Some scenes or stories in movies/tv are particularly hard to figure out. They require a whip-smart visionary team of directors, costume designers, cinematographers, casting directors, producers, actors, and stunt coordinators who have a deep understanding of how to achieve the right feel and look of the piece to make it come alive. Here, we explore the making of eight of the most legendary scenes in film/tv history. Enjoy!
Warning: Spoilers ahead!
In "Death Becomes Her", Meryl Streep's character, Madeline, learns of an immortality treatment, and jumps at the chance to outdo her long-time rival.Â
In the transformation scene, they wanted to show a sense of youth appearing on Madeline's body. If anyone knows anything about gravity, it is that gravity + time = sagging. So, what better way to show this than to have Madeline's breasts perk up as though she were a 20-something youngin' who needn't even bother with bras.Â
At first, the props department tried to create an inflatable bra mechanism, but that failed to do the trick. Instead, they came up with this clever idea to pull it off.Â

Meryl Streep's assistant but his hands into her shirt, which was strategically very flowing, so as to conceal his hands. Then, at the right moment, he pushed them up, so as to create the illusion of perkier breasts.Â
That there, folks, may be the luckiest assistant in the entire world.Â
In Mission Impossible III, there is a particular scene around the 1.5 hour mark, in which Bronway (Eddie Marsan), injects a capsule into Ethan (Tom Cruise)'s head.Â
The scene is extremely aggressive (it is, after all, a torture scene), so Tom Cruise's head is not dealt with in the gentlest of fashions. His head is jerked back by his hair and a gun is shoved into his nostril, ready to inject the capsule.Â

Only, there was one problem:Â in order to make it look like a legitimately aggressive torture scene, the gun was pressed into Tom's nose in an aggressive fashion. It hurt. A lot. So much so, that Tom had to talk to the director about it.Â
So J.J. Abrams came up with an idea.Â
They would angle the camera so the person holding the gun's arm was out of the shot. Then, he gave the gun to Tom, and used makeup to paint Tom's hand to the skin tone of Eddie Marsan. Then, Tom pressed the gun against his own nose. This way, it was a lot easier to gauge how hard he could push without causing himself pain.Â
The same goes later when Musgrave puts the phone to Ethan's ear, then Ethan bites Musgrave's hand. The hand that Cruise bit was not Billy Crudup's, but again was his own hand.
What's that? You want another fun hand fact? How about this...
At around twenty-seven minutes) The doctor's hands extracting the capsule from Agent Farris' head at the IMF headquarters belong to J.J. Abrams.
In the episode titled "Lesbian Request Denied", in Orange is the New Black, we learn a little of the backstory of one of the most loved characters on the show Sophia Burset.Â
In this episode, we learn about what Sophia's life was like before, during, and after her transition from male to female. The actor who plays Sophia, Laverne Cox, is also a transwoman. In the episode, we see Sophia before her surgery, when she was New York City fireman Marcus Burset.Â
The casting director and series creator were tasked with finding an actor to portray "Marcus", which is difficult, considering how much he would have to look like Sophia, as a man.Â

Jenji Kohan, series creator, approached Laverne to tell her that they were looking to hire someone. In an interview, Laverne said that Jenji said to her, "I don't want to traumatize you, by having you play a man again." You know, because I tried to play one for many years in my real life, and unsuccessfully.Â
But, I'm an actor. I can play this … I got this. I can do it.
"So … we talked about it, we did a hair and makeup test to get Sophia's looks throughout her transition together. One of those looks was her as [Marcus], as the firefighter, but Jodie didn't think I looked masculine enough to play [him]," Cox continued. "And so it was decided that someone would be hired. I did my best to butch it up, and it wasn't butch enough, apparently."
