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