We all have weird habits. Strange things we do that we don't want anyone else to find out about. Most of the time, we manage to keep them under our hats. But what if we don't know they're weird? We asked people around the world to tell us about the strangest things people they know do that they thought were totally normal.
50. The cleanest college student in the world.
My roomate in college thought you washed clothes on every single cycle on the washing machine. Our machine had a delicate cycle, a cotton cycle, a solo rinse cycle, a permanent press cycle, etc.
He always complained about the washer taking forever. It's because he was washing his clothes 4-5 times every time he did laundry.
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48. Probably saved that guy's life.
A guy in my hockey league was bragging in the locker room about how he had three testicles. We told him it was probably a tumor. He got it checked out by a doctor. It was.
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47. This is just wrong.
My neighbours ate their Cornflakes with orange juice instead of milk. Their parents had conditioned them all to think this was normal and acceptable behavior.
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46. Dry cleaning is expensive, after all.
I was talking to my husband on the phone and he told me to hang on, he had to put his clothes back on. He was at work. I asked what the hell he was doing and apparently he always takes all his clothes off to have abowel movement. Even at work. I knew he did it at home but he always would then get in the shower after so I figured it was just a preface to showering. He said he balances them over the stall door so they don’t get “poop particles” on them. I told him no one else does this. He didn’t notice because in the men’s room he’s used for the last 10 years there’s only one stall. I’m not sure why no colleague ever asked him why he’s hanging clothes over the stall door.
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45. Better write your name on it.
If anyone used my toothbrush at home when i was growing up, it always tasted weird when i used it. Turns out my mum just "used any one available." Snapped my toothbrush in half in front of her and kept my new one in my room from then on.
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44. Don't those things take care of themselves?
My dad's parents never told him to brush his teeth and he told me that he used to eat a whole can of condensed milk everyday as a kid! He still thinks it's perfectly normal, I don't know. And he just wondered why one day his teeth fell out. Only when he was in his 20s did someone tell him that brushing helps.
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43. That's where all the flavour comes from.
I had a roommate who didn't know you needed to wash potatoes.
She made some potato dish and it was... gritty.
42. He's not missing much.
One of my friends genuinely cannot taste basil. He always thought that basil was some tasteless leaf that people liked to put on pizza. He once ate bowl of basil leaves like a salad.
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41. To be fair, ghosts are real... aren't they?
A family member thought that hallucinations were something everyone dealt with. They thought that monsters under the bed and other cultural tales of ghosts were real things which were further confirmed by their experience.
It this led to later diagnosis of schizophrenia once they couldn't cope well enough to deal with the symptoms and it became evident to family members.
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40. This escalated quickly.
I had a college roommate who had two hampers. One for shirts and pants, and another for socks and underwear. If one wrong article made it into either hamper, the entire hamper was then considered contaminated and he would throw the entire thing away; he'd put on cleaning gloves, pick up the hamper, and take it down to the dumpster and in it went. Clothes and all.
Very strange person. He was home schooled on a farm by his mail-order bride of a mom who barely knew English. He also scrubbed the shower and toilet before every use, had no eating manners whatsoever (loud slurping, chewing with mouth open, etc.), would frequently yell at people for no reason, and he thought girls were, and I quote, "icky." Oh, and he loved to warm up KFC in the microwave and then keep the bones in a drawer in his desk. He was somehow both super clean and utterly disgusting at the same time.
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39. Do they sell them over the counter?
My friend from South Africa thought that everyone was regularly taking worming tablets to stop getting worms. It wasn’t until she got married and told her husband she was going to go pick up their worming tablets that she found out it wasn’t normal to take them in America.
38. She was probably the same kid who ate glue in kindergarten.
I lived with a girl that would eat baby powder that she had stashed in the drawer of the bathroom. She would walk by the bathroom and do quick shakes of the bottle right in her mouth. She would also buy whole frozen fish from walmart and take them out of the freezer bag and slap them hard against the brick kitchen floor before cooking them in a stew.