Despite Laverne's stellar acting skills, it wasn't working.Â
That's when the casting director discovered a fact that changed everything:Â
Laverne has a twin brother. M.Lamar auditioned, and despite not being an actor, was an obvious choice for the role. He did a great job, and looked the part, perfectly.Â
Steven Spielberg's Jaws contains one of the most unforgettable opening scenes in the history of film. The scene, Chrissie Watkins (Susan Backlinie) leaves a beach party to take a quick dip in the water. Treading through the water alone, she feels a tug. Then another. Then, audiences watch in horror as Chrissie is violently dragged through the water before disappearing under the surface forever.Â

In this scene, audiences don't see the shark a choice Spielberg explained in Making Of Jaws:Â
I thought that what could really be scary was not seeing the shark and just seeing the water; because we all are familiar with the water---very few of us have been in the water with a shark, but weve all gone swimming. And the idea of this girl going swimming and the audience going swimming with her wouldve been too extraordinary if, like a leviathan, the shark had come out of the water with its jaws agape and had come down on her…it wouldve been a spectacular opening for the film. But there wouldve been nothing primal about it—it would just have been a monster moment that weve all seen.Â
There needed to be a way that audiences would clue into the fact that Chrissie was being attacked by a vicious monster that was lurking under the surface of the water. At the point when Jaws was being developed, CGI was very new. Spielberg didn't want to use it, because he thought it would ruin the movie (the technology didn't have the capabilities to make things look realistic).Â
So, the crew was posed with an interesting dilemma  how do we get it to realistically look like Chrissie Watkins is being attacked from below by a shark?Â
To achieve this, they attached a harness to Backlinie. For the initial tug under water, they attached a cable to her that dropped down from the stomach-area of her harness, and fed that cable down to an anchor that was laying at the bottom of the ocean, and back up to where Spielberg was sitting.Â

According to Backlinie, "The first jerk-down Steven [Spielberg] did.... he just sat and when he wanted that pulled he just would pull."
For the side-to-side thrashing from the shark, more cables were attached to Backlinie's harness, then threaded through two pilings on either side of her, and stretched out to the beach. There, a group of men on each line would pull the two ends of the cable and run back and forth along the sand, to pull her to and fro.Â

To ensure Backlinies safety, she was outfitted with a special string that she could pull to release herself from the cables if it got too intense.Â
It was very cold," Backlinie said, of the experience. "I was in for two to three hours at a time."
Another interesting detail of this scene is how they created the gurgling, drowning sounds that you hear during Chrissie's attack. For that, they asked Backlinie to stand in front of a microphone, turn her head up, and they poured water down her throat.Â
Her dedication to that one scene is astounding. After Jaws, Susan Backlinie quit acting and went into accounting are you surprised?Â
The shower scene in Psycho is perhaps one of the most famous scenes in all of film history certainly the most famous shower scene. Though it is less than 3 minutes, the scene was so precisely measured that it took over 7 days to film and includes 70 different camera setups.Â
Psycho was released in June, 1960, and shocked audiences for its incredibly disturbing murder scene of a woman in the shower.Â
However, the film's creator, Alfred Hitchcock, was faced with a huge dilemma whilst creating the moment movies had very high censorship at that time the scene could not contain a shot of any genitalia or breasts, and couldn't actually show the stabbing or any knife wounds.Â
Hitchcock and his team of wizards used considerable artistry to accomplish the murder scene within these confines...
