For a project in middle school we had to make a video about something, can’t remember been years now, and my friend at the time, said we can do in downtown in our town. It was a group project too, so my mom dropped off me and another friend downtown to meet the rest of the group. We filmed a bit but then we needed something so we had to friend’s house, I’m gonna call her J, since her house was the closest but she didn’t want us to go to her house and ask if my mom could pick us up to go to my house instead.

My house was the biggest and I did have lots of things but my parents couldn’t pick us up as they were busy and the walk to my house was too far away. Not to mention it was hot as f**k, plus we weren’t even done filming so we had to go back to downtown. So we had to go to J’s house but J was always persistent I never go to her house, she always came to my house. I was curious so when we arrived there, J only wanted me to come inside to get what we needed. When I entered the house I was hit by old laundry detergent smell and cats, then I saw the piles and piles of things around the house. Things were literary stacked on top of each other. There’s so much stuff in the house and there was barely any room to walk around and it was dark as hell. I met her mom who was on the computer with stuff around her, and saw how dirty and obese she was. There was like 7 cats laying around and J quickly got what we needed and left.

She made me to swore to not tell the others what I saw and I felt bad since it explains some of her issues (the other reason is her mom was controlling, highly strict, yet neglectful never letting her do anything or go out) and why her clothes smelled weird and had tons of cat hair on them. J always looked disheveled when she came to school every day and why she never told about her home life. It was the first time I ever saw a hoarders house.

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Heather Lambie

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So sad for her and the cats

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It was normal. That's what shocked me. I grew up in a 2 bedroom apartment with 4 brothers, who I shared a room with. Only my dad worked a paying job. We had a depressed pitbull, and only ate Plain Cheerios, sometimes Honey Nut, for breakfast. We also had to ask before we got milk or a snack, and usually had to eat it or drink at the table. We didn't have a back yard, instead if we wanted to play outside, we'd go to an asphalt parking lot downstairs. It definitely wasn't the worst living conditions, we had a roof over our head and food, but it wasn't all that pleasant either.

When I went to my friends house for the first time, it was an actual house that they owned, with 3 bedrooms. He had a trained golden retriever, and two cats. He had his own room which was the biggest shock to me, especially since he could put up movie posters and whatever he wanted in them. We ate snacks and drank milk in his room without asking. His gaming console was also in there, unlike mine which was in my living room. He had an older sister, and two parents, all of them working jobs. He had a giant backyard. Best of all we had crepes for breakfast.

I would've visited everyday if I could. When I went back home I realized how cramped it was where I lived, and how sad my dog was. We eventually sent my dog to live with her sister, where she'd have a front and backyard to run. She's a lot happier now. A few years later, we moved to a bigger condo, and got a smaller dog (still a pit). So we're doing better.

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panic

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We love to see a happy ending

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Not all families eat dinner together. As a kid i would eat dinner with my family we would all gather around a table and eat, we did the have tv on in the background so mom and dad could listen to the news. Other than that we would eat and talk. First time I went to my friends house I sat at their dining table and my friend said “what are you doing? Let’s go back up to my room and eat” I looked at his mom for what felt like a minute before she said yes go ahead. It was strange and to this day I find it strange some families don’t eat together.

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Monday

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Our family only eats together at a table for special occasions so I always felt a little awkward eating at a table with friends and their families. On an ordinary day we all just grab our food and go in our different directions to continue doing whatever we were doing before.

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Opposing experiences.

I went to a friends house and found out his parents were hoarders. Like REALLY bad. The house was decorated normally aside from the MASSIVE piles of junk touching the ceiling. There was a little path to each room between the piles but other than that it was just junk EVERYWHERE.

Another time I got invited to a buddy’s house for an airsoft party. I had been to an airsoft party at someone’s house before and assumed we would just be playing in the street again. Pulled up to a three-story mansion with a full field for us to play in. He had an elevator in his house and a guest house about the size of ours. The field was for his sister who rode horses but she let us use it for the party. The dude was always humble and cool with me and never let on that his family was wealthy.

