"All happy families are alike; each weird family is clinically insane in its own way." --Leo Tolstoy (except the last bit that was edited by Morgan and Kelsey)
A never ending swamp land.
“I knew a girl who would get glasses of water and whenever she couldn’t finish the whole thing, she would dump the rest on the carpet because “it just absorbs it.”
The golden closet.
“When my brother and I were kids, we would often comment that out neighbor’s house smelled like pee. One day we were over there and I asked to use the bathroom. The kid said, “We just pee here,” and started peeing in the closet. I peed there too.”
Well, that’s just strange.
“I will never forget as a child visiting my friends house & noticing the wallpaper he had in his hallways. The pattern was of naked women, throughout his apartment, just little naked women all over the wall. We were maybe 8 & it was amazing.”
Plot twist: they all belong to her ex boyfriends
“When I was dating my first girlfriend in high school, I was invited over for dinner and meet the parents. At one point I was talking with her dad in his study and noticed lots of old-looking phallic objects on the shelves in the room. On closer inspection, they were mummified penises, dozens of them.”
You know you’ve walked into a death trap when one foot is in cereal and the other is on a snake.
“One of my friends’ family were horrific hoarders. You couldn’t see the floor of his house and I was literally stepping in bowls filled with cereal. At one point, I saw a snake just slither through and immediately I made up an excuse that I was sick so I could go home. What a nightmare.”
The boobies got revenge in the end.
“I once looked at an apartment in Columbus and when I went into the building manager’s apartment to sign the lease, the walls of his entire living room were covered in machetes and severed mannequin breasts with hand-painted nipples. A year later, the guy was killed when a booby trap he had created with a live grenade blew up.”
The faker the better?
I went to high school with a girl whose family would dresses up their house like a model home. The dining room table was dressed with a plastic Thanksgiving feast. When you walked in her room the bed was made with the top corner open as if she just got out of bed and there was a tray with a fake bowl of cereal and fake orange juice. They kept the place spotless and every room had an odd theme of fake living.
Who needs fruit snacks when you have butter?
“Growing up my best friend’s family didn’t have traditional snacks like fruit rollups or gushers. Instead, they ate sticks of butter. Whenever they offered me some I always told them I wasn’t hungry. They had multiple packages of butter in the fridge and freezer. They would just cut pieces off the stick and eat it. They weren’t poor, they weren’t fat, but they were f*cking crazy.”
Cuddle Buddies
“I hung out and played with these three siblings who lived next door. They were all pretty normal kids, but the mom seemed kind of clingy. During the summer we would play outside a lot. Every single day at about 12 the mom would call the kids back to the house, one at a time. They would have to go inside for about a half hour, then come out and the next kid would go in. Never thought too much about it, until one day I was actually in their house with them and found out why she called them. She had mandatory cuddle time with each of the kids. They would lie on the couch, and she would spoon them, in the quiet, for about 30 minutes each.”
To each his own…
“Went to a friend’s house when I was 17. She asked her mom for a snack and her mom brought out a huge raw white onion completely slathered in mayo on a plate and she and my friend just went at it with their forks like it was filet mignon.”
What a fun play date…
I went to a friend’s house and we put some cartoons on. While we were watching I asked him a question but he didn’t respond. He was fixated on the TV, absolutely glued. His babysitter just laughed and said, “oh he’ll be like that all evening now.” So I just had to wait for my parents to pick me up while he unflinchingly watched TV for hours.”
Like mother like daughter…
“There was a family of girls I went to church with and none of them were allowed to cut their hair. They had to wait until they were 16 so they wouldn’t get a haircut they’d regret because that’s what their mother had done. They also weren’t allowed to talk at the dinner table. One time one of the daughters was laughing at something and coughed on her food. The mom was afraid of one of them choking and dying, so talking was banned. No one told me that when I came over for dinner. I just talked and they all stared at me.”
Once a dishware fanatic, always a dishware fanatic
“I knew a girl in high school who had parents who were obsessed with dinner plates. They had such a huge collection of plates in their house that every room was full of them. Their entire house was basically a library set up for these things. Her bedroom was a mattress on the floor surrounded by display cases of plates. The last time I went over there I knocked one off the wall by mistake. I caught it and it didn’t even break but my god the rage her dad flew into was horrifying. He was inches away from punching me. They tried to nervously laugh it off like “haha good ole dad being funny haha.” The one time I asked my friend why they had so many plates she want on a passionate tangent about all the cool plates they had and why they were so awesome. I never asked again because hearing about neat dishware for an hour was like torture. I looked her up on Facebook. She works now as a Tupperware consultant. Seriously!”
Hm, that’s an interesting family tradition
“I went on vacation with my buddy when we were kids. They weren’t religious but before every meal they would all say the same chant about being a better person and trying your best. It was really creepy because they would all say it in the same monotone voice. It turned out the mom was just tired of everyone eating before she got to the table so she made up the tradition.”
When the apocalypse happens, we know where we’re going.
“An old friend’s mum was completely paranoid that terrorists would storm the small British town they lived in. Her solution? Have a massive bomb shelter built under their house. About about five times a year, she would spend literally thousands and thousands of pounds on groceries to stock the shelter with. By this, I mean she would genuinely buy out the whole supermarket (it would take her about 20 trips over a week). Not just canned food, but perishables, too. I only found this out by sleeping over on one of her ‘shopping’ days, where food covered literally every single surface of their massive house. My friend just shrugged it off and said, ‘oh, yeah, just restocking our bomb shelter! We always need to be ready for invasion.’ Da f*ck?”
This mother might actually be a bird
“I went to a barbecue with this family with three kids. The mom lights the barbecue and starts preparing food. The main attraction is chicken wings, which were covered in sauce. When the food is ready she brings over the huge platter of chicken wings and sets them on the blanket. The mom picks up a chicken wing and starts licking it. She’s licking it, turning it over, licking it some more. I think, ‘um, weird, but okay.’ Then she puts it back on the platter. I am stunned. She picks up another one. Does the same. Puts it back. All the while, she’s talking, saying things like ‘alright kids, come on, get your chicken wings, eat.’ As if she’s preparing the wings for our consumption by licking them. I am still in shock. There’s no sign on anyone else’s face that something weird is going on. She licks and licks and licks and they just eat it. I had salad that day.”
Sounds like Neil’s a great friend to have!
“I used to go over to this kid’s house named Neil when I was in 4th grade. His entire family, including Neil, would sometimes leave and go run errands, leaving me alone there. They also would tell my parents that I was invited for dinner, but then leave me in the basement to play video games by myself while they all ate. I never complained because Sega Genesis.”
Kind of want to watch the movie “Just Ask My Children” now…
“I used to frequently visit this family with all adult children who still lived at home and they always had the same exact movie on every single time I visited. I didn’t think much of it at first. They’d all huddle around as if it were first time they were seeing it. Once, when I actually stayed over for a longer duration, the movie ended. The TV was finally turned off, but then a minute later they turned it back on and started playing the same movie again and I finally realized that this movie is watched multiple times a day, every single day, almost like a ritual and all the members of the family react the same way to the same scene repeatedly as if they have never seen it before. The movie was called ‘Just Ask My Children.'”