1. Hitchcock decided to use a 50mm lens, which gave the scene a slightly less glossy feel Hitchcock wanted audiences to feel like they were seeing the events firsthand.Â
2. Because of this, Hitchcock decided that the shower scene would be too disturbing in full color, so opted for black and white film. Also, black and white film is far less expensive, so that could have been a factor, though it's not confirmed.Â
3. In order to create the illusion that audiences were witnessing a far more graphic scene than was actually shown, he took an impressionist approach. Several small cuts were strung together in quick succession. These rapid cuts created a fast paced tone that paralleled the adrenaline rush and confusion that the protagonist was experiencing at the time of her murder. It also capitalized on a natural human tendency to "fill in the gaps"Â with our own imaginations. If you show us a knife, a woman screaming, and some blood in the bath water, we will naturally fill in the gaps.Â
4. Another major hurdle in creating this scene was properly lighting the shower water, so that it felt very visceral, and protecting the camera from the water. The props department created a special shower head that, when the camera was tilted at a specific angle, the camera could look straight up at the shower and not get wet.Â
5. To show audiences that the woman was being stabbed without actually showing the stabbing, the camera focused on the blood that was trickling through the bathtub and down the drain. Though matching color wasn't important, (because it was in black and white), Hitchcock was very concerned that the blood be the right viscosity. After testing movie blood and ketchup, he settled on chocolate syrup.Â
6. To create a realistic stabbing sound, the special effects crew stabbed watermelons with large knives.Â
In Saving Private Ryan, the "storming of Omaha beach scene" has been hailed by historians, and by the men who survived the event, as the most accurate depiction of war in film.Â
The actual event, known as D-Day, went like this:Â
On June 6, 1944, 156,000 American, British, and Canadian soldiers landed on the a 50 mile stretch of France's Normandy 50 coast, which was fortified by German soldiers.Â
It was among the largest military assault in world war history. This event was the beginning of the end of WWII.Â
Spielberg didn't want to rely on massive special effects to create the grandeur of war, which would ultimately make it look glossy and fantastical. Instead, he wanted to create a portrayal that was visceral and real, so viewers could have a real sense of what the horrors of war were like. It was a massive undertaking.Â
So... how did they do it?Â
Trying to find a location that could accurately pass as Omaha Beach was difficult. The actual Normandy Coast is protected as a historical landmark, so filming there was out of the question. Yet, they wanted a place that was an exact replica of the location, including sand and a bluff similar to the one where German forces were stationed. Production designer, Tom Sanders, found Ballinesker Beach, Curracloe Strand in Wexford, Ireland. Perfect.Â

Whilst in Ireland, they hired 1500 actual Irish Army Reservists to portray the role of soldiers in the film. These men all had the look and experience to fit the part.Â
Next came the costumes. Designer Joanna Johnston started the project under the impression that she would be able to find a bunch of old WWII uniforms and alter them to fit the actors. Wrong! It turns out that barely any of these uniforms have survived past their time, so that was a near-impossible feat.Â
But, they wanted authenticity. So, Johnston and her team recreated 3000 authentic uniforms. She then found the company who made the original troops' boots, and ordered 2000 pairs. That's a whole lot of war-wear!
To bring a sense of authenticity to the organizational and military tactics of the crew, they hired former U.S. Marine Core Captain, Dale Dye, to direct the thousands of extras on set.Â
In pre-production, they put the core actors through a miserable bootcamp that bonded them as a unit, in the same way that soldiers under extreme duress would be bonded. It also prepared them for the very realistically harsh conditions on set.Â
Spielberg through away his standard method of creating a storyboard for the film a visual aid that would guide the look of each shot. Instead, he wanted to create the camera crew to have spontaneous reactions to the scene as it unfolded. It allowed for viewers to feel the chaotic and unpredictable energy of war in a realistic way.Â
Spielberg wanted the look of the film to be desaturated and low-tech (again, no glamour).Â
To achieve this, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski actually removed the protective coating from his camera lens to give the picture a softer, diffused look, and put the negative through an additional process to extract more of the color. He also shot in such a way that all movement blur was removed from the shot adding an extremely crisp, jarring look to the explosions. It feels a lot realer when you can see individual drops of water and bits of dirt.Â

Now this is where it really gets into Spielberg's near-obsessive attention to detail...Â
Spielberg's special effects team created a technology that would allow actors to die from gun wound with perfect timing. They put a sensor on the squib packs (packs of blood that explode) of every actor being shot, that would detect when another actor was firing their gun, take distance and speed of bullet into account, and explode at precisely the correct time.Â
