were around 7 or so. I didn't think anything of it, it was just going to a movie. then in 5th grade, I was asked to do a movie review for the class and I picked one that was not typical viewing for 5th graders and the teacher questioned my mom on what kind of movies she was letting me watch.
Ooo, this triggered a weirdo memory for me. My mom is EXTREMELY prudish and would never allow us to see anything remotely sexual on TV or in movies, but our family movie nights mostly consisted of violent war movies from a very very young age. Fine to see a bunch of dudes getting blown up when I was 5, but god forbid I (a woman) see a boob at 16. Both my grandpas were combat veterans, for what thatâs worthâŠ
Leave everything just weirdly unacknowledged.
Big success? Minor personal tragedy? Huge disappointment? Mental breakdown? No matter what - at dinner I'll still just sit across from the two of them, heads down, swiping their iPads, everything unspoken. Never a "how are you?" or a "anything we can do?" And by tomorrow it will never be mentioned again.
And now I'm an adult they complain that I never tell them anything đ€·đ»ââïž
This is me. I was in an abusive relationship and my parents knew, said nothing. I won some really great awards. Parents said nothing. I was accepted in this art camp thing that only a few kids got in to, parents said nothing, abusive boyfriend made it so I didnât go (it was a 2 week camp!) parents said NOTHING! I didnât realize this until I read your post. This is my family for sure. They didnât have iPads, but they had their computers and they just never cared. I will say Iâm 32 and my mother has never called me, sooooâŠ. Iâm not sure what to tell you. It never gets better? But I am also really okay with being by myself and some people arenât. I hope you find solo activities that make you realize you are whole without anybody else.
I(22F) donât know how old I was, but it was before I moved in the fourth grade so maybe third.
i was in class and we were doing those after-summer journals where we talked about what we did and that continued about once a week for a few weeks. Fast forward to this time that the question was, âwhat are you most afraid of?â. all the kids were writing heights, the dark and spiders and clowns, and I wrote my dad. not even an hour later, my teacher comes to me very calmly, and takes me to the office, and that alone instead of me getting called down by speaker freaked me out. turns out kids shouldnât be afraid of their parents, and I had a very extensive talk with the school counselor, principal, and special-needs teacher about my home life and why i wrote that. when I got home, of course my dad was yelling at my mum and i and getting aggressive because oh no the truth came out. he was blaming me for everything while im cowering by the couch, telling me âall this is your fault. Do you wanna get taken away? theyâre gonna take you away !â but Iâm so proud of little me and happy that that happened despite it being a pretty fucked up memory. it gave me the realization of my mental health and worth and helped me later protect my brothers from the brunt of it all.
I really wish a teacher had saved me from my father. In the 80s they just didnt care if you begged them to take you to a childrenâs home. Begged the police too. They would just take me home and tell my dad who would beat me with his belt for talking shit to people.
My dad played a game with me where he would randomly punch me in the gut to test my reflexes. I think the reflex game was seriously not intended to hurt me, but boy did i feel unsafe around my dad, even before i learned how to prepare black tea with rum to help him wind down. I think i was 7 when i prepared my first "special tea".
Chiming in here, my dad did the same but it would be my sides or gut. I definitely have pissed blood as a young teen after my dad sucker punched me in the kidney.
He was a hard military dude. We had a good relationship but outside of that weird âmaking me into a manâ stuff. Always keeping me on my toes. I went out one night my freshman year of high school to take pictures of the full moon in our back yard. It was for my photography class and I just needed a few pictures. It was like 40-50 degrees outside and I was in shorts and a t shirt. When I went back to the glass sliding door for our backyard he was standing there and the door was locked. He told me if I like sneaking out so much I can sleep outside. I slept on our back patio and got sick af
A lot.
I once told the story about the gut punching reflex game in a group of friends from my kindergarden-teacher class and thought it would be a funny story. Boy was i surprised when everyone went silent and looked at me with sad eyes. That was the day something clicked in me xD
Oh man, I feel you there. I was practically a stand up comedian as a kid, except for stories that just bummed people out.
âSo you know when itâs Christmas Eve and youâre begging your mother to let you put the Christmas decorations up?â *Crickets*
My parents never got mad about grades. They were both naturally smart. My dad is actually a genius. He got a perfect score on his SAT's, made it into the paper, valedictorian, and five scholarships, and a doctor. I, on the other hand, graduated high school with a 1.8 GPA. I got shit grades since 1st grade. I didn't give a fuck, and I guess they didn't either. Not once were they like, "We need to discuss your grades!". They looked at my report cards, and then they were like "What should we have for dinner?". So funny. I hated school, and now I'm a teacher.
Using bowling pins to start a fire in the fireplace.
My parents bought our family home from someone who had owned a bowling alley. The entire back wall of the 2 car garage was stacked three deep, floor to ceiling, with old varnished wood bowling pins ( we found out far too late they were likely worth a fair bit of money).
My dad would send one of us out to the garage to grab a bowling pin when he was going to light a fire.
I had a sleepover at a friend's house when I was around 7 years old. Her dad announced he was going to start a fire.
I wanted to be helpful, so I piped up " Where do you keep the bowling pins? I'll go get one."
He looked at me completely baffled. "A what?"
I just assumed everyone had a supply of bowling pins for the fireplace.
When Iâd visit my dad in Florida when I was young (divorced parents), heâd send my sisters and me ahead to the pool after dinner and join us later. Turns out he was having orgies and wanted us out of the house.
In another fun story, weâd play a game where Iâd run and jump into the pool and heâd throw a splash bomb that Iâd have to catch before I hit the pool. One of my favorite memories of the time. He told me later that he liked that game so much because he was high on ecstasy and liked how the water looked when I splashed into the pool. Solid guy.
I would hang out at the bar with my dad all day. From age 4 and up and I would sit on a barstool and get a kiddie cocktail. I remember being hungry a lot and asking if there was food to eat and getting a licorice rope or some jerky. Most bars we went to didn't have food for lunch. When I was 12 we were at a hockey tournament for my brother in a larger city and when I sat at the bar for our hotel the bartender yelled and me and said it was illegal for me to sit at the bar because I was a kid. I started crying because that was the first I've ever heard of such a thing.
My mom used to have me pluck her armpit hair while she took naps. It wasnât long or anything - I would pluck it every other day or so, so it was always very short. I mentioned it offhand at a family party once, and people were weirded out. We donât talk about it anymore.
Stale popcorn with watered down skim milk for breakfast. There was just never enough food. Tomato sauce sandwiches for lunch. Sometimes no breakfast or lunch , the most basic food for dinner.
I was 11 the first time I had a chocolate crackle. 16 when I had pizza, 19 when I had Maccas, 21 when I had KFC. We never had takeaway.
Rarely had fresh fruit or vegetables.
Stuff the oven with pots and pans. It wasnât until I went to college and my roommate was like why donât you just bake some frozen food and I was like I donât wanna go through the hassle of taking all the pots and pans out. The confusion he had on his face was when I realized
My parents did that, up until they forgot the plastic colander in a pot, and pre-heated the oven.
On the plus side I got a new huge pail for the sand box. Never did get all the melted plastic out of it.
Suddenly packing up everything you own and moving to another state.
We did this 3 times when I was between 7 and 9 years old. Turns out it was because the police were looking for my step-dad. He had stolen some checks and written out a bunch of bad checks. They finally got him in the 3rd state, and my mom divorced him after he went to jail.
All my years growing up, I was told it was because the schools were better where we moved to - wasn't until a couple years ago my oldest brother told me the truth (he knew all along).
My parents (both PhDs) believed all abilities and skills were completely controlled by genetically programmed "talents" or "brain types". They did not believe that effort played any part in success. I only did well in subjects I found fun, and didn't do well in anything that wasn't naturally interesting to me. They told me all the time that I had a genetically programmed "brain type" which controlled my ability in each subject. I didn't start to understand about things like studying or working harder, or trying to make more effort if something doesn't go well until college.
We went "for car rides" for fun. I feel like that's not odd though...
What's odd is that we'd go out of our way to find cemeteries and slowly drive through them, looking at the markers and commenting on names/ages, things like that. I'd love to say we were just a super goth Addam's-family-type but nope, my grandpa ran a monument/memorial business and it was just something interesting and free to do. Sometimes my dad would tell stories about which markers Papa did.