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Flash Henry

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I didn't know what hoarding was until I was 15 and went to my friend's house for the first time. We had to actually climb over giant piles of stuff to get anywhere.

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So I never had the fraternity experience during college. I stayed at home with my parents while studying for my degree. One day I get invited to visit some friends up north at another university. They lived in a frat house and said it was cool to crash at their pad. So I thought “hell yeah this gonna be fun”.

Upon arriving, I was greeted with the most disgusting frat house you have ever seen. There was trash EVERYWHERE. So much so to the point that you couldn’t even see the floor. It was like a sea of trash. The kitchen had massive stacks of dirty plates and dishes on the counter and in the sink.

And for the cherry on top? It was INFESTED with rats. I tried sleeping at like 1am and you could just hear rats darting across the floor in the living room and rummaging through the cabinets in the kitchen.

I was like “nope, I’m out”. Grabbed my sh*t and just dipped out. I got lucky because I knew another good friend of mine who lived about 15 minutes away. Hit him up and explained my situation and he was like “dude, get out of that HELL HOLE and come stay with me. We’ll smoke some weed and you can crash on my couch”. I took an Uber over to his place and the sense of relief when I got to his pad was unreal haha. I’m eternally grateful to that mfer

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I remember when I was a kid, like 3rd grade, new kid at school and I hit it off and become friends. I went to his house and he had ALL the sugary and processed snacks. Capri sun, pop tarts, freezer pizza, chef Boyardee, dunkaroos, you name it - All those name brand things more or less marketed to kids. I grew up in a very rural area, and my Mom was adamant about us having fresh fruit and veggies, she was a frequent shopper of local produce markets. We never DIDN’T have treats (most common was ice cream and potato chips), but seeing someone else’s house be filled with, what I see now as, basically commercials kind of shocked me.

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Hex Gurls

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my family was kinda like OPs family, my mom always insisted my friends ate way healthier and we always ate like just vegetables and meats, she’d try to convince us a sweetish apple was like candy, etc. Abd whenever i’d go over to my friends houses theyd have junk food in their pantry instead of dried okra or homemade pickles

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When my wife and I were first dating and getting serious, I would start going to her family functions. The first time I went to her cousins house was...weird. They had their entire VHS porn collection sitting out in open view next to the TV. My wife said to ignore it and that it's been sitting there since she was a kid. Which made it even weirder because her cousin had kids that were around our age.

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Deborah Harris

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Is this the wrong photo?

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Probably mild compared to some of the responses here but I'm from the Northern United States. I'm living in the South now. What was a shock to me was how people will walk into each other's homes and automatically open up the refrigerator. We don't do that up there.

We don't do that unless your family that is, I mean blood family. I thought it was really odd because when I first saw it, it struck me as rude. Ironically, people down here thought I was strange for not doing it.

Edit: typo

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Memere

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I'm not in the South U.S., but I do have family & friends living there. The only folks I know who will do something like this are family & friends. Nobody in the South walks into a stranger's house & gets into the fridge without being invited to.

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My parents were friends with this couple from church , we'll call them Bill and Martha . They were homeschoolers like us so my mom decided that on some days Martha would tutor my older sister and me alongside her kids.

Well Bill had some ... weird rules about tv and books. Martha and the kids were not allowed to watch any tv channels besides PBS ( the public broadcasting network ). They weren't allowed to read any books besides the bible and a few bible themed children's stories. And the three of them had to be in bed by 7pm. Also they couldn't have any bread that wasn't white bread. Bill however could eat, read and watch whatever the f**k he wanted.

Now our mom's rules were f****d up too, but Bill's tv rule really threw me for a loop. That family also wore shoes in their house. Having mostly grown up around Cambodians and Koreans, I really wasn't expecting that and sis and I nearly hurled.

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Nikki Sevven

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How do you homeschool without books? That's not homeschooling; it's indoctrination.

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Went to a third world country to visit my best friends family. It was not as expected..

I had known my friend for over 12 years. They often spoke about the difficulty of their origin story - growing up in a developing country, the disadvantages they experienced, poverty, etc. It was a cornerstone of their identity and I never had any reason to question it. In our late twenties we planned a backpacking trip though Central America, and decided at the last moment to make a stop over in their home country, El Salvador.

