I have exactly these moments. I also feel the same way about my mom, and about the extended family, teachers, my doctor. All the people who should have seen the signs and did nothing.
I was driving tractors at my cousin’s farms really early. It still doesn’t seem weird to me that this would happen.
More WTF to me was the random (adult) guy who called the pay phone at our school to try and talk dirty to girls.
I just remember my parents’ dinner parties. Twelve drunken adults, and twenty ashtrays to clean afterwards.
The main thing I can think of is this one older guy who invited me to sit with him at the Walmart food court back when that was a thing. I was 8 or 8. I enjoyed going to that food court to get an icee, and was waiting on my parents. We had a long conversation about my ideas for TV shows of all things. In retrospect, the way he acted was a bit odd, and I remember my parents being a bit weird about me talking to him. I still don’t know if he just was actually odd or if he had some other intent.
As a kid, all I noticed was that one of my TV show ideas became a show on Nickelodeon later that year: The Secret World of Alex Mack. And I was sure this man had stolen my idea. (Even though my idea was actually closer to Static Shock.)
I did hear some messed up stories. For some reason, around ninth grade or so, I turned into this guy that everyone wanted to tell their life story to. I basically went around talking to everyone, and they really seemed to trust me with stuff. This one girl told me about this perverted teacher who would arrange situations in his class to get girls to bend over, and that she had taken advantage of that to get much better grades than she deserved. I found out junior high girls were dating 24-year olds and getting pregnant. And about tons of drunk escapades at the junior high parking lot for some reason, including one girl I fancied being naked and hiding from the cops.
But all of that was stuff people told me. I can’t really think of much that I actually observed or experienced. Maybe the teacher with big breasts whose nipples you could sometimes see? Or the teacher that seemed a bit too lenient with the athletic guys, with rumors about her? Or the drama teacher my senior year who always seemed a slight bit creepy, and it turned out he’d had a sexual relationship with a girl I knew?
I remember random grown adults attacking or pushing me for no reason happening semi-frequently when I was a kid, and this was in the 90’s. For example once I was running through Wal-Mart trying to get to the cashier after grabbing some soap my mom had forgot to purchase and a grown man in his 40’s I had never seen before randomly clothes-lines me and yelled DON’T RUN IN THE STORE KID. I also remember being at a Parents-Teacher Conference in Elementary school and a random family decided to violently push me to the ground after I “got in their way” when I accidentally broke the sacred tether between their child and them despite the fact the child was standing a good 6 feet away from them and I was trying to get past them as they stood in a hallway.
Well, make up your mind - which is it?
I’m ‘only’ 33 and had a relatively sheltered upbringing so nothing really weird happened, but it was a bit odd that a former teacher of mine, who after he retired I got to know quite well in another context, decided a good 18th birthday present for me was a large box of condoms. If it’s possible, I think it was meant in the right way - I put it down to the fact that he had two daughters and no sons, and sort of ‘adopted’ me slightly, perhaps thought it was something I might be embarrassed to purchase myself (probably fair). I have no qualms about the guy, much less think he is a danger to anyone, and we’re still good friends today. But yeah, weird and inappropriate.
Oops. That second one was supposed to be a 9.
I’d originally said I was 6, but I looked up when the Alex Mack show came out. I didn’t notice I’d made a mistake in my edit.
I can think of a few who I thought were weird. Mostly I just think about the occasions when I got punished or criticized or ignored, and didn’t deserve it. I has this idea that I wasn’t allowed to talk back, or insist on fair treatment, and sometimes I just lacked the vocabulary or cognitive skills to express myself.
I like to think that if I were somehow sent back in time, modern-day JB99 would be more prone to say, “What the fuck, man?”
my high school spanish teacher had a secret relationship with a student and married her shortly after she graduated (she was pregnant already at that time :dubious:). of course my peers and i were apalled, but i recently discovered (via an old friend) that the entire staff and faculty knew what was going on the whole time! wtf? 
Speaking of pickup trucks, I distinctly remember when I was around 10 sitting in the open bed with 5 or 6 other kids while being driven to the local beach which was located about 3 miles out of town.
It’s not unusual for 14 year olds to be driving trucks. My brother stole one and when my mom arrived at the station the officer told her that for a 14 year old, my brother was the best driver he’d ever seen.
