What's a rule your parents had that you thought was silly at the time and still can't quite understand?
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My father installed a tetherball game in our back yard. We weren't allowed to play it because we would ruin the grass. It hung there for years and we just stared at it from the porch.
Never understood the whole "ruining the grass" type of people. Grass is meant to be enjoyed
Exactly if your grass is too fragile to handle foot traffic then what the hell is the point of it? Just stare at a patch of land that you paid for; nah I paid for this im gonna get my moneys worth
It's because they placed a dollar value on it. They are the people who pay chemical companies to keep it green and kill all living things. Once it isn't free, well, now it's an investment and protect the investment.
I love that millennials are going more towards natural grasses and no lawns, probably because we had parents like this.
I always wondered what the total is for resources that Americans waste on lawns each year. Some of my neighbors mow, weedwack, etc... 2-3 times a week. It's nuts.
Something like tetherball will kill the grass because of the restricted play area. But that's why you put down a playing surface around it. Don't put it where you want grass to grow...
At a park sure, in your backyard it’s not as likely. You’d have to be spending quite a number of hours every day to cause serious ware to your yard. A few kids playing out back is unlikely to build up enough traffic to cause issues.
Reminds me of my public school.
School had a paved area in the back. A large soccer field and then at the back end was a large walking path. That path was our school boundary and kids were not allowed to go past that path.
On the other side of the path they built a playground. Which we weren’t allowed to use during school time.
My school had THREE fields on school property we weren't allowed to use FOR ANY REASON for sports etc. We had to use the grotty smaller field near them.
Turned out years after the school was demolished that those fields were subsiding due to mine tunnels underneath, but they didn't have the money to fence them off. Just a stern warning not to go there.
They didn't even tell us about the mine tunnels....I think they thought Kids would start daring each other to run onto the field and jump up and down etc.
That definitely sounds like something kids would do if they knew about the tunnels. Children yearn for the mines
ouch
Garden of Eden
Power move
That's a "pull into McDonalds and order one black coffee" move
if you asked to do something the answer was always no. if you didnt ask it was 95% of the time allowed with maybe a few questions
10 year old: Hi mom, I'm currently in the plane, next in line to skydive.
Mom: Do you have a parachute on?
10 year old: Yes
Mom: ok, have a great time sweety!
I sort of did this in college. I knew my mom wouldn't be okay with me skydiving, so I made sure to call her once I landed.
I posted my tandem skydiving pic on Facebook and my mom saw it and texted me immediately “I told you never to do that”. My brother then photoshopped the text into the photo.
And that was when you decided NOT to send mom pics of the orgy you attended right?
My mom has explicitly told me that if I ever go sky diving do NOT tell her until afterwards. Now that I’m a parent too I understand haha.
Yep. As I got older into high school I would just kinda mention that I had some event on my schedule and how long I’d be gone. In a respectful but “matter-of-fact” informative way. It surprisingly worked.
We were always told 'if you don't ask...you don't want' & if we did ask we were always told 'no'. The parents were & still are aholes.
I countered this with "Can I do ____, and why not?" They weren't amused...
Better to say sorry than to seek permission
That's how I had to do things at my house growing up.
My mom was extremely wary of anything related to magic. She wouldn’t allow us to have cats because she thought they were evil. One time my cousin got me a history of magic book for Christmas-confiscated and never seen again. I tried to sneak and play DnD in high school, she found out and banned me from the after school club. She’s not religious or anything, she just doesn’t think it’s a good idea to mess with magic.
Plot twist: your mom was a witch and was saving you from the demons. She promised her "firstborn with magical talents" to a demon in exchange for money.
And THATS why you can't fly or summon snacks.
Same. Couldn’t celebrate Halloween or watch Harry Potter (I read the books at school though)
It’s so silly. I have to actually question people’s intelligence. Like people actually think that David Copperfield wields some dark energy?
I don't think it, I KNOW it. I saw the damn Statue disappear!
I brought a MTG card if found in the school hallway to a buddies house. His mom took it and burned it in front of us and gave us a half hour long talk about how magic is evil. She was very religious
Not me but my friend’s parents didn’t allow Adidas because they were told it stands for “all day I dream about sex”
Yeah, this is the lame 90s version of the Satanic Panic of the 80s. I distinctly remember a friend of my mother's telling her that she shouldn't let me listen to KISS because it stood for 'Knights in Satan's Service', or that she shouldn't buy Proctor & Gamble products because their moon-and-stars logo of the time was loaded with evidence that they owed their success to some kind of deal with the devil. It's basically the boomer housewife version of a conspiracy theory.
An asshole in high school told me I was a racist because I wore a 311 shirt.
“311 is a KKK band.”
I think his theory was that K is the 11th letter of the alphabet?
Now I’m just picturing an entire Klan gently swaying to Amber.