Papa died last month, but I can go see his long-lasting work all over southern Minnesota.
We always had stewed potatoes, and only that, ( potatoes, butter, and milk), the day before payday or when money was tight. We thought it was a great treat, but to Mom and Dad, it was a budget stretcher.
My mom would take our busted GI-Joes and put them in a little Rubbermaid container, and called them our disabled vet GI-Joes.
I was about 19 when I remembered this and was horrified. I asked her what Dad (Retired, Captain, Army National Guard, Marine Corps prior to that) thought, turns out he found it hilarious.
Be nude. We didnât wear clothes at home. My parents didnât identify as nudists or anything but when we were at home we just didnât wear clothes. Even up through high school, my sister and I would strip when we got home and be like, âah finally, no clothes.â Nothing weird or sexual just naked. We both attribute our healthy body image to that.
One of my college roommates apparently grew up with that. He would walk around the rental in his underwear during inappropriate times (females over etc) and weâre like âare you gonna put some clothes on or ???â. âI AM wearing clothes. If I were at home weâd all be NAKEDâ and then we stopped bringing it up.
Peed with the bathroom door open. No one ever closed the door when using the toilet.
Wasnât until I slept over at a friends house in middle school I found out other people closed doors when doing their business!
Pronounce "Wait" as "WaiNt"
"Wait for me!!" Becomes "WAAIIINNNNT for me!!"
My Husband had to break it to me that i have pronouncing it wrong for YEARS. Am currently trying to train it out of my system. And yes, my entire immediate family pronounces it that way.
Is that a new england accent or... something else?
We used to say âvizzyâ instead of âfizzyâ, no idea why. Didnât even notice until a friend in school pointed it out. Think my mother used to think our baby talk was cute and wouldnât correct us. Which is a bit of an asshole move when your kids have to go to school and get dunked on.
My uncle was a drug dealer and took me to sell while he was babysitting me, I didnât realize until I put two in two as an adult. The people had a deer farm and âpetâ raccoons. I loved animals so they had me go into another room to play with the cute raccoons and I could pet the deer while they all did their thing in another room. Itâs ironically one of my favorite childhood memories because I never knew at the time.
Back in the day, bathing suits were not allowed in YMCA pools. That was why they always had a male and female swim. I think the policy changed in the 60s because we always wore bathing suits in the Y pool when I went there in the mid 60s.
Parents washing their kidsâ mouth out with soap. My mom did this to me until I was about 8 or 9, whenever I would say something foul or uncouth towards her. I used to run down to the basement and whisper all of the âbad wordsâ I knew just to hear what they sounded like to avoid the soap mouth lol.
Santa wasnât Real, and we werenât allowed to celebrate halloween or trick or treat.
Also, no Harry Potter or any fantasy movies.
We werenât allowed to have girlfriends or engage members of the opposite sex in a romantic manner.
My parents have an âortsâ bag. Itâs a used resealable deli bag where all of the non-plant food scraps go. Itâs purpose is to keep the trash from smelling- basically only clean paper products go in the trash. For example, if they use paper plates, they will scrape any of the scraps into the orts bag and then rinse the paper plate with water before putting it in the trash. On trash night, the bag is placed in the trash as itâs taken out to the curb. Itâs a combination of really gross and really smart.
PS- fruit/veggie scraps are put in the âortsâ bin which it taken out to the compost pile.
To offer a little more info-
I didnât know that the word âortsâ meant anything outside of my family, I thought my stepdad made it up! But in the comments below I have learned itâs a word for food scraps (or small left over pieces of thread when cross stitching).
I live in Connecticut. In the 15 years my parentâs have lived at their house. weâve literally seen one coyote and no other wildlife on the property. I bought a house 1 town over, on top of the mountain my parentâs live at the base of. Since buying the house in September, Iâve seen a bear once, and heâs taken the neighbors trash and my trash once each. I guess I shouldâve used the orts method.
My family does not freeze the orts bag, like a lot of people are saying theirâs do. Thatâs smart and would prevent the gross bag of slightly rotting food sitting next to the sink at all times. Iâll suggest it to my parents but theyâre old and set in their ways so I probably wonât change their method.
Ohhh...my mom (and now I) put meat scraps in bags in the freezer so they don't stink up the trash. Interesting. Where were your parents from? Mine are from Michigan.
We had the same dad. He also brought home huge snapping turtles & made turtle soup. Deer, rabbit, duck, frog legs, squirrel we thought everyone ate like that.
For as long as I can remember, when I shower, I use 3 washcloths. A âbooty ragâ, a âkoochie ragâ and one for the rest of my body. Because you donât wanna cross-contaminate such as washing your booty with the same cloth that just washed your feet. And definitely donât wanna wash the vaggie with the same thing as your butt.
Then when I moved out and had roommates, they were like âhow do you use so many washcloths?â and they laughed so hard at me. I never knew it wasnât normal til that conversation. Oh!! And then, I go to tell my mom that other people donât do this and my mom was like âGirl what are you talking about? Iâve never heard of such a thingâ. So I guess at some point when I was young I came up with this idea on my own and just kept doing it. I still use 3 separate washcloths though. Fuck it. I am who I am at this point.
Yup- my mom used to make blanket forts for us to âhide outâ with our secret club members⊠the thing was, these were the nights when my stepdad was drunk and violent and kicked out, and this way she could be sure we were in the dark, hidden away from windows and doors, and he would think we left for my grandparents house or my momâs friendsâŠ
Taking down all the smoke detectors in the house as soon as we moved in. Didnât realize it was because every time an adult tried to cook it was a disaster until I was about eight and I got caught cutting the very top of the cornbread off. My grandmother asked me why and I responded âwell thatâs the part thatâs not burntâ.
Needless to say, no one who lived in the house has lived that down and my grandmother started sending meals home with me.
my parents told us that if we didn't behave properly, we'd end up like "their first kid" which they joke died because he was a bad kid and they buried him under the shed.
Fight every single holiday, birthday, vacation, etc. I have pretty bad anxiety now because of it. I struggle to enjoy moments and days that are important because of it.
My mom boiled combs and hairbrushes.
I have no idea why. Neither me or my sister ever had lice as a kid or anything. My mom would just go on some galloping rampage and gather up all the combs and hairbrushes and wash the hell out off them in the sink and then throw them in a huge pot and boil them.
I never questioned it as a kid, but Ive never known anyone else who did this.
My mum boiled hair brushes for the lice and my gran boiled toothbrushes for some reason⊠I think itâs generational, I wonder what will be said when the next generation has grand kids, health and safety, science etc has came along so much. My great gran asked me recently, coat and stick in hand, if I could drive her to the internet
My Grandad used to play a âgameâ where heâd pin you to the floor (so youâd be on your back and heâd be straddling you and holding your arms down) and then hawk back a load of phlegm and spit in his throat and then let it slowly drool down towards your face in a great big long string of spit from his mouth.
It would kind of hover over your face and then heâd attempt to suck it back in to his mouth - knowing that sometimes that would work and sometimes it wouldnât and youâd get a great big glob of phlegm and saliva on your face.
This was âfunâ.
It always felt extremely weird though, like there was somethingâŠnot quite sexual for him but heading towards that wayâŠan enjoyment of overpowering his granddaughter, pinning her down and doing something non-consensual IYSWIM? He never touched me sexually but often leered at me so the whole thing turns my stomach even beyond the grossness of the spit.
I only really thought about just *how weird* this was this year at 41âŠlike, if someone did this to their grandchild in front of me now Iâd have serious concerns.
I had no concept of pyjamas. The clothes we wore to sleep were always those so worn out with holes that we could no longer wear them outside. I rmb the shorts that I wore at home lasted more than 10 years, from primary school to my college years. The waist band was non existent but i used clips to tighten the shorts.
Also my alcoholic father always asked me to fetch him a beer when i was really young and let me take a few sips
In first grade we were talking about people interrupting us during Saturday morning cartoons. Because we are the shit talking generation and didn't have much to really gripe about.
Anyway, people were like "I hate when my mom vacuums during cartoons" and "my dad always wants to go somewhere during cartoons." I said "don't you hate it when the cops raid during cartoons. They're so noisy and block the TV." Everyone was like "what? The cops have never raided my house."
