Your childhood was probably weird on some level.

**youhas** · Joined: 21 Jul 2006 Posts: 3015 Location: Santa Clara, CA

When you're a kid, on some level, you just sort of assume that your life operates how all lives operate, that whatever you're going through is probably par for the course. No, you probably didn't go around, musing about your set of life experiences, saying, "gee, all this seems pretty normative!" of course. But you didn't really have anything to use as a benchmark for comparison. It's your life; you don't have any other life experiences to directly compare things to; your life must be "normal", at least as far as you're concerned.

Once you get a little bit older, with more experiences at other friends' houses and interactions with their families, you start noticing differences. Some of these are fundamental life differences, sure. "Your family doesn't celebrate Christmas? But you have other holidays, like Yom Kippur? Weird!" But a lot of them are just trivial nonsense, where whatever your family did, you blithely accepted as a "normal" part of the process, completely unaware that no, dude, other families do not roll like that. "You get to open your stockings at midnight on Christmas Eve, while I don't get to touch anything until Christmas morning? Weird!" "You have an Easter ham, while my family always cooks an Easter goose? So weird!" "Your family drives out to the same time-share in the mountains every summer, while mine flies to a different foreign city for every vacation? Super crazy!" And so on.

(Sidebar: honestly, there are some gigantic number of political debates that occur because people assume that everyone had a childhood much like their own, not even considering that people exist who grew up in radically different circumstances. "Everyone" has a mom and a dad! "Everyone" has one parent who works a boring, stable office job while the other one looks after the kids! "Everyone" grew up middle class, with certain "times are tight" down periods and "I got a raise at work!" lavish periods! "Everyone" grew up [ learning how to birth a calf / hanging out at the local mall / learning how to navigate the subway system ]! To hell with foreign-exchange programs; I'd love to see an interstate "let city kids spent a couple months in a rural area and vice versa" program, just to let everyone experience a lifestyle within their country's borders that may be radically different from their own. But I digress.)

So the question I pose to you: what aspect of your childhood did you notice was a bit "off", if only in retrospect, potentially years and years after the fact? Some of these may be weird lighthearted family traditions, and some of these may be darker "I did not see the dysfunction present" observations... but I enjoy hearing about other folks' quirky life experiences all the same.

For me, the most trivial-but-interesting example would probably be the effort that my family put into wrapping up Christmas presents. Most families would fill out the "From:" field on present labels with something reasonable, like "Santa" or "Mom"; mine turned them into opportunities to treat them as brief creative exercises. Sometimes, the references would be pretty straightforward, like getting a sleeve of golf balls "From: Tiger Woods" or whatever. Other times, the references would be more florid, like getting a Costco-sized box of Goldfish Crackers "From: The Icy Depths of the Faux-Cheddar Seas". And on some occasions, it was almost a creative exercise unpacking what the "From:" field meant, like the jar of salsa "From: New York City?!" - which was a reference to the salsa not being Pace brand salsa, which had a series of dopey ads admonishing salsas made from companies headquartered in places like New York City instead of their own San Antonio location. (Which is to say nothing of other over-the-top actions my dad took at times, like gifting a basketball... but first wrapping it in aluminum foil, attaching fishing line to it, and stapling the fishing line to the ceiling, so it looked like the basketball was a jumbo-sized ornament hanging from the tree.)

But enough about me. I'm sure you have all sorts of eccentricities of your own that would be tons of fun to share. I'd love to hear about them!
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**Whitt333** · Joined: 03 Dec 2007 Posts: 1535 Location: Minnesota

That's actually a pretty cool Christmas present tradition your family has! My mom always spent a ton of time wrapping, but never did anything creative like that.

Heres the only thing I can think of right off the bat:

My parents both completely dislike pretty much any type of seafood, so I was raised never eating it or really knowing much about it. And of course, public schools don't serve any type of seafood for lunches.

As I grew older, I realized that a lot of people absolutely love it and eat it all the time. I don't consider myself a picky eater, but I think that because I simply didn't get used to eating it as a child I'm just unable to eat it now. I've tried on multiple occasions to just go into it with an open mind, and I do, but I always come out genuinely thinking it's disgusting. Oh well.
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**Whitt333** · Joined: 03 Dec 2007 Posts: 1535 Location: Minnesota

That's actually a pretty cool Christmas present tradition your family has! My mom always spent a ton of time wrapping, but never did anything creative like that.

Heres the only thing I can think of right off the bat:

My parents both completely dislike pretty much any type of seafood, so I was raised never eating it or really knowing much about it. And of course, public schools don't serve any type of seafood for lunches.

