‘What weird things did your parents do that outsiders would find peculiar?’ – 22 stories that will make your own family feel a bit less odd

When we’re children, we think our families are completely normal and do things exactly the same as other families do. And then we grow up, get a bit of perspective, and realise that the people who spawned us are actually totally bonkers.

They’ve been chatting about this on the AskUK subreddit after Underwritingking posted an example of their own…

What weird things did your parents do that outsiders would find peculiar? When I left home and went to Uni my mum started intermittently sending me envelopes stuffed with clippings from newspapers and magazines that she thought I might find ‘interesting’.

These would often include clippings about Rupert the Bear or Thunderbirds, which I liked as a kid, but not so much as I hit my 20s. The ‘highlight’ was when my wife and I returned form our honeymoon to find an envelope full of clippings on the doormat, with the top one being ‘Honeymoon couple killed in car crash’.

We went on receiving envelopes for years, but nothing matched that one.

And the answers from people with equally odd folks did not disappoint…

1.

‘We were chronically poor so used to play the Argos Game – where we would get three catalogues, Mum would read out an item number and announce the object (e.g. “475/1243… and it’s an ironing board!”) and me and my sister would flip through the catalogues like maniacs to try and get the item first.

I remain the undefeated champion. When they got rid of the catalogues, I cried.’
–crgoodw

2.

‘My dad kept expired food in a separate fridge called the Risk Fridge. He would eat yogurts that were three months past date just to prove a point. We all lived in fear of accidentally opening the wrong fridge.’
–Aeshma-Maeva

3.

‘My mum did exactly the same thing when I was at uni in the 90s, often clippings about medical stuff about checking for testicular cancer and the joys of taking walks in the country (she liked me to go outside). I lived with seven other men at uni and they used to take it in turns to read out the clippings in my mum’s voice (she was quite faux posh).’
–denbunn

4.

‘My dad would regularly lose his shit about the kitchen bin. For a while we weren’t allowed a bin, we just had a bin bag on the kitchen floor. Then we were allowed one but it had to be outside the back. Then it moved further away by the shed. Eventually it was halfway down the garden.

Dude’s a fucking maniac.’
–BeccaaCat

5.

‘My mum used to call the robe that one might wear sometimes in the house a ‘house coat’. I then entered the real world and found literally every single other person I’ve ever met calls them a ‘dressing gown’.’
–datguysadz

6.

‘My parents call taking a dump ‘going for a sit’, which I assume was just hastily made up to cover one of us kids overhearing them saying they’re going for a shit. Anyway they’ve stuck with it for at least 30 years now.’
–shadow-season

7.

‘If my mum saw something she liked on those 90s home makeover shows, she’d chop up something we already had to ‘make’ it. Nothing was safe. Even the piano fell victim and became a garden table.’
–Human_Candidate470

8.

‘Collecting roadkill to eat that night. Mainly pheasants. Completely organic.

When we passed a dead bird whilst out on the school run my dad would come to a screeching halt. Jump out of the car, collect the bird and put it in the footwell then carry on driving. He then plucked it, prepared it and cooked it for dinner. Normally roasted it or in a pie.’
–JedsBike

9.

‘On the topic of clippings sent via post, my nan would also send me these, either articles of interest or partially completed crosswords where she didn’t know the remaining answers and I would then have a go and phone her to let her know how many I got. That was cute.

But one time when I was like 19 she sent me a picture (no accompanying article) of a random toddler from the paper who I guess she thought looked like me when I was little, along with a clipping of a horse’s head (like, she’d cut around the head part of a picture of a horse). She didn’t include a note but I recognised her handwriting on the envelope. If I hadn’t I think I would have found it vaguely threatening. As it was it was just bizarre.’
–alicatpow

10.

‘My mum often ran out of money and because we had prepayment meters for the gas and electricity sometimes we just had to go a day or two with no power. I used to find it quite fun, living by candlelight and having to find ways to entertain ourselves without power but none of my friends at school could understand why/how you could simply run out of electricity.’
–iffyClyro

11.

‘My parents were big EastEnders fans (not so much now) and back when the schedule was M/T/T/F we used to have ‘no TV Wednesdays’. I found it annoying then but I think it was actually quite nice. We’re all big readers so used to sit together with our books with the radio on in the background.’
–Baaaabaaaabaaaa