# Odd things your family did **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 5, 2007, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916 "2007-02-05T13:39:44Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Flutterby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Flutterby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flutterby)\ **Post date:** [February 9, 2007, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916/101 "2007-02-09T23:10:40Z")
[QUOTE=HelloKitty] Yeah, we did this too!! We lived right next door to my grandpa, so sometimes he would take us for a “Sunday Drive”, usually after church (we were raised Catholic). Sometimes it would be the whole family–Mom, Dad and 4 kids, and if it was a hot day we would alot of times top it off by stopping at the Dairy Queen! Then home in time to catch “Wonderful World of Disney”. Back in the early 70’s there was alot of countryside around us, so us city kids would enjoy seeing horses, cows and other farm animals. [/QUOTE] Ahh, see this was in the 80’s and early 90’s (they stopped when my parents divorced, except for the month we’d spend at Grandma’s in the summer) and we were always home in time to crawl into bed. This was considered odd by my peers. Oh, this one just occured to me. We were not allowed to read or do puzzles and such in the car. We would watch out the window for any sign of animals or anything interesting and try to be the first to spot them. We also played a lot of car games (making words from letters on license plates, counting cars) and if that palled Dad would quiz us on the multiplication table or our spelling. I can still remember sitting in the truck, somewhere out on the highway and proudly spelling \chocolate\ for my Dad (I must’ve been in grade 3 or thereabouts). If we ever asked how long until we got somewhere he would point at the next sign and tell us to multiply the distance (kilometers) by .6 which would give us an approximate time (and I still do it today). This was also odd to my peers, and would seem weird to kids today considering all the handheld toys and portable DVD players and such. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2007, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916/102 "2007-02-10T00:17:25Z")
It was the rule in my family that you weren’t supposed to have anything to drink at dinner. No water, soda, tea or coffee. You were expected to wait until dessert or after the meal. This went for at-home meals and eating out. The craziness of this finally inspired me to rebel when I hit my teens, and began brinking drinks to the dinner table. Surprisingly I was not banished to the attic or struck by lightning. ---
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2007, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916/103 "2007-02-10T01:12:04Z")
[QUOTE=The Chao Goes Mu] We kept our medicine in one of the kitchen cupboards. All of it, aspirin, cold meds, vitamins. It was all right there in the kitchen. Oddly, I still do that today. [/QUOTE] My family did that, but it started when one of my parents had to take medication that had to be kept in a dry place. Later as an adult, I also had some pills that had “keep away from moisture” on the label. And now my cat, Lenny, needs pills before feeding… all in all, a medicine cabinet in the kitchen makes more sense to me. I also keep band-aids in the kitchen rather than the medical cabinet, because in all honestly, chances are if I’m going to cut myself while in the apartment, it will probably happen in the kitchen. We had a bread box groing up. Now, due to limited counter space and the fact that Lenny is bread thief, I keep it in the fridge. The cold seems to delay mold, but the bread gets stale faster. I don’t care, it’s just there to hold the peanut butter. ---
**Author:** ![Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9d8465/32.png) [@Swallowed\_My\_Cellphone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swallowed_My_Cellphone)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2007, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916/104 "2007-02-10T01:13:13Z")
[QUOTE=Jackmannii] It was the rule in my family that you weren’t supposed to have anything to drink at dinner. [/QUOTE] That is weird. Sometimes you need a little extra moisture for chewing. ---
**Author:** ![Full\_Metal\_Lotus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/df705f/32.png) [@Full\_Metal\_Lotus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Full_Metal_Lotus)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2007, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916/105 "2007-02-10T12:56:39Z")
I grew up in the extreme rural part of Alberta Canada, our family settled there in 1907, and there are towns named after various members of my family tree. There are a lot of rural cemetaries with our DNA slowly composting in it, and from each one, my mom would gather a wild strawberry plant and “introduce/transplant” it into our 'wild" (babied, nutured and loved) patch on our property. those are the BEST strawberries I will ever eat… Regards FML ---
**Author:** ![Savannah](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b3f665/32.png) [@Savannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savannah)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2007, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916/106 "2007-02-12T04:27:45Z")
[QUOTE=Dung Beetle] That triggers another one for me (it’s so hard to think of things your family does as “odd”). We were allowed to open one gift on Christmas Eve. I don’t know how many years it was before I noticed it was \*always \* a pair of new jammies. [/QUOTE] Your mother must have known mine. 🙂 Same at our house. ---