As I grew older, I realized that a lot of people absolutely love it and eat it all the time. I don't consider myself a picky eater, but I think that because I simply didn't get used to eating it as a child I'm just unable to eat it now. I've tried on multiple occasions to just go into it with an open mind, and I do, but I always come out genuinely thinking it's disgusting. Oh well.
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**youhas** · Joined: 21 Jul 2006 Posts: 3015 Location: Santa Clara, CA

Whitt333: That's very interesting!... and also makes a ton of sense. There are plenty of tastes where if you're exposed to them in childhood, they become part of your default "yup, this is sustenance" neural pathways. And if you're not... well, then they don't, full stop. I mean, I love eating cheese, and things like "mac and cheese" or "grilled cheese sandwiches" have a great pull! But as someone pointed out to me, "cheese is just spoiled milk, if spoiled in a very careful and pedantic fashion"... so I can see why folks not raised on it might not immediately take to it. So something like "I never really ate seafood while growing up, so I'm not particularly fond of it now" makes perfect sense.
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**Dodongo** · Posted: Sun May 26, 2013 6:55 pm Post subject:

I know exactly what you're getting at, and often find myself thinking the same thing. The most recent "revelation" I had, if you will, was about dogs. My mother has always been a big dog lover, and since I was a kid we have always had at least one dog in the house (usually two), and one is always a labrador, as my mother loves them. I grew up thinking that a labrador was a fairly average sized dog, where as in fact, no, it isn't. A large percentage of other people's dogs I have seen seem to be small, terrier type things which I find almost a bit sad; I guess I was just raised to love gun-dogs.

Furthermore, I seem to be in a minority of people that grew up with no religious input what so ever, whether it be "He's not real" or "Praise Allah!" (you get my rather stupid point, I hope). This means that, growing up, the whole deal carried almost no weight with me and, despite singing hymns at school, I never really believed in any God etc.

The last one I can think of currently which might not actually fit in this thread, is that I worked out at a very early age (5 or 6) that Santa wasn't real, and came to terms with it entirely by myself (with surprisingly little sadness... that I remember).

Oh yeah, and I didn't speak untill I was four apparently; that I now know is a bit weird, haha.[/i]
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**alexhaz64** · Joined: 01 Mar 2008 Posts: 4480 Location: Long Beach, CA

First thing that comes to mind is the fact that I have 4-6 grandmothers and 3 grandfathers.

My dad was adopted at the age of 8, so he had two sets of parents. Both my dad's and mom's birth parents got divorced, and they have all remarried at least once. My dad's birth mom became lesbian, so for most of my life I have had four grandmothers. My mom's dad left her family when she was 10 or so, and got remarried years later, so technically she is a fifth grandmother (don't see or hear from them very often though). My dad's dad got remarried a few years ago, so technically she is a sixth grandmother. Oh, and my mom's mom was remarried for a while, though they got divorced over a decade ago now. So possibly a fourth grandfather?

Anyway my number of grandparents has always been extremely high. :p And they are all still alive at this time, believe it or not.

Oh I just realized a bigger one probably: My parents had me at a very young age, they are only ~20 years older than me. I never really realized this until other kids would mention how their parents were in their 40s/50s while mine were barely 30. :p (one kid had a parent who, while we were in the 7th grade, had a father who was 65 years old. My parents were 32 at the time.

)

Another one (as if this post isn't long enough) is that my parents remained very good friends after they divorced. (that was in 2003, so not really my childhood, but still) My mom even went to my dad's second wedding. In fact for the last year or so my dad moved into my mom's house after his second divorce for financial reasons. It wasn't the easiest living situation, but they are that good of friends still. I definitely know that isn't the norm for divorced couples :p However I do wish more people would follow their example, at least for their kids' sake. I have to say my childhood/adolescence was great thanks to my parents, and the divorce hardly changed a thing. In fact I'm so used to the situation now that it would just be weird if they ever got back together.
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**youhas** · Joined: 21 Jul 2006 Posts: 3015 Location: Santa Clara, CA

Man, that's a crazy number of grandparents. I only ever had the four, and three of them died before I was born.

Of course, extended families in general always seem a little strange to me. My mom and dad both grew up on the east coast and moved to California shortly after I was born, but almost nobody else from their families relocated. So I have numerous aunts and uncles and cousins... but we're not close in the slightest, and I haven't seen the grand majority of them since I was 12 or something. That whole "let's have a dozen relatives over for the holidays!" or "we're doing the Stevenson Family Reunion at Grandma's in Tuscon this summer!" concept was something I only ever saw in movies and TV shows; I think I just assumed that obviously, that was an accepted entertainment construct, but no real families did anything like that.

(Of course, I also didn't realize that ice cream trucks were a thing that actually still existed in the world until I was 24. I'd only ever seen them in movies and TV shows as well. And Grand Theft Auto 3, I guess.)
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**arvain** · Posted: Thu Jun 06, 2013 8:11 am Post subject:

Well, no ice cream trucks seen around here

Crazy number of grand-parents indeed

Only ever had 4. My dad's father died in 96, my mom's father died 2 years ago. Both my grandmothers are still alive, but one has always lived in Spain, so I barely ever saw her like ten times in my life.

Wtf am I doing posting here anyway. Nothing too weird about my childhood

No religion whatsoever, thank goodness (growing up as a gay male would've turned out even more difficult). I was "the bright kid of the school" until I realized later on that other kids were brighter (big disappointment at the time). Nothing too crazy about my family, my parents are 29 years older than me, my big sister has always done girly / big sistery things to me...

Nah, really, pretty dull childhood actually

*carries on*