I can remember a few weird things from a few friends growing up.

I was not wealthy and lived in a lower-middle class town for a while where most adults work in factories in the area, so none of my friends were particularly well-off.

One friend's family liked to eat potatoes raw. They would slice a potato in half, sprinkle salt on it, and chomp right in. Sprinkle a little salt, chomp chomp chomp. They were so enthusiastic about it that I finally broke down and gave it a try--yeah, no good. Didn't pick up that habit. The father was a truck driver and the mother was a miserable, sarcastic chain-smoker and they were very hard on the kids, I know the kids got hit with a belt if they did anything "wrong". When the dad was home, he was like a dictator. I hated eating dinner at their house because after dinner, each child had to ask permission to leave the table, and no one knew how the father would react. It was like rolling the dice. You had to ask permission, and he might say yes, or he might flip out on you, yell, and guilt you for not wanting to spend time with the family. The first time I had dinner there, probably nine years old, I did not know about this ritual, so when I was finished with my dinner I stood up and everyone FREAKED OUT ON ME. They could not believe how rude I was for not asking permission to leave the table. Oh, and the father used to remind me constantly that I looked just like a little girl he had a crush on when he was a boy, and that he wished he had married that girl (in front of his kids and wife). He really creeped me out with that.

Another family had four girls, I was friends with the oldest. Basically, at any given moment, everyone would erupt into the most shrill screaming you've ever heard in your life. It was like being trapped in a room with tortured rabbits. The mother would get enraged at the drop of a hat and all hell would break loose. The youngest daughter had an issue where she walked on her tippy toes all the time and it fucked up her legs but that never surprised me--she was probably always terrified of making any noise whatsoever. None of the girls were taught not to whine, so they all had super whiney voices (including the mother), and they would whine like babies about anything. Oh my god, the sounds in that house. The father was a hunter and the walls were littered with various taxidermied animal parts, including a coat rack made out of deer hooves that really upset me. That friend would call me on the phone when she wanted to watch Friends, even though I was not interested in the show at all, and she would hold me hostage on the phone during the entire episode, meanwhile, she would be screaming at anyone who walked in front of the TV or talked. It was a nightmare. I hated spending the night at her house because her bed had a VERY DEEP sinkhole in the center, she must have horrible back problems to this day.

In high school, I was friends with a girl whose mother was a little on the eccentric side, and the girl was slowly coming to that realization throughout her teenage years. She wanted to be at my house constantly due to this situation, which was a little frustrating for me, as I was a bit of a loner and was embarrassed about my own mother.

Her mom would sometimes (only sometimes) answer the phone in a British accent (we're American). The kids grew up watching a ton of British shows like Mr. Bean, Keeping Up Appearances, Father Ted, etc. There's nothing wrong with watching British shows, they are good shows, but it was a little weird that they ONLY watched British shows, combined with her mother sometimes speaking with a British accent. I recall my friend confronting her mother about the British accent thing once, and the mom pretended to have absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

Her mom mopped the carpets. With a mop. My friend didn't know this was peculiar until I pointed out to her that it was a bit peculiar.

Her mom was nice, though, but had suffered from a really tragic event in her childhood and I think she got passed around in foster homes a lot. I think her mom meant well, and I feel bad for talking about her like she's loopy. Besides, I suffered from anorexia all throughout high school, and her mom was the only person who noticed and expressed concern.

But I think I was a bit of a weird kid, too. My mom was a depressive alcoholic who had a string of very abusive alcoholic boyfriends plus one husband who tried to kill her and even me on numerous occasions, so I tried to avoid having friends over when I caught on to the fact that it was a little weird. Then, at my dad's house (he was wealthier than my mom), things weren't much better--my step-mom is nuttier than a pecan pie. My friends used to say that our house looked like a museum because it was so weirdly clean and tidy, as if no one actually lived in it. The one and only time I actually had friends over to play Playstation, one of my friends chose to sit on the ottoman. My step mom came home and freaked out about it and told him to get off the ottoman because it was not for sitting, it was for decoration. It's not like we lived in a wealthy gated community or something, either. We lived in a tiny house in a tiny town with a population of 300 people, middle-class America. I won't even get into how much trouble I was in for having a boy in the house. My dad and step-mom were insanely obsessed with my two sisters and I having any relationship whatsoever with boys.