Did (or do) your grandparents have any odd habits?

Sure. My grandmother rolls female babies in the family in dough, because she believes it will make them less hirsute in the future. Also, it’s supposed to be good luck.

I could probably list a hundred weird little things, but that was the first one to jump to mind.

My grandmother rolls female babies in the family in dough,

She gives them trust funds?

@jaytkay hahaha, don’t I wish. No, bread dough.

@ANef_is_Enuf That is truly odd. Pig in a Blanket con Baby.

@jaytkay eh, she’s from the “old world.” :)

My grandma smacks her lips all of the time, for no reason at all.

My grandfather in his 90’s loved women. Don’t know if that’s odd but that’s all I can remember. My bestfriend’s grandpa was something else though, he would regale us with stories of his youth where supposedly his own grandfather brought him to enchanted worlds filled with fairies, elves and all sorts of magical creatures. He said as a child his own grandpa would take him on his back and run without his feet touching the ground. Once they even had visitors where dark robed creatures float in the air to travel. On his deathbed, my friend’s grandfather refused to die until his grandfather comes for him. He only closed his eyes for the last time after saying he has arrived. ( Odd, so odd )

My grandparents were all born between 1895 and 1905 (I am 47). So maybe not odd for their day, but I don’t know anybody else whose grandparents:

Shot squirrels in the back yard to feed the family
Wove cloth on a loom to make clothes for the family
Raised worms to sell to fishermen for pocket money

My grandmother used to take the cartilage off of chicken wings, dry/smoke it, then powder it for use as a condiment. Apparently, it’s actually good for your joints to eat it. I should start doing that, since my knees sometimes give me problems.

My daughter’s grandfather used to walk on Chicago city streets barefoot. He claimed that if he carried himself with dignity, nobody would notice. The health or safety factors were never mentioned. (by the way, he was a physician.)

My grandmother always kept separate hand towels in the bathroom, her husband not being allowed to use hers or mine. She would also keep his dirty clothes in a separate part of the house to be washed separately from hers.

My paternal grandfather ate everything—everything—with utensils. Pizza, sandwiches, ice cream (he would never get cones).

My maternal grandmother always peeled oranges so that the peel wound up as one piece. She could also de-shell a lobster with her bare hands in record time (she even won a contest once).

I know… I’ve got nothing on @ANef_is_Enuf.

I am a grandmother six times over now, and my grandparents and parents are a long time gone. My grandparents never owned a TV and when they were at our house, they refused to watch, or even let us have it on when they were in the room.

They hated store-bought food, and always raised and fixed their own.

My gramps has an obsession with toilet jokes…
My other gramps is a collector… of random old ,,, stuff.

Paternal Grandmother: She had all kinds of weird habits that I think came from growing up in Germany during WW2 and afterwards spending time in a Russian relocation/prison camp when her part of Germany got annexed to Poland.

First of all, she was an amazing cook back in the day, but she NEVER had leftovers and rarely could you even have seconds at the meal. She made exactly enough for one portion per person when she cooked.

She has all kinds of strange superstitions. You never wish someone happy birthday early, or else you tempted fate and they might not live to see their birthday. You never mentioned to people that you were happy, healthy or had good finances because that would most likely cause you to have terrible luck in whatever area you mentioned. You never told a child that he or she was attractive or allowed them to look too much in a mirror because that would cause them bad luck and they would become disfigured.

@keobooks: Oh my, I wonder if those are common children of WW11 weirdnesses? My grandmother is from pioneer Americans but the things you mentioned, I’ve heard them all!

My last remaining grandfather died about two months ago. His most memorable odd habits were:
Taking a really long time to eat. I mean really long. We used to think it was because he didn’t have many teeth left (he was scared of the dentist). But he finally got dentures many years ago and the slow eating never changed (maybe it was habit by then). Whenever my family knew my grandfather was going to be over for dinner ..they always made sure not to make steak (or similar) because he’d be there, literally, chewing for a few hours.
He was someone who would never like to talk, listen or watch anything sad or negative. He simply would have no part in it.
My grandfather was also a life long water driller. And, was always successful at water witching (water dowsing) even in these modern times.

