Things your parents did that you now realise were bonkers

[lstickler]

Ha ha! I can't really remember but I don't think it was very long, probably a couple of hours!

[Gubodge]

My mother revived our hamster in the bottom oven of the aga, lstickler. We'd been just about to bury it when it's whiskers twitched. There were no ill effects and it lived for years.

[littleEDfamily]

Funniest thread for quite some time.

My Dad (despite being convinced then and now that my sister and I were the best looking children that ever lived), went through this period of feeling, and stating repeatly, that "short back and sides" (not a cool Mia Farrow crop either, more a sort of lego head style) was the most appropriate haircut for girls.

The pictures are not pretty.

[Pugwash]

Hubby's mother put him into a bonny baby show where he got first prize, when judge went to present it 'for the bonniest baby girl' mother in law had to admit that she was a he - and got disqualified. Whenever hubby now in 50s is commented on re his looks, he states that his original blond curly hair got him first prize in a bonny baby competition.

My eldest daughter has never forgiven me when she was about 5/6 having her hair cut short. We both went to a hairdressers down LL and I asked that hairdresser cut her hair short for the summer (she had a beatle type cut at the time) I was having my hair cut and could not see what the other hairdresser was doing, when I turned around, the hairdresser had given her a short back and sides thinking she was a boy, Daughter being very shy did not speak up and yell for me, it took about 4 months to grow to a 'normal length'. My family were furious - everyone thought she had been seriously ill and lost most of her hair. 30 plus years later she still blames me.

[HollieES]

These posts are so funny - love it! Particularly love the idea of having office wheely chairs around the dining table. That's genius.

Speaking of dance classes, when I went to playschool the 9 girls did a aerobics/dance routine wearing leotards and waving towels above our heads. The 8 other girls were wearing uniform red sleeveless, legless leotards with sweet little white legwarmers and they had white towels. Obviously my mum, on another originality streak, was having none of this, so dressed me up in a long sleeved, long armed YELLOW leotard, with black and yellow striped legwarmers and a lime green towel. I looked like I was doing some kind of hazardous waste removal. Awful.

Another time, my mum had gone out so dad was looking after me on his own. I was about 7 and decided to restyle my hair, but got the round brush stuck in it. I think I got quite upset, so my dad came in and CUT THE BRUSH OUT OF MY HAIR, leaving me with random stumps. A strong look for a 7 year old. Still, at least it was original.

[hellosailor]

These hair stories are just brilliant! It strikes me that parents had a more 'function over form' attitude to hair in those days! As I recalled in another thread recently, my mum was exasperated because she wanted me to have a short crop and I wanted to keep my pony tail, so one day she just came up behind me with a large pair of fabric scissors and snipped my ponytail off, leaving me looking like Joan of Arc.

[Pickle]

As a child we used to travel for miles riding on the trailer behind Dad's car. On a trip to NZ a couple of years ago my Dad was "looking after" my little boy. They were gone for ages, I heard the car arrive home and looked outside to see this...

Of course it was the highlight of his holiday and he still talks about it!

[Beany]

Pickle - just hilarious (and terrifying!!)... Also, I am still in stitches about the Poacher costume.

At the age of about 8 I told my mum that I wanted a new hairstyle, and I remember her really fervently trying to persuade me to go for a spiky punk do!! She even drew pictures of how it might look to try to cajole me into it. I cannot remember her ever having such a strong opinion on any other aspect of my appearance and she's not even 'alternative' - always skirts, never trousers.... maybe she was trying to live vicariously through me!

Anyway - even at the vulnerable age of 8 I knew that a chubby young punk was not a good look, so never followed her advice.

[Otta]

Pickle, your dad sounds so cool! I'd love a go on the trailer!!!

[Mrs TP]

Buying snacks whether biscuits or fruit and then not letting me eat them to make them last?

However, just remembered from time to time I buy my kids creative stuff and then freak out when they expect me to help or make a mess and that's on the rare occasion I allow them to get said creative stuff out of the packet...

[Lochie]

I remember being about 8 years old watching The Really Wild Show after school with my brother and mum, and being told that the reason Chris Packham had really blonde long spikey hair was because he had a medical condition which meant that he had nerve endings in his hair, so every time he wanted to have a hair cut he had to have a general anaesthetic. So he never really had his hair cut and that was why his hair was so long and spikey and white.

Incredibly I still believed this story (maybe not that he had to have an operation but that he had nerve endings in his hair and so his hair 'hurt') until a few years ago when I shared it with my husband and he put me straight.

I can't believe in hindsight my mum didn't tell the truth...hmmm....

[Smiler]

This is all great! Drunken / outsized ballerinas, bad hair, revived hamsters, decapitated bunny toys (brilliant, d'you have a photo?), lies .

Some of the stories suggest some parents may have been on-the-edge or overloaded at the time, others just pure eccentricity / wanton disregard for health and safety!

Feel sorry for Pugwash's little girl with the short back and sides(sorry Pugwash)! And the bearded pirates - am all for gender-neutrality but perhaps beards are taking this a bit far!

Perhaps the red garage floor was some kind of mid-life-crisis?

Molly - sounds like your childhood was quite a hayride! And Pickle, that photo is brilliant.

[Smiler]

Talking of re-heated hamsters, my friend's mum (otherwise seemingly conventional) was a believer in pet freedom, and would allow their hamsters to roam around the house for much of the time. They always went missing, and she would say that if they were a proper hamster they would survive and return, only the weaklings wouldn't make it.

