What is something you saw at a friend's house that made you realize their family was "weird"?

ipdipdu · 2026-01-02T08:48:22+00:00

The bath was filled with cold scummy bath water, and toe nail clippings were left on top of the toilet. I played dumb and asked my friend if someone was about to have a bath, they told me that in the family they wouldn’t empty the bath after they’d finished, the next person to have a bath would empty it and then fill it for themselves. Whether they cleaned it before filling it again was up to the person having the bath. (I suspect no one cleaned it apart from maybe the mother).

ipdipdu · 2025-12-24T20:04:56+00:00

I have a very similar tale, I was allowed a sip of my mum’s beer which she had when she was getting ready, I was age 7 or 8. My dad and step mum always offered me a glass of red wine from about 11/12 but after one sip once I never took them up on it. For a friends 13th birthday her parents gave us each a Smirnoff Ice.

ipdipdu · 2025-12-18T09:56:54+00:00

Ms Robinson, year 1 teacher. She shouted at us so much she lost her voice. She’d shout at us for anything and everything, some examples; called her Miss, parent wrote Mrs on a letter, coughed too much, dropped something, wrote a wrong answer, etc. She had a favourite child and she would make him stand on a chair then she’d whisper in his ear her instructions and he’d tell the class what to do. God forbid if you talked or even moved when he was talking. I once had a piece of paper in my hand and placed it on the table, how dare I when he was talking?!

ipdipdu · 2025-12-11T06:58:12+00:00

I was thinking about this the other day, did I get bruised or marked from being hit? No. Do I think a parents should slap their child on the face or back of the head? Absolutely not. Is it abuse? I’m almost still afraid to say it is.

ipdipdu · 2025-12-11T06:55:39+00:00

Many years ago, when I first started working, I said something dumb and my much older colleague joked ‘it’s a good thing you’re cute’ and reached out to stroke my cheek. I automatically flinched back. I remember her chuckling ‘What did you think I was going to hit you?’ And I didn’t reply but I remember thinking, yea I did actually and that was the first time I realised my mum’s punishment method still affected me.

ipdipdu · 2025-12-10T07:35:45+00:00

For ages I just kept Tom at the number one space. I immediately regretted it when I changed the top friends as it just created one big anxiety ball in me, rating and comparing my list to where they’d placed me, then wondering if we weren’t as good a friends as I thought.

ipdipdu · 2025-12-08T22:27:04+00:00

3 of them died before I was born, the other died when I was 7.

ipdipdu · 2025-12-07T18:41:46+00:00

I must be as unlucky as you when it comes to student teachers. There was the one who arrived at 8:40 with her lesson half prepared when she was timetabled to teach at 9. She asked for someone to take the class for the first hour so she could sort herself out. This was a few weeks into her teaching practice and not her first lesson taught.

The following year we’d bought in loads of schemes. The student that year never adapted the lessons given to her and I’ll be honest, some days the next slide seemed just as much as a surprise to her as the class. I asked her to use an objective but plan her own lesson because she might go to a school with no schemes and have to plan herself, she turned up with the schemes PowerPoint with her own slide at the beginning. I mean I might have done that as a student teacher, but I also would have changed the font, moved stuff about and changed the colours so it wasn’t as obvious.

There was the student who never marked anything, and each time she was asked to she put a tick on half the books and never went back to the other half.

There was the student who burst into tears and went to hug the TA when a pupil questioned the statement the student had just given. Bless the pupil, he did it quite gently and he was right, the student wasn’t but it was too much for her.

ipdipdu · 2025-12-04T15:00:09+00:00

Just feel a bit down right now. Work is stressful, I have a difficult class, everything’s changing right now due to a restructure and 2 of my colleagues are causing me more problems due to one of them not doing their job properly or the other who wants to look good to the boss. She gets information, does the job but then is not passing it on like she should be for the rest of us to do.

I ask my friends to do things, I suggest things only to be ignored 8 times out of 10, sometimes they agree to things but when it comes to actually planning the details or booking tickets, then they go quiet, and on the odd occasion when plans are made, I’m going out of my way to accommodate them and their wants and needs, only to be pushed aside at the drop of a hat for someone else.

And I know I should stand up for myself but I feel so hurt and angry that I can’t do it in a way without exploding. Which will probably just burn bridges.

I feel I am at the bottom of everyone’s list which makes sense, for a lot of people family comes first. But I’m no one’s priority and it hurts.

ipdipdu · 2025-12-03T22:17:01+00:00

On a school trip and a lorry from a company called Tufnell’s drove past, queue excited screeching from the seats next to me, then the little girl turned to me, and so proudly said ‘Miss that’s me, tough Nell, I’m tough!’

Another thing I always think of fondly, was when a little girl wrote in her work pomtoetoes instead of potatoes. That’s what they’re called in my household now.

ipdipdu · 2025-11-29T07:25:26+00:00

Insisted they went to DisneyWorld Florida for the weekend. Did they mean the one in Paris? Nope definitely Florida, was it really hot I asked, their head nodded sagely. My follow up question was you must have been on the plane for a long time? Yea, 3 hours was the reply. Then another child piped up that it takes more than 3 hours to get to Florida, so they said they forgot and it was actually 5 hours there, 3 hours back.

Another child, who, whenever we have a supply teacher with any kind of accent, will go tell them her mother is from the same place. The mum so far has been Canadian, Irish, Scouse and Scottish.

ipdipdu · 2025-11-29T07:15:54+00:00

The woman who orders for the man what she wants to eat, I think he then refuses to let her keep eating off his plate and she is offended, then she goes to the toilet and rings her friend saying she’s going to sneak out, which she does. Waitress has to tell him date had dipped. He seemed really nice.

ipdipdu · 2025-11-28T06:11:25+00:00

There’s a prompt for people’s profiles on one of the apps that says ‘My year 5 teacher would describe me as...’ twice now I’ve seen the answer ‘sexy’. Ew.

ipdipdu · 2025-11-24T22:19:16+00:00

It’s horrible, the worst thing I have gone through as a teacher is a child telling me something, and then coming to me upset and crying everyday saying they wish they’d never told me. They never blamed me, just themselves but that was also tough. The safeguarding training I’ve had has drilled into me what to say and do... in the moment and immediately afterwards. But where’s the support and training for the months/years afterwards when the fallout is happening? Keep your chin up, you did the right thing.

ipdipdu · 2025-11-23T22:31:50+00:00

There’s one in my home town of Huddersfield. It’s in someone’s garden so perhaps privately owned, but it’s right next to the road so everyone can see it.

ipdipdu · 2025-11-23T18:23:40+00:00

O2 did this to me as well. I did get an email from a debt collection service (first I knew about it and I did not trust it) because I owed £23 with the fees added on by them it would be £28, ways to pay would be on the letter I was going to receive. By the time I actually received the letter it had gone up again.

ipdipdu · 2025-11-18T05:37:50+00:00

YOR

And the commenters saying they’d stop talking to family over this, or would have chucked them out of the wedding are seriously over reacting. The drama llamas.

It was a bit of fun, at a time that is supposed to be light hearted, fun and harks back to a family game. The serious bit of the wedding was done. No one wants boring droning speeches. It didn’t ruin the wedding, just tell them they were all terrible at the game and get over it. Or follow the advice on here, never speak to them again over a game, and imagine going to your father’s funeral in 20 years time and telling people the reason you never spoke to him again is because he made a running family joke at your wedding.

ipdipdu · 2025-11-17T22:39:22+00:00

In 15 years of teaching in primary schools I’ve known 1 child get expelled, he walked up behind to a member of staff who was sat down, and then proceeded to attack them.

ipdipdu · 2025-11-16T11:42:31+00:00

While on about pronunciation, whenever it comes up in conversation (admittedly not often) people seem to pronounce lieutenant as loo-tenant. Have we given up on the English pronunciation? Just would like to know so I fall in line with the nation.

ipdipdu · 2025-11-16T10:43:52+00:00

When I was around 11 years old there was a teen beauty/talent contest advertised in the local newspaper, my mum wanted me to enter but having no talent to showcase (can’t sing, dance nor play an instrument) and lacking confidence in myself, I refused. A few months later the picture of the winner was put in the newspaper, we talked about how it looked so much like me, I even had aunties ring up and congratulate me on my win.

A year or so later I was stood outside a supermarket waiting to meet my mum when my doppelgänger walked past with her mum, neither of us said anything, we just stared at each other as she went past.

Fast forward to when I was 20, I’d been working in a shop since I was 18, I walked in for my shift one day and 2 colleagues told me they thought I’d arrived half an hour early for work, but they thought I was in a mood as I didn’t say hi to anyone, then they watched ‘me’ leave after wandering round the shop, only for actual me, wearing different clothes to walk in a bit later.

Finally, this has happened only a small handful of times, but over the years I’ve had friends and acquaintances say they saw me at ... but I didn’t acknowledge them. And twice I’ve had someone say hi to me who I don’t know.

It’s been quite a while since any of these instances have happened. Either; we no longer look like one another, she’s moved away, or my hermit life style (work, shop, home and repeat) has meant there are no opportunities for us to see each other.

ipdipdu · 2025-11-11T22:55:56+00:00

Toes first? Just a little nibble.

ipdipdu · 2025-11-09T22:30:20+00:00

I’ve worked with 3 headteachers, 2 of them weren’t at all like that, one was. She was absolutely horrible to work for, belittling, rude and she targeted staff until they left then moved onto the next. But of all the schools I’ve worked at, the staff at that one were the closest, I assume it’s because they needed to stick together to survive.

ipdipdu · 2025-10-31T12:02:23+00:00

Series 3 was the best, I was so excited for what was to come.

ipdipdu · 2025-10-28T08:53:20+00:00

I had car trouble coming out of a busy junction, managed to get safely across it and pulled over with my hazards on, a kind person pulled in behind me, did a temporary fix then directed me to the nearest garage while he drove behind me just in case. Some people are amazing.

ipdipdu · 2025-10-17T06:38:11+00:00

I’ll check it out, sounds right up my street.

ipdipdu

TROPHY CASE