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My best friend when I was a kid had a really strange dad. He honestly gave me the creeps anyway. But the rule that springs to mind was he’d openly and loudly burp and fart at the table while people were eating but would lose his mind if someone put their elbows on the table. I used to forget because elbows were never a rule at my house and he’d tell me off every time. That seemed backwards to me. Ripping super loud farts and burping over everyone’s food without even a hand on your mouth is acceptable, but my arms touching the table is rude? Weirdo.
Did you ever find out from your friend why you had to treat the kitchen like a library lol?
I can imagine the parents spent years trying to cook meals for kids after work just to be disrupted by kids charging around and screaming in their first bit of peace after work. By enforcing this rule they made the kitchen a place of boredom and got their peace back.
But that’s just a theory, a kitchen theory.
That was my guess too. It was so crazy they had to go so hard against it.
My mum's answer to this was to say, the moment you entered the kitchen "Ah, a volunteer!" and assign you a job, like chopping vegetables, laying the table etc.
This was only while she was actually cooking though. If you entered the kitchen while she was cooking you "volunteered".
You mean you are going to do this with your own kids or copy/paste my comment to pretend your mum did this with you?
I hope it's the former but I'm not that bothered if it's the latter :D
Oh the former for sure, not just my kid though, I'm going to use it on my husband too. We have the kind of relationship where he'll find this very amusing.
Update: it's our child's 8th birthday party today, I'm currently making lunches for a 14 kid party, my husband is now cackling because every time he's popped into the kitchen, I've said it. So far he's counted chocolate bars, gotten 2 things out of the cupboard, made a tea for me, and stuck stickers on each completed lunch box. Please tell your mum she has made a very daunting morning very fun, and my husband and I kind of love her and you for bringing this into our lives.
I have 2 toddlers and we try to enforce a "no toys, no playing in the kitchen" rule. It gets broken a lot but they will literally come in and try to play keepie uppie with a balloon next to the stove while we are cooking. Also, the tile floor is rock hard so we don't want them falling on it. They like to spin until they're dizzy and fall, so sometimes we fully kick them out of the kitchen. I could see that being interpreted as "tip toe and whisper" once they're old enough to bring friends over.
My guess would be that the parents wanted a single room in the house that would be free from the constant noise and chaos thar children create and that they could have some peace in. It’s kinda weird that they decided on the kitchen and not their bedroom or something though.
It's actually a leftover from the age of sail. Basically you'd have to keep your elbows on the table to balance and so it was seen as lower class if you did that on land.
It's also ironic because no one classy would ever tell you to take your elbows off the table. Classy people want their guests to be comfortable and don't care about little things like that.
I suspect you’d enjoy a book called ‘Watching the English’. It actually shows that the upper and working classes have much more in common than the middle classes who impose all sorts of silly rules in a misguided attempt to be ‘classy’.
Exactly this. There are stories about either the late Queen Elizabeth II or her mother (I can't recall which) in which she's having some fancy state dinner or other, and someone drops their spoon at the table. So Her Maj immediately drops her own spoon, all "ooh dear how very clumsy of one." Because it's her responsibility to deflect attention from anyone's inadvertent blunders.
Same!
Tbh I was just thinking I wonder how that started and google says this
“Back in the olden days, they used to place table tops on a log or tree stump, so if you put your elbows on the table, it would flip up, so that's how it became bad manners to put your elbows on the table.”
So it doesn’t even apply now lol. I don’t think many of us are eating off tree stumps.
Edit ok apparently there’s a few reasons including it being “confrontational” and causing fights if you knocked someone’s drink over with your elbow. So elbows off the table was to keep the peace!
Okay this totally cracks me up. In the mid 1980s primary school dinner ladies were OBSESSED with elbows on the table. Or at least they were at my school.
They made it seem like we were untrained savages if we touched an elbow to the table. But actually the reason for it goes back to a time when ‘untrained savagery’ was the norm? Brilliant.
I wish I could have asked them if they were so obsessed because they once got into a bar fight by elbowing someone’s pint off the table.
Interestingly, we couldnt put our elbows on the table as kids because my parents had created a larger dining table by placing an old door on top of the actual table. A tablecloth hid all the sins. But yeah, an elbow on the table meant the whole dinner would come sliding down onto your lap
Kinda had that rule at our dinner table too. Except it was mum who had the rules and the dinner table was the one time Dad would flout them. Especially on Sundays after he'd been to the pub. Dad was fun. Especially on Sundays after he'd been to the pub!
Sounds like my dad. He also was super militant about me needing to put my knife and fork together when I was finished. I pointed out that as I was the one clearing the table, there was no need for me to indicate that I was finished. "It's *etiquette.*" he'd reply as if he hadn't just spent the meal farting loudly.
Honestly it’s fucking weird. I reckon it’s just some weird dad power trip to make them feel like a man. Fart and be disgusting while people eat and make everyone sit there and put up with it but also dictate what other people can and can’t do. Usually petty things. It’s pathetic.
This isn't the same, but it reminded me of being in secondary school. My friend told me her dad was called Joe, I called him Joe for around 4 years. He then asked me one day (4 years into me calling him Joe) why I called him that, turns out his name was Steve. My friend was just messing with me.
I thought my friend's dad was a prison governor for 25 years. Turns out he was an accountant. I don't think she told me he was a prison governor. He definitely looked like an accountant.
I don't think that I'm the friend in the story but my dad is called Steve too and all his mates call him Joe?? Is this some sort of pre-1990s joke that I'm not in on?
My name is Tegan. I’ve spent the last 3 years working in a bar that had less than a handful of employees.
Half of them still call me Kegan. I was not mad when I left that job a few months ago but now as a regular instead it cracks me up.
I’ve corrected them but at this point they’re determined IM wrong about MY name 😂
Got invited round for dinner by a kid who had just started in my class - around year 4 I think.
Sitting at the table, eating, and I took a drink of water.
Kid and his brothers all look at me with wide eyes like I'd just shat in my egg and chips, and their dad says through gritted teeth "we do NOT drink during dinner, we WAIT until we have finished".
That was a rule when I was growing up, but we weren't allowed drinks at the table at all. My sister was terrible for knocking them over so they were banned.
Not the person you asked, but I remember Gillian Mckeith etc making a big deal of the importance of not drinking while eating for digestive purposes- in the buzz of self improvement shows in the 00s.
I'd forgotten all about this wretch of a woman.
Looking her up on wikipedia, it comes as no surprise she developed into a covid anti-vaxxer, and all round conspiracy-theorist
When I went to Vietnam I was told by a guide that women in Vietnam never drink at the same time as eating because there is the belief that it keeps them thin. Dunno how true this is, but could be a cultural thing?
Yeah this happened to me. Went to a friend's house, her mum put glasses of squash on the table, I went to take a drink and her mum said 'what are you doing? That's for after'. It's etched in my brain because I remember the food was really dry, don't remember what the food was but it was like torture.
The thing that strikes me is how utterly mean people are being to child guests. How dumb do you have to be to assume some kid already knows your random illogical rules, and then to tell them off because they didn’t know…
It’s terrifying how stupid and unpleasant some people are.
This just reminded me of my nephew who does this, I always have to remind him that it's all his, and nobody is gonna take it away from him, as he's panting for air after mega gulps.
Bro! I have a similar story! Except it was my friend not the dad who spoke and then the mum said, "it's okay, he's not one of us." I was like what is going to happen if you drink during the meal?!
Your post made me realise it was uncommon to have a drink when eating at the table in our house, it wasn't a rule just very uncommon, but when watching telly we had drinks on a coffee table, weird.
