Odd things you liked doing as a kid

[Couldlifeeverbesaneagain]

I always wanted to be a teacher when I grew up and would make my own worksheets with a black felt pen on a plain piece of paper which I'd then have go at completing myself in pencil. This was when I was about 7

I always thought I was odd for doing this as most of my friends hated school whereas I loved it.

I also used to make my own bus timetables for different stops around the house and pick up my dolls and teddies and put them in the basket bus that I'd drag around with string

I am an only child so enjoyed making my own entertainment - I am now a normal adult I swear!

What *odd* things did you used to do as a child? Keen to hear your experiences!

 

[Blowup80]

I used to draw bras on the page 3 girl in the paper before my Dad got home from work

 

[Dancing Dave]

Not to break up this thread but what a sweet dose of serotonin this thread has given me on this miserable (weather wise) night! I'm howling, we all really the same people behind closed doors

 

[sylviepie]

Another only child here! I used to:
- climb in low-down kitchen cupboard to lick the salt shaker
- write "end credits" for my school class and teachers as if we were characters in a film, and decide on fitting names for the "actors" playing us
- keep my video tapes of Neighbours in a rucksack in my room in case of fire (999 the telly programme responsible for that)
- accidentally invented prostitution for my Barbies by saying Ken could kiss them for a fee
- get my auntie to write out then mark some sums (she's a teacher). I'd also get maths books to do at home.
- pretended to my mum and dad that we were getting homework, and I'd come up with my own assignments.
- come up with stories while playing tennis against the back wall, which I'd say out loud.
- if I got scared while trying to go to sleep, I'd make my way downstairs (with the lights on) with my hands on my bum as if that would protect me from behind.
- called Intercity trains Durham Trains because that's where we went on them.

 

[nbt]

I used to walk around with a mirror held beneath my chin, so then it was like I was walking on the ceilings. I used to “step” over the doors because in the mirror it’d look like there was a step but there actually wasn’t.

I bet my parents thought I was a right dickhead.

 

[HoGi]

Me and my sister would play "cafés" but not us serving. We would pretend we were in somewhere like Debenhams cafe and we would go to the fridge with a tray and chose our lunch. Mum would wrap a roll and stick some crisps in there etc. So it was like visiting a café

 

[TheScarletgirl]

I use to do lots of weird stuff. Me and my cousins use to pretend we were in big brother and set up their house to look like it. We even put a paddling pool in the garden and the cupboard was the diary room. One of us would pretend to be 'big brother ' and ask questions about each other.

 

[BattleAxing]

Just a few more:

Other kids my age were starting to drink on the park. Where as I would be fashioning a fishing net out of a pair of low denier tights place them on each side of the canal and catch all the sticklebacks all by myself. I liked collecting various forms of pond life.

Making disgusting concoctions out of every liquid in the house.

Digging mud up and sieving it, then trying to sell it to the neighbours. Complete with yet another song - a spoof of dads army advertising what we called Broggalog which we claimed in the song would help revive weeds. Someone did actually buy it too. Probably because they rightly assumed we were really poor.

I was obsessed with dogs and would go up to complete strangers dogs to ask their name and pet them. I had a log of every dog I had ever met with its name and breed.

I would make these things called “Sand Cats” which was just balls of claggy mud rolled in sand that looked like turds. I still to this day have no idea what my objective was. But it was something I did really often.

 

[LittleMy]

Another one that played schools all the time - not an only child but I loved it.
Also used to drink malt vinegar from the bottle.

I also drank malt vinegar from the bottle!

Used to play Blind Date with my friends in the school playground. My best male friend always insisted that he was Cilla Black (he came out when we were 16).

I also used to draw black eyes around my Barbie dolls’ eyes with pen so they looked like they’d been having a Barney. My mum used to go apeshit.

 

[BattleAxing]

My Gran had Kays Catalogue … anyone remember that?

It would be the first thing I reached for when I went to her house, but not to look at toys. I would turn to the bedroom furniture pages and imagine what bed and furniture I would have, and then go to the clothing pages to choose clothes and put them in my imaginary wardrobes. I could actually physically see myself putting coats in the end wardrobe, skirts in another etc

I did this and would be so happy to find a catalogue in someone else’s house I didn’t have like Kay’s or Freeman’s, I would not look at toys but all the houseware stuff envisaging an entire house. I would even be able to “pick up” where I left off.

I would also write lists of all my classmates and give them job titles.

Dry hump the sofa arms and call it “rubbing pigeons”

In a moving car I would envisage a small super Mario like character jumping over all the obstacles like a platform game.

I played out from quite a young age and would place a fizzer or Parma violet on the floor then cordon it off from other children and claim it was drugs and I was waiting for the police.

If I found a shopping trolley on my estate I would place my little brother in the seat and go “imaginary” shopping. Saying what stuff I was buying as I was pushing him along. I felt grown up haha.

I also “managed” a busking act which involved dressing my little brother up in an old yellow rain mac that belonged to my dad and my sister playing a guitar and singing. I wrote them a song called “banana with no common sense” and would make them perform this outside in the hope passers by would give us money. No one ever did.

 

[SwimmingPigs]

Bring cups into the bath with me and pretend I was a bartender (serving bathwater and bubbles)

I invented a game at primary school called 'the bloody game' where one person would be the murderer and everyone else had to run away from them - if they were caught, they would be 'killed'.

When I went fishing with my dad I would help some of the maggots (used as bait) to 'escape'

I once chewed up some bread and rolled it into balls on a baking tray, then tried to serve to my family

 

[Skyeball]

Made perfume out of rose petals and water. Once beheaded a full rose for this and my nan and grandad didn't mind. Can you imagine not minding? My mum would have took the scholl sandal to my backside for spoiling our garden at home
Some of my family lived semi rurally and rented some land for livestock, I used to spend quite a lot of time burying my hands in the corn and feed pellets. No idea why.
Also used to write poems and read them out to the eggs in the incubators to help the ducks and chickens hatch properly.
I did the catalogue thing (Avon included..Heather Shimmer anyone?)too, convinced I'd have a kitchen full of Eternal Beau when I got married to a nice man and had lots of babies.
Did get married to a nice man and had a reasonable flock of babies, not a sniff of Eternal Beau in the equation. I've been had.

 

[Rainbow1]

My Mum used to wear slips under her skirts for work
I used to put them on my head and pretend I had long silky hair

 

[Lalla]

Another only child here. I was often referred to as having a 'rich imagination'. TBH I think half my family thought I was a right little oddball.

I used to:

Make my poor mother play boarding schools with me. This was when I was about 7-8 and obsessed with Malory Towers, St Clares, Chalet School etc. So I used to write my mum letters 'from boarding school' and she would have to send me written replies. She had a lot of patience.

We lived in a cul de sac (or as it's known in Essex a banjo ) so I used to play out a lot. We made rosewater perfume from rose petals (always smelt vile) and I also had snail collections - basically a group of snails collected from around and about, the challenge was to find unusual or very small ones. I'd keep them in tupperware for about a week with a selection of leaves until they died/ my mum found them, whichever happened first. I used to also play reporters and interview my parents about events in the news

I cut my Sindys hair into a bob, pierced her ears and added makeup with felt tips. She looked very cool. She was also in a same sex relationship with another Sindy (mainly because I didn't have a brother I could borrow an Action Man from) and they adopted a baby

I used to regularly draw the outside of my future homes - front and back elevations and floorplans of the layout/ furniture positions.

When I was a bit older, 11 or so, when I was home alone during the school holidays, some days I would put on makeup and a dress and be a newsreader - I'd sit in the living room with a table and some papers in front of me and read aloud the Ceefax news (I have never told anyone this before )

I was also clearly ahead of my time as around the same age I would also do makeup/ hair/ cleaning tutorials to entertain myself - where I'd do a whole voice over (just to myself, not recorded or anything, this was the early 80s, we didn't even have a video recorder let alone a video camera!) about what I was doing, how to achieve different looks etc. Jesus if I'd been born 30 years later I might have become an influenza. What a horrible thought!

 

[watermelon sugar]

I used to set up all my teddy bears up so it was like a tv studio doing the news so I put a teddy bear behind 2 chairs, set more teddy bears up as a tv crew, like they were filming, and I was the weather girl I used to want to be a weather girl when I was little.

when I was in the bath I used to swish backwards and forward like I was in a whirlpool. Used to do my mums head in

 

[Beauhead]

I used to eat the fruity lip glosses from Avon lol

 

[Pesky Tarian]

I used to write little menus and play waitress taking orders from imaginary people.
On car journeys I liked to look out of the window and pretend I was in the music video for a sad song

 

[BattleAxing]

Matter of fact I used to deface everybody in the newspaper along with it - usually missing teeth and hitleresque moustaches.

 

[HoGi]

We had a window that was a bit larger than normal so I could sit at it and my knees were level with the window sill.

I used to sit there and pretend I worked in the bank and stamp bits of paper (like they used to with paying in books etc)

 

[prozacprincess]

My Gran had Kays Catalogue … anyone remember that?

It would be the first thing I reached for when I went to her house, but not to look at toys. I would turn to the bedroom furniture pages and imagine what bed and furniture I would have, and then go to the clothing pages to choose clothes and put them in my imaginary wardrobes. I could actually physically see myself putting coats in the end wardrobe, skirts in another etc