Each family is weird in its own way, but some families are just downright bizarre. Whether it's strange rules, odd traditions, or otherwise eccentric behavior, it's always fascinating when a family isn't just your normal nuclear situation. Sometimes its your own family, and others, it's the family of a friend or a classmate—but either way, it's all a crash course in straight-up weirdness. These Redditors came together to share stories about clans that make the Addams Family seem normal, so read on and enjoy.
1. At the Bottom
When I was in high school, I was having dinner at my girlfriend’s parents’ place one night. She had two older brothers who were there as well. So, I was setting my plate down at the table when suddenly I felt someone slap my bum, I turned around, and it was her dad. We both just looked at each other, and he apologized.
He said he thought that I was one of his sons. I could tell he was pretty embarrassed. That was an awkward dinner…especially because he didn’t like me very much.
2. Learned It Online!
When my sister was about five, my mom really liked a series on YouTube about a skeleton puppet thing. She let me and my sister watch it too. I don't really remember it, but he said "SILENCE, I END YOU" a lot. My sister thought that was the funniest thing, so whenever anyone would ask her something, it was always funny.
She'd respond with, "SILENCE, I END YOU." We weren't allowed to watch it anymore after she yelled that out at church.
3. Total Snooze Fest
We usually sleep after the meal during holiday get-togethers, but the men do it while the women exchange gifts. We would all go into the living room and watch football and kind of doze. No big deal. I did it once at my girlfriend's family Christmas, and evidently, I embarrassed her or maybe offended someone.
Either way, I was the only one who slept after I ate while everyone else was energetic and conversing lively with family. My girlfriend woke me with an angry tone asking why I was sleeping while the party was happening. I was comfortable and relaxed, and we just had a lot of food. That’s just what made sense.
4. What Happens in the Dressing Room
All the way up until I went away to college, my mother insisted at all times on seeing exactly what I was buying for clothes, to make sure that they weren't too baggy for her liking. When I was 17 years old, we were out buying jeans at the Gap and she wanted to have me come out of the change room after trying on each pair so that she could inspect the way they looked for approval.
When I refused to basically do a fashion show for her with every individual pair of pants I tried on, she crawled her 58-year-old self under the door of the dressing room where I was trying them on to take matters into her own hands. I'm a guy, and there was a huge lineup outside the door of people waiting to use the dressing room. Everybody saw. Everybody heard.
5. Prison Preparation
I wasn't allowed to put sugar in my tea because my mum told me that when you go to prison they don't let you have sugar, so it will make prison that much harder. 1) Thanks for having so much faith in me, mum. 2) I'm pretty sure you are allowed sugar for your tea in prison.
6. Double Dookies
We caught my sons who were maybe 6 and 3 at the time sitting on the toilet together, one behind the other, pooping. They told us it was a double poop. We forbid them from ever doing that again.
7. No Words
My friend’s dad who I didn’t know very well and I suddenly had a staring contest over dinner, and we just kept on having them after that. We’ve never talked; nothing happened; just had a staring contest every time I had dinner. I was 10 at the time.
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8. Proud of My DaDDy
When I was in the 2nd grade, there was an anti-drinking and driving campaign. I didn't understand the concept, so after the teacher said, "I hope none of your parents drink and drive," I raised my hand proudly and said that my dad did. My dad drank Coke, and I didn't know the difference between Coke and any other cans.
All I knew was they were brown, bubbly, and I wasn't allowed to drink it. Come to think of it, what is the point of a drinking and driving campaign in elementary school?
9. Dad’s Don’t Do That
My dad was born in Iran, so he already had a little bit of a language gap. He would mess with my siblings and I and use his finger and thumb to pinch a teeny bit of skin on our wrists. And he would call this "jizz," which is what he thought it sounded like if you could hear it. This occurred a lot of times where my brother, sister, and I would be running away from my dad in the house pleading not to get jizzed on when we were younger.
Years later, someone explained to me that the noise Iranians think bees make is "jizz." Therefore, my dad was "buzzing" at us not jizzing, thankfully.
10. Happy Birthday!
It was my 16th birthday and my family went out to a fancy Italian restaurant. The staff came over to sing happy birthday to me, and my dad started singing along loudly in a bad Italian opera kind of accent. The staff were so stunned that they just stopped singing. The other customers around us laughed their heads off and applauded. I was mortified.
11. Play Ball!
At my friend's house they had a "no pizza-balling" rule. There were three teenage brothers and when they ordered pizzas (at least a couple larges), tempers flared quickly when people would try to grab as many slices as they could. The first rule in place was that you couldn't have more than one slice at a time, and you could grab another once you had the last bite in your mouth.
But one of the brothers quickly figured it out that if you ball up a slice he could fit it in his mouth and grab another one. Hence, no pizza-balling.
12. In the Nether Regions
When my daughter was around 5, she got a little popper toy from a machine. It’s a round rubbery little convex shaped toy that when you push down on the top and throw it down, it pops up pretty high. She loved that 25-cent toy. It went everywhere with her. One day we were leaving her grandmother’s house and I asked her where her popper was, trying to avoid five-year-old hysterics when they realize they’ve forgotten something somewhere.
She kind of shrugged and said she didn’t know. Halfway home in the car, she magically produces the popper in question. My wife asks her where she found it. Her answer was…disturbing. My daughter proudly claims, “It was in my butt.” We laugh it off but my daughter insists that were it was. It wasn’t until my wife gave it the sniff test that we realized she was telling the truth.
13. Get Back
I slept over my friend’s house, and in the middle of the night, I felt someone really, really close to my face as I was laying down. I opened my eyes a little and saw his mom in my face. Terrifying.
14. Laying It Out
I was 5 and my brother was 7, and my mom was in a minor car accident while driving us. It was just a rear end bump, but both cars pulled over and waited for somebody to come. The man asked my mom if there was anyone else in the van, and she nodded, so he asked her to open the door. My brother and I wanted to play a joke.
We thought it would be hilarious to drape ourselves over the car seats and be “lifeless” when they opened the door. So, when my frazzled mom and the guy looked into the van, they saw my brother and I sprawled on the seats, eyes closed, and not moving. She was mortified. I do believe we started laughing, so it was okay.
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15. Never Comes Down
We had our imaginary older brother named “Fred” to whom my mom, brother, and I would casually refer when our friends visited. Fred was much older and stayed in the attic. Whenever our friends would ask what he looked like, we always pointed to a different picture on our wall. I have no idea when this started.
16. Your Mom Only Gets One Chance to Make a Good Second Impression
After I submitted my first ever job application to a store manager back when I was 16 years old, my paranoid mother barged up to the store and started going on and on to the manager about how I was really shy and not much of a people person. Yeah, that's exactly what a manager wants to hear about an applicant for a customer service job…
17. Living Statues
If someone knocked on the door, we were not allowed to move or speak until Mom decided that yes, we were home and would accept company over. I actually didn't realize how weird that was until my friend came over and seemed surprised when someone knocked on the door, and I covered her mouth and pulled her away from the curtains.
My mom refuses to answer the door for unannounced visitors and to this day will still pretend no one is home if she doesn't feel like socializing. It's even worse when they call her cell phone and hear it ringing from within the home despite every television being on mute and every light in the house being turned off.
18. Bumper Butts
I walked in on my sister’s 5-year-old twins bent over on opposite sides of the room with their butts toward each other. They counted down from three and then speedily backed up into each other so their butts would slam together. Both fall over and laugh and then set up to do it again.
19. What Next?
In my senior year of high school, I asked out this girl right before school ended for the summer. She said she wanted to be friends. Bummer, but at least I'd never kick myself for not trying. I was still invited to her graduation party at her house and went as I also liked being friends with her regardless of any romance.
Her dad met me in the kitchen at the party and patted me on the back saying, "Bummer about her saying no. If it was up to me, you'd already be my son-in-law." Not sure how to respond, I awkwardly laughed and said thanks. Oh, but it gets even weirder. Not 20 minutes later, he walked into a shed outside and asked us if we wanted to see a magic trick.
He then proceeded to pull a dove out of his pants. A living, breathing dove. The guy was one of the nicest people I've met, but I never knew what he was going to say or do next.
20. You Go, Girl!
I was 10 at the time and with my mom at an event when my dad was overseas and had been for a few months. My little brother was in the grass doing whatever four-year-olds do. I was at that awkward stage where I didn't know how I was supposed to behave, and I wanted a big sister so bad! I wanted to act like the girls on TV.
