Weird stuff your parents did

Used a vibrator on herself underneath the dining room table

My mother believed in old wives' tales (dowsing, omens), but told me she actively prayed for me from the time I was a small child, because I declared Halloween my favorite holiday. Make it make sense.

R2 was your mother’s first name Margaret?

My mother wouldn’t let me read The Diary of Anne Frank. She said it was for girls. Years later, she apologized for her stupidity when I was reading it for a college course in comparative literature.

My mother threw an expensive bedspread in an old chicken coop.

Growing up, my parents taught us to call farts, boofers. I learned 20 years later that it's basically the same as 'nigger'. I guess they thought it was funny...and they identify as life-long liberals.

Mine was a 70s antivaxer who kept me out of school the first two weeks of each year while she performed and wondered why I always scored badly the first semester.

Oh, and she badmouthed every teacher as a know-nothing. I ran with it because I was a brat. I feel so sorry for those teachers. Teaching me was a dare.

My mother and I lived with my nonna. Nonna was famous for her healing malocchio "evil eye" prayer from back in the old country. Our living room was frequently filled with old Italians waiting to go into the kitchen where my nonna did her malocchio prayer over them. She refused to accept money for this ritual so those who knew would show up with boxes of pastries from the bakery or vegetables from their garden. Those who didn't know would first try to pay her and then come back to the living room and try to shove a five-dollar bill in my hand which I was forbidden to take. I sat on the floor watching tv with my fists clenched so that so these old ladies couldn't force money into my hand. It would sometimes turn into a little wrestling match between me and the old ladies. Me with my eyes glued to the tv never even turning my head and the old ladies trying to grab my hands. Sometimes I sat on my hands to dissuade them.

My dad let me and my brother watch the X rated Alice and Wonderland from the late 70’s.

I don’t think it had the effect on me that my dad thought it would.

To this day, I’d kill to see The Md Hatter’s (Alan Novak’s) dick. Which was merely alluded to in the movie.

My parents were spies in the sixties. Dad sat outside embassies in a car and recorded conversations, and my Mom typed them up. That was a mind-boggling conversation when my Mom casually mentioned it at Sunday dinner a couple of years ago. Nobody had any idea.

My mom also gave me a copy of Flowers in the Attic when I was nine. I lived that whole series and excitedly checked out the Heaven series after I completed that series.

Also finally enough I saw the x-rated version of Alice in wonderland lying underneath the pulled out sofa sleeper while I was playing in my aunt's living room. I don't remember who had it on and I was disgusted by it being I was only 8 years old.

R10 Who did they spy for?

R12 the International House of Pancakes, Tose.

My dad stashed his porn under the mattress on his side of their bed. Spoiler: not magazines, but hard core porn paperback books!

Second spoiler: they ere were excellent guides to real sex…and every book include at least one bi or gay chapter. I learned a lot 😛

Invited the neighbors over for Christmas party. In the suburbs in the 70s.

OP we passed around ALL sorts of smutty novels of the 1970s in Jr. HS. No parents necessary.

I was 7 years old. Not in 7th grade.

My parents dragged us to way too many funeral and hospitals when we were young . I had older parents and they had friends and family way older than them. As I am older now , I hate going to either .

My Mum would never turn off a appliance or lamp at the switch she would always pull the cord out of the light socket. As a kid we thought this was hilarious. It was only later I learned as Mum had grown up in India where the electrical wiring was direct current if you did not pull the cord your house could burn down.

R18, if you don't mind my asking--how old were they when they had you?

Just curious.

I like your story best, R10. Please give us a clue as to who was being spied on.

My parents didn't care at all what I was reading. I remember the whole school was scandalized when I was reading The Exorcist in fourth grade. I'd already seen the movie (with my mother). Decades later I was teaching middle school and had a sixth grader reading an adult novel (not "adult" as in porn) in class. I asked what she was reading and she became defiant and defensive. I told her she could read whatever she wanted as far as I was concerned. Reading is reading. Afraid I sort of screwed the pooch when, later on, her mother remarked that the girl was a poor reader and I countered with her reading adult-level books in class. Seems mother had no idea and wanted her back on children's literature ASAP.

R19 Similar story. No matter how freezing it was even with the heat on dad would always crack open the window in his bedroom. Come to find out dad's little sister died of carbon monoxide poisoning in her sleep with the old fashioned coal heater .

Mom had an abortion. It wasn’t Dad’s. It was Dr Joe’s. Our family dentist. This was before abortion was legal.

My mom would not let the dentist use Novocaine on me. I was always in severe pain when I was at the dentist but I never cried out. The dentist advocated for me after I had suffered through two dental procedures. My mother finally gave in.

when I was a kid my father insisted on reading the Sunday papers first. I would have to get up early to retrieve them from the front lawn where they were delivered and read them before he did.

This is so gross...my dad would lie on his side of the bed watching TV or reading and casually pick his nose and flick the boogers at the wall by his side of the bed.

So disgusting.

My grandfather always had his hand down his pants while watching the "pretty women" on soap operas.

My dad wouldn't let us watch COPS because he thought the show exploited people's misery.

I'm now an insufferable adult who judges people for watching police chases and body camera footage on YouTube.

These stories sound so quaint. Compare reading The Exorcist to what kids can access today on the Internet. Here's my story --

In 1971, Love Story was THE movie 12-year-old girls wanted to see. I was NOT to go because the characters had premarital sex. However, my mother thought "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" (Glenda Jackson, Peter Finch) was a good movie for me to see.

My dad wouldn’t let me watch Predator for some reason, R29. He also said that the Top Gun soundtrack was “communist music” and then secretly listened to it.

My father told me never to say that I had to pee. “Men piss, girls pee” in his words.

My mother always used “BM” for going to the bathroom. I only heard the word “potty” at school or on tv.

R25

Similar story - my mother is TERRIFIED of needles, so she hated getting novocaine & preferred to endure the pain of getting a filling without it.

She made the same choice for us - it wasnt until i was in jr high that i wised up enough to say "fuck that" & started getting the shot.

My mom went to a women's halfway house for 30 days for embezzlement. Her gay ex-boyfriend, my biological father, was plotting to kidnap me. I wasn't allowed to get into white cars with men who looked like Sergeant Carter, my aunt or my cousin had to pick me up from school.

My mother was too embarrassed to talk to me about homosexuality so she gave me The Persian Boy by Mary Renault to read. I was ten.

My parents were divorced and my dad had a huge porn collection. I remember being a kid, nine or ten, and my older brother showed me some me some of dad’s magazines he found and I was hooked. From then on out my weekends with my dad consisted of me snooping around looking for each new hiding place. My dad travelled internationally for work, so that collection grew into fifty porn videos - hardcore XXX stuff from all around the world. Me sneaking around lasted well into my late teen years. I became addicted to the secret as much as the porn. My mom found out at some point and freaked out and made him swear to get rid of all of it or I couldn’t go to his house anymore. And I had to go to therapy. He said he did, but he didn’t. So it continued.

For the longest time I didn’t know I was gay, I just thought I was fucked up sexually from all those years of porn. I marvel at today’s world where porn addiction is just a casual thing. And I wonder if I would have been better off growing up now or dead.