The first memory that stands out was seeing a very large building - 15 floors or more - with their families surname on it. I was like “woah that’s cool. You share a name with some massive company or something?” .. hours later we crossed a bridge that also had the family name.. then entered a gated community with the family name .. and that’s when I found myself in a massive compound with multiple family homes, vehicle, staff and security.

It was an incredible realization that not only did my friend *not* come from poverty, but in fact grew up in elite privilege in an otherwise poverty-stricken country. I couldn’t really place how uneasy my friend has seemed over this entire trip until I saw it all layer out in front of me. Boy oh boy did we have a lot to talk about on that trip..

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When I was a kid in the mid-1970s my parents rented a house in Stockbridge for the summer.

So I became friendly with some kids up the road, who invited me to dinner. So I went over and there were maybe 5 kids, the two parents and me. So the parents put out the food, then everyone dropped their heads, held hands and started saying thanks or whatever you call a pre-meal prayer.

That sort of caught me off surprise. As a kid from a completely non-religious family from NYC it was something I had never seen before, other than on the Waltons or Little Hoyse on the Prarie.

There was also the time I was dating a girl in HS (1980s). I went by her house, and her mom answered the door in a teddy. She looked good but I was caught off-guard. Turns out they were swingers and were headed to some party.

Honestly the latter seemed less odd to me than the former.

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Darla Taylor

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Swingers are people who will switch partners to have sex with.

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i always noticed going over to my old friends house how much unity you kind of felt walking in. like it was a genuine home,i grew up with a really abusive/neglectful mom and everything was so different it felt uncomfortable in a way.

they had really nice stuff,he had both parents,pool,dirtbikes,food/snacks/drinks,nice car,decorations and pictures,smelled nice,etc etc and i remember the most awkward thing i felt was just sitting at the table and eating with them cause it was really foreign to me and i almost felt interrogated but realized everything was fine sooner or later. same with breakfast,i got a really bad stomach ache the next day from eating so early cause i hadn’t eaten breakfast on that schedule in YEARS (and still dont eat it), it felt weird but nice. his mom didn’t like me though lmao

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I was invited to a friend's home, the entire house was rotting, molding and basically falling apart, but when I entered his room everything was fancy, high tech and expensive.
This family was treating thier child like a God but literally letting thier house rott apart.
I still don't get it

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This isnt really shocking but I was surprised as a kid. One time I went to a friends house where most of the house was sparkling, it smelled wonderfull and it was extremly neat and clean, not a single piece of dust or dirt. However when I walked into their bedroom I was surprised at just how messy it was, it wasnt only messy clothes and items on the floor, there was dust everywhere and plenty of dirt build up. And it was the exact same for all of the other siblings rooms. I guess that I just found it weird the entire house was spotless exept for the bedrooms.

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Memere

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Mom & Dad were the ones keeping the house clean & leaving the kids to clean up their own rooms.

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When I was about 9 or 10 I went to stay the night with a friend from school. I feel like my dad knew his mom in some round about way but he lived with his mom and stepdad in a reasonably well kept double wide trailer. This was in the late 90s but even for then it seemed like they had no boundaries for the kid and by proxy I had almost none as well for my time there. I primarily went over to play video games (PS1 I think) and we mostly played Resident Evil 2 for hours on end. Relatively scary content, blood/gore for me at that time. Junk food was readily accessible and while I had that at my house as well there were rules around what I could have an when I could have it at my own house. They also rented one of the rooms in the trailer to a kid about 20 who I only saw come home after his hockey game and not really again. After gorging on junk food and violent video games we crashed in the living room and woke up the next day with his step dad offering to let us shoot his revolver from the deck of the trailer. I had never shot a gun before and it was a bit loud and scary for me.

For what it's worth, the kid (my friend) has been in and out of jail for the last 10 years.

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Zedrapazia

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Wouldn't blame the games for jail issues tho.

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This is really minor but when I went to a friend's house, as soon as I walked in I took off my shoes and left them by the door. But my friend didn't. I was so confused! It turns a ton of people wear their shoes inside, in their homes. Its still weird for me to this day.