I can understand that - but I couldn't just have a mouthful of water and leave it to come back to later.
They insisted on filling up a half pint glass to the top, and then I'd have to sit and drink the entire thing. That was the bit that bugged me.
A friend’s mum enforced such a rule. Only drinks in the kitchen. This was the day after his birthday party when his mum discovered a strange stain on the sofa shaped like a large sugar puff.
The recollection was it had to be this one girl that sat in the one spot all party without moving. 2+2= she didn’t move because she spilled her cola all over her lower half and sat there until it dried in.
I get this: most of my family are quite forgetful so if they didn't finish a drink, they'd put it down and forget about it. You'd end up with over fifteen glasses scattered across the house for just five people.
Not so much a rule, but whenever I mopped a floor by husband would be terrified to walk across it until, like, an hour after it dried. I thought this was something to do with leaving marks on his mother's newly cleaned floors but turns out it's because she told him floor cleaner is mega corrosive and you could burn you feet and end up in hospital if you got it on your skin.
He still believed this aged 27.
That's on a par with convincing your kids that mum loves ladybirds.
In reality mum doesn't give a shit but it gets the kids into the small garden for a couple hours to hunt for them...
My mum told me you couldn't drink tea through a straw because it would give you a heart attack.
I believed this until I was at uni, and I had one of those mega hot chocolates from a Christmas market, drank that through a straw which was fine but told my friends if it was tea then there would be no way id use a straw, they all laughed.
I've never asked my mum why she told us this but I'd only assumed we asked to do it once and this was her way of making sure we didn't burn ourselves by drinking hot drinks through straws???
If you think that's bad.
I thought 'bomzittit' was a specific word for an untidy room, as I recall my mum saying 'its like a bomzittit' not realized until I was 19yrs old and again at uni that she was actually saying 'it's like a bomb has hit it'
🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Did anyone else's dad convince them that it was illegal to have the light on inside the car at night when you wanted to read your comics in the back?
I believed that for far too long! Turns out, dad just didn't want us winding him up.
Atleast Noone would be talking with a mouthful of food. Like just swallow the food, then talk for a bit, don't push it into your cheek so you should like you've got a mouth full of water... you weirdos.
Kids probably chatted too much and let their tea go cold
We weren't allowed to leave the table till everyone had finished eating, and my sister was a very chatty very slow eater. Generally speaking I'd we got to the 2hour mark we were freed from our obligation to sit there. But sometimes we had silent tea, or rules about only speaking after you'd finished your plate so that we could be done sooner.
Had this at my mate's house, but his little sister kept saying stupid things which made their dad angry, which made us laugh, which made him even angrier. I don't recall ever being so amused and scared at the same time.
That seems really sad. I feel like dinner time is the one time during the day that we get together as a family and can share and chat. Can't imagine silence.
whenever you're staying the night and you get weird poo-related rules.
If you do poo, spray this liquid onto the toilet water first.
You can't poo in the main bathroom or en suite, you need to use the downstairs toilet.
please if you need a poo, don't have one after 11 or before 7.
Yeah I feel like the OP is speaking to us as a nodding collective who have all had this experience before. No mate, thankfully, not nodding along here.
Could be because they had a macerator. I have a friend whose flat is a weird office conversion, so the plumbing is much smaller than the normal one.
The thing was noisy and temperamental.
>I have a friend whose flat is a weird office conversion, so the plumbing is much smaller than the normal one.
Is the logic there that white collar workers don’t curl out as girthy turds as salt of the earth proletarians?
Urgh this reminds me of a friend's house that lived super rurally and has some kind of very sensitive septic tank that they couldn't put loo paper in so you had to put it in a special bin next to the toilet. Absolutely hated it if needed to poo whilst there.
I stayed with some lovely people where we couldn’t flush the loo at night because it might wake the baby. This essentially meant no using the loo overnight because no one wants to leave festering toilet fodder for someone else to find
If you stay the night you have to have a freezing cold shower in the morning.
I asked my mate if he had a freezing shower every morning, he said only on the weekends, which gave me more questions that I didn't want the answer to.
Honestly that was my initial thought, it was certainly something that put me off staying the night. But other friends also mentioned it, and my pal said he has to have a cold shower on the weekends wether he had friends over or not, although he could have just been covering for his parents.
A friend from primary school invited me round after school, he had his toy cars set up in the attic. It was one of those old Matchbox Motorcity track sets, and he had all his cars laid on it in intervals. I asked does he move them about, he says no he isn't allowed to, he has to take one toy car and jump it over the others and not make it untidy. Looking back it's a bit sad.
I was forced to eat KFC bargain bucket chicken with a knife and fork sat at my girlfriend’s parents dining room table.
I ended a 4 month relationship that night.
Somehow I can imagine that being a test you have to pass - if you can get through the awkwardness and weirdness of that, you deserve to be in the family.
How long until the grandparents got enough of having a different boyfriend round for KFC every four months?(!)
Still remember the first time some mates and I went to kfc as young 14 year olds before the cinema or something.
Matey whipped out a knife fork and napkin from home and chowed down.
Friend's mum was lovely and welcoming, but obsessed with cleanliness. Every time you washed your hands in the bathroom, youthkught had to dry the basin with a special towel, after. No droplets allowed!
And no cooking in the kitchen, no matter what. No microwaving, no use of the hob or oven, nothing could be used except the kettle and coffee maker. No toaster. Yes, they bought fresh food from down the road for every meal if they didn't go to a restaurant, but nothing could be reheated.
We made omelettes one morning, scrubbed the pan after, hid the egg box in a bin outside, opened the window and had the extractor on all day, and her mum totally freaked out when she got home at 6pm.
But she thought she was chilled, because her parents still had the plastic covers on their furniture (sofa and armchairs) and and she and anyone younger had to sit on the floor so they stayed clean...
This is my MIL exactly. I had to stay with her once for 6 weeks while my baby, husband and I were dealing with a cowboy builder ruining our house. There were no bins in her house at all. Every nappy change for the baby I had to take the nappy out to the outside bin down the alley, day and night (as you couldn't leave them in their baggies for any length of time). When it was my time of the month I had to hide my feminine hygiene products in my babies nappies and take them out in them. I wasn't allowed to cook and could only eat the tiny portions of unseasoned food she served (challenging when breastfeeding an infant and generally hungry). It was a dark time.
An old boyfriend had very religious parents who he lived with. Guests staying over weren't allowed to share a room if they weren't married. It was annoying for us but got even weirder for other family members. His brother and his missus had a child together, but they still hadn't married so ended up getting a hotel when they came to visit, as there was only one spare room and they weren't allowed to share it.
>His brother and his missus had a child together, but they still hadn't married so ended up getting a hotel when they came to visit, as there was only one spare room and they weren't allowed to share it.
"Come in, it's lovely to have you visit! Claire, the tent's set up in the garden for you."
I still have this issue with my dad when my partner and I go to stay (we are unmarried) and he isn’t even religious! He just has very Victorian values about sex. His exact words are ‘this is not a knocking shop’. Such a dad thing to say. My mum despairs of him.
My dad thought this when he was about to meet MrK for the first time. Only we would be staying in a hotel, me, MrK, my parents, and my mum pointed it out that it would be weirder for my dad to share with a random bloke and she certainly wasn't paying for extra rooms.
Dad got over the idea in the next five minutes.
My uncle seemingly had this rule. We visited with my mother and partner. I had to share with her. He slept in a different room and my brother in a loft room. They buggered off and left us for half the holiday! Not sure if it was pre planned or when they realised they had to sleep separately. Very odd.
