I was just reminiscing in another thread about this one friend of mine when I was 10 years old whose parents didn't keep their shit locked down. Dad had nudie mags in his drawer and the older brother had even raunchier porn in his (this was the 80s), and they also had Skinemax. Sleepovers were a wonderland of an education. It should be noted that the raciest thing at my house was my mom's copy of Wifey. Later, when I was 14, I had a friend whose parents did a poor job of hiding their triple X movies. Just unlabeled VHS tapes lying around the back of the cabinet. One of my most hilarious memories was a male friend of mine watching it and laughing his ass off at the long, thick ropes of jizz that would propel out of the guy's dick when he came. I realized at that point that maybe that wasn't an accurate depiction of male orgasm. Focus: what childhood friend stood out as having a family dynamic that was startling different from your own.
My best friend growing up (that Im now somewhat estranged from) had some really weird dynamics with his family. Some highlights: -His dad's office had naked pictures of women on the wall as if he was 12 years old. They were all tear-outs from Playboy, so it was fairly tame considering everything else out there, but it was just there out in the open and no one seemed to care. -They would leave half-eaten bowls of cereal EVERYWHERE. As someone who hates cereal, it drove me nuts -They never ever had a decent car. They always bought cars from the Auto Trader flyer or off some buddy who didnt need them anymore. These people werent poor either, they had money. They just always drove beat up pieces of shit that always broke down and were completely unreliable. I'm all for frugality, but this was bizarre. Another one of my friend's mom walked around topless all the time. She was not attractive at all so it was fairly disgusting. My first girlfriends entire family was very touchy-feeling and they would all kiss each other on the lips when they said hello and goodbye. That grossed me out to no end.
In 7th grade, we moved and I started attending a new school. I made friends pretty quickly at school but it was a very rural area so when summer break came, I pretty much got stuck hanging out with the "tire kid" due to proximity. This kid's dad, before he died or left or whatever, had surrounded their house with huge used tires, stacked taller than the house in some spots. Really massive fucking tires. And I mean truly surrounded, there was room to park a car or two in the driveway and there may have been a path through them to get around the house, but that is about it. I don't know why, but the kid claimed they were still valuable. He didn't think it was weird, to have a yard full of tires. Along with the tires came all the problems associated with keeping a shit load of tires around. Mosquitoes and snakes were horrible. The county eventually forced them to clean up the property. He go me in trouble with the law that summer after 7th grade, he broke into a bus while I was with him. I stayed away from him after that, outside of school. He stayed in trouble throughout the rest his time in school, dropped out as soon as he turned 16. I see the kid around these days, he owns a concrete company and is doing really well. Shit like this \/
I went over to a friend's house when I was 7 or 8, and his younger sister (6 or 7) walked around naked after bath time. I remember being startled, because we were a cover up every square inch in public kind of family. About the same age, I went to another friend's house in the neighborhood after school. Her mom made us little PB&J sandwiches for a snack. She cut the sandwich down the middle into rectangles instead of triangles (whaaaa? mind blown) and when I bit into it - and, I'm still seeing a therapist about this - it was crunchy peanut butter. Crunchy! Hold me.
My best friend as a child lived next door. Our homes were identical, our households could not be more different. I was a well-behaved only child, he had siblings that suplexed each other down flights of stairs and chased each other with knives. My parents were clean and buttoned-down, his parents were trash. His dad was a miserable 400 pound union boss with black, greasy hair and a thick beard and he HATED me. I was an angelic kid so I did not get the scorn, I didn't understand people are naturally assholes. He would break wooden cooking spoons over my friends forearms as corporal punishment (he kept a drawer full of them) and he burnt down their house to the foundation for insurance fraud. He'd crack walnuts all the fucking time and just drop the sharp, jagged shells on the carpet while chain-smoking menthols indoors with all windows sealed. It was like a bingo hall in there. He also had porn. He'd leave magazines out as if it were for company to enjoy, and he had two hardcore early 80's porns on Beta. First time I saw they way shit worked, it freaked me out. But I could NEVER turn away.
When I was around 9 or 10, I lived up the block from a former boxer, former sparring partner of Rubin 'Hurricane" Carter and Muhammad Ali, and who wound up becoming a very well known referee. He had a daughter who was a year younger than me so I was over his house a few times hanging with her. He and his wife were completely different from my parents, who were straight-laced blue collar folks. They were, at least to me, hippies - beaded curtains in the doorways, incense burning, the mom looked and dressed like Cher (the hot 1970s Cher), all-natural food - the first time I ever had an oatmeal cookie was at their house. It sucked - no chocolate chips, no sugar, all natural - blech. There were rumors that they smoked the maryjane, and they made no secret of their friendship with Hurricane Carter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubin_Carter ), which made them the odd family out in our neighborhood.
My parents were pretty easygoing but fair, so when I visited friend's houses who had strict parents, it blew my mind. Some of the highlights from a few kids: -Elliott: video games were reserved for 1 hour per day on Sunday, 30 min of TV per day. And this kid had TONS of video games, 2-3 systems, 20 games for each. I never had anything past Nintendo until I was in HS, so I would start salivating only to find out we were forbidden. -Kyle: His mom made him brush his teeth IMMEDIATELY after school and then had some terrible snack of plain carrot sticks and some other bullshit. He and his 2 brothers were also chubby. I realized why when he started coming over to my house and slamming 2-3 Mountain Dews and eating tons of chips as we played computer games. Likely spent all their allowance on shitty food at school. -Wilsons: a family I babysat for in middle school. TV and video games were FORBIDDEN. They could play computer games in limited amounts, but it was awful educational games like Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing and Math Warriors. Not even fun ones like Number Crunchers or Treasure Mountain. There was literally a lock on the TV cabinet which I was given a key for when I would sit but had to watch only after they went to bed. Those boys turned into weirdo goths as they got older. Their sister was my age and a complete pathological liar. I can only imagine how messed up they are now. On the other hand, my next door neighbor was a bit of a wild child. He was never strictly parented in comparison to most kids I knew, but his older sister died in a car accident when I was 10-11 and after that, he did whatever he pleased. Riding snowmobiles around his suburban back yard, spending hundreds of dollars on game rentals, watching scrambled porn on the big screen in his basement with no fear of parental intrusion, just no normal supervision.
When I was in 6th grade, one kid's parents banned him from drinking soda or eating anything but the all natural granola bars and salads they would send him to school with, or eat afterwards. No candy, no "normal" sandwiches, no cereal, no Kool aid, no pizza, no hot dogs. So he decided not to eat. Anything. The weight melted off him so fast it was scary. At some point he started to bum quarters off of other kids to get soda from a vending machine at a gas station near the bus stop. Eventually his parents relented a bit and he started eating semi normal again, but it seemed to have a lasting effect on him. He was an average sized kid, both height and weight at age 12, but after that point he was always skinny and one of the shorter kids in school.
According to my aunt, my house was THAT kid's house. Why? Because I played the devil's music. If I picked up my guitar, my cousins obediently left the room and told her what I was doing. I was 11. And playing Beatles songs on an acoustic guitar. The nerve of me. I'd like to say they all rebelled and wound up street alcoholics, but one became a neurosurgeon. Two ended up pissy 45 year old religious old maids. And the other became a long haired, dope smoking bass player in a punk band. I actually get along with him.
Yeah, I probably was THAT kid. I mean, my family was closer to being the Cleavers than most other families were in terms of how we treated each other, but we were still weird. Basically, my mom worked full time and never cared enough to keep the house clean. Our house was carpet and we always had dogs and cats, so you can guess how that was. My dad was the furthest thing from the handyman type that you'll ever meet, and was also the type who thought that buying cheap Mercedes that were 10 years old and had six digit miles on them was more economical than buying newer cars. My house was old, small, not well maintained, and to top it off my dad bartended at a strip club for a living, so I was made fun of a lot as a kid for my home life. I didn't really understand the difference between my house and other kids' houses until about middle school, and by that time I got to the point where I never invited anyone over except for my absolute closest friends, and even that was only on rare occasions. I mostly went to other people's houses when I was a teenager. Honestly, my childhood home is something that still bothers me more than I want to admit, and having to have people over to it is my most common recurring dream. I didn't exactly have it rough, though. I had video games and mostly played whenever I wanted to, even though my dad hated it and always "threatened to throw those damn things out the window." We also had plenty of good food, including junk food. There was this girl who lived around the corner from us, on a dirt road. She was in my preschool class, and a few days before school started her mom called us out of the blue and asked if we wanted to carpool with them and if they could catch the bus to and from school at our place, since the bus couldn't go down their road and we lived on a main road. We got to know them pretty well, but they were a strange, highly Christian family. The mom was on either her second or third marriage and at the time had 4 teenagers from her previous marriages. One of her teenage sons would sometimes cut our grass for us. One day my mom made him a sandwich, and he was stunned when she used 5 pieces of meat on it; at their house they were only allowed one piece of meat on their sandwiches. Also, whenever the daughter came over to our house she would always gorge herself on the cookies, chips, and other junk food that we had. Sometimes my sister and I would have to go to their house, when our parents were at work. They ate the same meal for each day of the week. For example, we often had to stay at their house on Fridays, and that was their taco night, and of course the parents were strict about how much of each ingredient we could have in our tacos. I never enjoyed going to their house, and that was the source of one of my parents' favorite stories from my childhood. When I was in preschool, after one of the first times that my sister and I ever went over there, I told my parents that I didn't want to go back. When they asked me the reason my reply was "the girls are bossy and the snacks aren't good." They thought that that was comic gold, and they still love telling that story and repeating that quote to people.
Im guessing we were THAT kids house when it came to porno. Other than that we were pretty straight laced. My parent's fought sometimes but a number of my friend's parents got or had gotten a divorce as we grew up. That lead to what I thought was odd dynamics. I didn't catch on but my best friend's parents had moved to a new house and started sleeping in different bedrooms. I went to dinner one night with my friend, his dad, and his adult aged older sister. Out of nowhere the sister said she'd boycott christmas if the dad didn't give their mom a divorce. He blew up on her and we left before we had time to order. My friend was actually adopted by his aunt which we knew as his mom, this whole dynamic lead to some very rebellious teenage years for him. I still think it's weird that he refers to his parents, and everyone else's, by their first name. Another one of my friends had split up parents and the dad would move around each time his mom did so he could be close to his kids. She moved in into an apartment complex so he moved in on a different floor. She moved to a ranch house on one of the main streets in our town and he rented the house that sat in front of it. I don't think she minded. He was an odd ball hippy type who kept one wooden bowl in his house he'd eat out of. He drove a Geo Metro and had a rubber banded pony tail. He was a really sweet guy and truly loved his kids. My friend ended up moving out of state after our Freshman year. It turned out his dad was actually a highly paid brilliant computer programmer who made a nice six figure income. He found a new wife and cleaned himself up for her. I guess the weirdest dynamic was the poorer of my friends. His family was decent but they lived in a poor area of our town. Going over to his house meant we'd hang out in his neighborhood with scary 12 year old hicks who wanted to smoke weed and drink all day. Something that frightened me at8-9 years old.
Oh boy, does that bring back memories. I was raised by my grandparents who were born at the turn of the century and my friends were raised by their parents.Who were 1960's hippies. The dichotomy was staggering. In my house I was to be neither seen nor heard, unless I was spoken to. Around middle school I was allowed to go over to friend's houses. I'm sure I was a bundle of fun..."Shouldn't you turn off that light?", "We're making to much noise" and at the dinner table I'd be perfectly quiet except for saying "Please" and "Thank you" while I marveled at their family's barbaric behavior of talking loudly and resting their elbows on the table. After witnessing the way other folks lived I couldn't even imagine them coming over to my house. Another quirk in my house was my grandfather....he was a retired minister, so yes we said grace before every meal and then read from the Bible after we finished eating. But beyond being a minister, he was an inventor. Seriously. Like a wacky Disney grandfather, but with no wacky sense of humor. (And honestly, he was a brilliant man. He invented the variable pitch marine propeller and gave the design to the government during WWII because they wouldn't allow him to enlist because he was 38 years old with 6 kids.) Anyways, our house was "Modified" in ways that no one else's was, At one point we lived in an area of fairly upscale homes and our yard was littered with a bulldozer, several old vehicles, and his homemade motor home. Granddad was never happy with anything and always looking to improve it. We had doors that opened backwards (And the accompanying fucked up door jambs) to suit his ideals. (Who doesn't need a bathroom door that swings outward onto a stair landing so you can knock anyone on the stairs down the stairs? Oh yeah, these were solid Oak doors and jambs. They were very nice until he chiseled the fuck out of them to swing the other way.) Even though I lived on the lake and had my own boat, I rarely invited friends over to my house. The place and rules always freaked them the fuck out when I did, so I quickly learned not to.