A major choice that set this scene apart from other wartime scenes in movies is the sound. While most movies that feature a battle scene have a sweeping, epic score underneath, Spielberg decided to use nothing. There wasn't music playing during the real WWII, so it wasn't going to play here either. At certain moments during the battle, the sound of bullets whizzing and bodies falling cuts out altogether, to mimic the shellshocked state of Tom Hanks' character, Captain Miller. The sounds are replaced by a slow, haunting sound, like the sound of pressing your ear to a seashell. To simulate this, sound designer Gary Rydstrom recorded the sounds of the beach, played them over a speaker, and recorded them through in a microphone through a long tube. When asked about the sound, Rydstrom said, "It's like a psychological tea whistle."Â
In order to create the horrors of actual war, the casting department hired dozens of real-life amputees that would more convincingly portray the injuries acquired throughout the battle. The props department made 1000 meticulously detailed dummies that littered the beach illustrating the massive amounts of bodies along the shore in the real battle. They washed these bodies in hundreds of gallons of fake blood.Â

Saving Private Ryan won 5 Oscars that year, including best director for Steven Spielberg.Â
Most people remember the dragon attack in Game of Thrones, Season 7, Episode 4. When Daenerys finally unleashed Drogon on Westoros against the Lannister forces, they swung low and blasted a breath of fire onto unlucky soldiers below resulting a whole lot of crispy bodies. If you were impressed by the scene itself, just wait until you read what went into making it.Â
In a behind-the-scenes feature from HBO, the shows creators and crew discussed the extreme dedication it took to make this scene a reality. There were hundreds of soldiers and 27 wagons bathed in fire, a process that required fancy camerawork from numerous cameras, including a camera with the ability to fly through the air at 70 miles per hour, another attached to a drone, and one on an off-road pickup truck.Â

But the really wild thing, was how they executed the fire blast on the actors. Twenty stuntmen were hired to run away from the approaching dragon. As they did, they ran over explosive charges, which set off the fiery explosions, made to look like they were from the dragon's mouth. The stuntmen were ACTUALLY set on fire, (wearing fire protective gear underneath their costumes), and writhed around on the ground for twelve seconds before someone put them out with a fire extinguisher.Â

This episode set a world record for the most stuntmen simultaneously set on fire.Â
In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, there is a scene in which the protagonists are inside an old memory of Joel (Jim Carrey) and Joel is the size of a child. This wasn't done using CGI.Â

Instead, the set department and camera crew worked together to make it look that way with real-life illusions.Â
The set department built a room, called an Ames Room. The room looked like it had a straight back wall, but in reality, the wall was on an angle.Â
Rooms like these are the reason that these two friends look disproportionate to one another.Â

This is how it works:

Voila! There you have it.Â
Thank you for reading!
Unfortunately, not every person is able to stay settled in one home their entire lives. Some people are constantly moving around.
Be it for a job, or as a lifestyle choice, the reasoning is never fully uniform. But it does cause a lot of stress, and it can be really helpful to have some guiding principles set up everywhere.
These people are here to help you with those.
u/MrAlek360 asked:
Here were some of those answers.
Marie Kondo Would Be Proud
Take the opportunity to throw out garbage or stuff you don't need. Don't move useless stuff
And if possible start this process a few months before moving day. If you try to do it as you pack in the few days before the move, you'll run out of time.
Pack Those Tools Daddy Yas
Last thing packed and first thing unpacked should be tools, because something is gonna need to be disassembled or assembled and it helps if you know exactly where those implements are.
Tools. SCISSORS. Toliet paper. Paper towels. Small towel. Hand soap. Paper plates. Lightbulbs/flashlight. Some granola bars. Cleaning supplies. Backup chargers. Pen and paper (write out important numbers eg electric, gas, water, landlord, internet - assume your phone dies and you can't find charger or elec not on, what would you need).
Especially for a longer distance move, make and label the "OPEN FIRST" box as if you needed to live off it. Then if move has delays or other issues you can open that one and collapse.
Don't Be Keepin It All
Get rid of stuff.
Like, lots of stuff. If you have to wonder if you really want to keep it--you probably don't.
Give stuff away, take it to thrift shops, put it on give-away message boards...or just throw it away if you have to.
I move about every three years, and it's crazy how much unessential junk collects in my home.
There's nothing worse than unpacking in your new place and finding something you wish you hadn't just paid someone to protect and transport for you.
These tips and tricks will most definitely come in handy for you the next time you need to move.
Plastique
Get a large trash bag and rip a hole in the bottom (about the size of your fist). Then take any clothes that you have on hangers and put them in the bag with the hooks of the hangers going through the hole you made. Put as many as the bag allows and then tie the bottom with the trash bag's drawstrings. Super easy way to transport hanging clothes, keeps them clean, and makes it super easy to re-hang them.