The ones who played jokes on their big sisters and whatnot. So, I was sitting in a room with a ton of ladies talking to my mom asking her how she's handling my dad's deployment when I burst out with, "Oh she's just fine! She's been talking to her boyfriend all the time!" The silence tipped me off that I made a mistake.
I had launched myself into the biggest trash fire of my life thus far. I immediately started laughing and said I’d seen girls on TV say it and I was just kidding. My mom never really hung out with those ladies again. I feel pretty bad about it since there was obviously no boyfriend, and I was just an idiot. Sorry, Mom!
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21. Tap On. Tap Off.
My parents were serious savers when I was younger despite making good money. Our water usage was controlled and timed, which led to a certain way I’d wash dishes by trying to open the faucet the least amount of times. Over the years, the tedious money saving methods faded, except for how we washed our dishes. One night, a friend of mine invited me over, and I stayed for dinner.
I offered to help with the dishes. It only took a few dishes before my friend was like, “What ARE you DOING? Why ARE you washing in dirty water??" He then proceeded to turn the faucet wide open. I was horrified by the wastefulness I watched. I felt like I was watching dollar bills go down the drain. I was expecting his parents to go off any minute for being so wasteful, but nothing happened.
They probably thought I was weird for reusing the dirty water. This method of washing dishes was normal for them yet felt taboo to me. I was 13 at the time.
22. I Know Where You Live
My mom made me call up my eighth-grade social studies teacher at home, to ask if I could use him as a reference for a job application. He still lived with his parents and I asked for him by first name when they picked up. He was waiting for me at my locker the next morning to tell me that I should never, ever phone him at his house again, nor should I ever call him by his first name again. No surprise, I didn't end up getting the job.
My mom denies that this ever happened, and claims that she would never demand that I do something so strange and ridiculous.
23. Whatever Works
If my mum heard us making degrading comments about women, she would make us read out loud from Mills & Boon romance novels. "You want to talk dirty? I'll make you talk dirty!" It was so embarrassing, but it was really effective.
24. Sizing Each Other Up
I caught my twins in first grade measuring each other’s anatomy with a tape measure they got to measure their heads in first grade for bike helmets. I walk in after their baths and one is on his back with his legs in the air. Of course, my husband said, “That’s not something you do until high school!”
25. Years in the Making
I've known this boy since we were babies. Our parents always thought it was adorable that we were always together. His dad was convinced we would end up married. Our entire lives, his dad would try to get us together. He went as far as to send his son to my university so we could finally "fall in love and get married."
It was very creepy. When I married my husband, I got a Facebook message from his dad saying how disappointed he was in me for not marrying his son. I blocked him.
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26. B-Rated Parenting
I was nine, and I'd gone roller-skating with my friends and my church ministers; two of the girls in the group were his daughters. My friends and I were standing around bragging about how grown-up we were and what bad things our parents let us do because we’re so mature. At the time, I didn't get what an adult rating was.
I just knew it was worse than an 'R' rating, and I figured it just meant a SUPER grown-up movie. Hoping to impress my friends, I said something like, "My mom and dad let me watch adult-rated movies with them all the time!" Our minister was standing just a few feet away and definitely heard me. My parents weren't there.
But even years later, when I told them, they were MORTIFIED even though our minister moved away like 20 years ago. It still makes me feel like a huge punk.
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27. How’s It Hanging?
We had one family towel. The towel rack was where we’d hang the towel. It wasn't designated to anyone in particular, and every few days we'd just replace the dirty towel with a clean one. A friend visited our house, and she very politely asked why we used the same towel. It never occurred to me it was weird.
28. Half-Naked Dad to the Rescue
When I was in fifth grade, I got hit by a car. I was relatively fine, but my friend called my parents to tell them what had happened and my dad was in such a rush to get to me that he showed up at the scene in nothing but his underwear. It was very embarrassing but, at the same time, I appreciate his care and sense of urgency.
29. The Naked Truth
Our weirdest rule was the "Underwear At the Table Rule." Me and my three sisters were big fans of being naked when we were younger, so from ages 3-8 whenever we'd come home from preschool or school, everything would just come straight off regardless of who was home. So my mother instituted the Underwear at the Table Rule, stating that during dinner everyone needs to be wearing underwear at the very least, otherwise no dinner.
This worked for a while and was later complemented by the rule stating that if you have chest hair, you have to wear a shirt (that one applied more to my dad than to us).
30. Wrong Place to Park Your Rear
When I was a kid, I used to prefer to poop in the park closest to my house instead of at home. I used to wonder who cleaned up my poop every day because the poop was always gone by the next day. After months of doing this, I found out a neighbor's mom was the one who kept cleaning up my poop. I was mid-poop one sunny afternoon when I saw her walking towards the park from her condo across the road with a baggy, probably because she had a chore every day that included going to the park to clean up my poop before her children could go play.
I was squatted atop the playground in one of those wooden cubicles at the top of a slide peering out through a crack between the wooden pillars, watching the neighbor mom coming closer, trying to finish my poop at a rapid pace. I finished my poop, didn't wipe because I was a disgusting child pooping in a park, yanked my pants up and flew my poopy butt down the slide and booked it through the field to home base.
I raced through the door and continued to live my best life—until there was a knock on the door. My mom answered the door and to my horror there was neighbor lady and she and my mom had a long talk outside on the front step. When my mom came in, she looked at me with pure disgust and said, "NO MORE POOPING AT THE PARK!!!" Even worse? My older brother’s friends were over and overheard my mom scream that at me.
They demanded to know the whole story. Then when I started kindergarten, one of the children of the poop picker-upper neighbor mom was in a grade ahead of me and recognized me and told everyone what I had done. I was and always will be, The Park Pooper.
31. What a Pleasure
In fourth grade, my best friend lived just down the street from the school, so we would regularly go there after school. Her mom was an addict, and her step-dad drank, and routinely during sleepovers, we would hear them doing it loudly. My friend told me one day, she had found this big orange vibrator in her mom's room.
Then she explained to me what, in fact, that was. A couple of weeks later, we walked over after school to find the house littered with bright orange shreds...the family boxer had found her mom's vibrator too.
32. Bad Moves
I was heading back from the annual county fair with a childhood friend and his cousin to my friend's house. I’d gotten really sick at the fair and was sprawled out in the back of my friend's cousin's car trying my best not to puke everywhere. It didn't help that we live out in the mountains so the drive was unbearable.
Out of desperation for my stomach pain to pass, I didn't even turn on the lights when I got to his house. I was in for a disturbing surprise. I fell onto the bed in the dark only to find his dad under me snoring. Apparently, my friend's dad was staying up waiting for us to get home and fell asleep on his bed. I obviously woke him up, and he freaked out.
He turned on the lights, and yup, he was in his underwear. When he saw it was us, he laughed at the situation, but it was definitely one of the most uncomfortable experiences of my life. I'm just glad I didn't throw up on him.
33. A Bit Off Track
My 2.5-year-old son was going through a bit of a train phase. He went nuts whenever we passed by trains, wanted to watch Thomas the Train all day, etc. It should come as no surprise that he had latched onto a toy train as his favorite toy. The toy was the train named Percy from Thomas the Train show. He clung to Percy.
Everywhere we’d go, he had to hold Percy, but he’s also quite clumsy still. Any moment he dropped Percy, it's a mad dash to get the train back to him. The problem was that he couldn't quite enunciate the word Percy. Instead, he cried out the naughty word—yup, the one that also means cat—or rather, sobbed it out at the top of his lungs. Over and over.
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34. Pretty Good View
I learned we weren't normal the hard way. My dad would always be walking around in tightie-whities, and it would happen every day. I didn’t realize it was inappropriate until pretty late when much older than I should have been when I visited my dad one time and he had company. My dad gave stared at me and said, “…we have company.” I thought the underwear thing was normal, so I blew it off.
When I was leaving, my dad laughed and asked if “I did it on purpose.” I didn’t know what he was talking about—turned out I’d accidentally flashed everyone.
35. Planning for the Future
When I was a senior in college, I was working a part-time job. They offered to make my current position full-time once I graduated. Before I got a chance to respond, my father found out and contacted my supervisor expressing concerns about the offer due to the fact that I was still in college. How my father found out still boggles my mind, but the moment when my supervisor first told me that my dad had called him was probably the most embarrassing experience either of my parents have ever caused me.