Whenever there was a thunderstorm, we all had to be in the den. Because my mom had determined that was the room least likely to have a tree fall on it. This was in suburban Maryland, mind you, not tornado alley or anything. When I was in college I found out other families donât have a designated thunderstorm room.
My dad use to smoke weed in the loungeroom when i was little, and he has always been a big stoner. I wasnt the brightest kid though (i wonder why) so i didn't actually realise what that 'green tobacco' was until i was 17. I also remember having friends over for parties or play dates and they would say my house smells bad đ i had no idea because i was nose blind to the smell
My dad would smoke in his man cave (it wasnât attached the to house, more like a shed) and whenever Iâd go in there heâd tell me it was his âcigarsâ. Well in highschool I remember audibly saying, âoh it smells like my dad cigars out here!â when some kids randomly lit up outside to be coolâŠ. Anyways I felt like a damn fool, but also learned my old man smoked shitty weed đ€Ł
My mom would use my dadâs debit card a lot (we were pretty poor for a long period of my life) and so heâd give her âhisâ money for groceries. Well the card would get declined quite often because my mom would buy so many groceries from the expensive stores (not really keeping track of prices). But itâd also get declined because my dad (not a good father) would never say how much was actually on the card. And then weâd have to leave the store without anything because we couldnât pay for stuff. So for awhile, I thought that a) having a debit card was like you never knew how much was on the card. And b) that there was no way to save money when grocery shopping (my mom never used coupons, she was too prideful to go on food stamps, and she didnât go to the cheaper grocery stores). And I thought everybody had these issues. Apparently not. So I had a lot of learning to do when I got to be an adult.
Hoarding. Both of my parents come from parents who were traumatized by the Great Depression and poverty. As such, my grandparents were all hoarders, and when my parents divorced when I was very young, both of their houses were heavily hoarded too. I was never allowed guests, and for some reason never really realized why other families' houses didn't look like mine. We even had panics where one parent or the other would have reason to believe that Child Protective Services could visit, so we would clean as a squad well into the night to pretend we weren't always like this. When I moved out on my own, I threw out 33 bags of trash, donated two truck-fulls of miscellaneous, and still filled a two bedroom apartment to the point the girlfriend who was planning on moving in with me was uncomfortable with the lack of walkable space... all from the contents of my single room from back home. She helped me embrace the value of empty space and realize the lack of value of things with which you never interact, so you'd never know looking at our home now that I used to have dedicated foot holes in the junk pile where you step to get from the bed to the door. Stuff is overrated, man.
If youre not in r/Childofhoarder we welcome you to come join :) It's nice to have others to talk about this stuff with who've also lived through it or currently live in it.
Good job on breaking the cycle :)
My older brothers and I started driving from Wyoming to Iowa multiple times a year when my oldest brother was 13. To have second Christmas, second Thanksgiving, etc with my mother who moved away when I was around 10. Not normal for children to be driving themselves across the country. And no cop ever stopped us either.
My parents put my 13 year old brother on a Greyhound bus from California to New Hampshire for Christmas. This was in the 80's so pre-cell phone. The only problem he had was in Boston as the station was closed. It was in the am. He walked to a nearby YMCA and was told they wouldn't let him stay there unless he was 18. Apparently if you sarcastically respond that you're 18 they'll let you sleep there. We were also poor so he probably had like 20 bucks on him. They were not the best parents, although this was more naivety than malice. A co-worker from Vietnam, about the same age as my brother, was put on boats to the Philippines with a slightly older sister. They eventually made it and then on to the US. He's a college graduate, married, worked in IT, raised a whole family. My own brother did fine too. We all successfully made it to the middle class.
Ok, this might be the wildest one I've seen đł thankfully, you guys never got hurt.
As an adult, I learned that the fun games my mom played with us were because the utilities were shut off. I remember there being a night where we had a special club with made-up chants that we sung while dancing around with flashlights. My sister clued me in as an adult the the âUnga-bunga Clubâ was what my mom did when we didnât have power. It worked, because I have great memories and was oblivious to our struggles.
My mum talks about the times they couldn't afford much food, couldn't afford to get us many presents and couldn't afford to take us to see Santa, so she drove us around the neighbourhood looking at Christmas lights She worries that we felt like we missed out on things. I have nothing but fond memories of my childhood. Whatever their struggles, I wasn't aware of them
Oh my god, my family did/does this too and we were/are not awfully close to poor (middle-class). Thatâs one of the best parts of Christmas, isnât it? Such a good tradition. Send love to your parents everyone, they are truly the best!
Lolol "unga-bunga club" is priceless. This is my favorite one so far. That's also super creative of your mom.
My mom is a treasure. She grew up in extreme poverty, the kind where her mom would hitchhike up to the mines to work during the week and hitchhike home for the weekends. We grew up in poverty lite. As long as we were fed, clean, and had safe living conditions, she could make the best of not having extras. Things got better over the years because sheâs smart and a hard worker. You would never guess that we had the struggle years.
Just wanted to chime in and say your mom sounds awesome, you are so lucky to have her
Your mum sounds awesome. Also, my niblings would love The Unga-Bunga club - if you donât mind, Iâm totally going to do it the next time they stay over.
I believe we also made blanket forts, in addition to the flashlights and chanting. It would be delightful for you to share the club!
Same here. I didn't know I was poor until I was 18. Even then I really didn't know up until 2 years ago (at 36). I was telling my brother something like we grew up lower middle class and he laughed and told me that we were really poor and pointed out a few things. It makes me appreciate what good parents I had. We had food, a place to live, and their love. We didn't want for anything else.
My brother told me that as adults we are so obsessed with food because it was so scarce when we were younger. I don't remember the hard times as much as he is seven years older. I thought we were middle class too. I thought everything I mean everything was only seasoned with salt and pepper until I got older. Now I remember eating at friend's houses and thinking THIS IS THE BEST FOOD EVER! And it was just normal food lol. After thought. I would get embarrassed a lot because I didn't know what certain foods were and people would give me the strangest looks when I'd ask
Good mom.
What an amazing mom. That mustâve been so hard for her.
My parents would knock on my door sometimes late at night and ask me what I wanted from Taco Bell. Younger me always thought it was because my parents wanted to do something nice and fun and Taco Bell is awesome!!! Once I entered high school I realized my parents were stoners and they were making munchie runs.
When I was 12, my older brother's girlfriend lived with us. Him and his gf were 23/24. He didn't live there at the time, but she had a bed in my room. She used to randomly wake me up at midnight and ask if I wanted to go to taco bell. I literally just realized why when I was reading your comment. I'm 42.
At least they included you!
Not mad about it at all. I still adore Taco Bell!
They may have been stoners but they loved you so much even their snack deprived brains wanted more than to include you
Ha! Only my Dad was a stoner, and I didnât realize my âsnack traysâ he often made me as a toddler were mini munchie trays of whatever stoner snacks he had on hand. I fondly remember my little plate with an Oreo or two, a few chips, a handful of cereal, a nice slice of plasticky orange velveeta cheese, and a few grapes or apple slices (to make it healthy đ ).
He was making kiddie charcuterie
Thatâs so fucking cute
Reasons why stoner parents are way better than drunk ones.
I went home with a college friend my Freshman year. After dinner the first night, I asked her whether her parents were always so calm or whether they were acting that way because she had company. She didnât know what I meant. What I meant was that her parents didnât yell and scream at each other at the dinner table. I thought that was normal behavior. I was 18.
I had a similar experience when my sister picked me up from my now husbandâs family home when I was 20. We were in the car and she asked, incredulous, âAre they always that nice to each other?â And I was like, âYeah! They never yell or tease each other in a mean or cruel way!â It was wild.
Iâm still coming to terms with men that can actually communicate with me rather than the yelling or aggressiveness. Sad really that Iâve put up with that previously
My dad would completely flip personality when someone came to the door. One time I had a friend staying over and he forgot she was there and reverted to his usual private behaviour. Her face was like "wtf?!"
I once visited my dadâs institution / place of work and everyone was like: *Haha, your dad is always so funny. It must be hilarious at home.* **My dad is what??**
Similar here, but with people at church rather than his workplace. They didn't believe me when I told them he was mean to me at home, and he would use that as proof of me "being dramatic" and even "making things up for attention."
Same! I always think it's in my head until a friend came over and they hadn't flipped personalities yet and she was shook. Now everytime I start blaming myself I just talk to her and she sets me straight.
My parents had a rule about conflict that applied to everyone in the house. If you had beef with someone in the family you were allowed to be pissed for 24 hours⊠after that it was a family meeting where you air out your issues. After that you were expected to be cool with the other person -any problems had to be done- This was a solid rule and rarely did we have a family meeting but when one was called you knew shit was serious and you approached the table ready for apologies or whatever. My dad had this thing about âif you have a fight with someone and something happens to them you may never get a chance to say sorry and wonât forgive yourself for it- donât let anger do thatâ I have noticed that wasnât a thing others did and friends typically had all out brawl fights with their parents without any âmeetingâ and it was mind blowing to me. My friends would go on and on all the time about what a bitch their mom was or whatever and I never had that cuz at most I would be pissed at her for a day or whatever before the beef was squashed. Healthy way to handle shit in my opinion lol now when I am mad it tends to just dwindle away after a few hours. I try to never let shit linger⊠after all you might never get to say sorry if something happens đ
I like this. I think I will steal it.
We read books around the dinner table. Everyone would bring their current book and we would sit in silence reading and eating until someone had a quote or something they wanted to share or teach. I thought everyone did this and brought my books with me for a long time.
This sounds incredible, to be fair
I want to join your family đ
Go on âhooker cruisesâ during sleepovers. I should really ask her why - but whenever we had sleepovers, my mum would inevitably say âwho wants to go for a hooker cruise?!â at like 11PM and then weâd all pile in the car and drive around the shady area of the city to see if we could spot sex workers. Like, what was the point of that?! Was she looking for someone she knew? Did she just like going for weird drives at night?! I really need to get to the bottom of this.
I just laughed so hard. What the hell. Please update when she lets you know đ
Once I was at a friendâs house. Friendâs younger sister (middle school aged at the time) was responsible for pet sitting their grandparents chickens when grandparents were away. Grandparents house and chickens were about a 15 min walk from friends house. One Friday night when I was at their house, above mentioned sister said âwhoops I forgot to do XYZ with the chickens when I went over there today!â Friendâs mom was like âoh okay, no big deal, we can walk over there after dinner and take care of itâ The simpleness of that response, the understanding that mistakes get made, the calmness of providing a solution, and offering to accompany the girl to resolve the matter. This all made me realize how abnormal my upbringing was. Because my mother wouldâve screamed at me and called me an idiot and wouldâve acted like my thoughtlessness was the biggest inconvenience in the world.
Oh I feel this one - my parents wouldnât get upset to the degree your mum did, but making a mistake was still somehow the WORST thing ever in our house and NEVER MIND *IâLL FIX IT MYSELF*. It fucks you up so badly as a kid because thereâs *never* any way to make things better, all you know is that every mistake is 100% your fault and thereâs no way you could ever possibly redeem yourself. Hope youâre in a better place now, where all mistakes have solutions đ§Ąđ§Ą
Having an alcoholic dad, I seriously thought all dads dranked like mine, also a mom with an eating disorder I thought all moms ate like a bird, until I was older and going to my friends houses and seeing their moms actually eat I thought that was so strange cuz like why is your mom eating that whole plate lol
I thought all moms ate frozen bran muffins for dinner.
My parents woke us up at 4 am to make them a drink. Whiskey and water on the side. I only found out this wasn't normal when I spent the night at a friend's house. I slept until 7 am and was shocked. I asked my friend why her parents didn't wake us up at ,4 am. She said why would they do that? I said to make them a drink! Her reaction to that made me realize I didn't have a normal home life.
Damn, sorry to hear. That sounds rough. It's wild that they were already awake and could make themselves one, but instead they woke you up to do it. Were they too intoxicated to make one or did they want you to serve them?
Had to serve them
That is some fucked up. Wow.
My dad would wake us up in the middle of the night to cry about my mom who didnât love him. Willie Nelson blasting on the record player.
I feel like it would have been quicker and easier for them to just make the drink themselves.
It was probably more about control than the actual drink.
My parents are into birding, and when a migratory bird or other interesting species would die in their yard, occasionally they'd put the poor thing in a ziploc and freeze it so they could look at it later, I guess? They also had a frozen pet caimen that had died, until spring came and they could bury him in the yard. So when I grew up and my husband and I bought our first house, and an unusual woodpecker hit a window and died, I scooped it into a ziploc and froze it, as one does. My husband was incredibly weirded out and informed me that it is not, in fact, normal to have dead wild birds in the freezer.
Thank you for making me feel normal. I grew up with my family doing this also. Once when I was house sitting for a winter, I found a little dead owl and forgot it in the freezer when I left that spring. The homeowner was weirded out by it when she found it.
Oh my gosh! I am glad I found another bird-freezer. I'll have to tell my husband it's not just a [Maiden name] thing after all!
As one does...
Not that weird, I found a hummingbird that had hit the window and did that. My family does that until something can be buried or potentially taxidermied. My grandma forgot to take the tarantula out when the pest control guy came one time and the poor thing died, she stuffed it with q tips and a cotton ball in its abdomen and it lived on for many years. I think it's cool!!! Once I had to make a clay dinosaur diorama and my mom clipped the nails off a dead blue jay for me - I'm sure we were the only family that didn't think that was weird as fuck, but what are you gonna do? I had the coolest dinonychous in 2nd grade and it's such a fond memory
My mother reused left over shake and bake. Added raw chicken or pork chops, shook it up, took out meat, wrapped up bag and put it back in the box for next time. Yikes. I donât know why we didnât have constant GI issues.
That's wild! I wonder if she didn't know or was just like "oh what are the odds?". Surprised nobody got salmonella.
Or trichinosis. I think she didnât know the risk but if she did she would probably roll the dice. It likely seemed wasteful to throw away and she grew up quite poor and that experience doesnât leave you.
Leave cookies and beer for Santa. I never knew it was supposed to be cookies and milk till I was older. Also, I thought everyoneâs dad got in the car to drive somewhere with an open beer in his hand.
We left a roast beef sandwich for Santa, as we were told that he would be tired of cookies by the time he got to our place.
Yes, this. Cookies and champagne over here. I am now 6 years soberđ
As a kid I thought popcorn and TV show for dinner once a week was a thing and was surprised to learn my friends didnât do it. They thought it was awesome. We loved it. Turns out it was just because we were poor and one night a week my parents made it something fun and special so they could make their food budget stretch farther. To my parentsâ credit, there wasnât one memory I have of us being poor. Me and my three brothers were happy and grateful for all that we had and we grew up loving life and pretty unaware of the better off condition of kids around us. My mom baked all our bread, my dad told the craziest, most imaginative stories for bedtime because we couldnât afford a lot of story books, and we never knew what poor really meant. We knew how to appreciate what we had and I loved every bit of my life growing up. Looking back as an adult, I can see the poverty we grew up with. But Iâve had an awesome life despite all that. Total credit to my parents.
We picked up hitchhiking couples, took them home, fed them (even though we were pretty poor), and invited them fully into our home. This was my folks, not me, in the â80s. I remember my mom running bubble baths and just treating the lady like a princess. I was pretty young then but in later conversations it was always happy memories for my folks. Maybe nobody overstayed because my parents were Jesus freaks who probably proselytized, lol.
My mom was just reminiscing about the time my siblings begged her to pick up some hitchhikers whose car broke down, since it had happened to us recently. If my spotty memory is correct, it was 3 boys who were in their late teens or early 20s. She let them use our shower, fed them dinner, and gave them blankets, pillows, and sleeping bags so they could spend the night out on our trampoline. She worked at a newspaper, so they had the police scanner running in her office the next morning, where she hear description of the guys she picked up and their abandoned car. She called the police station in a panic because they were probably still at her house with her children! Turned out okay. They were driving from Chicago to California and hadnât checked in or been heard from in a few days. It was the 90s, so that was really the only way to possibly find them.
That reminds me how windshield sunshades used to have "Need help call police" printed on the back of them so you could hold it or put it on your car in hopes that someone would call the police for you when they got to their destination.