Makes A Difference
Hire movers if you can afford it
It seriously takes soooo much stress out of the whole process
Moved every year for about 7 years...only did movers the last few times
Wouldn't have it any other way now
New Digs, New Look, New Me
Most people are talking about the sh*t you physically pack here. For me the problem is address changes.
Whenever I have someone save my address information (e.g. Chewy, my dog's microchip manager, Work), I add them to like... OneDrive or Google sheets, and save the information there. When it comes time to change my address, I change it with my bank first, then go through and change it with the various services. I have a marker for whether it's no longer in use (to track things that had my address in the past), the login URL for the site and whether it uses my credit card information.
It doesn't necessarily have to be places that you do financial transactions with either. It sounds like a pain in the butt, and it is somewhat, but I have 55 different places I need to update my information with, and I move roughly once a year.
To Stabilize
If you have a physical library add a couple of layers of books to each box rather than lumping them all together
Not only does this distribute the weight evenly making sure no boxes are overly cumbersome, but it also makes your boxes bottom heavy meaning they are less likely to tip over
You've definitely hassled with these before, but it can be really hard to actually know how to solve moving problems. That's why these tips are here.
Spread It Out Like BUTTAH
If you can afford to, always schedule an overlap of at least a week between when you can move into your new place, and when you have to be out of your old one, as opposed to trying to fit the whole move into 1-2 days. Packing, sorting, moving, and esp. cleaning the old place...makes the whole process *so* much less stressful.
To Settle Faster
Pack a first day box. Include the usual and... soap, toilet paper, shower curtain, snacks, good alcohol, paper towels, regular towels, a few change of clothes, blanket, pillow, few utensils etc.
Yeah, this is a great tip.
I extend this beyond the first day, to the last couple days before the move and the first couple days after the move. In other words, don't assume that you can pack and unpack everything in just a day or so. Give yourself time to start packing and preparing in advance, by separating the minimum set of stuff you need to keep living vs. the stuff that can you can pack in advance. I literally pack that minimum set of stuff into a duffel bag like I'm packing for a trip for a few days, and pack everything else up for the move.
No Throwing Backs Out Today Mama
Put heavier things in smaller boxes. A small box of books is easier to move than a large box. Don't just think of what fits in something, consider how heavy you can carry and try not to pack heavier than you can move
So whether or not you're moving, or you will have to move in the next couple of months--hopefully this list helps you with some of your more cumbersome and daunting tasks.
The stress of moving is literally unparalleled--besides with death and divorce--so having this little bit of support can truly make all the difference.
Restaurant Employees Share The Worst Thing They've Ever Seen Someone Do To A Customer's Order
For anybody who's worked at least a few months in the food service industry, that adage that "the customer is always right" can be a total tease.
Yes, good customer service is important. We want people to enjoy their meal, tip well, and come back to pay more money in the future.
But sometimes a customer's entitled attitude can ruffle a waiter's feathers enough for them to take some *subtle* action.
Or, in many cases, a waiter may simply be careless enough to do something profoundly awful to a meal, whether there was some customer transgression or not.
Either way, it's best to have your head on a swivel and be as polite as possible whenever you find yourself giving your order to a hard-working server.
RegulatoryCapturedMe asked, "Restaurant workers of Reddit, what is the worst thing you have seen done to a customer's order?"
Some people chose to talk not about vindictive behavior, but mindless habits. These stories outlined all the gross things that happen behind the scenes because a cook just couldn't be bothered to keep things sanitary.
Floor + Griddle
"I worked at a popular fast food chain in my younger years, it was my first time with closing shift and we were all doing our part to clean and prep the store."
"I see this lady with a mop and bucket come out of the back, slop it on to the griddle and START MOPPING IT. I was appalled. I went and told the manager and she tells me well that's the quickest way to clean it then scolded me for worrying about things that didn't concern me."
"I quit that job next day and then called the district office and told them what happened. That location closed down not long after. But the franchise still exists."
5 Second Rule (x 50 = 250 Second Rule)
"Worked at a 50's style diner."
"Was prepping the chicken breasts for our burgers and dropped a tray of 50 and they slid right under the grill, easily the dirtiest place in the whole restaurant."