36. Share the Love
The weirdest was this: When I was 11 (this was 1990), I was BIG into New Kids on the Block. HUGE. For some reason, those giant buttons were also popular—I'm talking the ones that were 6" in diameter and had an easel so you could stand it up on your desk. Anyway, Mom and I were out shopping one day and one of the stores at the mall had them. I really, really wanted the one with Joey McIntyre, because he was my favorite. Mom would only buy the one with all five guys on it for me, though. Her reasoning: If she bought me the one with just Joey, it wouldn't be fair to the other four guys.
That was 26 years ago, and she still stands by her reasoning. And yes, I let her buy it for me.
37. Sixth Sense
When my son was 3, I suspected that he had been experiencing night-terrors for a few months. I was really concerned. The most unsettling thing he did wasn't waking up sobbing, though. Sometimes he would wake up around midnight, walk to where I was, stare at me and then walk back to bed. He wouldn't respond to me and just sit on his bed while staring at the ground. If I tried to comfort him, he would become angry and violent.
Next morning, he'd be his normal self. But that wasn’t the scariest part. At that time, he would often ask if ghosts were real. We never exposed him to anything with that sort of content. I'd try to reassure him that they were just imaginary. He would insist that they were real. Sometimes at night he would call me to his room and say someone was there.
I was freaking out a little. Not just by the idea that my child was seeing strange things but that he might be suffering from psychological issues. My wife insisted that it wasn't something to be concerned about. She's a psychologist and I respected her opinion, but I just couldn't stop worrying. I felt like I needed to help my kid.
Anyhow, it became less and less frequent and stopped altogether for the most part. He still asks about and insists that ghosts are real from time to time. But he isn't scared at night anymore.
38. Helping Out
When I was around 10 years old, I was sleeping over at my best friend Juan's house. We usually stayed up really late playing and would sleep in until about 11 or 12, which I loved because I rarely got to do that at my house. At about 8 AM, his dad came into the room and told me to get dressed because he needed my help.
His dad was a big drinker, so either his breath reeked from the last night or he had had one for breakfast, either way, he was a bit buzzed. He told me he needed my help picking out a toy for Juan as a surprise and we’re going to drive to Walmart. So, we got in the car and went to Walmart which was 10 minutes away.
It was a pretty awkward ride, and he started asking me questions like how I was liking school, and if I had a girlfriend yet. We got to Walmart, and he brought me to the toy section and asked me which toy I think Juan would like. I walked around and saw Darth Vader's Tie Fighter. Juan and I were huge Star Wars fans.
We’d even seen Empire Strikes Back in theaters when it was rereleased, so I knew he’d like it. He bought the toy, and then we had another awkward car ride back. He thanked me for helping and told me to keep it a secret. I changed into my pajamas and tried to go back to sleep, but like 10 minutes later, his dad came in.
He surprised him with the toy and gave me a wink. I found out that he had me go on this mission because he’d been trashed a few nights before and hit Juan, and he wanted to make it up to him. As far as I know, that’s the only time that ever happened, but we lost touch after eighth grade. It was all just really strange.
39. Loyalty Lies
I was about 12 and had this friend from secondary school. We’d spend the weekend having sleepovers and stuff like that. One weekend after her birthday, we went to town, and after her mom told her not to spend her birthday money buying presents for a boy she liked; she did. We were sitting in a cafe with her mom later.
Her mom asked, “Did you spend all your birthday money on that boy?” After a tense back and forth of my friend denying and trying to say no, her mom turned to me and asked if she had. I tried to avoid the question. After being told I was not allowed to lie, I HAD to tell the truth. I told the truth. My friend got upset.
I apologized to my friend, “I had to! She asked.” Her mom started going off about how I was a jerk and didn’t have to tell her. I could have said I respected my friend’s privacy and didn’t want to say anything. We didn’t really hang out after that. Her mom tried to guilt me about not hanging out with my friend anymore.
I feel bad in hindsight; it wasn’t my friend’s fault. 12-year-old me just really didn’t want to get caught in another family’s drama.
40. Sunday Scheming
When my daughter was younger, I was still in contact with my mom, and she would spend the night on Saturdays with her due to my work schedule. Then, on Sunday mornings, she would go to church with her. About five months in, my mom came home to tell me that my daughter had apparently told everyone in church that I was gone.
No one ever questioned her, since they had never met me and she had only gone to church with my mom. I guess it came up in Sunday school when they were making Mother’s Day cards, she didn't want to make one for me, and she told them I was gone. My daughter was smart enough even at four to know that I thought church was a joke.
And so, she didn't want to participate in making me church crafts. I could NOT stop laughing. The only thing that topped this was when she got up and had an argument with the preacher over Easter because he was just not understanding that Jesus was a zombie.
41. Seventh Sense
I'm the eldest of seven, and we’ve always been a close-knit family. We went through a lot as a family when the youngest two who are twins were born because of medical issues. I used to write little letters of encouragement for my siblings to read whenever they needed it that said I loved them and to hang in there. My sister and I went to a sailing camp once and ended up on different boats.
We were expecting a working sail school, but the other kids were expecting more of a cruise. They were snobby, rich kids who were mean. They didn't want to lift a finger to clean, cook, or keep the boat moving in the right direction. My sister is sensitive, and the kids on her boat were being mean to her. One of the older boys was calling her “Thunder thighs,” and she cried every night alone. We didn't see or talk to each other often, but when we could talk, she didn't tell me anything specific, but I could tell something was off with her.
I knew she wasn't having fun, so when we were back on the ships, I wrote her a note of encouragement. Someone asked what I was doing, and I casually said, "Writing my sister a love-note," His response stopped me in my tracks. He was like, "Oh, are... you in love with your sister?" in a way someone would sound when talking to someone “insane.”
It was shocking and kind of humiliating, and I didn't even know how to respond for a second. Especially because sisters can be more affectionate with each other, and it's not usually weird. It still really bothers me his mind immediately went to that place, and everyone else started to avoid me slightly more.
42. We Want a Pitcher, Not a Belly Itcher
Not my parents, but at my brother's baseball games, my grandpa would always sit in the bleachers and insult the other kids out loud, oftentimes even directly to the parents of those children themselves. Examples include things like "So and so is such a freakin' jerk!" or "He'd be a good first baseman if he didn't spend all his time daydreaming!" It was always fun to be associated with that guy while sitting in the bleachers beside the victims of his comments...
43. Dietary Madness
My mom was super, SUPER into nutrition. Like to a scary and not scientifically-accurate degree. I was not allowed to eat sugar—EVER. I mean I did not taste white sugar until I was 11-ish and caught on that I could just sneak it other places and she'd never know. I never had candy or chocolate of any kind until then (She sometimes baked sweet things, but it was rare, and she only sweetened them with apple juice). I get that sugar isn't good for you, but jeez.
I could not have honey either, because she believed I was allergic because my "hearing got worse" if I ate honey. Not sure how she came to that conclusion, because I never saw an allergist. I suspect I was just a normal kid—even now, if I'm focused hard on something I'm doing, I won't hear you talk to me! She also never took me to the doctor for any reason. I was not vaccinated until I was 18 and went on my own to do it.
I was not allowed to eat the same type of grain on more than one day a week. She had a list on the fridge like "Sunday - Wheat, Monday - Oats, Tuesday - Spelt, Wednesday - Kamut, Thursday - Rice," and I can't even remember the rest. Quinoa and teff were probably on there. Anyway, this was because she believed eating the same type of grain multiple days in a row would cause you to become allergic to it.
Her definition of "allergy" was vague and conflated sensitivities with allergies. She never saw a professional other than a legitimately-quack "nutritionist" who once made her believe she had cancer but NEVER SENT HER TO AN ONCOLOGIST. She did not actually have cancer, as far as I know. She was pretty obsessed with allergies, and she controlled everything I ate very carefully so as to avoid "giving" me more allergies. There were lists other than the grain ones—we also alternated soy, almond, and rice milks. Again, to avoid "creating allergies."
As far as I know, I only ever had one actual possible food-related...thing, and I outgrew it, so I don't even know what it was: until I was around 13, if I consumed anything containing the slightest bit of milk protein, I'd throw up violently not long after. I wish people had taken it more seriously whenever I told them about it, because people thought I meant "lactose intolerant" and tried to give me things without lactose but which contained casein. Or they were trying to be "nice" because they knew my mom controlled my diet. But my god, if a child tells you "I am allergic to milk," how about err on the side of caution because you don't know what's going on??
