I remember one day realizing it was odd that my dad would hug my mom but my mom would never hug him back. She would just stand there and let him hug her. Yeah he was an abusive husband and I was very happy for her when she finally left him after over a decade!
Homophobia
I was raised in a right wing, rural area, and i didn’t meet a gay person til higschool. When he said he was gay, i assumed he was joking.
Im trans now lol
Grew up semi-rural south and same thing but my parents took me to see The Birdhouse for some reason (I was 14) and I was like “OH!”
Not gay myself, but thankfully I did not grow up to be the bigoted person my parents wanted me to be.
Knee pain. Everyone told me it was normal growing pains, until one little league coach notice I run weird. Queue years of doctors and specialists and tests and scans and surgeries, and now I’m a 40 something guy with advanced arthritis that could have been much much worse if left untreated.
way to go attentive little league coach!
also wtf parents?
“Well it’s not hurting me so it can’t be that bad.”
My parents took me to see doctors, who told them it was just growing pains and suggested I exercise more to lose weight. I saw three specialists and had a bunch of xrays before anyone noticed the shady spots on my cartilage. Osteochondritis Dissecans occurs in 15-30 people out of 100,000, and most of the primary care doctors I’ve had in my life had never heard of it.
I can’t blame my parents for that. I can blame them for a lot of things, but they did their best.
Being unable to think of something without a prompt.
I guess most people can just remember things without sticky notes and calendars.
We are normal, it’s the others who are weird
This is me to a large degree. Give me a cue and a whole encyclopedia is at your fingertips. Just say think of something and I’m at a loss.
Singing to me the song of my people. Where you all at?!
Omg, this is me. I thought I was alone. I love all you people in this thread, FAM!
Same
I don’t know if this counts, but when I was little I’d go to friends houses, then later in high school to my first serious girlfriends house, and I remember their families were like… loving? I loved spending time at my girlfriends house especially, hanging out with her Mom and her Dad even if my gf wasn’t there. They were so nice, and you could tell had genuine affection for their children (and to some degree, me). I miss you Mr. and Mrs. Miller!
That’s me. I had no idea other families were affectionate and said crazy stuff like, “I love you.” My god, they even hug.
To this day I struggle with affection, even though I love it. If you touch me unexpectedly I’ll involuntarily flinch. I don’t mind, at all, but I still jerk and can’t help it.
I think my family was the same but I turned out cuddly, maybe the difference was the cats?
Heh that was my experience too. But I grew up with a single parent who spent all his time working, so most people’s childhoods weren’t spent climbing 5 floors of scaffolding for fun
Met my partner and was astounded by her loving family
Reading.
Or rather, how so many people seem fear and avoid it, or can’t do it. Something like 21% of adults in the US are illiterate, and the majority – 54% – read at or below a 6th grade level.
I’ve been a sight reader probably since I was about six years old. I absolutely cannot look at any words legibly written in my native language and not understand them. You couldn’t force me to look at words written in English and not digest them if you held a gun to my head. I fear no wall of text, no matter how tall it is.
It takes some effort to wrap your head around the notion that not only can most people not do this, but statistically speaking most or at least a plurality of people have to struggle or exert conscious effort to read and many of them are loathe to do so. And roughly one in five people simply can’t. This did not sink in for me when I was younger.
I can’t imagine having to live my life that way. You nerds have seen how much bullshit I write in a day; I’d go absolutely bats.
As a kid I kept asking librarians why libraries were so empty of people if they had so many books and it took me years to understand the sadness in her shrug.
My goodness, I am so much like you.
I’ve been using a book tracker app since the iPhone 4s (2011) just to keep track of what I buy - I don’t track anything else - because even way back then I had trouble remembering if I had a book or if I had just browsed it elsewhere.
In 2018, various functions (search, sort, stats, etc.) took a permanent dirt nap just as I was nearing the 3K number of entries. And these are just the books I own.
The size of the DB backup file has nearly doubled since then.