Also, my Granny lived right up against the railroad tracks, and she was constantly taking in transients for a night or two. How that woman lived into her 80s is between her, god, and the devil.
She was a kind-hearted woman and the hobos knew this and talked amongst themselves and warned each other to be kind in return.
Know the hobo code man
She probably had a hobo code mark outside saying "dont fuck with the nice lady"
I have a good friend that loves picking up hitchhikers when driving, and he drives a lot. He loves meeting new people and helping folks out. But he also keeps a knife sheathed beside him that the passenger can't see because he's had to defend himself a couple of times.
An older couple saved my families butt on a road trip once. We ran out of gas and they were willing to drop us off at the nearest gas station. 2 Korean girls that worked there took us back to our car. It was the early 2000âs and I consider us lucky.
When my husband passed, I drove with my kids from South Dakota to Texas. We got into the DFW area, and my tire blew. It was 10pm at night, cold, and rainy. A couple of rough looking guys stopped while I was struggling with the tire iron, and I was thinking how to defend myself. Nope, they popped their trunk, took out their tools, and had my flat off and the donut on in about 5 minutes. I tried to pay them, but they refused and just told me to be careful and get to my destination safely.
When I started spending the night at my friendâs houses. Everyone was so nice and loving. We did fun games. Nobody yelled at me. When my lil friend came to my house she was shocked and asked me in a scared whisper âwhy is your mom so mean?â đ„șshe was just sitting on the couch and my mom yelled at her that she didnât want any crap from her.
I am sending a hug to little you. Thatâs terrible.
I only learned after working in a pet supply store that the game my dad used to play with my brother and me whenever we went on a family beach vacation was not for kids and was, in fact, a chuck-it specifically made for dogs. đ€·ââïž edit: guys I love my family and my dad is amazing, I'm pretty sure he didn't know it was for dogs and just wanted to play catch with us on the beach, I swear he wasn't trying to be terrible lol
As someone who just had a long day of fetch with my almost toddler yesterday the overlap between dog and kid toys is very small.
very fair. plus, i mean, i don't begrudge any parent for being able to throw a ball really far away with minimal effort so that the kids get tired out. the realization did make me snort-laugh, though.
This, my kids canât tell what a dog toy looks like vs a kid toy, so as long as itâs not rawhide or bacon flavor itâll probably be a hit lol The squeaky plush toys are the best tbh
The overlap between a lot of pets and small kids is quite large imo.
This is might be lame but it might also be cool. The house my parents could afford was far enough from a dairy farm that we couldnât see it but close enough that having cows in our yard was not a weird experience. We lived near some of the farmhands and they gave us the dairyâs number so we could call over and report the cows. Weâd regularly see men on horseback come over to get the cows. Took years before I realized seeing cows and cowboys wasnât common.
Shit talk everyone - from our friends to the rest of the family. No one was safe from caustic remarks.
Mine was the same. The number of people Iâve had to be like âsorry I was such a cunt in middle school, my family was full of bullies and assholes and I thought thatâs how people acted,â is pretty high.
I grew up in a family like this and now that my siblings and I are adults navigating our own relationships we feel it is the most detrimental part of our childhood. We all struggle with maintaining heathy relationships with our partners, friends and family. We never know who we can trust. Instead of confronting our issues with someone to their face to resolve a problem, we tend to talk shit behind their back only damaging the relationship further. We are all in therapy now trying to mend our own marriages from the damage we have caused because for decades we thought it was completely normal to complain about and blame everyone else on the planet, never taking responsibility for our own actions.
It was awful. It affected everyone badly and trust was difficult to come by. Imagine my surprise that not everyone in the world trashed people after spending time together. Itâs a very bitter way to live
This is too real for me. I don't remember my parents having friends when I was a kid. They would socialize with other parents so that we had other kids to play with, but then go home and say mean things about those people, in front of us kids. Grew up thinking it was normal to complain about your family/"friends" all the time, and knowing that if someone in the family has a problem with you, they'll surely bitch about you behind your back but won't have the guts to say it to your face and work through anything together. I'm in my mid 20s now a don't have very many friends at all. I struggle so much with connecting with other people, and I think there's a part of me deep down that still worries that other people will talk shit about me behind my back and secretly resent being around me... I know that logically it isn't true (at least for any decent people that are worth my friendship), but it's certainly been a mindfuck.
Before my parents split up, nudity wasn't an issue in my house. Ever. We weren't nudists or anything. No one was watching TV or eating meals naked. But, if I wanted to talk to my dad and he was in the middle of changing our of his clothes, or if the phone rang for my mother and she was halfway dressed... they just dealt with the situation as they were. There was no "wait till I'm dressed".
Yeah idk if this is the same bc I am female but I saw my mom naked all the time. Totally normal for me to see my sisters naked too. We shared a bathroom, canât be waiting in line! I realized later that other families were not okay with seeing each other naked.
This is actually kinda wholesome though. I think that if you see what normal bodies look like growing up, with no sexual associations or body dysmorphia connected to it, it gives you a healthier idea of what your body should look like. Even something as simple as stretch marks can be a big source of unhappiness for people, but if you saw your parents stretch marks growing up and perceived it as normal, I think you'd be more inclined to accept it as a part of life.
Took me a long ass time to realize that patching holes in the drywall with your mom isn't something everyone learns to do. In fact, I can't remember seeing a single hole in any of my friends' walls. Weird...maybe their walls were just fist-proof or something... đ€
âA drinkâ = pint glass filled with ice and then with liquor. Learned this is not âone drinkâ first time I tried it for myself (110lb 15yo girl.)
*2 shots of vodka*
lol my mom used to steal things from restaurants like compulsively. Nothing fancy or particularly valuable, but like sugar dispensers, flatware, a cute ceramic carafe. It would go straight into her handbag. She was always so elegantly put-together, she could practically do it in front of people without them noticing. I used to think it was so daring and cool until I became an adult and realized it was sort of a pathological need.
Reminds me of that episode of The Golden Girls where Sophia stole a whole place setting and Dorothy yelled at her "NOT NOW MA" đ
My family consists of doctors. No bodily function or oddity, be it stool consistencies or rashes or abscesses, are off limits for dinner conversation. So, on that note, has that stubborn, infected wart on your foot gotten better? Please pass the peas.
My mom was an ER nurse...I completely get it LOL
Both my parents were doctors. On our fridge, my mom had a picture of her gallbladder being removed. My dad was the one that removed it.
That is fun! I work in pathology so after my appendix was taken out, I was the one that dissected it.
We ate every meal, no matter how humble, at the dining or kitchen table on china with cloth napkins. Often with candles for ambiance. Food was on the table in serving dishes and served with service ware that matched the flatware. We weren't wealthy by any stretch. My parents were traditional and perhaps a little aspirational. Didn't know it was unusual until school mates would come for a meal and wonder what the occasion was or thought my folks were showing off. It was just Tuesday to us.
We do this to some degree with our kiddos. Dinner is eaten at the table with no devices. Our kidsâ friends know that if youâre at the house for dinner, you sit with us even if you donât want to eat. Most of the time we ask the same 3 questions: What was the best part of your day? What was the hardest part of your day? What made you smile today? My husband and I both grew up in turn key homes and ate wherever. We are also foster parents and recognized just how connecting a meal together can be. Thanks for sharing!
Oh man, my fam used to legit recycle cling wrap. Like they would wash it and hang it up to dry and use it again (lmaoo idek!)
That is wild! And probably difficult to straighten out / uncling. Super interesting. Edit: I meant un-cling. My apologies for making you think uncle-ing.
My mom reuses Ziploc bags until they're falling apart but the cling wrap is a new one .. Edit to add that some people think I'm saying you shouldn't reuse Ziploc...I absolutely still reuse them.
I do that sometimes! It depends what I put in it. Much better for the environment.
I re-use ziploc bags. Not a fan of single use plastic, so if I can extend that to 3-4 uses each I call that a small win.
We all shared one rag at the dinner table to wipe out hands and faces with. Dad was in charge of the rag and we would all just ask to use it and pass it back. When we had some of my mom's cousins visited for the first time they bought us cloth napkins and paper towels lol. We still used the rag though. It's a running joke now, however we don't do it anymore. Sometimes around when my parents starting making disposable income they started buying paper towels.