I do not know why she got the idea that I'm allergy-prone, because I wasn't and still am not! She made up a medical condition for me and made me eat as if I really had it, but never got me checked by a doctor to be sure. Umm, what else...oh, I wasn't allowed to eat potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, or peppers, because they're part of the nightshade family and nightshade is poisonous and so eating those foods would eventually cause toxins to build up in my body and cause me to pass on. I don't even know where to begin with that one.
Within the last five years, she's stopped this stupid stuff entirely. She eats whatever, whenever. She still eats a lot of whole grains and fresh produce—great!—but she also eats potatoes (etc.) and even sugar sometimes. She still talks about her constantly-rotating cabinet of "allergies," but not as often. She thinks the stomach ache she gets from milk is an "allergy." And I'm like no, mom, switch to Lactaid?
She also gets a yearly physical from an actual doctor. And she seems much happier overall.
44. Can’t Hold It In
I’ve caught my sister doing strange things as a child. I once caught her playing with a bag with yellowish liquid inside when she was 10. She had pulled this bag from the side of her backpack. I asked her what it was. She said it was her own pee. She had been keeping it in there for days and once in a while, she’d pull it out to play with. I was horrified.
When she was 8, she cut off her doll’s hair, dismembered it and gave it a funeral, which she made all of us attend. She went to dig it up several days later but it wasn’t there. She’s done many other things but those were the two weirdest things she did.
45. For the Future
At 8 years old, I was at my friend's house for a sleepover. His parents start arguing over something. But my friend's dad looked straight at me and said, "Never get married." At 8 years old, I had no idea what to do with this information, so I just froze.
46. Along for the Ride
We picked up my friend’s mom one night at a bar because she couldn’t drive, and on the way back, she kept yelling “I’m not going to sleep with you!” to me in the backseat. That was the strangest one-hour ride of my life.
47. Do’s and Don’ts
When I was small, my mom would give me small taps on my bum to tell me I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to do. At Disneyland, a complete stranger offered me candy. My mother immediately whisked me away and took me to the bathroom to explain why I must never accept candy from strangers or talk to them in general.
Being the three-year-old and having no clue what was going on, I screamed the worst thing possible: "Don't hit me! Don't hit me! I'm sorry!" I wonder what my mom felt like as we exited the crowded bathroom.
48. Not in My Power
I didn’t know other people didn’t respond to sneezes with a sarcastic, “You are NOT blessed!” I got a LOT of weird looks in school from my teachers. I about made a distant family member suffocate from a surprised laughing fit my response sent him into though. He was actually impressed we had that kind of humor.
49. The Original Captain Underpants
When I was a young kid, we had a pajama day at school. This posed a problem for me because I always just wore my boxers to sleep. Well, obviously a kid can't just show up to school wearing nothing but underwear, but I was too little and dumb to understand that at the time. Why my mom allowed me to go in that way and even drove me there, I have no idea. It was the most embarrassing day of my life, and the school had to call my parents to come pick me up less than halfway through the day.
50. Not the Happiest Place on Earth
For me, it was that Disney films were almost completely banned (I was allowed to watch Mickey Mouse). My mum felt that they were too "saccharin" and that I should not be lied to about the future. We actually all sat down as a family when I was about five to watch Mulan, then read the poem while my mum explained the differences. Jokes on her though, I watched Pocahontas at a sleepover.
Although this does mean that I have not seen The Lion King, Cinderella, etc.
51. The Art of Doing Nothing
My niece was very upset that her older sister wouldn't turn the TV over when I was babysitting once. After about 10 minutes, she pretended to be interested in the washing machine that was on at the time and sat in front of it and watched it like a TV…for an hour and twenty minutes. Her older sister watched the rest of her film but obviously wasn't enjoying it.
She was outraged that her little sister was having a great time watching wet clothes spin round and round. It's the most creative act of revenge I've ever seen.
52. Wearing It Wrong
We went to see a girl my best friend liked. They’d gone out a few times, and we were all great friends. We went to her parents’ house and were in the kitchen. She went to the back to grab something and left me by the door. My friend was a few steps away on the other side of the kitchen in front of the door to the hall.
While waiting, my friend noticed a basket of clean laundry that had been brought in from outside. On top was a pair of red and black frilly panties. My friend thought it’d be funny to pick it up, pretend to sniff it, and then put it on his head. As he did so, he was facing me with his back to the open door to the hall. You can guess what happened next.
I couldn't speak from shock because behind him was the girl’s mother who stood watching what he was doing. He noticed my expression, slowly turned around, and just looked at her, and said, “Sorry,”' sheepishly while shamefully taking the panties off his head. Her mom said that they were hers and not the girl’s anyways.
53. Listen to Mother
My ex’s mother used to kindly and passively-aggressively make me stay when I was over. He was 25 and still lived at home. She was so eager for me to date him and stick around that she’d go out of her way to dote on me aggressively. She’d find ways to make me stay longer and even outright say it’s rude to leave so soon.
She’d find another board game, or another movie, or another snack to get me to stay over longer. She bought me strange presents like knick-knacks and porcelain figurines. He wasn't a bad guy, but mommy dearest had babied him so much that he didn't know how to do anything for himself. He expected me to take care of him.
Me, a then-19-year-old who hadn't even started college yet and was working part-time at a Dunkin Donuts. I also still lived at home. His mom just expected that she could completely enable him and baby him and then hand him off to a girl who would do the same for the rest of his life. She was crazy. We didn't date long.
54. Part of the Family
While packing leftovers at a restaurant, my nephew leaned over to the waitress. I still can’t believe what he said. He told her, "We're going to take this home for our black girl!" Their two dogs are named Nadia and Suri, but my brother-in-law doesn’t like those names, so refers to each by the color of its fur, white and black respectively. Collectively, they’re "the girls."
I guess the possibility of a misunderstanding never occurred to my brother-in-law when it came to these nicknames. All our faces were red as we stammered to explain to the waitress that we weren't subjugating a young lady of color.
55. Have a Glass!
Once, I was at my friend's house, and his father came to me asked if I want anything to drink. I politely asked for a glass of water. Very seriously, he responded with, “Oh, sorry. I don't think we have any water. Would you like some pasta instead?” Thinking it’s some kind of joke I said sure. He went into the kitchen.
He came back a little later with a drinking glass full of spaghetti and handed it to me before going back to whatever he was doing. I was quite confused.
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56. What a Way to Spend
There’s a fine line between being frugal and being cheap. When I was a sophomore, I went on vacation with a friend’s family to some beach hotel. Downstairs, there was a super upscale seafood restaurant where we went for dinner one night dressed up in suits and everything. Unbeknownst to me, this family was quite cheap.
They weren’t “frugal” as they claimed, but cheap. First, the school board had paid for the hotel where we stayed as a “teacher’s weekend.” Second, since the restaurant was part of the hotel, we got 50% off our whole bill. Third, my mom gave his dad money for my food for the week which I could spend on any meal I’d like.
The waiter was taking drink orders. I said, “Coke, please!” His dad, from the other side of the table, asked, “You sure?” Now, everybody was staring at me ordering. I said, “Yeah, I’d just like a Coke please.” He piped up again, “Alright, well, if you’re gonna be spending your parents' money then might as well go big!”
It’s $2 a soda but okay, whatever. I just let it pass and broke the tension by changing the subject. The drinks arrived, and it was time for us to order. His family decided for the table, for five adults, that the best plan of action was to split two small appetizers and eat free bread instead of getting individual meals.
I went to order a steak since I had my money. He said again in front of everybody, “Hopefully, you have enough money for breakfast!” At this point, I was so engulfed in this cocktail of passive-aggressive comments and cheapskate mindsets that I slowly lost my appetite and just sat there picking at the appetizer we got.
The appetizer was fried calamari on a bed of spinach. The calamari disappeared, and the plate of greens was just sitting there for a few minutes. Our waiter had just started and was being trained that day. He came to get the plates. All of a sudden, his dad said loudly for the restaurant to hear, “Where’s the spinach?”
The waiter rushed over and asked what was wrong trying to diffuse it. He might as well have had walked up and kicked him right in the balls because his dad erupted in rage. He had taken the waiter cleaning the plates off the table as some personal threat and went off the rails. My friend stepped in to try and calm him.
He shouted, and I quote, to his own son, “Screw you! I’m not going to calm down. You’re the kid, I’m the dad. Remember that.” He eventually calmed down to a point when the manager not only comped him his half-priced order of waters and calamari for free but also a second free meal to ease this man’s magnificent burden.
57. Sitting Down With a Friend
I grew up in a small house of four girls. And, growing up, privacy didn’t exist, and you get used to having conversations with one another while one was on the toilet and the other was in the shower or whatever. People thought we were weird because we sometimes would just hang out and keep each other company.
58. Texts from Mom
My younger sister’s male friend came out as gay when they were in high school. One night when I was visiting home, I was hanging out with my sister while she was browsing Facebook, and she called me over because she was getting messages from a different mutual friend’s mom who had asked her, “Your friend’s gay, right?”
When my sister said yeah, this woman started describing male-male sensual acts as if to say, “Oh yeah, I know what that is,” but it was really explicit stuff to a 16-year-old girl about a 16-year-old boy. I told my sister to ask her how much she’d had to drink that night, and when she did, the woman stopped responding.
It got a step weirder when we met up with the woman’s sons, our friends, and told them about the weird things their mother had said, and their response was to think it was hilarious instead of being embarrassed.
59. Didn’t Mean to Spy
When we were 18, we’re driving around the sketchy part of town late at night chatting, singing to music, and wandering about as teenagers do on a double date. I often slept over at my friend's house and spent a lot of time with his family. My boyfriend's mom worked with his mom, so he also knew my friend's family well.
My friend had been dating his girlfriend for a few years, so she knew his parents well. We saw his dad's car, which was surprising, as it was at least midnight, and he usually slept early. There’s no way we could’ve predicted what happened next. We then saw him pull over and pick up what was a girl clearly working the streets. We could clearly see and recognize his dad.
We saw her lean over as they drove past. After that, we’re all very quiet. I drove everyone home and took my friend back to my house at his request. I figured he didn't want to confirm that his dad wasn't home where he should’ve been to maintain the pretense that it may not have been him. We never spoke about it again.
We all had a hard time being comfortable around either of his parents again.
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60. Well, That’s One Way to Be a Proud Mother...
I was one of those early bloomers when it came to puberty, and I had C cup breasts by the time I was eleven years old.
My mom seemed to absolutely love to loudly talk about them to anyone who would listen. "Yeah, she's only eleven! Can you believe it? You wouldn't think that from the way she's filled out up top! Hahaha!" Then, I'd start crying from the humiliation and she'd just tell me to "lighten up." This cycle repeated itself more times than I would care to count even if I could.
61. Cheesy Dad
When I was nine, my friend’s dad brought cheesecake to a family event at school. When I was talking to a classmate, my friend’s dad walked over to us, took a bite of his pie, looked at us, and went, “Mmm, mmm, goodness, this cake is better than doing the deed,” and walked off as if he wasn’t talking to two nine-year-olds.
62. Gotta be Quick on the Draw
My family had a weird rule. To have control over the television you had to say, "Powerpuff Girls, Dragon Ball Z, Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy,” and a bunch of other Cartoon Network shows that were on television at the time. If you said this before everyone else, you got to decide what we watched on the TV.
63. Purity Pirates
I was over at a friend’s house when we were about 15. My friend was cooking dinner while I was in the living room flipping through channels and saw that Pirates of The Caribbean was on, and yelled to my friend, “Man, Johnny Depp is the hottest, right?” And I noticed a weird shift in the house. Her mom’s reaction was chilling.
She ran over to the kitchen, and I heard my friend and her mom speaking kind of harshly, but I couldn’t make anything out. I never brought it up because things calmed down after that. Later, my friend said that her mom interrogated her about me sleeping with people because how was a virgin supposed to know what hot is.
My friend had to fully reassure her mom that she and I were both virgins. Funnily enough, I was and my friend wasn’t.
64. Apply Generously
I found my son and his cousin absolutely coated in calamine lotion. They’d obviously found it and being 4 and 6 years old, they decided to do a bit of finger painting with it. I get that, but I don’t entirely understand why his pants were off. Yes, his privates had calamine on it too. It was the 90s so I got a hilarious picture of them posing together with their calamine body art.
65. Ukraine Do Anything
My best friend when I was 10 had recently moved to the US from Ukraine. We hung out practically every day at my place. His parents didn't speak English, but his mom was always nice enough when she picked him up. Once, coincidentally, his dad drove by my house while we were outside playing soccer against each other.
He realized it was us while driving by and slammed on his brakes, and his truck came to a loud, screeching halt. He got out of the truck, waved, and ran to the back of his pickup. I had never met him before, but he waved, smiled, and grabbed some stuff from his pickup and came over. Initially, the brakes had scared me.
But then he ran up, shook my hand, said a bunch of stuff in Russian, then gave us a whole 12 pack of Cherry Pepsi and a big block of cheese. They talked briefly for a couple of minutes. Then he waved and left. I thought it was weird to get a whole 12 pack and especially a block of cheese. I was leery about the cheese.
It seemed weird to eat just cheese, and I didn't really know the guy who gave it to us. But since it was my friend's dad and I was hungry, I figured it was cool. And it was. We stopped playing soccer about 10 minutes later because we’d each chugged a couple of cans of Pepsi, ate lots of cheese, and wanted to take it easy.
Another time, I was hanging out with him outside his house. We were playing outside while his dad was doing some yard work. Suddenly, their neighbor came outside and started shouting at my friend's dad. Apparently, my friend's dad would always park in the neighbor's assigned parking spot. The neighbor was done with it.
The neighbor was yelling at my friend's dad who, again, didn't speak a lick of English. My friend's dad was watering some plants, so when the guy started yelling at him in a language he didn't understand, my friend's dad decided to just spray the dude with the gardening hose. Just like the last encounter, I was scared.
But then his dad started laughing because he’d soaked the other guy who then ran away. My friend and I started laughing too, and he gave us both high fives. I guess that was the third "strike" on my friend's dad, and after that incident, he couldn’t stay at the trailer park where they were. He lived on his own for a bit.
He was away from the family just for a few months until they all could move back together. My last memory of his dad was when I was 16 and my car broke down while I was on the road. The timing belt broke, so the engine wouldn't run. My car was stranded on the side of the road. I needed to get the car to my high school.
I figured we could fix it in our auto class for cheap but paying $100+ for a tow would’ve hurt me as a junior. I was with my Ukrainian friend, and since my dad was at work, we called his dad to get us. He got there and pulled a big thick rope from his truck bed instead of pushing our car to the side to deal with later.
He tied it to the back of his truck and then tied it under my car. He gave instructions to my friend for him to translate, "I'm going to pull you. Keep the car in neutral. Stay as close to my bumper as possible because if you brake too much it’ll break the rope. Only brake when I brake, but don't brake harder than me."
He then "towed" me to the high school which was around three miles away. I was very nervous because even at the rope's full length, I wasn't more than half a car length behind him, but I couldn't put any more distance between us. I thought that to compensate for this, he’d at least drive slowly to avoid accidents but nope.
He drove fast and braked fast. It was terribly nerve-wracking, but I managed to stay on his bumper the whole way and didn’t run into him or brake too hard and snap the rope. Afterward, he gave us a ride home. He's a weird dude, and if he was in my life all the time, I wouldn’t like him. Occasionally, he's really cool.
66. Closed for the Night
My brother was up when he was supposed to be in bed when he was maybe four, and he went onto the deck to find my parents wearing nothing and sitting in the hot tub. His perfectly understandable reaction was to lock them outside like that. They had to go the neighbor's house to get the key.
67. All Sorts of Snacks
I was at my boyfriend’s house, and his parents were making dinner in the kitchen prepping vegetables while we and his brothers hung out in the living room. After a bit, his dad came in with sliced discs of raw potato and handed one to each of us. I was like "Uhh... what am I supposed to do with this exactly?" And they all went, "Eat it! It's a snack!"
I took a little bite, and it tasted just as starchy and bland and downright odd as I imagined it would. Apparently, they do that every time they have potatoes. I wasn’t even aware that potatoes could be eaten raw. I guess it has something to do with them being Irish.
68. On Top of Things
Years ago, I went to my then girlfriend's house. We were both in our early 20s at the time, and she lived with her widowed mother. I went there so often that usually I would just let myself in and call or text her that I was already waiting in the living room. Well, I did that once, and her mom came out wearing no top!
All of her glory was hanging out. She looked at me in shock, and I looked right back at her. I couldn't help but stare at her because she honestly was quite an attractive woman. Her shock then faded away, and she said, "Oh I didn't realize you were here. I'll let [ex-gf's name] know," then she smiled and casually left.