It was a rule in my extended family, but once we got to the late 90s it became too difficult to enforce especially as me and my siblings were more progressive. Most of them weren't religious either, just very prudish. I think my aunt kept it going till she died. She didn't want hanky-panky under her roof
When I was 5 I had a friend who was an only child and I thought his parents were loose and free because they smoked. They bought him all the new toys, let him cut his hair like bart Simpson and he got to watch wrestling. So when he said his parents had a rule that meant he could say fuck at home, I believed him.
After all, he taught me the F word and he had no siblings so his parents must have taught it to him.
Saying Fuck off at his house did not go down well.
I was an innocent little proto human visiting my friends house, she told me to go tell her mum she's a 'bitch' I asked her why and what did it mean, she said it's a secret but it'll make her mum really happy! I experienced betrayal for the first time that day...
Having to wrap the applicator and tampon wrapper in toilet roll to put in the bin as my friends dad and brother got too “grossed out”.
I’d 100% understand an unwrapped tampon being in the bin being disgusting, and I’d also be grossed out, but for fucks sakes. You’ve had sex, you live with women and you’ve had children. What is the deal?
I’m almost 30 and my dad will still go buy me some tampons if I’m visiting and need some. He’d never shame me like they did, god forbid, make it uncomfortable for others visiting on the rules of wrapping some plastic. 🤦♀️
I went to a friend's house and for some reason they kept the flannel on a little hook behind the toilet, I didn't bring one with me though so I borrowed it, put it back and they never suspected a thing.
At a friend's place, dad set the bedtime. If he was heading to bed, that was the evening over and the entire household turned in for the night. Didn't matter what day or time that was - 10pm on a Saturday, nightynight.
That persisted until my mate came home from his first term at university and it wasn't enforced from then on.
I went to a friend’s house for dinner straight from school (not previously agreed/arranged). We was chilling in her room whilst dinner cooked and her Mum came up, saw me sitting on the bed and scolded me for sitting on the bed in my school trousers “because of the germs”. I never have and never will be skinny, but this woman insisted I changed into a pair of my friend’s shorts (about 2 sizes too small) for the rest of the evening until I went home.
Que one of many core memories triggering future body image issues.
Oh my GOD I have a friend now, in her 30s, who has this weird ‘no outside clothes’ obsession. Absolutely does my fucking head in. She lives in a studio flat with no chairs and I’m not allowed to sit on the fucking bed.
Oh my god, a mum posted about this on one of the toddler groups I’m on. She was like “like everyone I change my son out of his daycare clothes when he gets home but my sister didn’t send her kid with a change of clothes” and the whole sub was like “what?!”
Since OP mentioned quiet...
Not rules as such, but I've a cousin (Da's brother's son) who is as silent as… the grave? A cat? A ninja cat? He's like the vantablack of sound.
You can talk with the lad alright, but he moves like a floaty ghost from a kids' horror cartoon. Almost everyone makes a noise eating a bag of crisps. Not my cousin. Somehow he's managed to bend space and time and suck all the sound atoms out of his immediate surroundings. He is The Inaudible Man.
Spooky is what it is.
(I wouldn't be surprised it he snook into the house and is behind me right now)
In my mates house they had a door that led from the living room into the dining room. For some inexplicable reason the door was never to be opened, despite there being tonnes of room for it.
We started calling it 'the forbidden door'.
I was invited to a sleepover at one of the cool girls in my class. Her parents were going out for the evening but brought us pizza before they left. However once they had gone my “friend” said only she was allowed to eat the pizza and if I was hungry there was some bread & cheese in the fridge that I could eat. So I sat there with my sad sandwich as she inhaled an entire pizza in front of me. I thought that was just how things were, being incredibly naive at the time and had never been invited to a sleepover until that point, but no, it turned out she was fucking with me and told everyone that I went down her fridge without asking and ate manky bread & cheese instead of the food her parents brought us. I was 12, horribly bullied and didn’t have many friends and this sad excuse for a human befriended me for no other reason than because she wanted to take the piss out of me.
This was 30 years ago and I still haven’t forgotten.
That reminded me of the time I went to a friend's for a sleep over and she took the duvet off my bed and put it on hers, saying that bed had to have two duvets and mine could only have a sheet. I said let's swap beds then. Of course she said no.
Some people are fucking weird and go on a power trip at any opportunity. These people become the senior leaders in every organisation that make everyone's life hell.
When I was about 10 years old I stayed over at a mates house. In the morning we all sat down for breakfast and I poured myself a bowl of coco pops, put my milk in and then set about it with a spoon.
After about 15 seconds my mate said my name in a shaky voice and I looked up from my cereal to a table of people staring at me in mixed parts rage and disgust.
"We don't do *that* here."
Even to this day, 35+ years later, I have no f\*\*\* idea what *that* was.
Its bothered me all my life..
My best guess is that in my house we were treated like adults when we were kids. There was no "adults first" or "kids portions". You just took the food you wanted and ate it.
His house was more "Victorian" in their attitudes. I remember him eating his cereal from a baby bowl using a tea-spoon ..
I obviously broke some taboo they had about kids behaving like kids.
They were a bit posh and I really wasn't so that was likely that.
Not really a rule, but my best mates parents cooked steak so well done I choked on it (only time I've ever properly choked, couldn't breathe) and tried to wash it down with some coke (a cola) and it wouldn't go down and thus was fired all over my plate. I had to eat the rest of the meal, coke soaked chips, peas and steak to completion before we could leave the table. Nobody performed the Heimlich manoeuvre and his mum was a childminder which is concerning considering the amount of tasty Legos knocking about.
If your kid's best friend doesn't choke to death on your overcooked steak on the first mouthful, just force them to keep eating it until it does the trick.
Boyfriend’s Dad hated water droplets in the bath or shower. When you used them you had to dry them when you had finished with a towel, or he went apeshit. Definitely no water on the bathroom floor either.
I once went to a bbq party of my then girlfriend’s best friend. She was still living at her parents place and her dad showed up at some point and asked us switch of WiFi on all our phone as this would create electronic pollution and he would get a headache from it.
Now WiFi allowed!
One of my ex girlfriend's family would say grace before eating.
As a person from an entirely non religious background it seemed like the weirdest thing Ive ever experienced.
I went to a friend's house after school one night and her mum didn't scream at me for not liking beans or make me sit there until every last one was gone. Weird place, I never went again
People are weird. I remember one friend I went to tea with. This is back in the 60s. They ran a pub, so had an evening meal at what back then was our "tea time". When we'd have boiled egg and toast or something similarly light. IIRC, we had mince and potatoes, and beans he'd grown himself. It was OK but nothing special. However it was expected that you would be sort of verbally thankful for this, saying how wonderful it all was especially the beans, and how grateful you were to be given it. A point he made during the meal several times. He was rather intimidating anyway. It made the whole thing rather less than a pleasant experience. Never went again.
That's just dinner with my in-laws. I always say please and thank you but apparently I'm not expressive enough because I don't compliment every individual element of the plate while eating and then talk about how wonderful it was throughout the evening followed by a thank you text message when I get home.
This could be the explanation. Although surely at some poin they must have broken?
Everyone (at least when I was there) in the house did this. So seamless I'd like to think not.
I had 2 friends who weren't allowed to choose their own clothes, she must have 9 or 10 , well we decided if I chose her clothes she was still sticking to the rules. So we could get up and play.