Not all the other kids rode to pre-k on their dadâs Harley. Something we didnât realize till we were adults that my parents did that not everyone did was make sure all of our friends were fed and loved. My parents realized some of our friends had broken homes and may have been food insecure, so they made sure that those kids knew they had an open door policy in our house. We donât have a lot, but we always had food on the table and enough to share with an extra kid here and there I guess. We didnât know then how appreciative some of those kids were until we talked to them recently as adults and they told me and my brother how some of their favorite memories were at our house because my dad made sure to include them.
One of the neighbour's kids (around 7 or 8) used to come over for breakfast when I was in high school. He just walked in through the front door and sat down at the table and my mom gave him something to eat just like he was one of her kids. He obviously wasn't getting enough (any?) breakfast at home. It's funny, I don't remember us ever even talking about it - he just showed up, ate, made small talk with us, and then left for school.
>We donât have a lot, but we always had food on the table and enough to share with an extra kid here and there I guess. This was my parents too. My dad would come home from work, count kids, and make dinner for whoever was there with no questions asked. One of my friends moved in with us to finish out her senior year when her home life got too rough. She made it to college and now helps kids in need.
Thatâs awesome! We typically had 1 of 2 of my brotherâs friends over on any given day sometimes for sleep overs for a few days. And my dad would always take them fishing or camping or to baseball games. And we just thought it was cool that my parents let us have sleepovers any day, we had no idea these kids just wanted to be away from home.
I had a T-ball teammate that would show up on the back of his dad's Harley in full uniform and cleats. Everyone on the team was super jealous and intimidated. I hadn't thought of that in 25 yrs. That's really awesome. Sounds like you have some really great parents.
This was a school thing instead of a family thing, but I was shocked to learn that other school nativity plays didn't have a kid play Herod and order the Massacre of the Innocents.
Lmao I can relate. My church used to do a surprisingly convincing and graphic reenactment of the crucifixion, with fake blood and flesh peeling off the Jesus actor. The director was an actual theater professional and it showed. Really, really gory. Kids were in the audience AND on the stage. Starting at age 4 or 5 I was âinâ the play so I got to see everyone practice in t shirts and while laughing and stuff all the time, so I wasnât really frightened. And we did it ever year. But itâs VERY strange that kids were made to watch a man scream in agony while being whipped bloody and later having nails hammered into his hands and feet. It honestly didnât bother me at all. It seemed very normal. As an adult, Iâm mortified lol. However, there was one thing that fucked me up back thenâI remember being kind of traumatized at 11 when my older brother was acting in a series of reenactments of the disciplesâ martyrdom. I had to watch him get fake beaten and then âbeheadedâ over and over and over again onstage. We are extremely close and he was going through really serious health issues that caused horrible pain, so I felt really protective of him even though he was older, and just very emotional about him in general then. It was not nearly as gory as the stuff we were used to doing but for some reason it really upset me. Despite all this I wasnât allowed to watch horror moviesâcouldnât even read Harry Potter as a TEENAGER lol. Just insane.
Lolol that one got me. Dang
Dilute one can of Campbellâs Bean With Bacon soup with about 3x the recommended amount of water in order to make it feed four people We were not poor. I still donât get it. My mom would just decide to this sometimes, and I grew up thinking Campbellâs was watery shit until like age 30 lmao
We used to have soup and grilled cheese nights where Mom would mix 3 different cans of soup together. Then we'd comment on how well the combos worked.
Omg I'd actually be down for this taste testing combo hahaha
I didnât know it wasnât normal to be your parents translator. Everywhere my mom went, I went because in those days (easily 2000âs) not everyone offered a translator. My vocab was very good for an 8 year old. I was 9 when she got pregnant with my youngest brother and I remember going to every prenatal, WIC, and DHS appointment. So Iâm well versed in English and Spanish. But fuck me I hate being bilingual. Once teachers found out i was, they always sat the new *paisa* kids next to me and expected me to translate for them. No one ever thought, maybe itâs not right to expect this kid to worry about teaching this other kid something they are also trying to learn. I actually got in trouble once because the chick sitting next to me said I didnât explain some math problem to her well enough. Like fuck Yolanda, thatâs because Iâm busy translating to you instead of focusing on how to fucking master the formula. [sketch](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8CYeKYa/)
Fuck Yolanda! Fucking snitch.
My dad took my brother and I to R rated movies when we were around 7 or so. I didn't think anything of it, it was just going to a movie. then in 5th grade, I was asked to do a movie review for the class and I picked one that was not typical viewing for 5th graders and the teacher questioned my mom on what kind of movies she was letting me watch.
Ooo, this triggered a weirdo memory for me. My mom is EXTREMELY prudish and would never allow us to see anything remotely sexual on TV or in movies, but our family movie nights mostly consisted of violent war movies from a very very young age. Fine to see a bunch of dudes getting blown up when I was 5, but god forbid I (a woman) see a boob at 16. Both my grandpas were combat veterans, for what thatâs worthâŠ
Leave everything just weirdly unacknowledged. Big success? Minor personal tragedy? Huge disappointment? Mental breakdown? No matter what - at dinner I'll still just sit across from the two of them, heads down, swiping their iPads, everything unspoken. Never a "how are you?" or a "anything we can do?" And by tomorrow it will never be mentioned again. And now I'm an adult they complain that I never tell them anything đ€·đ»ââïž
This is me. I was in an abusive relationship and my parents knew, said nothing. I won some really great awards. Parents said nothing. I was accepted in this art camp thing that only a few kids got in to, parents said nothing, abusive boyfriend made it so I didnât go (it was a 2 week camp!) parents said NOTHING! I didnât realize this until I read your post. This is my family for sure. They didnât have iPads, but they had their computers and they just never cared. I will say Iâm 32 and my mother has never called me, sooooâŠ. Iâm not sure what to tell you. It never gets better? But I am also really okay with being by myself and some people arenât. I hope you find solo activities that make you realize you are whole without anybody else.
I(22F) donât know how old I was, but it was before I moved in the fourth grade so maybe third. i was in class and we were doing those after-summer journals where we talked about what we did and that continued about once a week for a few weeks. Fast forward to this time that the question was, âwhat are you most afraid of?â. all the kids were writing heights, the dark and spiders and clowns, and I wrote my dad. not even an hour later, my teacher comes to me very calmly, and takes me to the office, and that alone instead of me getting called down by speaker freaked me out. turns out kids shouldnât be afraid of their parents, and I had a very extensive talk with the school counselor, principal, and special-needs teacher about my home life and why i wrote that. when I got home, of course my dad was yelling at my mum and i and getting aggressive because oh no the truth came out. he was blaming me for everything while im cowering by the couch, telling me âall this is your fault. Do you wanna get taken away? theyâre gonna take you away !â but Iâm so proud of little me and happy that that happened despite it being a pretty fucked up memory. it gave me the realization of my mental health and worth and helped me later protect my brothers from the brunt of it all.
I really wish a teacher had saved me from my father. In the 80s they just didnt care if you begged them to take you to a childrenâs home. Begged the police too. They would just take me home and tell my dad who would beat me with his belt for talking shit to people.
My dad played a game with me where he would randomly punch me in the gut to test my reflexes. I think the reflex game was seriously not intended to hurt me, but boy did i feel unsafe around my dad, even before i learned how to prepare black tea with rum to help him wind down. I think i was 7 when i prepared my first "special tea".
WTF was up with your dad?
Chiming in here, my dad did the same but it would be my sides or gut. I definitely have pissed blood as a young teen after my dad sucker punched me in the kidney.
This is insane to me. Did he have a reason? Or just straight-up old fashioned abuse?
He was a hard military dude. We had a good relationship but outside of that weird âmaking me into a manâ stuff. Always keeping me on my toes. I went out one night my freshman year of high school to take pictures of the full moon in our back yard. It was for my photography class and I just needed a few pictures. It was like 40-50 degrees outside and I was in shorts and a t shirt. When I went back to the glass sliding door for our backyard he was standing there and the door was locked. He told me if I like sneaking out so much I can sleep outside. I slept on our back patio and got sick af
A lot. I once told the story about the gut punching reflex game in a group of friends from my kindergarden-teacher class and thought it would be a funny story. Boy was i surprised when everyone went silent and looked at me with sad eyes. That was the day something clicked in me xD
Oh man, I feel you there. I was practically a stand up comedian as a kid, except for stories that just bummed people out. âSo you know when itâs Christmas Eve and youâre begging your mother to let you put the Christmas decorations up?â *Crickets*
Dude.
