‘What’s an embarrassing but very silly thing your parents did growing up?’ – 23 highly ridiculous adults who should have known better

If you’re a tween or a teenager, you find your parents embarrassing even when they’re being their most sober and normal selves.

But when they’re being silly, either accidentally or on purpose, it can be absolutely excruciating to experience.

It seems there are plenty of people who have been left slightly traumatised by the sheer idiocy of their mums and dads, which came to light after Redditor SupaC123 asked this:

‘What’s an embarrassing but very silly thing your parents did growing up? My dad once fully sat on someone in the cinema when trying to find our seats. My mum told my geography teacher at parents evening in Year 7 that I’d started my period!’

And received lots of sympathetic replies from people who had suffered themselves.

1.

‘Dad had a Sooty hand puppet that he’d pop out the sunroof in traffic or if someone beeped at him.’
–turbochimp

2.

‘Whenever I (or one of my brothers) brought a new girlfriend home for the first time, he’d always bring out of photo of a small chimp, saying it was a photo of me as a kid.’
–Live-Metal-1593

3.

‘My dad took us to Disney in Florida. He was seemingly oblivious to the giant queues and just directed us to the front of every photo opportunity in the park which made me want to shrivel up and die as a teenager, and also abandoned his Scouse accent in favour of a bizarre pseudo American ‘Howdy mam!’ type voice for the duration of the holiday.’
–she_couldnt_do_it

4.

‘My dad would roll down the windows and blast Classical FM if he saw my mates up the road, or he’d start doing his kangaroo petrol skit.’
–jonviper123

5.

‘My Dad will dance to any song he likes, anywhere! Busker in the crowded town square? Dancing. Someone plays music on the train? Dancing.

‘He does not give a flying chinook who sees him, what people think of him (especially me) he will dance his heart out, I aspire to be as carefree and unchained as my father.’
–aBroniest

6.

‘My dad somehow got it in to his head that ‘kinky’ just meant ‘cool and good’ which led to several incidents of him using it loudly in public.’
–Vast_Resolve_8354

7.

‘My Gran used to think an orgy was another name for a party. I think my Dad had to intervene in the end.’
–blodblodblod

8.

‘For about two years straight my mum would shout at me for peeing on the floor at night – like constantly (I can see why now I’ve got to clean my own house), yet I was adamant I’d not been the culprit.

‘This argument went on so long I even took to using a different toilet, and exclusively sitting down when ever I went to the loo, but this continued with my mum getting more annoyed now that I was lying rather than the initial crime.

‘This all stopped one day when she caught my dad in the bathroom one day watering the plant in the corner, which he was very proud he’d been keeping alive, except It was a plastic plant which was covering the floor around the toilet with water when he ‘cared’ for it.’
–Tangie_ape

9.

‘Door bell went. Dad asked if I was expecting anyone. Said my mate Liam was coming around. As a joke he grabbed his cleaver out of the draw and opened the door, knife up high in a pretend ‘Psycho’-type motion. It wasn’t Liam. It was my head teacher collecting donations as part of the Rotary Club Christmas Santa drive. I did actually die that night.’
–MrBozzie

10.

‘I think it was at parents evening at secondary school or something similar and the head teacher was giving a speech on stage, I was at with my parents in the audience.

‘Some kid did a giant ripper, my mum and dad were crying with laughter like naughty little school kids, I was so embarrassed. All the other parents pretended they didn’t hear it.’
–Electrical_Oil1150

11.

‘When watching Saving Private Ryan at the cinema on the opening night my Dad went to the bathroom, but instead of walking out of the theatre he opened the fire exit and set all of the alarms off: the place was evacuated.’
–Particular-Row5678

12.

‘My mum reported me missing once when I was late home from school. Thing is, I got home earlier than them and had a key, so normally I was home before her. But I had lost my key so I went next door. Whilst she was calling the school and the police and panicking, I was sat with the nice old couple next door having biscuits and watching Neighbours.

‘I eventually noticed her car was back and went round and knocked on the door. She cried. She did admit later that she probably overreacted. For context, I was 13, and she had been home for less than 30 mins. It was 5:45pm.’
–BobBobBobBobBobDave