Ship of Fools: Where does your father store his barnacles?

Thread: Where does your father store his barnacles? Board: Heaven / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Sarasa (# 12271) on :

Are there things perculiar to your family that you assume everyone does because your family does? The title is inspired by a visit to Down House where Charles Darwin lived. Apparently one of his children asked a playmate "Where does your father store his barnacles?'
In my family it was painting of anenomes. One of members of my fathers family was keen on painting the things and every house I visited on my fathers side of the family, including my parents, had a picture of them As a small child I assumed everyone had one somewhere.

Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on :

Oh definitely. In our family, if you saw mint sauce on the dinner table that meant one thing in particular; the only food upon which you would ever consider putting mint sauce: roast potatoes.

I was in my 20s before I found out that was considered unusual or that it was considered an accompaniment to lamb.

Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :

Not nearly as quirky as barnacles, but as a printer's daughter, I did not realize till I was at least in junior high school that other people had to BUY paper, or just didn't have it in the house. I think we always bought loose leaf and exercise books (or "scribblers" as we called them then) for me to use in school, but for drawing, writing, making notes, etc. at home, there was a seemingly endless supply of scrap paper that came home as odds and ends left over from print jobs, or samples given to my dad by paper salesmen, or whatever. The idea of going out and buying paper for everyday use was as foreign to me as the idea of not always having stacks of it around the house.

Posted by Mark Wuntoo (# 5673) on :

I'm not telling you where I store my barnacles [Hot and Hormonal]

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

My father reads aloud from the newspaper and books. We used to gather around and listen to him read P.G. Wodehouse stories as an evening activity.

My brother and I were shocked to discover that other families don’t do that, and actually find it obnoxious.

(Dad also drives without the radio on, which my wife finds completely strange.)

Edit to add- not a printer’s son, but when your parents are self-employed lawyers who move office occasionally, you always have heavy-stock paper airplane paper with obsolete addresses on it. My daughter gets to benefit from that one now.

[ 14. January 2018, 19:13: Message edited by: Og, King of Bashan ]

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

It seems most families eat salad before the main meal. Mine always had it after.

My mother also thought that potatoes and butter were bad for you. I never had butter on anything, and almost never potatoes until I was into my 20s.

My mother also thought that if you had a cold, you should have a small glass of sherry before getting out of bed, a thimble-full really. This certaintly started when I was preschool age. It made none of the family particularly interested in drinking wine nor alcohol in general.

Posted by Rossweisse (# 2349) on :

My father painted 30mm (mostly) lead figures of soldiers and others (camp followers, musicians) from the American Revolutionary War. He bought kits, researched the regiments meticulously, and individualized them, often putting each figure into a detailed vignette.

He ended up doing one from every single regiment in the ARW - including American, French, British, American Indian, and German, as well as recognizable likenesses of George Washington and Banastre Tarleton - and it's an amazing display. My school friends were always impressed, mostly in a good way.

The Pater gave away a few of them to other family members and friends, but I have most of them now, in his display cabinets. I need to dig out the illustrated catalogue he made of them and review who's who.

Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
It seems most families eat salad before the main meal. Mine always had it after.

My family, too!

In my childhood years, I always assumed that mothers cook meat, but don't actually eat it. My mother is a natural vegetarian from babyhood. She can't abide the taste or texture of meat or fish or fowl. The first time I spent the night with one of my girlfriends when I was in grade school, I almost got sick, and was shocked when my friend's mother ate meat.

Posted by Ohher (# 18607) on :

When I was small, I believed that grandfathers of necessity conformed to only model I'd known: they were short, spoke in a near-incomprehensible Scots brogue, and played the bagpipes. This despite living next-door-to, and quite friendly with, my best friend's grandfather, who spoke with a heavy Italian accent, brewed wine in his cellar, and wouldn't have known one end of a set of pipes from the other.

Posted by Aravis (# 13824) on :

The first time I went to a beach with my husband and suggested making a sandcastle after a swim, he said, "Which one?"
I didn't know what he meant, but found out his dad is very keen on archaeology and the structure of castles, and they'd always attempted models of specific castles: Harlech, Raglan etc.