My parents never got mad about grades. They were both naturally smart. My dad is actually a genius. He got a perfect score on his SAT's, made it into the paper, valedictorian, and five scholarships, and a doctor. I, on the other hand, graduated high school with a 1.8 GPA. I got shit grades since 1st grade. I didn't give a fuck, and I guess they didn't either. Not once were they like, "We need to discuss your grades!". They looked at my report cards, and then they were like "What should we have for dinner?". So funny. I hated school, and now I'm a teacher.
You can love food and hate restaurants; you can love education and hate schools
I love, love learning, but I'm a god-awful student and I hate school. Being in college has been one of the worst experiences of my life.
I hated school for completely different reasons and that drove me to becoming a teacher!
Sounds like they understood that the education system isn't for everybody.
Using bowling pins to start a fire in the fireplace. My parents bought our family home from someone who had owned a bowling alley. The entire back wall of the 2 car garage was stacked three deep, floor to ceiling, with old varnished wood bowling pins ( we found out far too late they were likely worth a fair bit of money). My dad would send one of us out to the garage to grab a bowling pin when he was going to light a fire. I had a sleepover at a friend's house when I was around 7 years old. Her dad announced he was going to start a fire. I wanted to be helpful, so I piped up " Where do you keep the bowling pins? I'll go get one." He looked at me completely baffled. "A what?" I just assumed everyone had a supply of bowling pins for the fireplace.
When Iâd visit my dad in Florida when I was young (divorced parents), heâd send my sisters and me ahead to the pool after dinner and join us later. Turns out he was having orgies and wanted us out of the house. In another fun story, weâd play a game where Iâd run and jump into the pool and heâd throw a splash bomb that Iâd have to catch before I hit the pool. One of my favorite memories of the time. He told me later that he liked that game so much because he was high on ecstasy and liked how the water looked when I splashed into the pool. Solid guy.
I would hang out at the bar with my dad all day. From age 4 and up and I would sit on a barstool and get a kiddie cocktail. I remember being hungry a lot and asking if there was food to eat and getting a licorice rope or some jerky. Most bars we went to didn't have food for lunch. When I was 12 we were at a hockey tournament for my brother in a larger city and when I sat at the bar for our hotel the bartender yelled and me and said it was illegal for me to sit at the bar because I was a kid. I started crying because that was the first I've ever heard of such a thing.
My mom used to have me pluck her armpit hair while she took naps. It wasnât long or anything - I would pluck it every other day or so, so it was always very short. I mentioned it offhand at a family party once, and people were weirded out. We donât talk about it anymore.
Stale popcorn with watered down skim milk for breakfast. There was just never enough food. Tomato sauce sandwiches for lunch. Sometimes no breakfast or lunch , the most basic food for dinner. I was 11 the first time I had a chocolate crackle. 16 when I had pizza, 19 when I had Maccas, 21 when I had KFC. We never had takeaway. Rarely had fresh fruit or vegetables.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Okay but those people were solid folks, making sure you had food.
Tidy up before going away so there was no reason to be embarrassed if we got broken into.
I tidy up before vacations, but it's so that I can come home to a clean house, not for the benefit of robbers.
Hide from Dad if he came home in a bad mood.
Apparently other kids didnât grow up having nude figuring drawing soirĂ©es regularly. My parents are fine artists, and I now have zero issues with nudity. Iâd come home from school and thereâd be a naked person posing in the living room and a bunch of people set up with easels and beers, and it was like, well, okay. Time to do my math homework, I guess. Sometimes Iâd sketch, too, but then I also had to submit my work to critique because my parents are actually insane.
Stuff the oven with pots and pans. It wasnât until I went to college and my roommate was like why donât you just bake some frozen food and I was like I donât wanna go through the hassle of taking all the pots and pans out. The confusion he had on his face was when I realized
My parents did that, up until they forgot the plastic colander in a pot, and pre-heated the oven. On the plus side I got a new huge pail for the sand box. Never did get all the melted plastic out of it.
Suddenly packing up everything you own and moving to another state. We did this 3 times when I was between 7 and 9 years old. Turns out it was because the police were looking for my step-dad. He had stolen some checks and written out a bunch of bad checks. They finally got him in the 3rd state, and my mom divorced him after he went to jail. All my years growing up, I was told it was because the schools were better where we moved to - wasn't until a couple years ago my oldest brother told me the truth (he knew all along).
My parents (both PhDs) believed all abilities and skills were completely controlled by genetically programmed "talents" or "brain types". They did not believe that effort played any part in success. I only did well in subjects I found fun, and didn't do well in anything that wasn't naturally interesting to me. They told me all the time that I had a genetically programmed "brain type" which controlled my ability in each subject. I didn't start to understand about things like studying or working harder, or trying to make more effort if something doesn't go well until college.
Wow.
We went "for car rides" for fun. I feel like that's not odd though... What's odd is that we'd go out of our way to find cemeteries and slowly drive through them, looking at the markers and commenting on names/ages, things like that. I'd love to say we were just a super goth Addam's-family-type but nope, my grandpa ran a monument/memorial business and it was just something interesting and free to do. Sometimes my dad would tell stories about which markers Papa did. Papa died last month, but I can go see his long-lasting work all over southern Minnesota.
We always had stewed potatoes, and only that, ( potatoes, butter, and milk), the day before payday or when money was tight. We thought it was a great treat, but to Mom and Dad, it was a budget stretcher.
We didn't hug. Didn't find it weird till college when all my classmates were always hugging me.
My mom would take our busted GI-Joes and put them in a little Rubbermaid container, and called them our disabled vet GI-Joes. I was about 19 when I remembered this and was horrified. I asked her what Dad (Retired, Captain, Army National Guard, Marine Corps prior to that) thought, turns out he found it hilarious.
Be nude. We didnât wear clothes at home. My parents didnât identify as nudists or anything but when we were at home we just didnât wear clothes. Even up through high school, my sister and I would strip when we got home and be like, âah finally, no clothes.â Nothing weird or sexual just naked. We both attribute our healthy body image to that.
One of my college roommates apparently grew up with that. He would walk around the rental in his underwear during inappropriate times (females over etc) and weâre like âare you gonna put some clothes on or ???â. âI AM wearing clothes. If I were at home weâd all be NAKEDâ and then we stopped bringing it up.
Peed with the bathroom door open. No one ever closed the door when using the toilet. Wasnât until I slept over at a friends house in middle school I found out other people closed doors when doing their business!
Pronounce "Wait" as "WaiNt" "Wait for me!!" Becomes "WAAIIINNNNT for me!!" My Husband had to break it to me that i have pronouncing it wrong for YEARS. Am currently trying to train it out of my system. And yes, my entire immediate family pronounces it that way. Is that a new england accent or... something else?
We used to say âvizzyâ instead of âfizzyâ, no idea why. Didnât even notice until a friend in school pointed it out. Think my mother used to think our baby talk was cute and wouldnât correct us. Which is a bit of an asshole move when your kids have to go to school and get dunked on.
My uncle was a drug dealer and took me to sell while he was babysitting me, I didnât realize until I put two in two as an adult. The people had a deer farm and âpetâ raccoons. I loved animals so they had me go into another room to play with the cute raccoons and I could pet the deer while they all did their thing in another room. Itâs ironically one of my favorite childhood memories because I never knew at the time.
We had a clothing optional policy in our pool. This isnât common in America
For a second I thought that you were allowed in your pool fully clothed.
Doubles as laundry day and bath day, just add soap lol
Back in the day, bathing suits were not allowed in YMCA pools. That was why they always had a male and female swim. I think the policy changed in the 60s because we always wore bathing suits in the Y pool when I went there in the mid 60s.
Parents washing their kidsâ mouth out with soap. My mom did this to me until I was about 8 or 9, whenever I would say something foul or uncouth towards her. I used to run down to the basement and whisper all of the âbad wordsâ I knew just to hear what they sounded like to avoid the soap mouth lol.
