Crazy things your parents said

A lot of these posts show what a bloody hard upbringing a lot of us had. My wife was adopted and she had a stepmother that controlled her life from a few days old. If she hadn't had a wonderful loving stepfather I don't know how she would have turned out. Problem was he married a narcissist who was known in the village where he ran a pub as 'the tyrant'. If I had met Angela when the bitch was still alive I would have recognised immediately what she was and verbally brutalised her. The narcissist would have made sure I never saw Angela again - narcissists are all about control and of course they only have feelings for themselves.

What a shame we cannot take a leaf out of the French revolution and have Committees For Public Safety where you have to appear to see if you are fit to be a mother or father, if not, immediately sterilised and banned from ever having contact with children. Good loving parents, it really doesn't matter if your mother or father are your birth parents or not. It's been my misfortune to encounter girls and women who either didn't have fathers or bad fathers, it affected them deeply. Same goes for boys that didn't have good mothers or mothers that spoiled them. 'Mummies boys' don't make good partners or husbands.
 
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@cracked case I used to chew liquorice root sticks as a boy!

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Another popular snack was a stalk of rhubarb and a poke (small paper bag) of sugar in which to dip it.

This luxury was supplied by mum along with the imploration, "Now away and play and don't come back till teatime."
 
@cracked case



This luxury was supplied by mum along with the imploration, "Now away and play and don't come back till teatime."
My parents were similarly neglectful. I mean, in a good way. Age 10 I'd be sent out with a sandwich of sliced white bread, processed cheese and tomatoes to do me till teatime. Much of the day involved grain silos, running water, toxic chemicals and large farm animals. I'm very grateful for that freedom though and feel sad that fear of "stranger danger" constrains the playtime of so many British kids.

Oh, back on topic: "holding the country to ransom" (said of anyone taking industrial action)
 
Do children need the freedom of being out of site of adults for most of the day, to develop? We learned how to plan ahead (important before mobile phones), learn what hurts, and what it was to be real friends

"Goes like a steam-shovel" - not something my parents said, just a phrase gone out of fashion.
"It's six and two threes" - meaning the same either way
"Brown trouser job" - a risky endeavour.
 
Children do need freedom but as always with freedom comes risk, I don't see how you can separate the two. Isn't risk a part of life? Falling out of trees, running across roads and 'nearly'getting killed, of course some do. I wouldn't have swapped that freedom and danger for anything. When we encountered 'dirty old men' we threw stones at them and chased them. Scrumping/stealing apples from gardens and getting chased. Nowadays it's must be really scary with so many kids carrying knives and killing each other. No one at home with both parents working, sitting in front of a monitor - life second hand - not for me.