69. Forty Days and Forty Nights of Shame
When I was about five years old or so, my pre-kindergarten class did a play based on Noah’s ark—as it was a school that was connected to a church. We were instructed that our costume was supposed to be raincoats, rain boots, and umbrellas. I didn’t have any of those things, but I begged my dad to buy me at least one of them so that I could fit in and follow the guidelines.
Fast forward to the night of the play.
I’m frantically scanning the audience because my dad is ALWAYS late for everything. He finally shows up just before we are about to begin, and hands me...a life jacket. I had to stand up there in a stupid life jacket next to all of the other kids in their little raincoats. I was really embarrassed. Dad’s defense was that I was the only kid who would have survived the flood. I can laugh at that now, but I sure wasn’t laughing at the time!
70. Close Connection
It was in the early days of our romantic relationship, and we had been friends for nearly a decade before that. I had helped her father install a new home theater system complete with a satellite dish outside that had servos for it to aim itself at different satellites. He called a week later because it wasn’t working.
It was all hooked up to a single touch screen remote thing, so I talked him through it, and he told me, “Thank goodness, now I can enjoy my dirty video in peace.” I just chuckled, and then he thanked me and invited me over to check out the new system. He started stumbling on his words as he realized what he was saying.
I was like, “Mick, did you just invite me over to watch that with you?” It was just his generous personality coming through, and I was laughing my bum off. He said, “Yeah, actually that’s probably not a very good idea seeing as you’re going out with my daughter. What was I thinking?” He was fun. We had some good times.
71. Grub’s Up
My parents never took me out to dinner ever. Not exaggerating at all. In my 18 years living with them, we did not eat out even once. The habit was to have three meals at home. Even when I was older (in high school) and deliberately went out with friends, they still compelled me to eat three meals every day at home. When I got home there was my share on the table and I had to finish all of it no matter what.
That meant I had to hold back when I went out with friends, the reason was always "I cannot skip dinner, sorry, you guys go on without me." As a teenager that was a very lame thing to say, or so I thought.
72. Muddy Duddy
When I was about eight, my friend's mom had just picked all the plants from her garden, so we took hoses and had a mud fight in the garden. We went inside, took a shower, changed, and continued playing. Then an hour later, we wanted to go back out and have another mud fight. Her dad was mad because we wasted so much water.
And he didn't let us go back in and shower; he made us strip and hosed us down in the back yard. I went home right after.
73. Catch of the Day
I was 17 and went to visit a friend, but they were out shopping for school clothes. I found his dad in the garage in his new ice fishing shanty. He set it to see how things would fit including a bucket of water where the hole would be. I grabbed a pole and dropped a line in the bucket. We shot the breeze for about an hour.
No one was surprised when they got home from shopping. I kind of cherish that memory. My friend’s dad was very kind and funny.
74. In-Person Demonstration
When my son was three, I was changing him before he left to spend the night at his grandma’s house. As soon as I took off his diaper and he was only wearing a shirt, he got up and got in between my husband and mother-in-law who were talking to each other and said, “Grandma! Look at me!” He then got on his hands and feet with his body facing up and started thrusting upwards and yelled, “I’M EXERCISING!”
75. I Love You This Munch
I had a friend growing up who had saints for parents. They had to have known my home was a bad place to be because they never sent me back there even after their child and I did dumb stuff. They would just send us up to her room. Sometimes I think we just pushed it on purpose to see how much her parents would tolerate.
One time when we were older, her mother took us to a concert. My friend and I loved the same music. We even had our own “band” complete with electric guitars and amplifiers and a microphone her parents let us use inside the house. We stopped it as young teenagers, and her mother agreed to chaperone us to see a concert.
The concert was held in a pretty small arena, and everyone was lighting up. As rebellious as my friend and I tried being, we were innocent in the ways of inebriation at our age. Her mom hung out towards the back of the arena, and we went right up front. It was a great experience for a young teenager at their first concert.
But we started feeling incredibly loopy. People were blowing into the air into our faces, and there was a layer of mist hanging by the ceiling. After the concert, we made our way to where her mother was waiting the entire time. We got into the car, and her mother said, “Girls, I think we might’ve gotten a little high.”
Then she brought us to Burger King, and we ate a whole lot of whopper juniors while my friend and I were annoying her the way back home. I still think of that night and chuckle to myself because the image of her strait-laced mother bringing us to Burger King just cracks me up and is one of the happiest memories I have.
76. Anatomy Anomaly
When my middle son was about three, he would constantly point at different people and say "pee-pee" if it was a guy and "vagina" if it was a girl. We tried to get him to stop saying the words in public but eventually figured it would make more sense to not make a big deal out of it and wait for him to be tired of doing it.
We’re at the mall one day, and the cashier was ambiguous looking. I myself was not really sure of their gender until I saw her name tag. My son looked at her and said, "Pee-pee or vagina? Which one?" Surprisingly, she didn't seem offended and said, "I'm a girl." My son responded, "Oh, vagina." The cashier just laughed.
77. Bad Pick Me Up
My friend’s mom would pick him up at the bus stop every day. Once, she asked if I wanted a ride home. I said sure and got in. She said she had to do something at home quickly and took us to their house. We lived two blocks from the bus stop in opposite directions. It didn't make sense but whatever. I didn't say anything.
We got to their house, and she sat me down at the kitchen table then yelled at me for being mean to her son for about two hours. I walked home afterward, late for dinner, and told my parents what happened. It was like she essentially kidnapped me and then yelled at me, and I still have no idea what I did to my friend.
78. Getting to the Bottom
My husband and I will playfully slap each other's bums when the other is bent over doing something. I was at the grocery store with my four-year-old daughter. We passed a very large woman bent down looking at a display. My daughter slapped her bum as we went by, and I had to try very hard not to giggle while I apologized.
79. Not a Good Look
When I was seven, there was this kid in my class who lived a few blocks away. He was weird, his family was weird, and he was on my block with his dad who was a scary guy wearing a dirty T-shirt with sweatpants. The kid invited me over to play some Nintendo. I really didn't want to go. Now, my mother was overprotective.
So, I'd usually just look at her, and she could tell from my look whether it was a, "Please, mom, can I go?" Or a "Please, mom, tell them I can't go?" My dad, however, was oblivious to the world around him. Mom wasn't there. Dad was. So, I looked at Dad, and he’s like, "Heck yea, afternoon to myself!" He told me to go.
The kid's dad drove one of those ancient mega-vans. The kid sat in the passenger seat. There were no back seats. So, I had to sit on a center console. The floor was covered in fast food wrappers and bags and generally smelled like garbage. We got to their house, and the place was filthy. The parents were like chimneys.
The kid's mom kept calling me "Adam" which was not my name. I asked the kid who Adam was as we went to his room and booted up some Nintendo. He kept pushing off the question. We played for a while. After about two hours of my guard being fully on, I asked if I could go home. The kid's dad drove me home in the mega-van.
The whole time he was cursing profusely over traffic, missed turns, etc. I was never so happy to be home. By that point, my mother was home, and she was furious that my dad sent me off with this family and was thrilled that I was back. She was mad that my father didn’t know where they lived so she couldn't just get me.
He hadn't felt like that was a huge deal; she felt otherwise. She was also mad because the family was known in the neighborhood. The mother had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals since she lost her oldest son, Adam. Since it had been years, I kept hearing different versions of what happened from different people. Either way, the story was horrifying.
Essentially, she was partly responsible for what happened to Adam. My mom said that she straight up did it but was found not guilty by reason of insanity, spent a few years in the state hospital, and then managed to get released. It could’ve been negligence. The dad was allegedly someone who now would be on a register.
The guy gave off a creep vibe, but it's possible that the rumor was neighborhood hype. Years later, the kid did some time because he’d creep on women at a nearby college campus. Apparently, he was caught after breaking into some woman's apartment to watch her sleep.
80. What’s with People Today?
I was cleaning out my garage and had a bunch of stuff in the driveway to pull out the lawnmower for the first mow of spring. While I was driving the mower, I started to notice people driving by slowing down and looking mad at me. It was strange, but I didn't think too much about it. Two different people flipped me off.
A few others yelled, but since I was driving the mower, I could not hear what they were saying. Finally, I couldn't stand it and had no clue why my mowing was upsetting everyone, so I shut the mower off and started to go inside. I was walking by my driveway, which wasn’t visible from where I was mowing. That’s when I realized what was happening.
My five- and six-year-old kids had climbed into my dog’s old cage and somehow locked themselves in. So, it looked to everyone like I locked my kids in a cage while I mowed the lawn. Not cool.
