‘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

12.

‘We take punching each other when we see a yellow car VERY seriously. We have been known to chase each other round a car park in public for a good five minutes until one of us makes contact.’
–Fine_Shallot_8447

13.

‘Reminds me of when we first announced we were getting married, my parents called my grandad to tell him on speakerphone, and the first thing he said was ‘a lot of people get divorced nowadays!’. He was pleased, he just has a knack for occasionally blurting out the wrong thing.’
–Gauntlets28

14.

‘Parent here. Usually 30 minutes after having my morning coffee I need to go take a dump. To be polite, if this happened during breakfast with the family I just said ‘I’m getting the call’, go do the necessary, then return.

My daughters grew up thinking this was totally normal. My eldest told us that when she first went on holiday with friends, she ‘got the call’ at breakfast and said ‘I’m getting a call, back in five minutes’. Her friends then noticed that she’d left her cellphone on the table and when she got back they we quite challenging asking her ‘why did you lie about getting a call?’. That was when she learned that this was not a universal thing, at 22 years old.’
–JohnInBrazil

15.

‘Not sure if weird but they only ever let us play Gameboys on really long journeys. Never at home during a normal week.’
–PanicStil

16.

‘We lived opposite a big park. When my mum wanted us to come home she’d stand out the front and blow a whistle. Obviously this was before mobile phones were commonplace.

She’s also a Buddhist (so am I now) and would chant without caring if friends were over (which I agree there’s nothing wrong with but as a kid it was embarrassing).’
–PhilOakeysFringe

17.

‘My mum would feed us porridge with some food colouring for dessert. I was young and it didn’t register as porridge if it was blue or green.’
–ro-dalliance

18.

‘When my sister was tiny she called a pillow a ‘Rooty’ and a duvet was a ‘Grand Rooty’. The terms stuck so that’s what we all said while growing up. When you’re at uni and say something about the Grand Rooty it’s then you die a little on the inside and realise no one else uses that term.’
–Hamsternoir

19.

‘As a kid my mum would pass me things from the fridge and say ‘ooh try this’, me excitedly thinking it was a treat I’d oblige willingly with responses such as ‘it’s really fizzy’. Mum would then say ‘yeah it’s definitely off then’. The thing is I started to quite like that game but coleslaw is now ruined forever!’
–shanypoos

20.

‘My dad had a thing where he’d save every single plastic bag that came into the house. not just carrier bags – literally any bag. bread bags, the bags inside cereal boxes, those little bags you get with screws from B&Q. he had a drawer in the kitchen that was just bags inside bags inside bags. If you ever needed a bag for anything he’d disappear for about 10 minutes and come back with the perfect sized bag for the job, genuinely proud of himself.’
–N0omi

21.

‘Not my parents, but my Nan. When I used to stay with her, for lunch she would put a pork pie in the oven, then serve it in a bowl with hot chicken soup all over it. It was delicious and one of my favourite meals!

It was only when I talked about it in my school that I discovered nobody else did this. Later in life I discovered my Nan had never ever been able to cook and had chronic mental health issues. I thought she was bloody great though!’
–Snoo_23014

22.

‘We lived near a beach you could drive on. There were four of us siblings, and my Dad used to take us to the beach, we would get out the car and each hang on to a door handle whilst he drove along the beach and we ran like lunatics trying to keep up (and not end up under the wheels!). It was to tire us out. Apparently.’
–Joojane

Source r/AskUK Image Screenshot