37. Unless someone showed you, how would you know?
A coworker from the Midwest sat down with spaghetti one day for lunch.
After twiddling the noodles around with the fork for a while, he looked and me and asked “How do you eat this?”
Thinking it was a joke, I laughed at him and kept eating. He looked at me with a straight face and said, “I’ve never had spaghetti.”
36. Trying to up your protein intake?
My grandma fed me hot dog water in the form of hot cocoa with the recycled boiled hot dog water. She thought it was okay to do and just told me years later.
Or one time she made me eat black and ash covered hot dogs. I'm starting to see a trend form. I still love hot dogs though.
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35. Better the second time.
My ex husband has reflux really bad. Once I saw him chewing something while we were out shopping and so I asked for a piece of what I thought was gum. NOPE. It was food that we had eaten about an hour earlier. He told me his food would always come back up all the time and he would just rechew it and swallow it back down. I was like NOOO.
Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay
34. A very special discovery.
So it was a random day with nothing special about it. My fiancée and I are at the local grocery store shopping for the usual staple items. We usually keep some form of frozen chicken and veggies for a quick meal on the event I’m to tried or lazy to cook anything for the week.
Well we’re walking down the aisle that has ice cream on one side and all of the convenience items like hot pockets, pizza rolls, stuff like that.
My fiancé comes to a full halt with a stomp of her foot and does a hard triple take and goes, "No way. YOU CAN BUY CORN DOGS!?”
I as like, "Is that a joke!?”
She thought you could only buy corn dogs at the regional carnival/fair that comes around here in October.
Image by Kriss Chen from Pixabay
33. We all know someone like this.
I was roommates with a guy for several months and I began to notice he was a picky eater. I would always offer him food and he always declined, sometimes looking at the food in disgust. Admittedly, I'm an adventurous eater, often eating a lot of various ethnic foods and unusual stuff. After a while, I got curious enough to ask him about his diet and he opened up. The dude ate plain cheeseburgers, cheese pizza, mac and cheese, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, ice cream, and pretty much nothing else. He was about 25 at the time, and had the diet of an 8 year old. He openly admitted that he hated all vegetables and only ate bread, meat, cheese. He hated Mexican food, Chinese food, salads, and anything even slightly spicy. He thought I was the weird one and that I was just trying to be different by eating all this weird stuff.
32. Almost as tasty as grammar.
In grade 5, our teacher was running a discussion about words, and why it's important to choose the right words to express yourself during writing assignments. He asked what some of our favourite/least favourite words were and why, so we could expand our vocabularies. We're all taking turns until it gets to be my friend Paige's turn. She gives her favourite word and explains it's her favourite because of how sweet it is. We all just assumed she meant how nice it was. She then gives her least favourite word, explaining she hates how sour it is. At this point, the class is looking at each other going "She just said 'sour', right?"
Turns out she has a type of synesthesia, which is a rare condition that causes a person to taste certain tastes when speaking or even thinking certain words. She had lived her whole life thinking it was completely normal to taste words, because it's such a unique and strange thing that nobody would ever talk about it being a condition. She had tests done later that year, and there were actual chemical changes in her brain and saliva when certain words were said. Pretty fascinating!
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31. Allergies are the worst.
In my early 20’s I started having a lot of pain in my upper left jaw. My dentist said there was nothing wrong with my teeth and that I should go see a sinus specialist. Get to the ORL (ear nose and throat doctor) and they comment on how stuffed up I must be. I’m slightly baffled, and say that I’m actually breathing much easier that day than usual. And that was the day I found out that most people can breathe through their noses MOST of the time and not just on special occasions. Turns out I’m allergic to dust mites in a “how have you not had anaphylaxis and died” way, and had been experiencing an allergy attack for 23 straight years. That doctors visit legitimately changed my life. I no longer had to choose between breathing and eating.
30. Great way to avoid splash-back.
I remember the day a new employee from South America started working, I think he was from Peru. When he went to use the urinal in the men's room, he would pull his pants down completely to his knees, so you could see his bare bum while peeing, like a little boy might do. A representative from Human Resources had to explain to him bathroom etiquitte.