It provided endless fraught afternoons of hamster-searching, listening for scratches, looking for clues, with some grizzly finds and miraculous returns of scrawny, black feral hamsters.

My poor friend was always fretting about her hamsters in school, and now has no pets.

[Kes]

Oh these are brilliant

I feel for the oversized dancers, I was told firmly by my Mum that I couldn't do Ballet because I was far too tall so I'd never be a ballerina (like my height would be the only thing stopping me!). I was however allowed to do Tap and Disco, inevitably I was always the tail girl dressed as a boy in trousers and a shirt (or on one occasion a bear costume), standing bitterly behind my little sister and the other girls in their pretty pink leotards and skirts. Playing a boy also necessitated haveing my hair scraped back, pinned and "laquered" (as my Mum put it)so tightly that I could barely blink.

Not that I had much hair, envious of my curls, my Mum insisted I keep my hair short to perserve them, add to this the mens clothes I had to wear as womens were to short for me by my early teens and I was constantly mistaken for a boy untill I got a saturday job, bought hippy skirts and grew my hair right down my back (which also looked dreadful)

K

[lstickler]

My mum used to let our hamsters roam around the house too! The hamster usually lived in the saucepan drawer. My mum also (and she still does this to this day) when she sees her fish dead/near death she holds them by the tail and swishes them through the water. She is convinced that this makes water flows through their gills and magically revives them!? They usually live for a day or 2 more. They probably end up dying from the trauma of being dragged backwards through water!

[nunheadmum]

My mum tried to convince us that it was stupid to follow fashion (in part, to cover that she couldn't afford to change our clothes on the whim of fashion), even down to refusing to buy jeans when they came out...despite their obvious hard wearing properties. We got some choice, not remotely fashionable gems instead.

Then there was the haircuts......short, curly perm because it'd be easy to look after. Had my hood up for weeks!!

Used to hate too that we weren't allowed to play with all the other local kids on the 'Bing' - the old discarded piles of rubbish from the coal mine which, long abandoned, ran below. Probably more bonkers that everyone else DID let their kids play on it, but it was hard always being the one saying 'We're not allowed....'. And then there was the 'Glen', the unused wild area between us and the next area, following a rather fast flowing large stream / small river and prime space for all those activities no wants to be seen doing. We were allowed to go for picnics down there in the summer!!

[Bumpkin]

After some early morning playful shouting or something, my dad told me that if you opened your mouth too wide whilst shouting it would split open at the edges... Denies all knowledge now but it had me fooled / confused for several years.

[Belle]

Far too many to mention. I had parents who were both eccentric and quite financially stretched, leading to many interesting lifestyle choices. Re bumpkin's post above tho, that reminded me that when I was having tantrums as a kid (hmm now see where my son gets it from!) my parents would say 'stop it, or you'll burst a blood vessel!' .which obviously scared the s**t out of me, even though I didn't really know what it meant.

I was dressed largely in hand me downs for most of my childhood and have some painful but funny memories as a result. Also have just remembered that on summer holidays on the NE Scottish coast, my dad would model his home made batik swimming trunks. :-$ Toooo embarrassing. Me and my brother would hide behind a rock reading Look-In whilst my parents set up a full blown campfire on the beach and cooked all our meals and endless pots of tea on it with billy cans. Everyone else was kitted out with standard british beach fare - windbreakers, ice creams, beach towels - we had a tent my dad had sewn himself for his mountaineering expeditions, and the billycans.

[bobby's bear]

On the fancy dress theme I was sent to a fancy dress party aged 7 as Marie Antoinette and was told to say repeatedly 'let them eat cake' I couldn't remember who I was supposed to be so my Dad wrote it on my arm in marker pen.

I was also told that when the ice-cream van played a tune it had run out of ice-creams so I used to feel sorry for all the children that came running out of their houses when it drove by!

[Medusa]

I *love* this thread.

[cactus]

My mum loved fancy dress competitions, one time when aged about 7, I had to be 'A well bread lady'

Basically just 30 of those waxed bread wrappers that were used in the 70's, pinned to my dress

[Bonfire2010]

At the height of 'Fame' mania, everyone in my school had proper 'Fame' t-shirts (with the slanty writing), except me. My mum made me one by writing Fame in blue felt tip pen on a plain white t-shirt. I can still feel the embarrassment!

[SBot]

I have memories of my mother telling me that the ice-cream van only played music to let us know he had run out of ice-cream!!! Of course we believed her and never asked for an ice-cream!!

Power stations are cloud factories!!

[zeban]

That's hilarious SBot!

[Saffron]

Oh don't even get me started on hand-me-downs. I have 2 older brothers, and I'm a girl!! When I was 6 years old, instead of buying me a nice girlie winter woolly hat (I would have been happy with secondhand even!), my mother made me wear my brother's outgrown black wool skimask to school when I told her my head was cold. She told me, 'It's not a fashion show when it's cold'. After I came home in tears b/c kids obviously laughed at me, she didn't make me wear it anymore... but she also didn't give me anything else to wear on my head! I think I never ever told her again that my head was cold, even when I was freezing.

My father also used to tell me not to put my face on the cat when I would give our cats a cuddle. He never said why. He just appeared to find it disgusting (and he likes cats!). I alwasy used to tell him that when I was a grown-up, I'd have my own cats and put my face on them whenever I liked. And I have, and I do!!

Now off to buy some nice winter hats for me and my daughter. xx