Dumb Things Your Parents/Family Members Did When You Were A Kid

My cousin's wife told me her parents had it everwhere: kitchen, bathrooms, garage, patio.

She hates it.

Slapped faces viciously and randomly

"Luxurious" padded toilet seats.

If you went in too soon after someone, it was still WARM.

And it was impossible not to think about sitting in shit.

An uncle who was good with math who got an opportunity after getting out of the army in 71 to go to school for computers...he was basically head hunted but he turned the opportunity down because he really wanted to be a farmer.

I believe he later had some regrets about that life choice.

It was a dumb thing to do. We bought a house from the estate of a 101 year old lady. Carpets everywhere from 1968. We had them all torn out and put in laminate "wood" floors. But now we have to spend even more to put area rugs, hall rugs, and bathmats everywhere. At least that smell is gone.

The dumbest thing my parents did was to marry each other.

Procreating.

Pushing my brother and me into sports, rather than encouraging more cultured things like learning an instrument or a foreign language. We were both adopted and NOT athletic. And languages and music are things best introduced in childhood (although I've tried to make up for lost time as an adult).

My mother insisted my vision was fine and that I didn’t really need glasses. I just wanted classes because other classmates had them.

I couldn’t see the board.

Middle class cousin and her working class husband bought their house in the poor, trashy part of town. They didn't have a lot of money but...still. Dumb. The schools in that part of town were full of poor trash.

Not surprisingly, their daughters grew up trashy. One of them had two babies before she was 19.

Why didn’t they just send them to private school? R9

Are you being funny, R10? Or, just dumb?

My parents bought a few British cars from the mid 1950's to the mid '60s. One was a Zodiac from Ford's British division. The nicest was a Jaguar Mark II (I think?) that looked like a Rolls Royce knockoff. There were a few others in there that foled up in my mother's various minor accidents. Not one of them was reliable in winter.

In 1963 they bought a Chevy Impala but were still continuing with the British cars. Then my dad bought a French car, a Pugeot in 1967. More crap. The engine block cracked its first Canadian winter.

The Chevy was reliable and inexpensive to maintain so the conventional wisdom of the times said stick with GMs. But all good things must come to an end and after the early 1990s they stayed with Toyotas.

Wearing chenille and gabardine

My extended family used to watch the dumbest movies. Even as a five year old I judged. There were all these movies that starred howie Mandela. Like one where he became an animal trapped in a man’s body

My parents moved us around too much so my K to 12 education was scattershot. I’d be considered a brain at one school and a dunce at the next. Surprise, my schools in Tennessee were better than anything in Western Mass.

My folks also bought the worst cars. Mustang 2, AMC Hornet Sportabout wagon, Datsun 210 wagon, Mercury Lynx…

The Hornet used to backfire a lot. They bought it new! All of them were new!

r15 OMG, we inherited a 1976 AMC Hornet Wagon from a great aunt. The BIGGEST piece of shit...constantly in the shop.

The driver's side door was held on by duct tape and prayer.

Her husband always bought nice high quality cars but he got suckered in to buy this AMC piece of shit, then he died shortly afterwards. His widow, my aunt couldn't drive so we ended up with it.

My idiotic trashy stepdad used bleach on everything - and not in the OCD cleansing way - just for anything. Have a cut? He'd pour bleach on it. Have a sore throat? Teaspoon of bleach in a glass of orange juice. Stomach Ache? Drink this tablespoon of bleach. Ants in the yard? Bleach.

Before Astro vans, we suffered a Jeep Wagoneer that rusted through the doors. My dad put 84 Lumber stickers over the holes.

We had a VW bus for a year. At one point both my parents refused to drive it because it made us look like a local well-known family of moochers who had 13 kids.

Acquaintences of tbat family kept frozen hotdogs and buns at hand in case they showed up.

Take a wussy three year old on the Matterhorn Bobsled ride at Disneyland. WTF, Mom?

r17, you should be grateful. Drinking all that bleach surely made you immune to COVID according to our stable genius President.

Expecting great success from their children while raising them with values that run 100% against the values and mindsets that actually lead to success in this world

Took out a second mortgage to buy a used Prius.

When I was 11 or 12 and started thinking about sex, I asked my mother (actually grandmother who I lived with) if she could read minds. She said yes.

My parents would plant things but most of it would die because they wouldn't water it afterwards. They just stuck it in the ground and hoped nature would take it's course (which it kinda did: death).

My mom was psychotic about utility bills and you'd get screamed at if you let the tap run, or held the refrigerator door open too long.

They bought a 1958 Mercedes sedan in 1970 from a man who'd bought it when he was in the service overseas. We drove it for a while. Since then- to this day- it has spent the rest of it's life in barns and garages, rotting away. I think it's because they've always had this license plate frame on their cars that says, "My Other Car Is A Mercedes".

Someone once offered them $6,000 for it but they turned him down. Now it's only good for metal scrap.

My mother and her sister held a seance right after “The Exorcist”. Two witch bitches did not elicit any divine power.

At the age of seven iI knew we were fucked.

We lived in a prairie style/arts and crafts bungalow with a front porch. In 1970, my parents enclosed the front porch. It ruined the look of the house.

R28 Do you know what the house looks like now?

I'm praying someone restored and got rid of your parent's abomination.

My parents: Moving out of an affluent suburb with good schools to a very poor, rural area with terrible schools and where all the residents were most likely inbred.

The only reason we moved was because my aunt lived next door and my mom did not get along with her. Their issues started long before they lived next door to each other, so I guess moving in next to my aunt was another dumb decision.

My cousin: Turning down a full scholarship to attend a prestigious university away from her hometown so she could stay close to her boyfriend who never finished high school or went to college. She went to community college instead and now works in retail. She is married to that same boyfriend now but I still think what she did was incredibly stupid.

R30 how old is this cousin and how long has she been married?

R30 She's happy. Doesn't sound dumb.

R31 She is 30 and has been married for 6 years.

R29 - My mother lived into the house until she died in 2023 (small town Iowa) The inside of the house had all the classic quarter-sawn oak woodwork and built in bookcases and buffet. It had leased glass windows. But the outside looked nothing like it was. I sold the house to a nurse who loved the interior. I left the new owner a photo of the way the house originally looked. So maybe she will restore it. But I doubt it.

One weekend my mother painted our entire apartment pink (my room had recently been redone with fake wood-grained Contact vinyl wallpaper in walnut, so I was spred). But most of the apartment looked like the Pinky/Gene Kelly segment of “What a Way to Go!”

My father was not thrilled.

Heavy smoking. Never buying a house.

They bought a OUIJA board for my father's parents. After 2 tries my grandfather pushed the thing around to to say GO TO BED and GOOD NIGHT.

R37 I like your Grampa..that's funny.

Buying a house twenty feet away from crematorium and one block away from the busiest highway (I94) in America.

They burned bodies at 3am (mob related?) and belched leaded gas from the other. This was supposed to get us into better schools in the area (bussing protocol).

R20 locals and those in the know simply refer to it as “The Matterhorn.”

Three year olds would not have allowed on that ride .