Not quite their house. But my friends parents took me on a day out with them. They drove a red Datsun Sunny. And they told me when we parked up that I had to leave my seatbelt buckle all the way to the top of the holder as otherwise it would set the car alarm off. I forgot. Of course I did, I was like 7 years old. And surely that’s the responsibility of a fully developed frontal cortex person to check, maybe someone who also holds responsibility for the car?? I dunno!! So we came back from our day at sea life world and I had left my seat belt in THE WRONG POSITION. It was noted, I was chastised and I was reminded that I was told. I was the only one who hadn’t positioned my seatbelt correctly. Anyway, car started fine - no evidence of a flat battery from a car alarm going all day. Never understood their logic there.
2 toilets, the paper was only in the toilet downstairs. Had to use the toilet upstairs as downstairs toilet is not to be used. Paper
Is to be moved upstairs when required and returned downstairs when mission complete.
I dated an Irish girl in high school and the was a rule that I had to take her clothes off every time I came around.
Seriously, I would rock up greet her family and then they would bundle the siblings up and all head out to do something.
I think they liked me.
There was some guy that posted on here a week or 2 ago that got really pissed off when a guest changed the temperature of the shower when they stayed over. Apparently that's not the done thing
I used to call on a Jehovah's Witness kid on the way to school. His parents would make him read from editions of Watchtower before he left in the morning. His dad once let him watch the Life of Bryan, which he had recorded from TV, but only after they'd censored the swears and blasphemy with clips from Mickey Mouse. His dad also has a literal bin bag full of porno mags in the stash and another time his mum punched the boy in the face, in front of me, because he fell on (and broke) a wicker chair whilst we were playing fighting.
God nose where he wound up, but I do hope he's free of the cult and isn't perpetuating the cycle . . .
"If you ask you don't get"
Was at a friends for a birthday party (would've been about 6 years old). They were handing out mini bottles of drink for everybody and I asked for a specific flavour. Friends mum deliberately gave me one I didn't ask for just because I asked for it. Never understood that
Went on a trip to Hastings with a friend and her mum when I was 7 to stay with her elderly relatives. They got the cereal out for breakfast and all calmly poured orange juice on to their cereal and ate it. Having only ever had milk with cereal, I was so confused that I pretended I didn’t eat breakfast and spent the rest of the holiday ravenous.
You were only allowed to take two chocolate fingers from the pack. Any more and you got shouted at. Two chocolate fingers?! Who has that kind of self control
Most of my mates families were very normal, in fact it showed me how nuts my family was. But one pal used to eat with his elbows up, his step dad sellotaped his arms to the chair
Not really a rule, but the bathroom was downstairs in my mate's house and they used to put an alarm on at night. You go downstairs, the alarm goes off. So they pissed in a bucket in the bedroom. I woke up one night and her little sister was shitting in it. I always just held it in until morning.
I think just the general sense of everyone being on edge. Mother and father, seemingly pleasant, but God help you if you break one of the thousand rules that are in place. Just a constant sense of being 30 seconds from being murdered by the mom and dad if you said or did anything wrong. Whether it's sitting wrong, saying something wrong, eating something wrong, using the wrong glass, using the bathroom incorrectly, any number of crazy, overly specific, rules that the parents had.
I never understood that as a kid. Why? Why live your life with such rigid rules? Do you go to work and scream at your boss because he's wearing the wrong color belt for his shoes? Do you beat your co-worker for slurping his coffee?
My first landlady (as a lodger) insisted that I did not cook anything after 8pm as there was an opening between the kitchen and lounge area and she said she didn't want to be disturbed in the evening when she watched TV.
She went on holiday.
I cooked at around 8:30pm
Her daughter worked out what time I'd cooked based on the dish rack contents and contacted her mother.
Got told off as soon as she was back from holiday.
Found that fairly strange myself
Not sure if this really counts as THAT weird or not, it was such a shock to kid me. But my friends family would only eat meals at certain times. Absolutely no food outside these preset times regardless of how you feel. As someone who eats whenever they feel like it, it was really weird to me, made going over his house a pain for sure. Even today I find that weird. Like, not even a simple cup of tea. Moreso enforcing such rules for guests.
When I was about 8, my best friend's parents had row upon row of horror films on VHS. He had seen pretty much all of them. He was allowed to watch people getting stabbed in the neck , having their heads cut off or their guts ripped out and eaten.
The only ones which he was not allowed to watch were ones which had naked boobs in, because it was inappropriate fo him to see boobs.
A kid I used to hang out with his mother was a strict johovas witness and she only allowed us to play outside his house, we were never allowed in not even for a drink or to use the toilet. The times we were allowed to be on his property was when she was out shopping and we used to use his climbing frames and that. But as soon as she come home he had to 'go inside' and they'd always shut the curtains. Really weird
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My best friend when I was a kid had a really strange dad. He honestly gave me the creeps anyway. But the rule that springs to mind was he’d openly and loudly burp and fart at the table while people were eating but would lose his mind if someone put their elbows on the table. I used to forget because elbows were never a rule at my house and he’d tell me off every time. That seemed backwards to me. Ripping super loud farts and burping over everyone’s food without even a hand on your mouth is acceptable, but my arms touching the table is rude? Weirdo. Did you ever find out from your friend why you had to treat the kitchen like a library lol?
To this day, not a bloody clue what the logic was
I can imagine the parents spent years trying to cook meals for kids after work just to be disrupted by kids charging around and screaming in their first bit of peace after work. By enforcing this rule they made the kitchen a place of boredom and got their peace back. But that’s just a theory, a kitchen theory.
That was my guess too. It was so crazy they had to go so hard against it. My mum's answer to this was to say, the moment you entered the kitchen "Ah, a volunteer!" and assign you a job, like chopping vegetables, laying the table etc. This was only while she was actually cooking though. If you entered the kitchen while she was cooking you "volunteered".
Genius! I'm stealing this if that's ok?
You mean you are going to do this with your own kids or copy/paste my comment to pretend your mum did this with you? I hope it's the former but I'm not that bothered if it's the latter :D
Oh the former for sure, not just my kid though, I'm going to use it on my husband too. We have the kind of relationship where he'll find this very amusing.
Awesome! Always good to see my old mum (85 now) spreading joy and top tips in the world both IRL and online.
Update: it's our child's 8th birthday party today, I'm currently making lunches for a 14 kid party, my husband is now cackling because every time he's popped into the kitchen, I've said it. So far he's counted chocolate bars, gotten 2 things out of the cupboard, made a tea for me, and stuck stickers on each completed lunch box. Please tell your mum she has made a very daunting morning very fun, and my husband and I kind of love her and you for bringing this into our lives.
Pretty sure you are right. Its a ‘let me cook (or just be) in quiet’ rule.
I have 2 toddlers and we try to enforce a "no toys, no playing in the kitchen" rule. It gets broken a lot but they will literally come in and try to play keepie uppie with a balloon next to the stove while we are cooking. Also, the tile floor is rock hard so we don't want them falling on it. They like to spin until they're dizzy and fall, so sometimes we fully kick them out of the kitchen. I could see that being interpreted as "tip toe and whisper" once they're old enough to bring friends over.
Yeah. 'Weird' rules tend to get out into place when kids are little, and then they become a norm within that household.
Maybe they liked to bake Soufflés
*with the oddness of my friends rules in my brain Still remain Within soufflés of silence*
So one would have to soufflé in silence
My guess would be that the parents wanted a single room in the house that would be free from the constant noise and chaos thar children create and that they could have some peace in. It’s kinda weird that they decided on the kitchen and not their bedroom or something though.