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29. We've all tried it.
Growing up, I was conditioned by my mother to not only use soap on my body while showering, but to use it in my hair too. Doing this made my hair feel insanely rough and dry, but I kept at it thinking it was the right thing to do. On a trip to California to meet some friends I took a shower and they didn't have a bar of soap. I confronted my friend about it, asking what they used in their hair as a substitute for soap. Everyone in the room gave me a strange look and told me that soap wasn't supposed to be used for hair. I was around 18 years old when I found this out.
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28. You only need one.
Had a friend who I took shooting when we were like 20. He’s never shot before and when he was trying to aim he was tilting head strangely. When I questioned him about it, he said, “Well which eye do you see out of?!”
He had been blind in one eye his entire life and thought everyone was like that.
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27. Take a deep breath - if you can.
I remember that, for a long time, I thought it was completely normal to not be able to get a full breath. I distinctly remember being 16 and asking my friends, "You know that feeling when you actually get a full breath in your lungs and it feels AMAZING?" No one had any clue what I was talking about.
Turns out I had undiagnosed asthma for most of my life. Makes more sense now.
26. It probably brought them closer together.
I had a sleepover with a friend in middle school one weekend. I went to shower and she gave me a towel. It had a weird smell to it, but I couldn’t find any other towels inside the bathroom, so I used it by patting myself barely and just air drying.
Turns out her whole family shares a towel to prevent having to use new ones every time. I told her how weird that was and she was shocked to find out that my family has THEIR own towels to use, but we put them in the wash every 2 or so uses.
I didn’t sleep over there again.
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25. Time to put a lock on those drawers.
My mom has been a kleptomaniac my whole life, but I didn't know that when I was little. I went everywhere with her. When we’d go to other people’s houses, she’d go through their cabinets, drawers, etc. She’d just say she was “being nosey.” What she was actually doing was looking for stuff to steal.
Fast forward a few years; I’m at my best friends house. She went out of her room for a few minutes and I got curious, so I started going through one of her drawers. She came back in and asked me what I was doing. I remember saying “Nothing, I’m just being nosey.” She then explained to me that it is not okay to go through other people’s belongings.
I honestly just thought it was something everyone does.
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24. What doesn't kill you...
My ex had to inform me that I was allergic to pineapples. When I was a kid I thought it was a little curious that my mouth felt numb and lips felt itchy whenever I ate pineapples but when I asked my mother in front of my whole family, she said it was fine and not to worry about it. Years later my ex and I were just getting to know each other so she asked my favorite fruit. I said pineapples although the numbing, itching sensation is sometimes off putting. I didn't believe her at first, so I asked my mom about it again in front of my ex, just to prove I'm right. Mom goes, "I mean, its normal if you have a pineapple allergy." She figured it was fine, since it wasn't strong enough to kill me or anything.
23. Have you checked if you have a tail?
I wag my foot, somewhat like how a cat or dog would wag their tail, as I go to sleep. If I'm prevented from wagging my foot I just can't get to sleep.
Despite growing up with a cat who relished the fun of pouncing on my wagging foot, I still have to wag my foot in order to fall asleep.
A boyfriend eventually noticed that the wagging is an indicator of my mood. Basically the intensity of my emotion. If I'm quite happy or mad, I wag the foot rapidly. When I'm neutral the wagging is about a one second period. And when I'm wicked peaceful I wag it quite slowly.
It's only when I'm trying to fall asleep. I don't wag or shake any body part at any other time.
22. You're supposed to stop when you feel resistance.
Whenever I clean out my ears with q-tips, it makes my throat tickle and feel like I have to cough. (No, I don’t shove it in super far). I thought this was completely normal until one day my sister was in the room with me while I was doing it and I mentioned how I hated cleaning out my ears because it makes my throat tickle and she was like, "What are you talking about?"