Are you my sibling? We seem to have the same mother.
It wasn't my mom, it was her friend who was telling her this stuff. Fortunately my mom was pretty skeptical of that shit.
I wasn't allowed to wear anything Nike, cause Nike was a Greek godess or something, and that's not christan.
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Korn intensifies.
Lol wait till they find out it's actually Adolf (The founders name is Adolf Dasler and a nickname for Adolf is Adi)
I wasn't allowed to shower until my homework was done. But I also wasn't allowed to shower past 7pm. So between getting home from school, homework, eating dinner etc...
This is a mega-strange avenue for discipline. Were showers an unusually luxurious indulgence in your home?
If you let ‘em shower too late they’ll be doin the devil’s mambo in there.
I was almost thinking like, is it a hot water thing for cooking/dishes?
It's all about power and control, any arbitrary rule is.
So you were a filthy stinking gremlin?
Welp, withholding hygiene is def actual child abuse, so sorry your parents are pieces of shit
My mom would let me watch any rated-R movie that I wanted, but would not let me by a CD with the explicit language icon.
The explicit lyrics label really meant that you were gonna sell over 1million copies. Kids like me were gonna buy it and hide it in our rooms.
When I was 11 I wasn’t allowed to buy a black bathing suit. No reason given. When I was 12 and bathing suit shopping, Mother suggested this black one. I said I’d try it but asked when the “no black bathing suit” rule changed, and she denied there had ever been such a rule. So I guess she couldn‘t understand the rule either even though it was her rule.
I asked my mom years later about some of the rules and arbitrary punishments. She had no memory of them and apologized.
Most annoying one was when I was 14 and my sister was 16. We went to youth group and then went to Burger King afterwards which was usual. One of my friends was waiting for his ride and my sister felt that leaving a 14 year old alone was a poor decision so we stayed like an extra 15 minutes waiting. We called our parents and let them know we would be a few minutes late and they said ok.
When we got home we were both grounded for not asking if it was ok if we were out late, but simply telling them that we would be out late.
Add onto this that I also got grounded despite not having a phone or car and was completely at the mercy of my older sister.
It was completely out of character for both of them and to this day I can’t wrap my head around the logic.
My parents were like this regularly. It was scary and exhausting because one moment they were fine with something you asked or told them about and later that day (or days later) they were freaking out and punishing you over it. To this day they will even do it to themselves while making decisions. Still can't understand why.
You did the right thing calling them though and keeping the other kid company.
It’s awesome when parents forget their own rules.
My wife said that when she turned 16. She asked about getting her drivers license. Her parents said “not until you’re 18!!!”
That’s when she got it.
Her sister turns 16, and literally immediately gets her license. My wife said “hey! How come she got to get it at 16?” You said we had to wait until 18!!”
“We never said that!”
Those type of parents, you could produce a document written on vellum, signed and wax sealed by the Pope, and a 4k video of them expressly saying you'll get your licence ONLY when you turn 18, and they'll claim its deepfake or gaslighting.
My dad and stepmom banned the Simpsons when we would visit as kids. They were very religious at the time. Now they've gradually become atheist, and totally deny ever doing that
Yup. My wife said her mom banned simpsons. They aren’t that religious. But her mom and step dad were teachers and they felt it was a bad influence.
Fast forward a few years when star sibling who can do no wrong starts watching it, and crickets. It’s suddenly ok to watch.
My mom was usually very cool about things. I pushed limits of course, but apparently not her big ones. But, while clothes shopping I was NEVER allowed to buy bras that had color or patterns. Ever. Eventually she told me it was because people only bought different colors so other people could see them.and she didn't want anyone seeing mine. It was weird. But her firm line, even when I was 17-18 is no black bras or underwear. She definitely had a hang up about it
My mom prohibited using the washing machine between Christmas and New Years, she believed it would bring death in the family in the following year. Never made sense in any way, just a superstition. When I finally moved out it was a really big deal for me to finally be able to wash my clothes in that time period. And as expected, my family was fine the year after.
What was her cultural background?
I'm not the poster but the same superstition exists in rural communities in Germany.
The time between Christmas and New years was often the only time in the year when women could really spend time with family and not do chores and rivers were often frozen anyway (made it harder to wash clothes).
Yep, I'm from Germany myself, though not rural.
And this could very well explain it, maybe her mother held a similar belief
I’m from Germany too and my mom always used to spend all of new year‘s eve doing laundry like crazy because „it’s bad luck to bring the dirt from the previous year into the new one“. Now I’m wondering: regional differences or just my neat freak mom at it? My mom and her family are from Lower Saxony.
Thank you! This is why I love Reddit.
Prior to modern washing machines, washing clothes was a labor intensive, multi day affair. So having a little “superstition” would relieve women of this burden for at least a week.
They should have went a little bit further and said that because of superstitious “reasons” only men could do the wash.