Now granted, a number of books I get need to go straight into storage before I can even read them, as I have not yet built my library. It’s already gone through several redesigns to stay ahead of the size of my collection, and right now I’m looking at movable library storage stacks - the kind that roll on miniature railway tracks and have wheel-like dogs at their ends that a person turns to easily move them back and forth (opening and closing an access corridor between the stacks for access to the books). I’m hoping to eventually have almost half a linear kilometre of shelving in my library once it’s built.
I cannot imagine the horror of being even semi-illiterate, much less fully illiterate. I absolutely love reading.
Not everyone has tics they must surpress while in public.
Why is there no helpful suggestion under this comment? I have multiple tics too and I want someone to tell me “just sprinkle some cinnamon on your ass and they will go away!”
Have you tried sprinkling cinnamon on your ass?
It hurt to learn this
This was a really recent realization for me. I am one of the people who can voluntarily activate the tensor tympani muscles in my ears to create a low level rumbling sound. I recently tried explaining this to someone else and they still think I am making it up.
Is this not normal?! I can also wiggle my ears, I know that’s weird though.
Yeah, my Dad used to do this to entertain kids, so I worked at it until I could too. It wasn’t easy to learn but real easy to do
Wait, that’s not normal?
It’s more that most people don’t figure out how to tense those muscles independantly of the rest of the neck
When I first read this one, I thought it sounded crazy. Then I realized I know what you mean and am able to do it.
Maybe it’s normal and it’s just the description that doesnt click with people? Anyone in the comments who thinks they can’t do it?
I use to control it before, but since I’m on some other medecine, it start to have its own will. It happen to me unvoluntary like every 5 or 10s. That’s SO FUCKING ANNOYING !!!
Fellow rumbler rejoice!
As I kid I thought it activated some kind of telekinetic or telepathic power so i’d keep doing it and gesturing at ping pong balls or candle flames
So sad to learn that it has nothing to do with psychic powers
So THAT’S how you describe it!
You aren’t alone. I can do it too.
Just to clarify, since I don’t know if my experience is what you all are describing: this sounds kind of like what I hear if I start a yawn. Is the rumbling sound just for a second or can you make it indefinitely? And can you also make a short click or series of clicks?
I can get those sounds if I tense up some muscle(s) that you would also use to start a deliberate yawn. The clicks are easy to make, with less tension, and the rumble happens with more tension and it’s only for about a second or so. Also I definitely hear the rumble during a yawn. Does that sound like what you mean or am I describing something completely different?
That sounds like what I can do. Both the rumble and the clicks/ear popping.
Yep, the same sound as when you yawn. I can make it happen without yawning. Honestly, I can only make it for 5-10 seconds before I get “tired”.
Regarding clicks …I’ve no idea what that one is.
When you yawn sometimes you hear a little clicking noise in your ear canals, it’s earwax coming into contact briefly and separating, you can do it voluntarily similar to rumbling but I need to open my jaw a little for that effect
Rumble and clicks are separate, but the yawn activates all of those muscles so you get them together
It’s easiest to just rumble, but I need to open my jaw a little to click
I can do this as well, as can one of my siblings and my father so I assume there is a generic component. Used to call it “ear clicking” since it is audible to others if they put their ear to yours in a quiet environment.
I figured out that was the name when googling about it some years ago.
Is it just a click or also the described rumbling. Because I don’t hear a rumbling but I do make the clicks when I notice that my ears need to adjust to the air pressure.
If you hold it tense you get a rumble as described but the first time I tense it will make a little click. If I keep applying tension and release eventually it will stop clicking and just I’ll just hear the rumble and it will take a bit to “reset” to where it clicks again.
Humans are weird.
Edit: I quick kagi search turns up a Reddit thread saying the clicking is caused by “Voluntary Opening of the Eustachian Tubes” which is equalizing the pressure in my ears. That sorta explains why it stops clicking after a bit.
If I use the muscles that I use to get the click very carefully I get the rumble too :)
I never noticed it before and now this will be really distracting unless I forget about ASAP.