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
Not nearly as quirky as barnacles, but as a printer's daughter, I did not realize till I was at least in junior high school that other people had to BUY paper, or just didn't have it in the house. I think we always bought loose leaf and exercise books (or "scribblers" as we called them then) for me to use in school, but for drawing, writing, making notes, etc. at home, there was a seemingly endless supply of scrap paper that came home as odds and ends left over from print jobs, or samples given to my dad by paper salesmen, or whatever. The idea of going out and buying paper for everyday use was as foreign to me as the idea of not always having stacks of it around the house.

My dad was in the Royal Air Force until I was 17 and any number of things came home with him. Nothing dramatic like half an aeroplane but we could borrow some impressive tools and never had to buy scrap materials, batteries or nuts and bolts until I was sixteen.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

There are a good few dialects of Chinese, many of them mutually incomprehensible. My father knew them all. He was also something of a gourmet. His practice when going into a Chinese restaurant was to treat the menu as a list of mild suggestions. He would (in the proper dialect) demand the presence of the chef. When this person appeared from in back he would open conversation, rapidly develop mutual relations, home town, interest in clams, etc., and then they'd develop a meal from there. We always dined hugely and magnificently (he was also a big tipper). But alas, none of us have his fluency in languages and we can't duplicate his habit.

Posted by St. Gwladys (# 14504) on :

My mother was supervisor in a factory that made paper cake cases. We never had to buy any, and always had rolls of waxed paper to pack sandwiches in.

Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :

My family was the very, very last of our acquaintance to still have a black and white TV. When my friends came round, they assumed it was broken and asked what had happened to the colour.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
It seems most families eat salad before the main meal. Mine always had it after.

We never, ever, are salad and I loathe it to the present day.

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

Most people think of pancakes as a breakfast thing, but in my childhood we had pancakes and bacon for dinner. Sometimes we had eggs and oatmeal for dinner too. Breakfast was almost exclusively cold cereal.

Posted by Diomedes (# 13482) on :

My parents were arable farmers East of England) and we only ever ate vegetables that were home grown. We had months of brassica/root vegetable monotony through the winter and spring until the delights of summer crops brought a very welcome respite, I remember as a child being invited to a friend's house for tea and we had peas (frozen, I realised later) - in the winter! It was mind-blowing!

Posted by cliffdweller (# 13338) on :

Not my family of course, but I remember reading that Ronald Reagan's grandson noticed the photograph of the president prominently displayed in his kindergarten classroom, and just figured every kid got to have their grandfather's photo up for a week, and his happened to get drawn first.

Posted by luvanddaisies (# 5761) on :

I assumed when I was small that everybody shared a birthday with a parent as my father and I had the same one. I thought it must be very weird for my mother having a birthday on her own.

Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on :

It was totally normal for my family to pick up our reading books and sit together in the lounge at least when on holiday*. If the lounge had chairs arranged around a window with a good view there was a chance that this was our preferred activity of the holiday.

Jengie

*I only know that it was unusual because a friend came to spend a holiday with us and was surprised at my family doing it. I think we must have done it at home but no recollection.

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

quote:
Originally posted by leo:
We never, ever, are salad and I loathe it to the present day.

We were never salad either [Razz]

, but we ate it with every dinner (during -- not before or after).
Now in hot weather (which is much of the year here), I will often make a large salad as my entire dinner.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

I didn't realize everyone didn't stock kosher salt in their pantry. When I first moved out on my own, I went and bought some, along with all the other pantry items my mother had. Eventually, I realized I had no use for half of them! Turns out she had the same box of kosher salt for probably a couple decades! Also, cream of tartar was another "staple" I still never use except if I make one particular recipe, but I thought one needed to have it around.

For the most part, though, we knew we were different from our friends' and classmates' families, so I don't know if I can think of much to share.

We did get paper scraps like Trudy describes, because some friends of our parents ran a print shop out of their garage. (I particularly remember a LOT of that pale green cut into about 11x6" strips.) My dad had a bunch of old art supplies we got to use - oil crayons, pastels, etc.

And we ate our salad with dinner, like Pigwidgeon's family. We always ate at 5 pm (which meant, M-F, that my dad wasn't there; he always worked overtime) because my sister was diabetic and on a schedule. I didn't realize that was considered early.