As Boy Scouts, we regularly went on trips hundreds of miles away in the back of pickups.
I don’t look back on this with quite the same shock, because it was just how things were. People accepted a higher risk than now.
One of my friends moms growing up was the “Cool Mom” in the 90’s sense, she was a bored housewife who decided to start playing video games and reading comics instead of watching daytime TV like a “normal” person. Pretty soon she was the person who would help us with complicated jumps in Super Mario Bros 2 or advanced puzzles in The Legend of Zelda. Thinking back though it was pretty obvious there was something wrong with her like she had an obsessive personality because the moment she really started getting into video games her entire household turned to crap. The longer I knew her as that “Cool Mom” the more and more obvious it was that dirty clothes and dishes were piling up all around the house and nobody seemed to mind but myself. I remember staying the night at my friends house and waking up to go pee and saw his mom playing NES at 4AM in the morning with a bunch of hours old TV dinners on the table next to her.
Not WTF, but more huh?
One the few memories of our time in Japan in the 60’s (we left just before I turned 4) was my Mom or Dad holding up to pull the handle on a slot machine. I was told that the casino was on a military base and that’s why that took me in with them.
I also remember my same age friend and I playing house and sleeping under the poker table at my friend’s parents house every Friday and Saturday while my parents played poker into the early morning.
Surprisingly, I don’t have a gambling addiction or compulsion, but like my Dad, I don’t stop until I’ve lost every coin (I could find a convenient penny slot machine, I’d use my pennies), when I used to go to Vegas with my folks. I really don’t care if I win or lose (never came home with more than I went with), it’s just the idea of playing. Hmm…maybe I do have a compulsion.
When my brother decided to teach my brother to drive when he was 15, he was shocked that my brother already knew how to drive. My brother told him that his friends had been letting him drive since he was 12. This was in the 60’s.
I’ve wanted to clothesline a number of kids running around the stores. Especially those that bump or squeeze past me. When I was growing up, going out anywhere, especially to the department store was a privilege as I’d usually get a toy and/or candy.
I may have run in a store once. Until my Dad caught my by the ear.
Edit: I have this unfulfilled fantasy of “accidentally” tripping a running kid and saying: “Awww, you fall down, go boom. Good thing you weren’t running FASTER!”
Edit 2: There was a time when kids would say sorry or excuse me if they bumped into you. Now, no more. 
Pretty sure I saw that movie too.
There was an elementary school teacher who used to give out birthday spankings. I think it was innocent, but that would surely get her in trouble today, and it was pretty risky in the late 80s to early 90s when it took place.
There was a teacher who sometimes laughed along when some kids picked on a mentally impaired boy in homeroom. This was weird because I also had her for class, and she was a perfectly normal teacher, but there were several times when people would make snide comments to this kid, and she never stopped it. In fact, she’d smirk about it.
I posted this in another thread.
When I was in intermediate school, one of the music teachers would “accidentally” leave his Playboy in his desk drawer. Some of the guys told me that if you left money, you could take the issue and he’d replace it with new one. I also heard that he would “leave” a Penthouse (hot stuff back then) if you asked, and other more risque mags if you asked.
About a decade later, I read a news article that we was found showing pornos (real film back then!) in the music room closet to some of his male students. Heaven knows what else went on the closet!
Edit: The other music teacher was a wimpy old man who my brother (who’s older) said was locked in the music closet and let out only when he cried. I told my friends the story, but stopped talking about after finally asking him straight out if the story was true and he said it was. I still thought he was a wimp, but tried to keep my friends from on picking him too much after that.
Sadly, I think there has never been a time when adults would routinely say sorry or excuse me if they bumped into children. Children are junior, and don’t actually deserve respect or consideration to far too many adults.
I apologize to everyone young or old if I bump into them. Just common courtesy.
That said, I’m actually laughing thinking and writing about this story.
Once at a Sears Dollar Days sale (remember when they’d put up a big tent), I bought a rubber mallet and after looking at it let it drop to my side. It mysteriously bounced back and when I looked down to see why, there was a little girl rubbing the top of her head and staring at me. I didn’t say anything and since AFAIK, no one saw what happened, just walked away smiling! 
You must be in your 40’s by now, but “I’m sorry, little girl!”. :smack: