You've probably experienced that moment when you share a childhood memory that you think is perfectly normal and a friend or spouse is like, "Uhhh...that's unhinged."
The response in the comments was overwhelming (and hilarious). Here are some of the best replies:
1. "My brother-in-law's family shares bath water. They fill the bathtub once and took turns. They thought my sister was 'being fancy' when she insisted on her own bath water."
2. "When we started dating, my husband informed me that the expression is 'a force of habit,' NOT 'a horse of habit' — which I had been saying for over 20 years."
3. "In the '60s and '70s, it was pretty common for families in my area to keep turtles in their basements to eat bugs — just free-range bug-eating basement turtles. Apparently, my family did this before I was born. My older siblings all remember the basement turtle. The first time I even heard about this was about a year ago, and I'm in my 40s. I'm still dumbfounded."
4. "When I eat popcorn, I have to swish it in my mouth with water or Diet Coke before I swallow it. I’ve been doing this since I was a kid, but my family did NOT teach me this — it’s just something I started doing on my own."
5. "My family always used to call a remote control a 'God box.' I didn’t realize this was odd until my college roommate clued me in."
6. "I didn’t realize until I was a grown adult that other people don’t say 'they have long toes' to mean somebody is overly sensitive. Also, my family used 'dookie' for 'dishcloth' and 'not a chicken on the road' for 'nobody in sight.'"
7. "My dad casually mentioned that his high school swim class in Illinois was taught naked, and I just...could not. The pool at the school I went to is literally surrounded by windows — I can't imagine what that must have been like."
8. "It wasn’t until a month ago that I learned a song my family used to sing was made up by my uncle. I thought it was a very common song growing up. It goes: 'your mama, your daddy, your bald-headed granny with the big behind like Frankenstein, walking down the street saying beep beep beep on the Sesame Street.'"
9. "I’ve always called phone charger bricks 'charger butts.' My poor son didn’t realize this was strange until he said it in front of a friend."
10. "My family addressed everyone as 'poosh' or 'pushka.' We still call everyone 'poosh,' and it drives people mad for some reason."
11. "My dad was constantly flexing his vocabulary skills, so I learned the biggest words I could and used them in casual conversation. As I got older, I realized how weird it was for a 6-year-old to walk around saying, 'it sure is peculiar weather today, isn’t it?' Like the way little kids talk, but with big words that don’t quite fit. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t have friends until I got older and figured out normal people don’t talk like 1940s radio announcers."
12. "I call small pieces of garbage and paper 'frible.' I legit thought this was a real word. My husband still laughs at me when I say it."
13. "When I was young, my mom had a jar of rocks sitting next to an empty jar. Whenever I did like 30 minutes of something technology-related (like using my Nintendo DS), I would have to go move my rock to the empty jar. When I went to kindergarten, I was surprised that we didn’t have an empty jar — and I was even more surprised in high school when I realized no one else had this experience except for my sisters and me."
14. "I made chorizo and eggs for breakfast once and placed the bowl in front of my boyfriend. He then looked at me and asked 'where’s the mayonnaise?' I was so thrown off. A few weeks later, his mom made chorizo. As I was making my plate, she asked, 'Wait, don’t you want mayonnaise?' So apparently they all do it."
15. "Whenever someone in my family is laughing about anything at all we add 'like like what road it on?' to the conversation, and everyone laughs even harder. No one knows why we say it anymore. I tried to explain it to friends, and they think I’m nuts."
16. "BMJ: bacon, mustard, and jelly sandwiches. Don’t knock it 'til you’ve tried it!"
"We always put jam on the outside of our grilled cheese sandwiches. Apparently thats weird, but I dont care because it is so tasty."
17. "My family still uses the 'baby words' for random objects. For example, I still call blankets 'beeps' because that's what I said when I was a kid, and my family called them that my whole life. One night, my boyfriend was staying over and I told him not to use a blanket because it was the 'dog beep,' and he was like 'WTF???'"
18. "My family didn’t do birthday spanks, but we had 'the bumps.' We'd grab the birthday boy or girl, toss them in the air, and kick them on the way down. One toss and kick per birthday, plus an extra one for luck. It wasn’t quite as bad as it sounds."
Some responses have been edited for length and clarity.