Turns out there is this nerve in the face called the Arnold Nerve that has no effect on the majority of the population, but in rare cases can feel sensitive and cause a coughing sensation if anything touches the inside of the ear.
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
21. I'm sure they appreciated the privacy.
My aunt put a fence around the pool to keep the ducks out. She didn't believe us when we told her they could just fly over it.
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20. This one is just a no-no.
My stepmom puts mustard in scrambled eggs.
So, I'm visiting home on leave from the Army. My dad got remarried while I was in, so I had never lived with my stepmom. It just so happens one of my older brothers was visiting too. So in the morning, my stepmom makes a big breakfast for us and my step siblings and I were genuinely excited about it.
I take one bite of eggs and stop. They were terrible. I casually eat around them while talking to family not sure what to do. After dragging my heels long enough, people are finishing up so I find an opening when everyone else is going about their business to dump the eggs in the trash.
After, I take my brother aside and say, "Dude. What was up with the eggs?" He responds with "Oh, she puts mustard in them. It's not THAT bad."
I was mortified. So the next morning, I wake up and am scrounging for food. Stepmom asks if I want some eggs. Naturally I'm like, "Uhh no thanks I'm not hungry just foraging" and decide against food lol. About an hour later, I'm starving so I decide to make some eggs and whatnot. I ask my stepbrother if he wants some and he says sure. Note, this is not my brother who has had normal eggs.
I make up some delicious eggs and it's just me and step brother in the kitchen. He digs in and is like, "Wow, what did you put in these? They are amazing!"
Salt and pepper. But nothing else.
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19. It's all fun and games until...
My boyfriend was born with a cataract in one eye and his parents didn’t discover it until he and his brother were playing with toy bow and arrows when he was three and he got shot in the eye. You can’t tell unless you look up close and see a bit of the blue on his Irish is missing from the procedure after the incident. Day to day it’s not a big deal, it just means he has no depth perception. The trauma apparently changed his demeanor as a child though, he went from being very out going to painfully shy for years apparently.
18. Pie, cake. It's all the same, right?
I met a somewhat secluded family in Utah that was puzzled we celebrated birthdays with a "birthday cake." They thought the normal thing was celebrating with a "birthday pie."
I don't judge or care about others traditions, but the fact a "birthday cake" was an unheard-of concept to them was really weird.
17. Sometimes it's a blessing.
Once my partner and I passed an open sewer being worked on. I was holding my nose and gagging. She goes, "Oh, now that I'm thinking about it, that does smell bad!"
She has to concentrate on smelling things. And if she isn't actively concentrating, she doesn't always smell things. Turns out, she and her siblings all have a really weak sense of smell, and none of them really noticed anything was different until I, and other friends, pointed out how that wasn't the norm.
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
16. A perfect driving record against all odds.
My hubby learned to drive at 12 years old. During the summer and holidays, he regularly drove his Grandad's truck into the fields to deliver everyone lunch and water. He also would drive the tractor to and from fields.
As a result, when I met him in his late 30s, he had a perfect driving record. His defensive driving was phenomenal. The only tickets he ever received were driving without a seatbelt, and parking on the sidewalk.
Fast forward 10 years. He goes to the eye doctor for the first time in 20 years. He needs glasses. The night we pick up the glasses, he is driving towards a traffic light. As he rolls to a stop, he states: "WHOA, the traffic lights aren't starbursts anymore." Apparently to him, they'd always been blurry.
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15. That would have to be some powerful soap.
I'm black and when I was in junior high me and my dad were living with his best friend's family temporarily. (They were also black.) One day the daughter who was the same age as me asked me why I take a shower everyday. I thought she was joking so I laughed and kept it moving. A little bit later that day the mom pulls me aside, with the very concerned daughter in the background listening from afar. So the mom asked me, "Why do you take a shower everyday?"
At this point I thought I did something wrong but I tell her simply, "So I don’t stink." She then lectures me for a good five minutes on the reasoning of why I shouldn’t take a shower everyday.
Their reasoning was because if I showered with soap everyday my skin would get lighter!