"My boss saw and had me pick them all up rinse them with water and re-season then and stick them back in the fridge..."
-- d0rf47
"No One Will Notice"
"I saw a waiter pour an orange juice, take a big swig with his lips on the rim, top it up then take it to the table." -- RegulatoryCapturedMe
"In college, I worked for a well known pizza place. One of our wait staff came to collect a pepperoni pizza, and nabbed a piece of pepperoni off the top before taking it out."
"He gets to the table, and everyone is staring at him in stunned silence. There's a very fine string of cheese going from the pizza to his mouth." -- DeeTee79
Others chose to highlight the times a co-worker was, indeed, straight up vindictive. These small acts of revenge were blatant, shameless, and often very gross.
A Symbolic Attack
"Worked in restaurants for over 10 years. It's pretty rare that you see people mess with someone's food but it does happen occasionally."
"The most memorable was once when a customer made a waitress cry complaining about their food and sent it back. The chef farted on the remake. It got a lot of laughs."
"More common is if a customer is an ahole, when they order dessert, you find the smallest slice of cheesecake you can."
The Brine Does Look Like Urine
"I know a guy that pissed in a bucket of pickles. He would have never been caught if he didn't talk about it." -- filthysquatch
"Welp. That's a felony." -- saltnskittles
"number 14 mcdonalds pi** pickles" -- LetsGeauxSaints
Some Burger With Your Pickles
"I had a buddy at mcdonalds, a real chaotic type, who every once and a while would say 'oh hey, guess what time it is... PICKLE SURPRISE!' and put a whole handful of pickles on a random cheeseburger." -- mattmoney31716
"Dude... I got like 9 fu**ing pickles on my regular tiny hamburger the other day.. I think he might still work there." -- vl8669
A Clear Policy
"At my last restaurant job, my coworker would make very ugly sundaes for customers who were rude."
"For particularly nice customers, she would painstakingly recreate the sundaes in the menu pictures and give them extra cream and sprinkles."
Finally, others were just as revengeful, but they took out their rage in a more subtle way.
Rather than ruin a meal completely in a brash, obvious way, these cooks and waiters simply listened to customers' order and gave them exactly what they asked for.
These stories remind that we should be careful what we wish for, especially if we've upset the waiter.
A Crowded Pie
"I gave them what they ordered. We were a pizza/Italian/bar restaurant. Our menu was ludicrously large and essentially anything that was on the menu that could go on a pizza was listed as a topping, probably 40 to 50 topping choices.
"I would get asked pretty often for 'a pizza with everything on it!' I had a usual joke or two to find out what they really wanted. Typically a deluxe but then they'd want no black olives or whatever. No big deal."
"Until the a**hole came in that that ordered 'everything' and then proceeded to ask if I was ret##### when I questioned him. My sister has disabilities so I didn't appreciate his tact... told my boss about it and he smiled and said get him a pizza with everything."
"Brought it out and gave it to him. He flipped out and demanded the manager of course. My manager had my back and gave the guy his bill which at $2 a topping was well over a $100 pizza. Guy refused to pay, cops got called, Yada Yada Yada. I hope he enjoyed his pizza with clams, pineapple, Buffalo chicken, broccoli, anchovies, green olives, cream cheese, cauliflower, jalapeños, shrimp..."
-- anix421
Flying Too Close to the Sun
"Some Indian guys came in one time and asked for us to make their food as spicy as possible. I told them that's going to be extremely spicy and wanted to make sure they knew what they were asking for."
"They went on a long rant about how Indian restaurants are the only places that actual know what spicy is and anything we bring out isn't going to be close to how spicy they like their food."
"So I had the owner come over to tell them that we'll try our best but there won't be any refund on this food if it's too spicy. So we made them chicken fried rice with Trinidad scorpion peppers. After 2 bites and about 10 glasses of soy milk later, they ordered something else."
-- MrCanno
Extra Extra Extra
"Wanted extra mayo so I maliciously complied by drenching it. Lady thought I would forget her fake $10 prayer tip the last time she was there." -- Dumfk
"Just keep one on hand for when you see those people again, give it back as their change, or if you care about/need your job, dont listen to me about anything." -- harpo555
It's a list that might leave you feeling rather paranoid about going to fast food or sit down restaurants in the future. But at least one preventative maneuver emerged as a common theme: be polite.