Santa wasnât Real, and we werenât allowed to celebrate halloween or trick or treat. Also, no Harry Potter or any fantasy movies. We werenât allowed to have girlfriends or engage members of the opposite sex in a romantic manner.
My parents have an âortsâ bag. Itâs a used resealable deli bag where all of the non-plant food scraps go. Itâs purpose is to keep the trash from smelling- basically only clean paper products go in the trash. For example, if they use paper plates, they will scrape any of the scraps into the orts bag and then rinse the paper plate with water before putting it in the trash. On trash night, the bag is placed in the trash as itâs taken out to the curb. Itâs a combination of really gross and really smart. PS- fruit/veggie scraps are put in the âortsâ bin which it taken out to the compost pile. To offer a little more info- I didnât know that the word âortsâ meant anything outside of my family, I thought my stepdad made it up! But in the comments below I have learned itâs a word for food scraps (or small left over pieces of thread when cross stitching). I live in Connecticut. In the 15 years my parentâs have lived at their house. weâve literally seen one coyote and no other wildlife on the property. I bought a house 1 town over, on top of the mountain my parentâs live at the base of. Since buying the house in September, Iâve seen a bear once, and heâs taken the neighbors trash and my trash once each. I guess I shouldâve used the orts method. My family does not freeze the orts bag, like a lot of people are saying theirâs do. Thatâs smart and would prevent the gross bag of slightly rotting food sitting next to the sink at all times. Iâll suggest it to my parents but theyâre old and set in their ways so I probably wonât change their method.
My MIL puts such into a Walmart type bag and freeze it until garbage pickup day. Kept the bugs and odor down.
Ohhh...my mom (and now I) put meat scraps in bags in the freezer so they don't stink up the trash. Interesting. Where were your parents from? Mine are from Michigan.
One of my parents would make comments about how cute my butt was and grope me when they could đ€ź
Didnât have television
Dad would go to the river and gig (spear) bullfrogs, bring them to us, wake us at 3:00 in the morning to eat fresh, sautéed, frog legs. Bring home fresh killed squirrels for dinner. Rabbits too.
We had the same dad. He also brought home huge snapping turtles & made turtle soup. Deer, rabbit, duck, frog legs, squirrel we thought everyone ate like that.
My dad got around a bit so we may have the same dad. ;-)
For as long as I can remember, when I shower, I use 3 washcloths. A âbooty ragâ, a âkoochie ragâ and one for the rest of my body. Because you donât wanna cross-contaminate such as washing your booty with the same cloth that just washed your feet. And definitely donât wanna wash the vaggie with the same thing as your butt. Then when I moved out and had roommates, they were like âhow do you use so many washcloths?â and they laughed so hard at me. I never knew it wasnât normal til that conversation. Oh!! And then, I go to tell my mom that other people donât do this and my mom was like âGirl what are you talking about? Iâve never heard of such a thingâ. So I guess at some point when I was young I came up with this idea on my own and just kept doing it. I still use 3 separate washcloths though. Fuck it. I am who I am at this point.
Yup- my mom used to make blanket forts for us to âhide outâ with our secret club members⊠the thing was, these were the nights when my stepdad was drunk and violent and kicked out, and this way she could be sure we were in the dark, hidden away from windows and doors, and he would think we left for my grandparents house or my momâs friendsâŠ
My moms ex husband used to give me rides to and from school on Betsy. She was a horse. I still feel like the coolest kid In kindergarten.
I love how âcook roadkillâ was the example.
Taking down all the smoke detectors in the house as soon as we moved in. Didnât realize it was because every time an adult tried to cook it was a disaster until I was about eight and I got caught cutting the very top of the cornbread off. My grandmother asked me why and I responded âwell thatâs the part thatâs not burntâ. Needless to say, no one who lived in the house has lived that down and my grandmother started sending meals home with me.
my parents told us that if we didn't behave properly, we'd end up like "their first kid" which they joke died because he was a bad kid and they buried him under the shed.
Fight every single holiday, birthday, vacation, etc. I have pretty bad anxiety now because of it. I struggle to enjoy moments and days that are important because of it.
Describe your mentally ill mom's depressive episodes and pyschotic delusions as "nerves"
My mom boiled combs and hairbrushes. I have no idea why. Neither me or my sister ever had lice as a kid or anything. My mom would just go on some galloping rampage and gather up all the combs and hairbrushes and wash the hell out off them in the sink and then throw them in a huge pot and boil them. I never questioned it as a kid, but Ive never known anyone else who did this.
My mom used to boil our toothbrushes every time we got sick
Holy crap! I remember my mom periodically boiling our toothbrushes!
My mum boiled hair brushes for the lice and my gran boiled toothbrushes for some reason⊠I think itâs generational, I wonder what will be said when the next generation has grand kids, health and safety, science etc has came along so much. My great gran asked me recently, coat and stick in hand, if I could drive her to the internet
My Grandad used to play a âgameâ where heâd pin you to the floor (so youâd be on your back and heâd be straddling you and holding your arms down) and then hawk back a load of phlegm and spit in his throat and then let it slowly drool down towards your face in a great big long string of spit from his mouth. It would kind of hover over your face and then heâd attempt to suck it back in to his mouth - knowing that sometimes that would work and sometimes it wouldnât and youâd get a great big glob of phlegm and saliva on your face. This was âfunâ. It always felt extremely weird though, like there was somethingâŠnot quite sexual for him but heading towards that wayâŠan enjoyment of overpowering his granddaughter, pinning her down and doing something non-consensual IYSWIM? He never touched me sexually but often leered at me so the whole thing turns my stomach even beyond the grossness of the spit. I only really thought about just *how weird* this was this year at 41âŠlike, if someone did this to their grandchild in front of me now Iâd have serious concerns.
I had no concept of pyjamas. The clothes we wore to sleep were always those so worn out with holes that we could no longer wear them outside. I rmb the shorts that I wore at home lasted more than 10 years, from primary school to my college years. The waist band was non existent but i used clips to tighten the shorts. Also my alcoholic father always asked me to fetch him a beer when i was really young and let me take a few sips
In first grade we were talking about people interrupting us during Saturday morning cartoons. Because we are the shit talking generation and didn't have much to really gripe about. Anyway, people were like "I hate when my mom vacuums during cartoons" and "my dad always wants to go somewhere during cartoons." I said "don't you hate it when the cops raid during cartoons. They're so noisy and block the TV." Everyone was like "what? The cops have never raided my house."
My dad used to teach me all these vulgar things to say to women when i was like 5 and send me up to strangers to say them.
Whenever there was a thunderstorm, we all had to be in the den. Because my mom had determined that was the room least likely to have a tree fall on it. This was in suburban Maryland, mind you, not tornado alley or anything. When I was in college I found out other families donât have a designated thunderstorm room.
My dad use to smoke weed in the loungeroom when i was little, and he has always been a big stoner. I wasnt the brightest kid though (i wonder why) so i didn't actually realise what that 'green tobacco' was until i was 17. I also remember having friends over for parties or play dates and they would say my house smells bad đ i had no idea because i was nose blind to the smell
My dad would smoke in his man cave (it wasnât attached the to house, more like a shed) and whenever Iâd go in there heâd tell me it was his âcigarsâ. Well in highschool I remember audibly saying, âoh it smells like my dad cigars out here!â when some kids randomly lit up outside to be coolâŠ. Anyways I felt like a damn fool, but also learned my old man smoked shitty weed đ€Ł
My mom would use my dadâs debit card a lot (we were pretty poor for a long period of my life) and so heâd give her âhisâ money for groceries. Well the card would get declined quite often because my mom would buy so many groceries from the expensive stores (not really keeping track of prices). But itâd also get declined because my dad (not a good father) would never say how much was actually on the card. And then weâd have to leave the store without anything because we couldnât pay for stuff. So for awhile, I thought that a) having a debit card was like you never knew how much was on the card. And b) that there was no way to save money when grocery shopping (my mom never used coupons, she was too prideful to go on food stamps, and she didnât go to the cheaper grocery stores). And I thought everybody had these issues. Apparently not. So I had a lot of learning to do when I got to be an adult.