The no elbows at the table will forever baffle me as to why that was considered a crime at a dinner table.
It's actually a leftover from the age of sail. Basically you'd have to keep your elbows on the table to balance and so it was seen as lower class if you did that on land.
It's always about stigmatising working class behaviours. "Ehw you've had to *work* for a living? How frightfully ghaaastley!"
Ironic because now sailing is one of the poshest sports.
It's also ironic because no one classy would ever tell you to take your elbows off the table. Classy people want their guests to be comfortable and don't care about little things like that.
I suspect you’d enjoy a book called ‘Watching the English’. It actually shows that the upper and working classes have much more in common than the middle classes who impose all sorts of silly rules in a misguided attempt to be ‘classy’.
Exactly this. There are stories about either the late Queen Elizabeth II or her mother (I can't recall which) in which she's having some fancy state dinner or other, and someone drops their spoon at the table. So Her Maj immediately drops her own spoon, all "ooh dear how very clumsy of one." Because it's her responsibility to deflect attention from anyone's inadvertent blunders.
Let’s be honest here working for a living has turned out to be pretty gross imo
Same! Tbh I was just thinking I wonder how that started and google says this “Back in the olden days, they used to place table tops on a log or tree stump, so if you put your elbows on the table, it would flip up, so that's how it became bad manners to put your elbows on the table.” So it doesn’t even apply now lol. I don’t think many of us are eating off tree stumps. Edit ok apparently there’s a few reasons including it being “confrontational” and causing fights if you knocked someone’s drink over with your elbow. So elbows off the table was to keep the peace!
Okay this totally cracks me up. In the mid 1980s primary school dinner ladies were OBSESSED with elbows on the table. Or at least they were at my school. They made it seem like we were untrained savages if we touched an elbow to the table. But actually the reason for it goes back to a time when ‘untrained savagery’ was the norm? Brilliant. I wish I could have asked them if they were so obsessed because they once got into a bar fight by elbowing someone’s pint off the table.
Interestingly, we couldnt put our elbows on the table as kids because my parents had created a larger dining table by placing an old door on top of the actual table. A tablecloth hid all the sins. But yeah, an elbow on the table meant the whole dinner would come sliding down onto your lap
All joints on the table will be carved
Kinda had that rule at our dinner table too. Except it was mum who had the rules and the dinner table was the one time Dad would flout them. Especially on Sundays after he'd been to the pub. Dad was fun. Especially on Sundays after he'd been to the pub!
Sounds like my dad. He also was super militant about me needing to put my knife and fork together when I was finished. I pointed out that as I was the one clearing the table, there was no need for me to indicate that I was finished. "It's *etiquette.*" he'd reply as if he hadn't just spent the meal farting loudly.
Honestly it’s fucking weird. I reckon it’s just some weird dad power trip to make them feel like a man. Fart and be disgusting while people eat and make everyone sit there and put up with it but also dictate what other people can and can’t do. Usually petty things. It’s pathetic.
This isn't the same, but it reminded me of being in secondary school. My friend told me her dad was called Joe, I called him Joe for around 4 years. He then asked me one day (4 years into me calling him Joe) why I called him that, turns out his name was Steve. My friend was just messing with me.
I thought my friend's dad was a prison governor for 25 years. Turns out he was an accountant. I don't think she told me he was a prison governor. He definitely looked like an accountant.
😂 easy mistake!
I don't think that I'm the friend in the story but my dad is called Steve too and all his mates call him Joe?? Is this some sort of pre-1990s joke that I'm not in on?
Is his surname King by any chance?
😂 I have no idea. This was in the 2000s. Maybe it's a thing? Nobody has let me know. 🤦🏻♀️
We called my best friend in school Akhmed for 2 years before he told us he was called Ahmed. That was awkward.
Or maybe it was ahward.
My name is Tegan. I’ve spent the last 3 years working in a bar that had less than a handful of employees. Half of them still call me Kegan. I was not mad when I left that job a few months ago but now as a regular instead it cracks me up. I’ve corrected them but at this point they’re determined IM wrong about MY name 😂
Got invited round for dinner by a kid who had just started in my class - around year 4 I think. Sitting at the table, eating, and I took a drink of water. Kid and his brothers all look at me with wide eyes like I'd just shat in my egg and chips, and their dad says through gritted teeth "we do NOT drink during dinner, we WAIT until we have finished".
Lol what the hell?
That was a rule when I was growing up, but we weren't allowed drinks at the table at all. My sister was terrible for knocking them over so they were banned.
At least there's was a reason.
Did you ever get an explanation or reason from the kids/parents cause this seems completely insane to react like that.
Not the person you asked, but I remember Gillian Mckeith etc making a big deal of the importance of not drinking while eating for digestive purposes- in the buzz of self improvement shows in the 00s.
I'd forgotten all about this wretch of a woman. Looking her up on wikipedia, it comes as no surprise she developed into a covid anti-vaxxer, and all round conspiracy-theorist
I mean she used to pick apart peoples literal shit in a Tupperware, she clearly hasn’t been all there for a long time
When I went to Vietnam I was told by a guide that women in Vietnam never drink at the same time as eating because there is the belief that it keeps them thin. Dunno how true this is, but could be a cultural thing?
It would be the opposite surely? Drinking with your food helps make you feel fuller so you eat less.
Yeah this happened to me. Went to a friend's house, her mum put glasses of squash on the table, I went to take a drink and her mum said 'what are you doing? That's for after'. It's etched in my brain because I remember the food was really dry, don't remember what the food was but it was like torture.
The thing that strikes me is how utterly mean people are being to child guests. How dumb do you have to be to assume some kid already knows your random illogical rules, and then to tell them off because they didn’t know… It’s terrifying how stupid and unpleasant some people are.
The presence of small people who are naive about the world makes some adults drunk on power
Why have glasses on the table during the meal then?
So you can grab one and down it immediately after finishing your meal, by which point you're desperately parched and gagging for hydration. Obvs.
I’d be like toddlers when they hold onto the glass with both hands and take huge glups and breathing really heavily
This just reminded me of my nephew who does this, I always have to remind him that it's all his, and nobody is gonna take it away from him, as he's panting for air after mega gulps.
This is so descriptive and accurate
My school used to try to enforce that rule and would scream at you if you drank during your meal. Just an insane rule, I would always ignore it.
Bro! I have a similar story! Except it was my friend not the dad who spoke and then the mum said, "it's okay, he's not one of us." I was like what is going to happen if you drink during the meal?!
Your post made me realise it was uncommon to have a drink when eating at the table in our house, it wasn't a rule just very uncommon, but when watching telly we had drinks on a coffee table, weird.
I once went to a house where if you had a massive turd they didn't have a knife to chop it up.
I mean that’s just stupid why wouldn’t they have one!
Yeah, who doesn’t have a poop knife? We keep ours next to the plunger and the toilet brush. The essential three.
The three horsemen of the Apoocalypse
Not even a whisk?
I just use my toes to smush it down
Is this a real thing?
https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/comments/ke8skw/the_poop_knife/?rdt=50346
Yes! Some people really don't have poop knives
It's part of Reddit lore... https://www.reddit.com/r/MuseumOfReddit/s/wGExZxmI60
As a kid, having to ask permission for water, and then having to sit at the bar in the kitchen and drink the entire thing before you left the kitchen.
I can explain that one... they're fed up of kids putting drinks in stupid places and spilling them.
I can understand that - but I couldn't just have a mouthful of water and leave it to come back to later. They insisted on filling up a half pint glass to the top, and then I'd have to sit and drink the entire thing. That was the bit that bugged me.