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People Explain Which Things They Thought Were Completely Normal As A Kid And Later Realized Were Really Weird
As much as adults regularly hammer home the importance of honesty with their children, parents are responsible for a significant amount of white lies and bent truth.
It makes sense. Parents are busy, they're human beings who grow impatient, and they find efficiency rather refreshing.
So it's no wonder they fabricate a few elements of "reality" here and there, all to make their kids act in a way that, typically, is well-adjusted for societal expectations.
But when those kids grow into adults, they learn to adopt the behaviors without the lies. And at that moment, the absurdity of their parents' myths all comes flowing to mind.
ancient_a**holed4 asked, "What normal thing in your childhood did you later realise was extremely weird?"
Many people shared some truly inventive, out of the box thinking. Most were the creative innovations of parents trying to keep everything running smoothly.
Tire Them Out Before Bed
"My mom taught me and my sister to howl at the moon. It would get our dog all worked up, and he'd howl too."
"It would make my grandma so mad, but my mom found it hilarious."
-- eeyoremarie
Smart House
"My parents didn't want to shout our names for dinner or to come downstairs so my Dad installed a literal doorbell in our bedrooms."
"So if we were needed in the kitchen we were summoned by the 'child bell'. - we lived in a 2 bed semi."
A Very Fun Way to Enjoy Burgers
"Burger Roulette: every time there was a barbecue or we made burgers one of the burgers would be stuffed with hot sauce and peppers. So hilarious and definitely made dinners more exciting, but not a normal thing lol"
-- SavvyPanther
A Myth They Made On Their Own
"I think I only thought about this once, then completely forgot about it. When I was a kid (6-7?) I used to think 'brown people pooped brown poop, and white people pooped white poop.' "
"It never occurred to me that I had never seen a white sh** any time I went to the toilet, and so when I saw that someone had unfortunately forgot to flush the toilet (at school) and I saw the 'remnants,' I was immediately intrigued, since I was the only brown kid at that school, and I thought there was another brown person at my school, and I just hadn't seen them."
Other people came to understand that their parents' strange, often dishonest behavior or commentary actually had a very admirable motivation underneath it.
These were good stories that shed light on the honor of moms and dads.
Be Ready
"My mom used to have me practice screaming for help at the top of my lungs before going to friends houses ಠ_ಠ" -- lazydaisy2pointoh
"You know whilst this is weird it's also a good thing to teach kids to use their voice . They're told to shut up or be quiet so often that when they need to use their voice it's not natural to them" -- Ieatclowns
Gettin' Health
"Whenever I wouldn't wanna get shots my mom would say 'te lo van a poner en tu cosita si no lo dejas' which means 'they're gonna put the shot on yo di** if you don't comply' and the doc who didn't know Spanish was like 'yeah en tu cosita.'
A Boarding House
"Random kids living at our house."
"I had 9 siblings and my parents always had one or two other kids that had been kicked out of their homes living with us. Usually friends of my older brothers and sisters, it wasn't until my twenties that I discovered that most had been disowned by their parents for being gay."
"Also had no clue that this wasn't normal for the 60's."
Best Guy to Have Around
"It's a little thing, but it was very surprising to me - that it was my dad and not my mom who stayed home with me when I was sick."
"Also, my friends all had stories of their parents trying to get them to go to school even when they were sick. My parents never did that, and even let me stay home a few times even when they knew I was faking it."
"I know it's hard for a lot of working parents to stay home with a sick kid, but all my friends at the time were pretty much from the same middle-class background as I was, and my father was a hospital physician and the head of his division at the hospital and also saw a lot of patients, so it was not easy for him to miss work. I guess he handled a lot of stuff by phone (this was before the internet)."
"It's a little thing, but it really made me feel so cared for and I still associate staying home sick with getting taken care of by my dad who had an excellent bedside manner."
Finally, others discovered the flaws of their parents. These misunderstandings weren't the results of purposeful fibs on the part of parents.
Rather, the kids at the time couldn't conceive of a world in which their parents could screw up.