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
My mother also thought that potatoes and butter were bad for you. I never had butter on anything, and almost never potatoes until I was into my 20s.

OTOH, in our house we always had buttered potatoes, whether baked, boiled or mashed. My mother's secret for creamy mashed potatoes was to heat the milk and melt the butter into it before adding it to the potatoes. I never even knew what sour cream was until being asked in a restaurant if I wanted it for my potatoes.

My mother always kept a bottle of Argyrol in the pantry, although I don't remember it ever being used for anything. When I left home to set up house for the first time, I was disappointed that I couldn't find a bottle of it at the local drug store.

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

I never assumed other people lived the same way my family did. I was always surprised when I spotted something familiar at a friend's house. "Oh look! Your mother has a measuring cup just like my mother's!" I don't know why I thought we were unique.

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
[I]n our house we always had buttered potatoes, whether baked, boiled or mashed. My mother's secret for creamy mashed potatoes was to heat the milk and melt the butter into it before adding it to the potatoes. I never even knew what sour cream was until being asked in a restaurant if I wanted it for my potatoes.

My mother thought butter was one of the five basic food groups, and my father insisted on potatoes with every meal. (Mom occasionally substituted noodles or rice -- with butter, of course.) I don't think I ever heard of sour cream until I moved to Arizona and had it with Mexican food.

Posted by Rossweisse (# 2349) on :

quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
My family was the very, very last of our acquaintance to still have a black and white TV. When my friends came round, they assumed it was broken and asked what had happened to the colour.

So were we. Finally, we got new neighbors, of whom one worked for Motorola. Invited over for drinks, he took one look at our B&W set, and said, "I can get you a really good price on color." There was something the Pater was yearning to see in color on PBS, so he took him up on it.

Posted by Nicolemr (# 28) on :

We had black and white TV until I was in college, and that was 1980. When I wanted to see the Rankin and Bass animate The Hobbit on TV, my parents actually rented a color set for the occasion. Why they didn't just buy one I do not know. Like I said they finally did in the 80s.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
I didn't realize everyone didn't stock kosher salt in their pantry. When I first moved out on my own, I went and bought some, along with all the other pantry items my mother had. Eventually, I realized I had no use for half of them! Turns out she had the same box of kosher salt for probably a couple decades!

My parents had one of those large boxes as well.

I feel like more and more recipes call for coarse or kosher salt these days, so I go through it at a pretty good clip- I probably use it more often than the fine grained stuff.

It did take me years before I stared consulting expiration dates on my spice jars. I swear that my folks have bottles of seldom-used spices that date back 15-20 years. (You also never see the back of their refrigerator, because there are so many random bottles of stuff that my dad used in one recipe and then never used again. My wife cured me of that habit).

Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:
(You also never see the back of their refrigerator, because there are so many random bottles of stuff that my dad used in one recipe and then never used again.)

I think I feel a new thread coming on: How often do you clean out your refrigerator?

Posted by wild haggis (# 15555) on :

Easy. When it gets dirty!

Posted by Gill H (# 68) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Nicolemr:
We had black and white TV until I was in college, and that was 1980. When I wanted to see the Rankin and Bass animate The Hobbit on TV, my parents actually rented a color set for the occasion. Why they didn't just buy one I do not know. Like I said they finally did in the 80s.

We only got colour TV in the early 80s too, and only because the black and white one finally died. In the UK the TV licence is cheaper for black and white than colour (I believe the black and white one does still exist). So when friends would come round and scoff at us for not having colour, I would say "Oh yes, we're so poor even the cat is black and white because we can't afford a colour one!"

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

We only got a colour telly when Dad's attempts to buy a new B&W one we're met with "well, you could buy a colour one and turn the colour down"

Posted by Ian Climacus (# 944) on :

My dad held onto Betamax well into the 80s, and possibly the early 90s. Always told us it was a superior format.

There came a time when even the local video store gave up so he finally made the move.

Posted by Mrs Shrew (# 8635) on :

Not me, but my husband - he grew up in the middle of nowhere, and the TV signal was dreadful (completely unusable if the weather was bad).

They went to visit family in a city when the kids were small, and the kids were all happily watching TV when their uncle came in and noticed that the picture was terrible, because their aerial had come detached. When he asked why they hadn't called for him, my husband merrily explained that the picture was much better than they got at home...

Posted by mark_in_manchester (# 15978) on :

My kids showed us up a while back in someone else's bog, pointing at the loo roll holder on the wall and going ' what's that?? '.

I made one after that.

It's funny how things being technologically-mainstream just before one has many memories (perhaps age 6 or 7) make them seem like they've always been. My kids must think about mobile phones and the internet like that - not a novel observation.

Now this thread (and stories of late technological adoption) have reminded me our 'new' 13-yr-old car has a CD player. I think I might go and sit in it now, just for kicks. First CD...something from the Christian sub-culture, just for you lot...might have to be Bruce Cockburn, as I only have Larry Norman on lp [Big Grin]

Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on :

My father regularly ate hot dogs for breakfast, the way one eats breakfast sausages. Imagine my surprise to learn that no one else’s family cooked hot dogs for the morning meal.

Posted by MaryLouise (# 18697) on :

Because my father was Scottish, we ate salt with our oatmeal porridge for breakfast. When I went to boarding school and put salt on my porridge, the hostel superintendent thought I was playing some kind of nasty prank and sent me to detention for spoiling good food. I felt the same dismay about fellow hostel inmates who sprinkled sugar all over perfectly decent plates of porridge.

Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gill H:

quote:
Originally posted by Nicolemr:
We had black and white TV until I was in college, and that was 1980. <snip>
We only got colour TV in the early 80s too <snip>

You were early adopters compared to us [Biased]

. When I said we had black and white an eternity after everyone else, I was talking mid nineties. After the family finally got a colour one for the living room, the black and white set came to university with me in 1998 (it gave up the ghost not long after).

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

The parents of our best friends have just got a television! A very nice one too, but that is only because one of them is 75 and they get a free TV licence!

Posted by Puzzler (# 18908) on :

Not as late getting a TV as some of you, but I was the last person in my form without one.
We went next door to watch Princess Margaret’s wedding on TV and my dad promised to get one in time for the next royal wedding, imagining that to be years away.
He kept his promise and we got one a year or so later when Princess Alexandra (I think) got married. But it had doors on the front and was only to be used with permission. That is, until my mum’s elderly aunt came to stay and introduced us to the delights of various soaps and other forbidden delights.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

We lost our TV when colour came in. We had had a black and white TV, kept in my parents' bedroom, only to be watched for agreed children's TV programmes such as Blue Peter. That one sadly died when my youngest sister screamed in frustration as it was being switched off - it possibly had valves as it had been handed on to us originally.

As it was the beginning of the summer my parents deemed TV unnecessary until the autumn, whereupon some friends invited us around for supper and to admire their new colour TV. We watched The Flintstones, something compered by Bruce Forsyth plus other not very good TV and my parents came away forswearing a replacement TV.

This was the 1970s. I, and my sisters, went through secondary school with no TV.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

Some friends of mine did not have a television and were always being pestered by the Licensing Authorities who couldn't believe anyone didn't have one, and assumed they must be breaking the law.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

The licensing authorities do keep pestering. They also send detector vans around to check. I have had many years of being entertained by this as I only had a TV as an adult when my sister bought us one so my daughter, her god-daughter, did not have to go to secondary school without a TV at home. That one scarred.

Posted by Helen-Eva (# 15025) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Sarasa:
Are there things perculiar to your family that you assume everyone does because your family does? The title is inspired by a visit to Down House where Charles Darwin lived. Apparently one of his children asked a playmate "Where does your father store his barnacles?'

I would have found it impossible to comprehend (until about age 13) that everyone did not know that anecdote. I have discovered that there is NO SUBJECT that cannot be turned to evolutionary biology in the presence of my dear mother.

Posted by Curious Kitten (# 11953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
I only had a TV as an adult when my sister bought us one so my daughter, her god-daughter, did not have to go to secondary school without a TV at home. That one scarred.

I still don't get why we couldn't have put the money towards a computer.

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Og, King of Bashan:

(Dad also drives without the radio on, which my wife finds completely strange.)