**Author:** ![StuffLikeThatThere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc8723/32.png) [@StuffLikeThatThere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StuffLikeThatThere)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2007, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916/107 "2007-02-12T06:41:54Z")
> [@anaamika](#): > > You can’t put your bread in the fridge, I firmly believe. Top of fridge or the freezer, and then you toast the slices when you want them. But what’s the point of putting it in the breadbin? Either your bread takes up room or the breadbin takes up more room. Is there some more advantage to doing that? You have a breadbox so that when someone says, “I have a present for you!” you can say, “Is it bigger than a breadbox?” and thus start the required guessing game before receiving the aforementioned present. Really, I think that’s what they’re for! > [@The Chao Goes Mu](#): > > We kept our medicine in one of the kitchen cupboards. All of it, aspirin, cold meds, vitamins. It was all right there in the kitchen. Oddly, I still do that today. I don’t think that’s weird at all. That’s what we did growing up, and it’s what we do now. Some medicines, as has been mentioned, are supposed to be in a dry place. Plus, Mr. Stuff gets our vitamins and daily stuff out every morning while I’m cooking breakfast and puts it by our plates. He should have to schlep to the bathroom to get the stuff? 🙂 > [@Jimson Jim](#): > > For years my parents wouldn’t throw out bacon fat. It was poured into a coffee cup reserved for that purpose and kept in the fridge. The fat was re-used to fry eggs, brown beef or other meats or my personal favorite, make popcorn. I still do this sometimes just out of habit though I never use it. It just sits around till I scoop it out into the trash. Mr. Stuff’s mom did this, and it took a while to convince him that I really wasn’t going to. First, I hate frying bacon, so there isn’t much bacon fat around. Second, I don’t WANT to fry things in bacon fat! Third, I don’t want a little jar of bacon fat sitting around in my kitchen. Yech. When PAM, olive oil, and butter all simultaneously become unavailable, perhaps I’ll be sorry. But I’m taking my chances. When I was a kid, we could only have two boxes of cereal open at once, to prevent six open boxes with crumbs in the bottom. I understand my mom’s point, but it led to a lot of ruthless strategizing. The person who emptied a box could open a new one, of their choice, if they didn’t quite have a full bowl. A great deal of energy was expended trying to manage the boxes just right so you could open your favorite. ---
**Author:** ![E.Thorp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@E.Thorp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E.Thorp)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2007, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916/108 "2007-02-12T07:17:39Z")
[QUOTE=Fiddle Peghead] Not especially weird, but this is as good a place as any to get the answer to a question that’s nagging me since I was a kid in the 70’s. My family always refered to a knit cap (stocking cap) as a “toboggan”. We’re from southwest Virginia. The first time I used this word outside of the area, people looked at my like I was insane. Anyone else use this terminology, and where are you from if you do? [/QUOTE] \*\*jsgoddess \*\*beat me to it, but I wanted to chime in and say I also grew up calling the knit cap a toboggan. South-central Ohio (Chillicothe). Nice to know this regionalism – one of my favorites from childhood, along with “the lawn needs mowed” – made it as far as Virginia. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2007, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916/109 "2007-02-12T08:07:31Z")
[QUOTE=Jackmannii] It was the rule in my family that you weren’t supposed to have anything to drink at dinner. No water, soda, tea or coffee. You were expected to wait until dessert or after the meal. This went for at-home meals and eating out. The craziness of this finally inspired me to rebel when I hit my teens, and began brinking drinks to the dinner table. Surprisingly I was not banished to the attic or struck by lightning. [/QUOTE] Hmm… that might be a good strategy. Perhaps by having this silly rule, your parents subtly encouraged you to satisfy your desire to rebel in an entirely non-threatening and actually quite socially acceptable way. Parents, take note. ---
**Author:** ![Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/c4cdca/32.png) [@Quiddity\_Glomfuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quiddity_Glomfuster)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2007, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916/110 "2007-02-12T08:35:59Z")
[QUOTE=Tahssa] I catch myself doing this too from time to time too. We didn’t have a remote in our house until I was about 12. Somehow my dad convinced my brother and I that being nominated as the channel switcher for the night was a reward. My brother and I would fight over who got to get up and change the channel when it was desired to be changed. [/quote] That’s hilarious! Heck, I’ve heard stuff like that in comedy routines. Your dad was a genius. We need folks like him in the Middle East! ---
**Author:** ![Caterpillar22](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5a626/32.png) [@Caterpillar22](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caterpillar22)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2007, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916/111 "2007-02-12T08:50:29Z")
I come from a very affectionate family. Lots of hugs, lots of kisses, and we always say “I love you.” This didn’t end after the kids grew up, and as adults we are still that way. Most of my friends growing up came from very similar houses, so I never thought it was strange. Maybe its a small town, big family thing…I don’t know. My boyfriend’s family is different. His dad doesn’t hug anybody accept his wife, and that is very occasionally. Affection between men is called a handshake. A lot of affection is given to the children, but it stops come puberty. The only time I see hugs are at get-togethers when they haven’t seen a person in a long time, or if someone is leaving for an extended period. In the year that I’ve been with him, I’ve never once heard them say “I love you” to each other. I mean, its obvious they love each other, but it still bothers me. They’re not by any means cold or unfriendly otherwise, but being around that makes me incredibly uncomfortable. [QUOTE=LorieSmurf] One weird thing my family also did (and I don’t know why we did it), is that we announced when we had to go to the bathroom. For instance, we would be watching TV, and my mom would get up and say “I have to go to the bathroom”. It wasn’t a proclamation or anything, just a casual remark. I never really thought it was weird, until I grew older and noticed that _other families did not do this._. [/QUOTE] Haha! We did the same thing growing up. I never even thought about that until just now. Apparently I still announce it, I just asked my SO. I don’t even notice. _laughs_ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/odd-things-your-family-did/390916.md?page=5)