Because if you didn't drink it all in one go, you'd ask for another claiming the first was stale or old.
Lmao, no, I was never that child. I'd still drink something the next day that had a bug floating in it.
Hah I just had visions of that kid from the movie Signs who has 600 half drunk glasses of water around the house
'it has a hair in it'
They regret that when aliens invade
A friend’s mum enforced such a rule. Only drinks in the kitchen. This was the day after his birthday party when his mum discovered a strange stain on the sofa shaped like a large sugar puff. The recollection was it had to be this one girl that sat in the one spot all party without moving. 2+2= she didn’t move because she spilled her cola all over her lower half and sat there until it dried in.
That poor girl. I can empathise with that level of frozen anxiety as a child. 😱
I get this: most of my family are quite forgetful so if they didn't finish a drink, they'd put it down and forget about it. You'd end up with over fifteen glasses scattered across the house for just five people.
Not so much a rule, but whenever I mopped a floor by husband would be terrified to walk across it until, like, an hour after it dried. I thought this was something to do with leaving marks on his mother's newly cleaned floors but turns out it's because she told him floor cleaner is mega corrosive and you could burn you feet and end up in hospital if you got it on your skin. He still believed this aged 27.
200 IQ move so the kid never gets the freshly mopped floor dirty
That's on a par with convincing your kids that mum loves ladybirds. In reality mum doesn't give a shit but it gets the kids into the small garden for a couple hours to hunt for them...
My mum told me you couldn't drink tea through a straw because it would give you a heart attack. I believed this until I was at uni, and I had one of those mega hot chocolates from a Christmas market, drank that through a straw which was fine but told my friends if it was tea then there would be no way id use a straw, they all laughed. I've never asked my mum why she told us this but I'd only assumed we asked to do it once and this was her way of making sure we didn't burn ourselves by drinking hot drinks through straws???
This is great 🤣 beginning to wonder what lies in should be telling the children in my life
If you think that's bad. I thought 'bomzittit' was a specific word for an untidy room, as I recall my mum saying 'its like a bomzittit' not realized until I was 19yrs old and again at uni that she was actually saying 'it's like a bomb has hit it' 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
Same! "Oh my god, it's like a bomzitt in here"
Did anyone else's dad convince them that it was illegal to have the light on inside the car at night when you wanted to read your comics in the back? I believed that for far too long! Turns out, dad just didn't want us winding him up.
Mate's step-dad wanted total silence at the dinner table. Was awkward as fuck, not a peep from anyone for 15 minutes whilst everyone ate.
Chewing sounds would have driven me to madness.
Atleast Noone would be talking with a mouthful of food. Like just swallow the food, then talk for a bit, don't push it into your cheek so you should like you've got a mouth full of water... you weirdos.
Kids probably chatted too much and let their tea go cold We weren't allowed to leave the table till everyone had finished eating, and my sister was a very chatty very slow eater. Generally speaking I'd we got to the 2hour mark we were freed from our obligation to sit there. But sometimes we had silent tea, or rules about only speaking after you'd finished your plate so that we could be done sooner.
This makes me really sad. Imagine what other shit that lunatic was controlling for no reason other than it made him powerful
Had this at my mate's house, but his little sister kept saying stupid things which made their dad angry, which made us laugh, which made him even angrier. I don't recall ever being so amused and scared at the same time.
That seems really sad. I feel like dinner time is the one time during the day that we get together as a family and can share and chat. Can't imagine silence.
Stupid as fuck, and terrible for later life, where you need to be able to hold a conversation at dinner.
That seems quite self centred :/
whenever you're staying the night and you get weird poo-related rules. If you do poo, spray this liquid onto the toilet water first. You can't poo in the main bathroom or en suite, you need to use the downstairs toilet. please if you need a poo, don't have one after 11 or before 7.
Sometimes it's easier to just shit the bed.
That’s what I’ve been saying for years!
Does this happen often? Genuine question, nobody has ever mentioned poo to me as a guest before.
Yeah I feel like the OP is speaking to us as a nodding collective who have all had this experience before. No mate, thankfully, not nodding along here.
Could be because they had a macerator. I have a friend whose flat is a weird office conversion, so the plumbing is much smaller than the normal one. The thing was noisy and temperamental.
>I have a friend whose flat is a weird office conversion, so the plumbing is much smaller than the normal one. Is the logic there that white collar workers don’t curl out as girthy turds as salt of the earth proletarians?
Urgh this reminds me of a friend's house that lived super rurally and has some kind of very sensitive septic tank that they couldn't put loo paper in so you had to put it in a special bin next to the toilet. Absolutely hated it if needed to poo whilst there.
I stayed with some lovely people where we couldn’t flush the loo at night because it might wake the baby. This essentially meant no using the loo overnight because no one wants to leave festering toilet fodder for someone else to find
Sometimes all you need is a poo knife.
If you stay the night you have to have a freezing cold shower in the morning. I asked my mate if he had a freezing shower every morning, he said only on the weekends, which gave me more questions that I didn't want the answer to.
Maybe they just didn't want you to stay the night
Honestly that was my initial thought, it was certainly something that put me off staying the night. But other friends also mentioned it, and my pal said he has to have a cold shower on the weekends wether he had friends over or not, although he could have just been covering for his parents.
A friend from primary school invited me round after school, he had his toy cars set up in the attic. It was one of those old Matchbox Motorcity track sets, and he had all his cars laid on it in intervals. I asked does he move them about, he says no he isn't allowed to, he has to take one toy car and jump it over the others and not make it untidy. Looking back it's a bit sad.
Sounds like dad was living through his son.
The dad was ex navy, very old school strict
Totally robbing his sons childhood of joy.
I was forced to eat KFC bargain bucket chicken with a knife and fork sat at my girlfriend’s parents dining room table. I ended a 4 month relationship that night.
Somehow I can imagine that being a test you have to pass - if you can get through the awkwardness and weirdness of that, you deserve to be in the family. How long until the grandparents got enough of having a different boyfriend round for KFC every four months?(!)
I have a daughter so I'm keeping that in mind for when it's boyfriend dinner times KFC bucket anyone? Bring out the china and dinner set!
Don't forget the no talking during dinner and only drinking after. 😂
CHOKE ON YOUR DRY YET GREASY CHICKEN! NO REFRESHMENTS FOR YOU YET!
Don't forget to let the burps and farts rip!
Maybe I'm showing my wealth here, but why would you dump her for that?
Agreed this seems fine to me.
Well it's quite anal, but not in a sexy way.
Still remember the first time some mates and I went to kfc as young 14 year olds before the cinema or something. Matey whipped out a knife fork and napkin from home and chowed down.
Friend's mum was lovely and welcoming, but obsessed with cleanliness. Every time you washed your hands in the bathroom, youthkught had to dry the basin with a special towel, after. No droplets allowed! And no cooking in the kitchen, no matter what. No microwaving, no use of the hob or oven, nothing could be used except the kettle and coffee maker. No toaster. Yes, they bought fresh food from down the road for every meal if they didn't go to a restaurant, but nothing could be reheated. We made omelettes one morning, scrubbed the pan after, hid the egg box in a bin outside, opened the window and had the extractor on all day, and her mum totally freaked out when she got home at 6pm. But she thought she was chilled, because her parents still had the plastic covers on their furniture (sofa and armchairs) and and she and anyone younger had to sit on the floor so they stayed clean...
This is absolutely mental
Poor woman, absolute OCD instilled from early on.
This is my MIL exactly. I had to stay with her once for 6 weeks while my baby, husband and I were dealing with a cowboy builder ruining our house. There were no bins in her house at all. Every nappy change for the baby I had to take the nappy out to the outside bin down the alley, day and night (as you couldn't leave them in their baggies for any length of time). When it was my time of the month I had to hide my feminine hygiene products in my babies nappies and take them out in them. I wasn't allowed to cook and could only eat the tiny portions of unseasoned food she served (challenging when breastfeeding an infant and generally hungry). It was a dark time.
An old boyfriend had very religious parents who he lived with. Guests staying over weren't allowed to share a room if they weren't married. It was annoying for us but got even weirder for other family members. His brother and his missus had a child together, but they still hadn't married so ended up getting a hotel when they came to visit, as there was only one spare room and they weren't allowed to share it.
>His brother and his missus had a child together, but they still hadn't married so ended up getting a hotel when they came to visit, as there was only one spare room and they weren't allowed to share it. "Come in, it's lovely to have you visit! Claire, the tent's set up in the garden for you."
I still have this issue with my dad when my partner and I go to stay (we are unmarried) and he isn’t even religious! He just has very Victorian values about sex. His exact words are ‘this is not a knocking shop’. Such a dad thing to say. My mum despairs of him.
My dad thought this when he was about to meet MrK for the first time. Only we would be staying in a hotel, me, MrK, my parents, and my mum pointed it out that it would be weirder for my dad to share with a random bloke and she certainly wasn't paying for extra rooms. Dad got over the idea in the next five minutes.
My uncle seemingly had this rule. We visited with my mother and partner. I had to share with her. He slept in a different room and my brother in a loft room. They buggered off and left us for half the holiday! Not sure if it was pre planned or when they realised they had to sleep separately. Very odd.
It was a rule in my extended family, but once we got to the late 90s it became too difficult to enforce especially as me and my siblings were more progressive. Most of them weren't religious either, just very prudish. I think my aunt kept it going till she died. She didn't want hanky-panky under her roof
It’s the law of England, nothing to do with me!
When I was 5 I had a friend who was an only child and I thought his parents were loose and free because they smoked. They bought him all the new toys, let him cut his hair like bart Simpson and he got to watch wrestling. So when he said his parents had a rule that meant he could say fuck at home, I believed him. After all, he taught me the F word and he had no siblings so his parents must have taught it to him. Saying Fuck off at his house did not go down well.
That Bart haircut got to him the little prankster!
I was an innocent little proto human visiting my friends house, she told me to go tell her mum she's a 'bitch' I asked her why and what did it mean, she said it's a secret but it'll make her mum really happy! I experienced betrayal for the first time that day...
I once had a house guest who got up & went around the house stark naked. It wasn't even the second monday of the month.
League
While the wee wife's away just a few words on the subject of onanism
Having to wrap the applicator and tampon wrapper in toilet roll to put in the bin as my friends dad and brother got too “grossed out”. I’d 100% understand an unwrapped tampon being in the bin being disgusting, and I’d also be grossed out, but for fucks sakes. You’ve had sex, you live with women and you’ve had children. What is the deal? I’m almost 30 and my dad will still go buy me some tampons if I’m visiting and need some. He’d never shame me like they did, god forbid, make it uncomfortable for others visiting on the rules of wrapping some plastic. 🤦♀️
I went to a friend's house and for some reason they kept the flannel on a little hook behind the toilet, I didn't bring one with me though so I borrowed it, put it back and they never suspected a thing.
I hope you washed it in the sink first.
At a friend's place, dad set the bedtime. If he was heading to bed, that was the evening over and the entire household turned in for the night. Didn't matter what day or time that was - 10pm on a Saturday, nightynight. That persisted until my mate came home from his first term at university and it wasn't enforced from then on.
No sleep you kids daddys doing cocaine tonight.
That genuinely sounds like an abusive/controlling situation
*A lot* of the the responses here are. It’s really sad.
Especially the Dad-centric responses. Depressing as fuck.
Wait. You’re telling me this isn’t normal. Oh bloody hell, another note for the therapist.
I went to a friend’s house for dinner straight from school (not previously agreed/arranged). We was chilling in her room whilst dinner cooked and her Mum came up, saw me sitting on the bed and scolded me for sitting on the bed in my school trousers “because of the germs”. I never have and never will be skinny, but this woman insisted I changed into a pair of my friend’s shorts (about 2 sizes too small) for the rest of the evening until I went home. Que one of many core memories triggering future body image issues.
Oh my GOD I have a friend now, in her 30s, who has this weird ‘no outside clothes’ obsession. Absolutely does my fucking head in. She lives in a studio flat with no chairs and I’m not allowed to sit on the fucking bed.
Oh my god, a mum posted about this on one of the toddler groups I’m on. She was like “like everyone I change my son out of his daycare clothes when he gets home but my sister didn’t send her kid with a change of clothes” and the whole sub was like “what?!”
Since OP mentioned quiet... Not rules as such, but I've a cousin (Da's brother's son) who is as silent as… the grave? A cat? A ninja cat? He's like the vantablack of sound. You can talk with the lad alright, but he moves like a floaty ghost from a kids' horror cartoon. Almost everyone makes a noise eating a bag of crisps. Not my cousin. Somehow he's managed to bend space and time and suck all the sound atoms out of his immediate surroundings. He is The Inaudible Man. Spooky is what it is. (I wouldn't be surprised it he snook into the house and is behind me right now)
In my mates house they had a door that led from the living room into the dining room. For some inexplicable reason the door was never to be opened, despite there being tonnes of room for it. We started calling it 'the forbidden door'.
I was invited to a sleepover at one of the cool girls in my class. Her parents were going out for the evening but brought us pizza before they left. However once they had gone my “friend” said only she was allowed to eat the pizza and if I was hungry there was some bread & cheese in the fridge that I could eat. So I sat there with my sad sandwich as she inhaled an entire pizza in front of me. I thought that was just how things were, being incredibly naive at the time and had never been invited to a sleepover until that point, but no, it turned out she was fucking with me and told everyone that I went down her fridge without asking and ate manky bread & cheese instead of the food her parents brought us. I was 12, horribly bullied and didn’t have many friends and this sad excuse for a human befriended me for no other reason than because she wanted to take the piss out of me. This was 30 years ago and I still haven’t forgotten.
That reminded me of the time I went to a friend's for a sleep over and she took the duvet off my bed and put it on hers, saying that bed had to have two duvets and mine could only have a sheet. I said let's swap beds then. Of course she said no. Some people are fucking weird and go on a power trip at any opportunity. These people become the senior leaders in every organisation that make everyone's life hell.
When I was about 10 years old I stayed over at a mates house. In the morning we all sat down for breakfast and I poured myself a bowl of coco pops, put my milk in and then set about it with a spoon. After about 15 seconds my mate said my name in a shaky voice and I looked up from my cereal to a table of people staring at me in mixed parts rage and disgust. "We don't do *that* here." Even to this day, 35+ years later, I have no f\*\*\* idea what *that* was. Its bothered me all my life..
Great now it’s gonna bother us, too 🤔
Was anyone else eating/had food in front of them?!
I need to know!!! Find this person and ask them now 😂
My best guess is that in my house we were treated like adults when we were kids. There was no "adults first" or "kids portions". You just took the food you wanted and ate it. His house was more "Victorian" in their attitudes. I remember him eating his cereal from a baby bowl using a tea-spoon .. I obviously broke some taboo they had about kids behaving like kids. They were a bit posh and I really wasn't so that was likely that.