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81. Standing By
I played in a band that had a girl lead singer. The entire band was a close-knit group as we spent so much time together. She asked me to ride with her to visit her grandmother in the hospital, which was four hours away. I obliged, and while we’re there, her grandmother asked to see me. I’d never met this woman before.
For some reason, she wanted to talk to me in her last few hours. She made me promise to always take care of her granddaughter. I assume the grandmother thought her granddaughter and I were in a relationship. We were not, however, nobody wanted to correct her. She was gone a couple of days later.
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82. Von Trapped in a Musical
It took me a while to learn that other families aren’t constantly singing. My dad sings and plays the guitar, my mom was in chorus in high school, and two out of my three sisters take theater and vocal lessons, and one sister plays the ukulele. I constantly hear people walking around the house singing, and we’ll do impromptu musical numbers.
Because of this, I’ve kind of picked up a habit of singing without even realizing it. My friends will tease me sometimes when we do group calls when I start singing randomly. But I didn’t realize how strange it was until I went to a party. In a good mood, I burst into song. And they looked at me like I was crazy.
83. My Poor Ears
I went over to a friend’s house in third grade. They were better off than my family was. As my friend and I were eating food, I heard what I thought was the longest toot ever coming from the kitchen. I saw my friend’s dad who was there staring at me. After a few seconds, I asked my friend why her dad was tooting so much.
She then informed me that he was running the garbage disposal, and she started laughing hysterically. I’d never heard of one of those before. I still haven’t lived it down.
84. Onomatopoeia It
I’ve grown up with my mom telling us how to cook and saying, “And then go ‘ghrr’ the [ingredient]” to make a puree, which was normal to me, and I’d know that meant I needed to grind/blend/juice whatever ingredient it was in the mixer/grinder. So, "ghrr" was the human imitation of the sound that a mixer makes.
My sister used the same term when she was sharing a recipe in her college. There were 8-10 people around her who just looked confused. They asked her to repeat herself. Then a friend started to laugh realizing what “ghrr” meant. My sister took a whole minute to realize that no one else referred to it that way.
We had such a laugh when she came back and told us about the incident. We still use "ghrrr" when communicating at home. When we’re not communicating with each other, we have to stop ourselves from using that.
85. Mama’s Tasty Barbecue
One of my best friend’s mom is Jamaican, and she held these big barbecues in the summer. Her son was deployed, but she invited all his white boy friends anyway. I think it’s partly because I think she really liked us, but the main reason was to get us to eat weird things so she and her friends could laugh at our faces.
This one time she gave us what she called Jamaican meatballs. Only 3 of the 12 of us were brave enough to try some. It was me and my friends Joseph and Dave. Dave made it three bites and couldn't cope anymore, but Joseph and I finished ours. His mom came over and told us that we had in fact just eaten bull’s testicles.
Joseph ran away to wash his mouth, but I didn't really care. At that moment, the mother who was a little tipsy grabbed my bum saying, "I like a strong guy!" This was before I met my wife, and she was single, but still you don't come onto your friend’s mom. I panicked and picked her up and started dancing to the reggae.
This had an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage was she was a 5'2" lady and I'm 6'4" so she could no longer reach my bum or the floor. The problem was I now had a tipsy slightly amorous lady at my head height, and she went for the kiss. I should point out both my friends and her friends were very much laughing.
It was a very large uncomfortable dude holding a middle-aged lady in the air while trying to dodge a kiss from her. At this point, she gave up on my face and started kissing my neck, and I was so taken away that I dropped her! She landed flat on her bum, and it was one of those moments when everything just went silent.
It didn't stay quiet for long though. She started laughing and half-jokingly, half-seriously said, "You better be ready because I'm gonna get you later." She didn't. She drank a lot and passed out just before we left. My friend and I actually put her to bed. My friend got back from deployment, and I told him the story.
He said, “Yeah, you were always her favorite.” I’ve been to many of her barbecues since, and she’s apologized, but whenever she gets a little tipsy, she likes to dance with me. She probably doesn't try anything now because I bring my wife, but she does like to tell the story and always winks at me as if to hint things.
86. Trouble on the Telephone?
One day at work, I was in the middle of an important meeting with a client in my office and I had not been checking my cell phone during this time. All of a sudden, my boss walks in to interrupt my meeting and hands me a cordless office phone, telling me that my mother is on the line. As it turns out, my mom had Googled my boss' phone number, called him up on his office phone, and asked him if he could please put me on the phone.
Now, you’d think that all of that excessive hassle was for something important, right? Nope! She just wanted to whine about my step-father, and was in the mood to talk at that particular time. No emergency or anything whatsoever. She just wanted to chat and had zero concern for the consequences of her actions, as per usual, unfortunately.
And so, that was the day that my boss and pretty much all of my coworkers throughout the entire company lost all respect for me. When the mom of one of their coworkers calls him on the boss' phone just to talk about personal nonsense, there’s pretty much no way of recovering. A few months later, I resigned. There was nowhere to go in that place anymore...
87. Getting Attached
I was 12 and at a friend's house playing with Lego when suddenly, the power went out. My friend got really agitated, but I didn’t worry. His older brother stormed into the room and frantically grabbed things from under the bed. He finally pulled out a case and opened it up. He took it, loaded it, and chambered a round.
He sternly told us to stay in the room and lock the door and not to open it for anybody but him. We sat there for a while being pretty scared before he finally came back when it was alright. I went home. Later, I learned the dark truth. My friend's mom was in a bad relationship and her boyfriend had cut the house’s power and phone line.
He continued to stalk her calling her constantly and threatening to hurt himself. We lived just across the street in a remote place, and we were the only neighbors for miles around. Not long after, my summer ended, and we moved away. I still remember that night when people knocked on our door and then talked to my mom.
She collapsed on the floor crying. He had lured my friend's mom out to a parking lot to talk and had hurt her badly, and she was gone. After we left, I never saw my friends again.
88. Camping Into a Stupor
When I was around 13 years old, I went camping with my best friend and his dad who didn’t live with him. We set up camp, and his dad said, "I'm leaving in five days at 9 AM. Be sure you're here." From then on, we were on our own while his dad just drank himself silly. We cooked all our own food and went on hikes each day.
One evening, we came back and found his dad wearing no clothes and singing loudly while lying on a big rock. We just went and made our dinner. On the fifth day, his dad was sober and drove us home while singing Hank Williams songs and telling off-color jokes.
89. Above My Brain Wave
This girl I liked in high school decided that we weren't a good fit. But her mom disagreed. She spent time on AIM chatting with me telling me all the things I should do to get her attention. After a few weeks of the topic, she started to tell me about her marital issues and that she was thinking of leaving her husband.
The girl I liked had no idea. It was very strange and, in retrospect, so incredibly inappropriate.
90. Let’s Speed This Up
We’d take food from each other’s plate when we would eat at dinner time. Once you had finished eating your plate, you would pick at the slowest person’s plate. For our family, this was usually my mom’s plate. It wasn't until I reached to take food at my now-wife’s house that I learned nobody one else did this.
91. Cut the Cake
In eighth grade, I had a friend who came out to our friend circle as gay. It was cool, we all knew. He was not incredibly flamboyant or anything. He told us he was afraid to tell his very squared away Marine openly conservative father. He was terrified of how he would react because his dad was vocal whenever he was displeased.
Almost a year after he came out to us, he decided he wanted to tell his dad and live his truth. He asked me, other good friends, and his mom who he had told right after us to be there for him as moral support. We sat down to a really lovely, but tense meal. We had salad, entrees, and little slices of frozen cheesecake.
Nobody had said a word the whole meal. We were all pretty visibly nervous, so his dad looked at me and pointed his knife hand in my direction and asked his son what my problem was. I guess that was all the prompting my friend needed because he just blurted out, “I’m gay. I like boys. I’m gay.” The words hung in the air.
Everyone sat in silence, and it felt like the world stopped spinning. His dad just sat there for what felt like a million years with a piece of cheesecake still on his fork. His dad slowly got up, walked over, stood him up, and hugged him. He and his dad both began crying, so his mom asked us to leave for them to talk.
While they’re still hugging and we’re getting our shoes on, I overheard something that made me burst into tears. His dad was saying to him, “I’m sorry. I can be better.” They moved a few months later, but he added me on Facebook years ago. He had many pictures with his parents and partner at pride events and was having the best relationship with his dad.
His dad’s reaction and subsequent change really floored me. It was good to see somebody who had been one way their entire life just change out of love for their kid. I still feel very lucky to have been able to be in that room that day.
