Recently, we asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about the weirdest things their families do that they didn't realize were weird until recently. Here are some of their answers that made us say, "Oh...?":
1. "Something that no one can ever understand about my family is how my parents decided to name me and my sisters. My dad chose our first names and my mom chose our last names. Yes, we all have different surnames!"
2. "Every Christmas, we would have a themed family photo shoot. This sounds normal, but the photos we took were...strange. We would always have a theme and all my siblings, cousins, second cousins, parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and great-grandparents would have to dress up for that theme. Like one year we did 'at the zoo' and we all, even the very elderly family members, had to dress up as a different animal and pose for a very extravagant photo."
3. "No poop knife in my house, but we used wire coat hangers to pick big poops out of our butts, but then we threw out the used ones."
4. "If I got something in my eye when I was little, my parents would lightly suck on my eye to get it out."
5. "We have a rubber chicken that gets hidden all over the kitchen. Whoever finds it gets to hide it again. Now that my siblings and I have all grown up, we each have our own 'kitchen chicken.'"
6. "My mom has always had towels that hang on the racks in our bathrooms for looks that were nicer and more expensive than the ones we actually used. My dad calls them the 'looking towels.'"
7. "When we had dinner, if you took a bite that was too hot (temperature wise), the rest of the family would blow into your mouth until it cooled off."
8. "All the women in my family worked as nurses in the '80s and '90s. I don't know if it was common practice, but my mom and my aunts always brought home those small knit hospital blankets, and my favorite sheets were the blue hospital sheets. As a kid, my painting smock was an OR surgical gown and I even decorated Christmas cookies with plastic syringes. The weirdest one was whenever I had to clean the bathrooms, we used surgical lap pads to clean the mirrors. I thought they were just regular cloths, and it wasn't until a decade later when I was watching Grey's Anatomy that I realized they were used in surgery to soak up blood in body cavities."
9. "Every few days, I would check my mom for 'chin music.' That means that I would have to see if there were any 'pluck-worthy hairs' on her chin (and sometimes the mustache!)"
10. "My parents put certain foods (hot dogs, toast, etc.) on paper towels instead of plates. Obviously things like pasta or rice would go on plates, but anything that didn't ~require~ a plate went on a paper towel. Turns out my parents just really hate to wash dishes, so they destroy the planet by wasting paper and buying plastic cups instead. Real dishware only comes out on special occasions!"
11. "We had a kitchen towel that we would pass around at dinner to wipe our hands on. Didn't really think anything of it until my brother's girlfriend started coming over and she asked about it."
12. "We never had birthday parties. Birthdays were observed, but there were never parties. I got toys, some good food, but no one was invited ever. My father told me it was a family tradition. Many years later, when I realized that absolutely everyone I knew did in fact have birthday parties, I looked into the matter more closely and found that an ancestor had apparently died after his birthday party, and since then, all parties were forbidden in the family."
13. "My family doesn’t sleep under the comforters on our beds. Part of it is because we’re all hot natured and usually don’t need it, but usually in the winter if I get cold I just add the throw I have at the foot of the bed. I actually thought comforters were just for looks (or that rare night when it gets really, really cold) until a couple years ago."
14. "We always have our house in the 50 to 60 degree range, even during the winter (winters are bad as we live in Wisconsin). Everyone would always comment on how cold it is in our house, but it feels fine to me. Meanwhile other people’s houses, which are normally in the 70-degree range, are way too hot for me."
15. "We have always had cats. We have several 'cat songs.' Some are just songs that we've changed the words to include our cats' names, but others we've completely made up on the fly. We can still remember and sing the cat songs of our pets that have long since passed."
16. "A friend of mine’s family eats corn on the cob for dessert."
17. "At one point in my childhood, we had 36 cats. They were all of the indoor-outdoor variety, generally coming inside only to eat and sleep at night. Anytime I had a friend sleep over, they were amazed and delighted when a half-dozen or more cats came to sleep in my room. Then I find out that my family was considered the weird one in the neighborhood because of all the cats that I thought were so awesome!"
18. "Anytime we would get fast food, we would put all of our fries together in a big mound to share. Sort of like communal fries. I was over at a friend’s house and they bought us fast food, so once we got home, I went to put my fries in a plate and put them in the middle of the table! I got a lot of strange looks."
19. "My family does this thing where — whoever's birthday it is — they have to eat the first piece of cake without talking. So everyone in our family would try to make the birthday person talk by saying funny things, and if you spoke while eating your first piece, you had to finish your slice under the table. My grandparents told us it was a 'German tradition,' but no one else had ever heard of it."
20. "My family would often drink milk with dinner. Like we'd go through about 3–4 gallons of milk a week."
21. And finally: "We have a box of elbow macaroni that we hide around the house. It started simple, just putting it on shelves and in the freezer. It eventually escalated into more and more complex scenarios. I went out of town once and discovered it in my suitcase. My children had stuffed it with a shirt so it wouldn’t rattle! It’s basically our super annoying, year-round Elf on the Shelf."
Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity. Please also note that some of these answers have been pulled from this thread on r/AskReddit.