My husband does that, too, but I've found out all I have to do to get him to turn it on is to start humming.

My father brought home lots of scrap paper, too, from his display business. What our friends were most surprised and tickled with was the tracing paper.

Our friends were most surprised to find out we had a roller coaster in the back yard. Our father had built the tracks going down the hill and made little cars for us to sit in out of crates with roller skates attached to the bottom. It wasn't dangerous because the hill was steep enough to give us the thrill without ever being more than a few feet off the ground.

What was dangerous, although no one knew it back then, was the small jar of mercury we liked to play with. Spill it out, watch how it rolled around, pull it into pieces, make marbles out of it. We should all be dead by now.

Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Twilight:
What was dangerous, although no one knew it back then, was the small jar of mercury we liked to play with. Spill it out, watch how it rolled around, pull it into pieces, make marbles out of it. We should all be dead by now.

Me too! I've often wondered what all I can blame on mercury poisoning.

Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on :

My parents , non- early- adopters, never had an automatic washer and dryer until they retired. I grew up with a scary wringer washer, huge basins for rinsing ( memories of plunging my arms elbows deep in freezing water, after managing to keep them out of the dangerous wringer) and clotheslines in our basement and attic as well as outside. When I went away to school I had to feign expertise with the machines in our dorm laundry room. Ditto blenders and microwaves, appliances we never had at home. I never used a dishwasher until I moved in with Dear Spouse.

Posted by The Intrepid Mrs S (# 17002) on :

My brothers were born 12 and 14 years after me, so they assumed that all families consisted of a Mummy, a Daddy and an Annie, and then whatever children they might have. Reading children's picture books, there was always - for instance - a Mummy duck, a Daddy duck, an Annie duck and all the little baby ducklings. No idea how old they were when they realised not all families came with a home-grown au pair!

Mrs. S, scarred for life...

Posted by Trudy Scrumptious (# 5647) on :

I've just discovered one of these from my own children's perspective; very timely on the cusp of our move to new Ship quarters ....

At supper Friday night my dad was drinking out of my Ship of Fools mug, so the Ship came up in conversation. My son, now 20, said, "You know, when I was a kid you always had Ship of Fools open on the computer and I grew up just thinking it was one of the sites everyone used, like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Ship of Fools."

This led to some reminiscing about the times I included Shipmeets in our family vacations, including the time in 2006 when a pair of Shipmates let us do laundry at their home in England while we were on vacation. I had never realized that my kids grew up thinking the Ship was as ubiquitous as Facebook and Google!

Posted by Huia (# 3473) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Trudy Scrumptious:
I've just discovered one of these from my own children's perspective; very timely on the cusp of our move to new Ship quarters ....

At supper Friday night my dad was drinking out of my Ship of Fools mug, so the Ship came up in conversation. My son, now 20, said, "You know, when I was a kid you always had Ship of Fools open on the computer and I grew up just thinking it was one of the sites everyone used, like Facebook, Twitter, Google and Ship of Fools."

No, not everyone, only the discerning
[Razz]

Huia

Posted by lily pad (# 11456) on :

I grew up on air force bases and thought that people who lived in the same house all their lives was pure fiction. It has been an eye-opener to belong to a base brats facebook group and realize how many of us had similar experiences but were never on the same base at the same time. For us, pretty much all the houses, schools, rec centres, and family life was the same right across the country. It is strange to realize just how different things were from our civilian counterparts.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

Sharing food in restaurants.

My family has always been one where when eating out we will each order a main course that appeals to us (gammon and chips, say), but swap trimmings and sides to taste. So dad will have the egg off my gammon, and I'll have his mushroom and some of his chips because he never finishes them. Meanwhile, mom will be swapping her peas for my brother's pineapple slice. Or any of a myriad of combinations and swaps, often several of them during the same meal.

It was only when my family first ate with my wife's family that I realised this sort of thing isn't usual.

Posted by jedijudy (# 333) on :

Marvin, my Faith Family do the same thing! We get together after going to our various churches every Sunday. Our rule is: don't tell the server that you want your meal without ***! There is always someone who wants what another person doesn't.

It makes sense to me...waste not, want not!

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