‘What’s a rule in your house growing up that you thought was normal but turned out to be very strange?’ – 22 incredibly eccentric regulations

We all think other people’s families are weird, don’t we? With their bizarre traditions and strange rituals and funny habits.

But have you ever stopped to consider that it might actually be your own relatives who are the batshit crazy ones? The AskReddit forum has been considering this after user HumanRole9407 asked this question:

‘What’s a rule in your house growing up that you thought was normal but turned out to be very strange?’

They received lots of answers from people who belatedly realised they’d grown up among some very odd people.

1.

‘We were only allowed ginger ale if we were sick or on an airplane. It wasn’t common but we would occasionally get soda, but ginger ale was special I guess?

‘I was well into my 20s and had an epiphany one day that I’m a grown adult with my own money … I can just go buy a ginger ale if I want to.’
–InannasPocket

2.

‘When I was a kid, the rule in the car was that the driver picks the music.

‘When I turned 16 and started driving, it became ‘owner of the car picks the music’.

‘When I got my own car it became ‘most experienced driver in the car picks the music.

Basically my mom just changed the rules at random so that nobody could listen to music except her.’
–TopFisherman49

‘In the words of one Dean Winchester: “Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cake hole”.’
hereforthedramaanon

3.

‘Don’t feed friends. If friends came over after school, we weren’t allowed to offer them snacks or drinks. My parents didn’t want them to ‘eat all our food’.

‘As an adult, I feed everyone. I offered food to my kids’ friends. I find it so weird that my parents were so stingy. We weren’t broke, growing up, we were well off. I never minded feeding the kids who came over.’
–Relevant-Package-928

4.

‘Everyone takes an afternoon siesta. Turned out, my grandma was narcoleptic and her kids got used to napping with her.’
–Jaives

5.

‘I slept over at a friend house once in elementary school and during dinner no one was allowed to drink anything. The mom’s reasoning was that by filling your stomach with water you would be too full and cause you to not finish your meal.

‘After everyone cleaned their plate (required by the parents to not waste anything) everyone got up and went to the refrigerator to get a can of Coke. I asked for a glass to get some water and was given a rolled eye look from her mother.’
–EarlGrey1806

6.

‘We had to wear socks at all times to keep the carpet clean. Now I can’t walk barefoot without feeling like a rebel.’
–MustLovelyMe

7.

‘Not being allowed to get the bath mat wet. What’s it for, then?!’
–SuperPomegranate7933

8.

‘We could not watch TV Monday through Thursday unless we had straight A’s.’
–tomd65

9.

‘The entire family shared a bath towel for the whole week.’
–krisann67

10.

‘Bedroom window had to be open at all times, even in the winter. I thought it needed to be open to get air. We would suffocate if it wasn’t open. Seemed totally logical.’
–markmark29

11.

‘Each time we would enter the house we were required to shout ‘woo hoo’. My mom hated it when she felt like someone was ‘sneaking’ up on her.’
–myobservationonly