Everyone's Enemy
"Getting honked at, flipped off, and yelled at while driving. I just thought driving was this extremely aggressive and negative experience that made everyone angry."
"Turns out my dad was a serial tailgater who used to ride right up on people in front of us, regardless of the speed we were traveling. Highways, subdivisions, country roads, didn't matter."
"It wasn't until I began to learn to drive myself that it all made sense."
Inventive Dishes
"My mom's cooking. She boiled noodles until they were mush. Her potato soup was boiled onions and potatoes drained then added to warm milk with salt and pepper. Baked beans were beans, ketchup, and pancake syrup."
"The most common meal in our house started as spaghetti, then became chili, and then chili mac."
"Vegetable soup was all the vegetables dumped straight from a can with no seasoning and the meat would be hamburger, canned roast beef, or canned corned beef with potatoes."
"A lot of the other stuff she cooked was pretty good, but that was only if she followed a recipe. If she winged it things got strange. My favorite will always be the grape soda bbq because she didn't have Dr Pepper."
Here's hoping you aren't still under the spell of any lies or half-truths that proliferated when you were a kid. But there's no harming in acknowledging just how long you lived according to them.
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People Explain Which Things Were Meant To Be 'The Next Big Thing' But Totally Flopped Instead
Remember Theranos? It was a breakthrough technology company that claimed to have devised blood tests that required very tiny amounts of blood. The hype was real: In 2015, Theranos received a $9 billion valuation and its CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, seemed prime to become a household name. Shortly afterward, she was exposed as a fraud; her trial (on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud) has been postponed several times as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
After Redditor LineofDeath asked the online community, "What was supposed to be the next big thing but totally flopped?" people reminded us how you should never fall for the hype.
"Now they are chiefly remembered..."
Quadraphonic entertainment systems in the early 1970s. They were supposed to replace stereophonic systems. Now they are chiefly remembered for inspiring the name of The Who's second rock opera.
Ah, yes...
Remember those days? That didn't end well for them, didn't it? The hype was real and it died as quickly as it began.
"I saw ads for it..."
That streaming service that lasted like two months. 'Qubi' or 'Qupi' I think?
Even bad timing aside (a mobile-based streaming service at a time when no one could really leave their house) the marketing was just horrible. I saw ads for it for nearly a week before I realized it was a new video streaming service, and by that point was so annoyed by the ads untrusting everything I didn't care at all, just out of spite. Also, I mean it was just YouTube you have to pay for and got worse content.
"Not sure..."
Not sure if this one has totally flopped yet, but I noticed while in Costco the other day that there are no longer any curved TVs. If Costco is no longer carrying them then I think we can assume they're going the way of the dodo.
"I thought it was a good idea..."
Google Wave. It was supposed to replace email with a more collaborative approach. Essentially it was like a dynamically-created discussion board you'd share with select people and you could have a more readable discussion than one with a bunch of forwards and CCs and the like.
I thought it was a good idea, but it flopped big time and Google got rid of it after a few years.
"They pushed really hard for those..."
Amazon's shopping buttons. They pushed really hard for those and I never saw the point.
They try a lot of things.
Not all of them are winners.
"It was supposed to..."
The Divergent series. It was supposed to kinda have a Hunger Games concept and all and try to be a replacement. The last two movies ended up being so unwatchable.
These were terrible.
When the actors gave up on them, you knew it was over.
"Now they're just used to..."
Segways were supposed to revolutionize travel and replace the automobile. Now they're just used for guided tours for dorks in tourist traps.
"These were the next, awesome way..."
Airship travel. These were the next, awesome way to travel long distances; in fact, the spire on top of the Empire State Building was meant as an anchoring point for airships.
The Hindenburg kind of put a damper on it, though.
"I had a friend in high school..."
3DTV
I had a friend in high school who was preparing to go to film school. She swore up and down that 3DTV was the way of the future and one day all movies and tv shows would be in 3D.
The hype machine is a real thing...
...and you can't believe it all the time. Sucks to be the inventor... or the investor. (Looking at you, Quibi.)
Have some suggestions of your own? Feel free to tell us all about them in the comments below!
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