Child abuse. I thought it was normal to threaten children with violence for noncompliance. I thought it was normal to be afraid to misbehave or be suboptimal in school at the threat of violence.
Sharing socks. My family used to have a sock basket next to our shoes. You didn’t own your own socks, you just grab a pair when you need them.
I mentioned “the sock basket” offhand to a friend in elementary school and she thought it was crazy. That’s when I learned that not every family has a community sock basket. Looking it up though, I find a couple reddit threads from people with the same experience (and people replying that it’s weird) 🤷♀️We used to do it as well at least for me and my brothers. We all got the same white tube socks so they went in the same basket by our laundry
wait that’s not normal?
My daughters share school socks, because they are all the same colour and shape. So I guess this concept isn’t too unreasonable to do it on a whole family level.
This is unintentionally how we do it. We split up the socks after cleaning them but like a day later mom is wearing the oldest ones socks and the oldest one is wearing dads socks, and the little one has one sock from the older brother and another he found under the couch buried in dog hair.
Same same.
I think that depends on common shoe sizes. With the biggest feet there is no way I could put on anyone else’s socks.
Not even sure how that would work with the different sizes we had in my family
Growing up in a house with hoarder parents:
- Having absurd amounts of pretty much anything standing around in the house.
- Parents going through your trash and blaming you for throwing away certain things that were ‘still good to use’ (they weren’t).
We had 3 breadmakers. 2 were in new in box for multiple years
Why hadn’t they chosen like cabbage patch kids or game consoles
NOOOO they had to hoard kitchen counter appliances.
My dad is 80+, has a pristine vitamax blender in box but still uses a crappy one he got at a thrift store because he wants to get as much out of his investment as possible
Well, the feeling of one side of your hip being out of place. Then twisting slightly to snap it back.
It’s hip displasia.
When I was much younger: that normal people could see much further than me.
One of my oldest memories is going into a McDonald’s for the first time with glasses; I stopped and read the entire menu, because I couldn’t believe normal people could read it as soon as you walked in. I always had to get up to the counter to make it out.
I got a lot better in school after that!
O my god. This is so relatable. I was 14 or so when a girl in my class told me I need contact lenses because I couldn’t read the school board unless I sat in the front (spoiler, I sat in the back).
And I was like nahh. Then I got a checkup and I was already at like -2. Then I wore lenses for years and I absolutely hated them. They stick to my eyes. Then only at like 18 I got glasses (not cool to teenage me) and I never switched back.
Maybe they should give children check ups, at least once in their life lol.
Nobody “dresscoded” me at home. As soon as I was old enough to pick my own clothing, I could. What skirts or jeans or dresses I wore was my choice completely. My school also didn’t care much.
Blew my mind when I realized how many other girls had to sneak out with their clothes because the parents had a rule against tight jeans or whatever.
I still think my parents were right with this one. The kids with the strictest rules were always those with the craziest outfits. Can’t blame them, I’d have done the same.
I, as a boy, ran through my cousin’s to change my clothes on my way to the bus.
Don’t do this to your kids if you think that was wrong, lol. I know people who grew up like this, complained to me and then started to behave the exact same way with their kids later on.
Yeah I don’t. My kids love these stories of me dodging my dad’s insecurities, they wear whatever they want. And they mostly wear t-shirts and jeans.
My mom used to pick out clothes for me as a little kid before school, and I’d come downstairs in completely different outfits.
Looking at light or sky when I need to sneeze helps me sneeze quicker.
It’s apparently something to do with Photic sneeze reflex. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photic_sneeze_reflex
Yep, same same, nothing more annoying than sneezus interruptus.
I pretty much always sneeze when first stepping into sunlight
My wife doesn’t but I thought it was pretty funny when I realised my kid does too
It’s not super uncommon
My hypothesis: evolution keeping our ancestors from staring at the sun till blindness
Who would ever want to sneeze faster? 😄
My wife does this too, both of us have the reflex, I just happen to not enjoy sneezing?
Sounds like made up star trek science 😁