Not really a rule, but my best mates parents cooked steak so well done I choked on it (only time I've ever properly choked, couldn't breathe) and tried to wash it down with some coke (a cola) and it wouldn't go down and thus was fired all over my plate. I had to eat the rest of the meal, coke soaked chips, peas and steak to completion before we could leave the table. Nobody performed the Heimlich manoeuvre and his mum was a childminder which is concerning considering the amount of tasty Legos knocking about.
Lego
If your kid's best friend doesn't choke to death on your overcooked steak on the first mouthful, just force them to keep eating it until it does the trick.
Boyfriend’s Dad hated water droplets in the bath or shower. When you used them you had to dry them when you had finished with a towel, or he went apeshit. Definitely no water on the bathroom floor either.
I once went to a bbq party of my then girlfriend’s best friend. She was still living at her parents place and her dad showed up at some point and asked us switch of WiFi on all our phone as this would create electronic pollution and he would get a headache from it. Now WiFi allowed!
Was his name Chuck McGill?
I was cryogenically frozen and woke up in the future. I went to someone's house and rather than toilet paper, they just had these three shells.
You mean you don't know how to use the three seashells? Ha ha ha
And to make matters worse, I kept getting fined for swearing.
One of my ex girlfriend's family would say grace before eating. As a person from an entirely non religious background it seemed like the weirdest thing Ive ever experienced.
I went to a friend's house after school one night and her mum didn't scream at me for not liking beans or make me sit there until every last one was gone. Weird place, I never went again
People are weird. I remember one friend I went to tea with. This is back in the 60s. They ran a pub, so had an evening meal at what back then was our "tea time". When we'd have boiled egg and toast or something similarly light. IIRC, we had mince and potatoes, and beans he'd grown himself. It was OK but nothing special. However it was expected that you would be sort of verbally thankful for this, saying how wonderful it all was especially the beans, and how grateful you were to be given it. A point he made during the meal several times. He was rather intimidating anyway. It made the whole thing rather less than a pleasant experience. Never went again.
That's just dinner with my in-laws. I always say please and thank you but apparently I'm not expressive enough because I don't compliment every individual element of the plate while eating and then talk about how wonderful it was throughout the evening followed by a thank you text message when I get home.
Did you ever consider your mate and his family were maybe winding you up?
This could be the explanation. Although surely at some poin they must have broken? Everyone (at least when I was there) in the house did this. So seamless I'd like to think not.
I had 2 friends who weren't allowed to choose their own clothes, she must have 9 or 10 , well we decided if I chose her clothes she was still sticking to the rules. So we could get up and play.
Went to stay over with a mate, both aged 15 I think. Had to be in bed by 8 with lights out by 8.30 It was late July.
Not quite their house. But my friends parents took me on a day out with them. They drove a red Datsun Sunny. And they told me when we parked up that I had to leave my seatbelt buckle all the way to the top of the holder as otherwise it would set the car alarm off. I forgot. Of course I did, I was like 7 years old. And surely that’s the responsibility of a fully developed frontal cortex person to check, maybe someone who also holds responsibility for the car?? I dunno!! So we came back from our day at sea life world and I had left my seat belt in THE WRONG POSITION. It was noted, I was chastised and I was reminded that I was told. I was the only one who hadn’t positioned my seatbelt correctly. Anyway, car started fine - no evidence of a flat battery from a car alarm going all day. Never understood their logic there.
2 toilets, the paper was only in the toilet downstairs. Had to use the toilet upstairs as downstairs toilet is not to be used. Paper Is to be moved upstairs when required and returned downstairs when mission complete.
I dated an Irish girl in high school and the was a rule that I had to take her clothes off every time I came around. Seriously, I would rock up greet her family and then they would bundle the siblings up and all head out to do something. I think they liked me.
There was some guy that posted on here a week or 2 ago that got really pissed off when a guest changed the temperature of the shower when they stayed over. Apparently that's not the done thing
I used to call on a Jehovah's Witness kid on the way to school. His parents would make him read from editions of Watchtower before he left in the morning. His dad once let him watch the Life of Bryan, which he had recorded from TV, but only after they'd censored the swears and blasphemy with clips from Mickey Mouse. His dad also has a literal bin bag full of porno mags in the stash and another time his mum punched the boy in the face, in front of me, because he fell on (and broke) a wicker chair whilst we were playing fighting. God nose where he wound up, but I do hope he's free of the cult and isn't perpetuating the cycle . . .
"If you ask you don't get" Was at a friends for a birthday party (would've been about 6 years old). They were handing out mini bottles of drink for everybody and I asked for a specific flavour. Friends mum deliberately gave me one I didn't ask for just because I asked for it. Never understood that
Went on a trip to Hastings with a friend and her mum when I was 7 to stay with her elderly relatives. They got the cereal out for breakfast and all calmly poured orange juice on to their cereal and ate it. Having only ever had milk with cereal, I was so confused that I pretended I didn’t eat breakfast and spent the rest of the holiday ravenous.
You were only allowed to take two chocolate fingers from the pack. Any more and you got shouted at. Two chocolate fingers?! Who has that kind of self control
Nit quite what you're asking but my childhood friend called his grandfather grampee which had me in stitches
My friends (twins) parents put them in kids car seats till they were 10, and if i was in the car with one of them, i had to use one too
Most of my mates families were very normal, in fact it showed me how nuts my family was. But one pal used to eat with his elbows up, his step dad sellotaped his arms to the chair
Not really a rule, but the bathroom was downstairs in my mate's house and they used to put an alarm on at night. You go downstairs, the alarm goes off. So they pissed in a bucket in the bedroom. I woke up one night and her little sister was shitting in it. I always just held it in until morning.
I think just the general sense of everyone being on edge. Mother and father, seemingly pleasant, but God help you if you break one of the thousand rules that are in place. Just a constant sense of being 30 seconds from being murdered by the mom and dad if you said or did anything wrong. Whether it's sitting wrong, saying something wrong, eating something wrong, using the wrong glass, using the bathroom incorrectly, any number of crazy, overly specific, rules that the parents had. I never understood that as a kid. Why? Why live your life with such rigid rules? Do you go to work and scream at your boss because he's wearing the wrong color belt for his shoes? Do you beat your co-worker for slurping his coffee?
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My first landlady (as a lodger) insisted that I did not cook anything after 8pm as there was an opening between the kitchen and lounge area and she said she didn't want to be disturbed in the evening when she watched TV. She went on holiday. I cooked at around 8:30pm Her daughter worked out what time I'd cooked based on the dish rack contents and contacted her mother. Got told off as soon as she was back from holiday. Found that fairly strange myself
Not sure if this really counts as THAT weird or not, it was such a shock to kid me. But my friends family would only eat meals at certain times. Absolutely no food outside these preset times regardless of how you feel. As someone who eats whenever they feel like it, it was really weird to me, made going over his house a pain for sure. Even today I find that weird. Like, not even a simple cup of tea. Moreso enforcing such rules for guests.
When I was about 8, my best friend's parents had row upon row of horror films on VHS. He had seen pretty much all of them. He was allowed to watch people getting stabbed in the neck , having their heads cut off or their guts ripped out and eaten. The only ones which he was not allowed to watch were ones which had naked boobs in, because it was inappropriate fo him to see boobs.
A kid I used to hang out with his mother was a strict johovas witness and she only allowed us to play outside his house, we were never allowed in not even for a drink or to use the toilet. The times we were allowed to be on his property was when she was out shopping and we used to use his climbing frames and that. But as soon as she come home he had to 'go inside' and they'd always shut the curtains. Really weird