Aimeé
When you’re a kid, you mostly assume the adults in your life are normal and trying to teach you how to navigate reality in the best possible way. What they say, goes, at least until you’re old enough to question it. Even then, there are probably a lot of traditions and habits that you won’t even think to question. And that’s where they get ya.
Writer Nicole Cliffe always gets a lot of engagement on her tweets, but this one of what is considered “normal” in a family got even more responses than usual, probably because all too many of us eventually realize how not normal our family is.
She asked, “If you normalized something (non-awful) because your family did it and then realized it was not, in fact, normal or remotely common, I would love to hear about it.”
I appreciate that she specified non-awful, because it kept the thread from getting super depressing. It was just super weird. She shared an example from her family to explain further:
Our kids can say “Dad trained us to say ‘yes sir how high sir’ when he made a harrumph noise, as a joke, but honestly we always just did what we wanted bc he’s a colossal sucker.”
— Irulan, Princess Royal, Bene Gesserit-trained (@Nicole_Cliffe) September 8, 2020
A few of the things people said were normalized in their family actually do seem normal to me, so I guess they’re more rare than weird. Some people even commented when they recognized a family habit, which is really cute. It’s nice to know you’re not alone when you leave the house you grew up in. There are weirdoes everywhere.
1.
pasta in milk every morning for breakfast
— rachel (@bugposting) September 7, 2020
2.
My mom explained that we didn’t do particular activities because “Jews don’t ski” and “Jews don’t sail” and “Jews don’t bowl” – there was a very long list of things Jews don’t do.
— ⭐️bex schwartz (@starbex) September 7, 2020
3.
Combo of my mother and father’s quirks: my mom felt very strongly there should be no visible tv in the living room, and my father loves things to be “just so”, so after every movie he wld put the whole tv, remote, & cords back into factory packaging. “Just like new!” he would say
— Lynn(e) (@betteronpaper1) September 7, 2020
4.
answering the home phone as: hello “name surname” speaking, how can i help you?
— you okay? (@sheldonknaggs) September 8, 2020
5.
The first non-awful thing I can think of is Popcorn Time. 7:30pm, every night, everyone got a bowl of popcorn. There were assigned bowls, and my stepdad would drop everything and go to the store at 7:25 if he suddenly realized we were out of popcorn.
— amelia ~ the pumpkin queene (@broken_queene) September 7, 2020
6.
Oh, very very same. My parents loved getting praised at Parent Teacher Night but were legit shocked when colleges started offering me money.
— Irulan, Princess Royal, Bene Gesserit-trained (@Nicole_Cliffe) September 7, 2020
7.
Yelling “I need backup!” to the whole house when you are on the toilet and out of toilet paper 😂😂
— Kate Morgan (@katie_thelady) September 8, 2020
8.
My mother had many turns of phrase that I thought were just normal sayings but either completely weren’t or were very uncommon outside of our household.
“Big Bird, what to do?” and “Heavens to Murgatroyd!” are the two that come to mind.
— Valerie Woolard (@valeriecodes) September 7, 2020
9.
My dad told my brother and I we had a brother and sister named Peter and Suzie but they were bad so they had to live under the house. I freaked out when we moved when I was 5 and didn’t take them. Weird to realize this was not a typical threat to get your kids to behave
— this fraudulent christmas prince (@thexmasprince) September 7, 2020
10.
Spoon jar. The jar/mug you kept next to or on the stove full of tasting spoons. I still spoon jar.
— Molly McAleer (@molls) September 7, 2020