92. No Takebacks!
One day, my best friend and I hung out at the mall, and she didn't have any money, so we just split the money I had between me and her. After we hung out, we had to drop her off back home. Her mom found out about the money and tried to give it back and tried to give me $20. I declined. Soon, she shoved the money at me.
Then she ran away into her house shutting the door. She yelled through the window, "Keep the money! I’m not taking it back!" Then she locked the door. I thought it was weird but, I kept it after that. Every time I think about that experience, I always chuckle a little
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93. You Kiss Your Mother with That Mouth?
My mom and I have this inside joke where we go, "Don't talk to me" or "Don't even look at me" in response to unimportant things. I don't remember how or when it started, but I've been doing it since I was younger. I didn't realize it was strange until one day when it turned into the most awkward situation ever.
I was at the mall shopping with my mom. When she said that I couldn’t get something that I wanted, I said, "Fine, don't talk to me then.” A woman who heard got offended. She pulled my mom aside and told her I shouldn’t talk that way to her and I had to learn some respect. My mom explained that it was a joke, but we don’t think she believed her.
94. Not Like That
I was about 15 and visiting a friend's house for the first time. I was left alone in the living room for a while. I didn't know what to do and started looking at the books, which were everywhere. I picked one up. My friend came, saw me holding the book, and panicked. She put the book down to the millimeter where it was.
She said, "Father doesn't like it when we touch his things." Later, I learned no one could have different foods touching on a plate in her father's very intimidating presence and more insane rules. I was freaked out and hardly dared to breathe. I never went back. Her father suffered from a host of psychiatric ailments.
95. Bad Dads 2
My dad, influenced at least in part by the movie Bad Boys II, decided to mess with my boyfriend on my first date by acting like a tough guy. He filled a whiskey bottle with tea and, when he answered the door, he started chugging down the whole thing while scanning my boyfriend up and down. He then tried to break the bottle over his own head. The date was canceled due to the ensuing hospital trip, and I became known as the girl with the totally insane father. "Don't concuss yourself this time, Dad!" became the running joke in my house once I was able to get a date again.
96. Second Try
We went white water rafting in Maine. I was in a truck with my friend, a different friend's dad, and two 10-year-old boys going to the end of the rafting route. I sat in the front, and the dad was driving. I was 17 then, and the topic of "being a man" came up. He was saying sometimes you just need to follow your dreams.
We're all listening at this point. He made the wildest confession I’ve ever heard. He told us that this was not his first life. He told us he moved to the West Coast when he was young and started a family. He had a wife and kids. He said he liked them decently enough but wanted more out of life. Then one day he went out to pick up some milk and never went back.
I don't know how the kids in the truck took the story, but my friend and I were pretty, “What just happened?” for the rest of the trip.
97. Sock It To Ya
My parents instituted a "sock tax." In retrospect, smart. I hated it at the time. So, I left my dirty socks around the house. I don't know why I would be taking socks off all over the place, I was a kid. I guess I was sloppy and it just happened and the socks had to be off right then and there. Parents got fed up with this. And so, to get my dirty socks back, I had to pay a quarter per sock.
Doesn't seem like a big deal at first, but it adds up when you're nine years old. Had to literally nickel and dime my way through a few pairs because I was running out of socks, I was kind of a sock deserting addict I guess. Finally got in the habit of picking up my socks for a while and things seemed fine. Then I hit a heavy relapse.
Parents gave me a big box of my dirty socks for Christmas that year and a few pairs of new ones. Got better after that. Typing this is making me smile, I really love my mom and dad.
98. Knock, Knock
In high school, my friend was dating a guy, and he invited us to his house. But his mom was really mean and acted like us being there was awful. I rang the doorbell, and the mom invited me inside. I was there for an hour and had to go outside to get something out of my car. I came back inside and heard, “UM! EXCUSE ME!”
“I’m sorry, yes?” She said, “You didn’t ring the doorbell before BARGING into my HOME.” Surprised, I said, “Oh I’m sorry, uh...should I go back outside?” She nodded and told me, “We wait to be invited inside at the house.” I went back outside, and she closed the door. I rang the doorbell and heard her say “Who is it?”
“Hi, it’s me here to see your son,” I said through the door. I heard, “Just a moment!” She opened the door and said kindly, “Please, come inside.” Apparently, every time you leave the house even for a second, she expected the pageantry of a first invite.
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99. Bye, Bye Birdie
My grandmother always thought that the hand sign for “I love you” was the middle finger straight up, exactly like flipping the bird. When she would send my dad or his sisters out of the house for the day, she’d innocently flip them the bird and yell that she loved them and to come back in time to have dinner.
Now, out of tradition, my family always flips the bird to one another when we say goodbye. People give us strange looks at the airport when we, a group of 15 people, all starting flipping each other off as a goodbye.
100. Find Your Own Supply
I was in middle school on summer break hanging with a friend in the middle of the day. He was rolling a joint at his desk when his bedroom door flew open. There stood his mom enraged. She shouted, "Where did you get that!?" He stumbled, stammered, then mumbled something. His mom stopped him. I couldn’t believe her reaction.
She yelled, "Get your own! Stop grabbing mine! I'm tired of moving my stash!" Then she walked out slamming the door behind her. Here I was thinking that we were both going to be in big trouble and that my parents were going to get called even though I hadn't tried before and never had. But it just his mom who was really protective of her stash.
101. Non-Traditional Gender Roles
A few years ago, my two-year-old daughter and I were waiting in line at Nordstrom. She was being really quiet and really patient, so I decided to reward her by purchasing a Melissa and Doug stamp set as a gift. As soon as we got up to the checkout counter, she randomly blurted out to the girl who was scanning our things, “Did you know that my mommy has a [insert male genitalia here]?”
I was in utter shock and had no idea where that had come from or what she was talking about. I just stood there for a moment, expressionless, wondering what in the world had just happened, before I finally managed to awkwardly say, “Umm yeah, I don’t.” The lady just stared at me, forced a smile and simply replied, “Have a nice day.”
The only explanation I can think of as to why this could have happened is that we had been talking to her a lot about my pregnancy and discussing what gender the baby might be. We have spent a lot of time wondering whether the baby is going to be a boy or a girl, so my guess is that she was trying to innocently tell the cashier something about the baby in my belly, but just worded it very poorly.
On top of all that, all the talk about this baby’s gender must have raised some questions in my daughter’s head, because she also decided to announce to her daycare class that “My daddy decided that he wants to be a girl, so he is going to become a girl.” The daycare staff never mentioned anything about it until our daughter casually informed us of her announcement during dinner one night—and we just about lost our minds when we heard about it.
I asked her teacher the next day if she had really said this, and the teacher, in fact, stated, “Yes, she did say that. But it seemed like a very private and sensitive topic, so obviously, we didn’t want to bring anything up about it to you.” For the record, my husband is NOT transitioning and we have no idea what my daughter was trying to actually say. Ahh, kids. You gotta love them!
102. I'd Rather You Didn't
My six-year-old daughter was in the passenger seat a few days ago and looked at me and said, "Dad, when I'm seven I'm going to kill you. No wait, when I'm eight." I asked, "How are you going to do that?" She smiled and said, "I'm gonna drive over your head with this car."
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103. Pushing the Limit
I used to hang out with this girl at her house when I was 14 or 15 (I am also a girl). One day she came out of her parent's room with something in her mouth. At first I didn't realize what it was but once she sat back down on the couch, I saw that it was a… marital aid toy. In her mouth. And it was turned on...I kind of flipped out and asked her what the heck she was doing.
She said her gums hurt, so she was massaging them. The bad/sad/disgusting/weird thing was that she didn't even know what it was. She found it in her parent's room one day and thought it was for your teeth/gums so she just kept using it regularly. On top of that, her parents knew she used it for that purpose because they walked in and talked to her while she had it in her mouth. I didn't go back.
104. To Each Their Own
My son had a pet caterpillar that he let walk all over his private area and got an allergic reaction. He said it happened in the middle of the night when he was sleeping but we know it happened because he liked it. Sigh.
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105. What a Load of Poop
I wasn't allowed to say I farted. Instead of saying that f-word, my parents wanted to replace it with "poop." One day in second grade I had one of those horrible, once a month, disgusting smelling toots, and I told my friend "I just pooped!" A girl who was also sitting at our table heard me and raised her hand in front of the entire class to tell the teacher I had just pooped my pants.
The walk of shame to the nurse was not fun after having to explain myself to my teacher and the entire class.
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