Pixabay
14. Big brother is watching.
I believed until I was in my mid 20’s that there were video cameras in every bath tub and so when I bathed, I was careful to not do anything I wouldn’t want to spies to see. I have no idea where I got this idea, no one ever told me there were cameras. And yes, I do see a therapist.
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13. You can feed him after midnight.
I have a coworker who literally only eats once a day, which isn’t too crazy in itself, but how he measures time to eat is “whether the sun is out.”
He won’t eat if the sun is out, except for morning coffee. Not even breakfast or a snack like a granola bar or a bag of chips. He walks home from work and will only eat once he gets home at night.
I asked him if he ever gets hungry since he never seems hungry or cranky or uncomfortable and he told me he has built a “tolerance against nutrition.” He used to starve himself all throughout his younger years and told me he's “used to going four to five days without food.” He’s never been poor or fat and told me starving himself was just a bad habit (implied it in the same sense smoking or chewing fingernails is a bad habit.)
He gets super mad if someone offers him food. His response is “Naw, the suns out."
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12. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.
Not a friend, but something I didn't find out until my wife pointed it out. I thought it was completely normal for your eyes to un-focus naturally when you're tired... seven-year-old me remembers reading late into the night and having to cover one eye and then switch eyes in order to keep reading. Fast-forward to being married, my wife offhandedly mentions sometimes she doesn't know which eye to look at while talking to each other....
It turns out biocular diplopia is a thing. And the fix for it is to cut your eye muscles up and stitch them back on in a better alignment.
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11. Let's hope Arianna Grande didn't get there first.
Growing up my mom would always tell me to grab a donut from the Walmart bakery area and eat it while we walked around the store. We lived in the country so we only went to the store every two weeks. For a long time this proceeded until it was common practice and eventually I just did it without even telling her. Around early middle school a girl who has a crush on me sees me eating a donut in Walmart and asks me if I just take those. I said yes, so she proceeded to take one and eat it with me.
I then relay to my mom how this silly girl had no idea Walmart had free donuts... And that's when she told me she had been paying for them for years. But I had not asked her permission for a long time so there is no telling how many donuts I unknowingly stole from Walmart.
It's not very often you get to find something strange out about yourself that you thought was perfectly normal.
10. There's a tool for that.
My hubby likes to clean his ears with literally anything he can stick in his ear canal. Don’t know how many times he’s had to go to the doctor for ear infections and he still tries to do it, it’s tiring trying to catch him every time.
Image by PDPics from Pixabay
9. They don't teach bathroom etiquette in schools.
There are some ladies at work that have made me a bit uncomfortable with how chill they are in the shared bathroom. There's one that narrates the whole process, one that doesn't properly pull her pants up until after she washes her hands, but the one that really made me the most uncomfortable was the lady who had speaker phone conversations one otherwise fine afternoon.
I was in the bathroom first, in the hidden corner stall because it's the only one with minimal gaps, and she came in already on speaker phone with some kind of financial institution - and yes, she went potty with the financial institution on the phone. I stayed very quiet, thinking "maybe she'll be quick and go."
She hung up, and I held my breath. My break was almost over, I needed to get out but I was too anxious because what kind of person has speaker phone conversations with their financial institution in a public restroom while using the toilet?
Then she called her kids.
She continued to do this fairly regularly until she no longer worked for the company. I found a different bathroom to use in the interim.
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I worked with a guy who had some kind of gut problem. He'd be sitting at his desk and vomit into a cup. Not a lot, but like a vurp (vomit+burp.) He would do this a few times a day, even in meetings. Finally, his boss talked to him and said that was not cool, and he should see a doctor. The guy was surprised. "Why?" he asked. He apparently had been doing this all his life.
He went to a doctor, and what do you know! They had medicine for his condition! He was pretty happy that it was a curable condition; he'd never seen a doctor for it. Apparently the guy grew up super poor in the Ukraine, where his condition was never addressed, either because of poverty or neglect. Probably both.
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