What strange memories do you have of childhood?

I had imaginary friends from 3-5 years old. They were little people that lived inside the walls and came out to keep me company. They were absolutely real to me and even went along on vacations in a shoebox, which I insisted my mother pack!

My parents and I went to look at a house my uncle was thinking of getting. The tenant was still there and so were all of her cats. There were cats everywhere, you couldn't see the front lawn because it was covered in cats. The cat lady picked up cats and introduced them to me by name. I asked my mom if I was misremembering this. She said my memory was accurate, but she thought the cat lady was making up the cat names on the spot.

When I was in kindergarten or 1st grade we had a fire drill. One of the boys was misbehaving so he was told to go sit against the wall. My teacher said if this were a real fire he would die so we better behave.

OP that is really weird and unhygienic. It seems to have traumatized you. Is this why you're now fat?

Op this sounds familiar to me. Did you go to kindergarten in the 70s?

The food in my kindergarten was really gross. We didn't want to eat it, so come lunchtime, the caretakers sat with us and basically force-fed us.

Afterwards, the most delicate-stomached of us (myself included) puked on the tables, the caretakers bundled the tablecloths up and took them away.

This happened every day.

My mom took us to parties where everyone was naked except our family. We have joked about it since. It was the 80’s btw

Jesus fucking Christ.

That wasn't chocolate pudding, OP.

Old Italian ladies coming to my Nonna's house from all over and at all hours to have my Nonna perform a malocchio prayer ritual over them to get rid of the evil eye.

OP, you were being fed mind-altering drugs as part of a MK-Ultra experiment.

R1, I had the same experience. They only came out at night and would climb up into my bed and we'd talk and play. I knew the difference between real and imaginary and they were real. I never told anyone about them because even at that age I knew that no one would believe me and think I was crazy. I called them The Little People and their leader was Mr. Mayor. I looked forward every night to seeing The Little People. And then they never came back.

I vaguely remember that I believed that the big metal garbage can in our kitchen was "alive." It was very ordinary looking with a foot pedal, was taller than me (I was quite small, not in school yet) and I thought of the lid as a mouth whenever it opened.

Sometimes I was scared of the garbage can, thought of it as my friend even, but sometimes not. That is so fucking crazy, but there you go.

R6, whaaaaaa? You’re just going to leave us hanging and not explain the naked parties?

I was at my grandmother's house when I was about 3 or 4 and I was eating lunch at the kitchen counter. She left for a moment and I remember seeing a woman sitting next to me at the counter. She seemed to appear out of nowhere, but she was so kind and radiated warmth. She seemed to leave as abruptly as she came, but I never forgot her face. Years later, my grandmother was going through some old pictures and I saw the woman's face again - it was her mother who'd died years before I was born. I couldn't believe it.

I'm not usually one to believe in ghosts and all that stuff, but this was too creepy to comprehend. It gave me a weird sense of peace, though.