My two remaining grandparents are my parents’ mothers. I don’t know my dad’s mother very well. My mom’s mother ..my grandmother, she is very holistic in her approach to everything (she runs her own ortho-bionomy practice). The oddest thing I can think of was that, in the poor days, she used to catch pigeons for the family to eat. The other thing, she will not use a microwave. The pigeon thing is odd because I don’t know anyone else that did it. And, well I don’t know anyone that will not use a microwave.

@Neizvestnaya I dunno. I always assumed it was some north eastern Ges rman thing—the superstitions. I think the no leftovers thing is from the war. Thanksgiving at her house always sucked.

I just remembered another thing about my paternal grandmother. She didn’t ‘get’ fast food. I remember that she almost never ate it, but as a special treat she bought me McDonalds. She brought it home, placed all the burgers on plates she kept warm in the oven, cut the burgers into quarters and carefully arranged them on the plate with the fries. She discarded all the wrapping and boxes. Then she added bowl of salad to the meal and she served it at the dinner table with white wine for herself and chilled grape juice for me. I remember being frustrated that with all the fancy stuff, she ruined the fast food.

Now my paternal grandmother does a whole lot of different strange stuff, but it’s mostly because she has dementia, so I won’t go there.
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My maternal grandmother is a bit odd too, but totally different. She’s awesome in at least 50 or so different ways. I’ll add her later.

@keobooks: My grandmother’s food routine was to prepare a huge table of foods and then sit down with a small bowl of salad, plain black tea and proclaim to us that people are so greedy and gluttonous. If I ate everything that looked good (like grandpa) then she’d scorn me into feeling like crap and if I didn’t eat then she’d call me wasteful. I love my grandma though, she changed her life to make a better one for me.

@Neizvestnaya That sounds like torture. Why did she make all that food if she didn’t want anyone to eat it? How did she changer her life to make things better for you?

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OK Now I want to talk about my other grandma, She has always been ahead of her time. My mom said that my grandmother mortified her because she had a a JOB when my mom was growing up and that was so distasteful. Even worse, she was a civil engineer. I thought it was cool, but my mom said she got teased.

My grandmother also used to carry a full set of tools in her purse. Once when my mom was a kid, they went to the movies and the projector broke down. The manager said everyone would get their money back because he couldn’t fix the projector because they didn’t have a screwdriver big enough to unscrew the thing and fix what was broken. My grandmother proceeded to pull a 2 foot long HUGE screwdriver from her purse that was just big enough.

My grandma is great and quite an individualist, but she mortified me as a kid. She would wear whatever she wanted and didn’t care what other people thought. Once she picked me up from school wearing an aviator hat with flaps, this huge seal fur coat and combat boots. I begged her to never walk into the school where people could see me—she could just honk the horn. So she made a point to walk right into class and make sure everyone saw her. She refused to be shamed into dressing conventionally.

Right now, she’s 87 years old and a big computer geek. She is addicted to 2 different kinds of solitaire and some cat and mouse pac man style game. She has a digital camera and takes really unusual pictures. Like the morning mist rising off her old welding tanks or turkey buzzards eating a carcass in the driveway.

The only thing that dates her on computers is that she doesn’t get instant messages. She always writes them as if they were a formal letter. She had ICQ for a while and would write “Dear Keo, I see that you are online. How are you this evening? Love, Grandma”

One more thing. She’s very level headed and rational, but she 100% believes in telepathy and is constantly experimenting on sending messages to my grandfather and other family members. She swears it works and sometimes when I call her she claims that she knew I was going to call because she was sending me messages, telling me to call. I swear she’s not a kook or crazy—she’s just totally convinced that ESP is real.

My grandfather was not badly off but he was extremely careful with money which I put down to the impoverished times he grew up in. For example when he took us for a run in his car he would switch off the engine when going downhill to save petrol. He made his own toffee and would put odd bits of soap into a metal contraption that he would shake in the water before washing. He believed in spiritualism and had dozens of books on the subject in his front room though he rarely talked about it.

Oh crud. I said “old world” up there. I meant “old country.” That’s what she always says.. the way things were “in the old country.”

My grandad held me over the edge of Durham cathedral when I was a kid. He repeated the act only this time over the edge of a pier, at high tide. I’d call that pretty fucking odd!!
He never did explain why he felt this urge to put one of his grandkids in mortal danger, the mad old goat!