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Alma Muminovic

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Only in America. But it’s gross.

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In-laws didn't throw things away. Not necessarily hoarders, but not far off. Just kept so much *s**t* in piles around the house. Honestly don't know how people live like that. It makes me physiologically uncomfortable.

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Kel_how

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My grandmother was a hoarder and I helped my mom clean out her house several times. We basically needed hazmat suits. And I developed allergic asthma from it.

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It's pretty tame in comparison to the rest of these stories, but it took me like three visits to my friend's house before I realized they didn't have any mirrors. Still not sure if it's a deliberate choice or what the deal is, but it's kinda weird to me.

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Shasta Morris

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Vampires

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The first girl I dated while in college had her own house (which I thought was super awesome considering she was only 2 years older than me). It was absolutely filthy. Not just garbage everywhere but just random stuff laying around and zero organization. She was definitely a hoarder. We broke up after about a month but a few years later hooked up again and her house was waaay better. I'm glad it wasn't a permanent thing for her.

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panic

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We stan character development

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In middle school, my friend picked up a pole axe and slammed it through his bedroom ceiling a few times. His dad does not care because my friend can patch his own drywall. His dad was drunk all the time and just let his kids do whatever they wanted as long as they were not too loud.

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PuggerWugger

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He just had a pole axe lying around?

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I went over to my friend’s house for the first time and was surprised to find out that her parents would argue in front of everyone, including me. They had no self control when it came to that. In one instance I was actually involved in one of the arguments and had to calm her step-mother down. It was really weird for me to see that since my whole childhood whenever anyone came to my house my parent would act normal and never argue in front of guests. I just found it really strange since I am not an adult, and still a teenager, and my friend is too. I shouldn’t be included in arguments about you cheating on each other 🤪

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HeatherDPanda

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True That!

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All the lights of the house were red, because some astrologer told them it was good for them.

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LinkTheHylian

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How do you play Red Rover when you're all red?

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Went to my friend's house when I was like 9 was playing hide and seek, went into a forbidden parents room cause it's only cheating if you get caught.

The wall had pistols rifles swords and other cool as f**k s**t I stood in awe and then left without ever mentioning it to my parents, eventually they showed me it themselves but my god was that a core memory for me.

Also for context I live in the UK so this is mad rare for us.

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I'm Kid A

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In Texas this is called wall art.

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I was dating a man and when we went back to his place everything just looked off. It was really nice and stylish but didn’t look like “him” or his style if you know what I mean. I didn’t say anything the first night, but after a few visits it finally bugged me enough that I had to ask. I thought maybe it was his ex wife’s stuff but nope, when he bought his place he bought all the previous owner’s furniture and decor along with it. He did not choose a single thing in the entire place.

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Cyndielouwhoo

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Secret agent for sure.

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Salt and pepper shakers. Like everywhere. Like rooms full of stacked boxes inn every room. All walls lined with shelves full of displays. Her mom had a severe obsession with them.

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Huddo's sister

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I believe that is called a collection...

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One of our wealthiest friends (also one of the sharper dressers) lives in a house with no furniture. He has a few camping chairs around his kitchen counter and his bedroom is a mattress in the ground with different piles of clothes around.

He irons every outfit before he puts it on.

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Indosidius

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When I first moved out of my parents place, I just started working. My basic furniture was a mattress on the ground, a fee camping chairs, a little table that I used my pc for gaming and watching movies, and a bar fridge to keep my milk fresh. The place I rented had a build in stove and build in cupboards. Simple, 1 bedroom granny flat build ontop of a garage so I had a huge patio. Over the years I bought a proper bed, proper fridge, cooking utensils, lounge suit, TV etc. When my wife came over the first time (dating) she commented on what an excellently equipped kitchen I had (for a bachelor)

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A sex dungeon in the basement of my neighbours. They are goody two shoes who are very religious. To look at them you’d think they are prudes, but from what I saw they are the complete opposite. I stumbled upon their sex dungeon when both bathrooms they had were in use and I really had to go. The wife said I could use their washroom they had downstairs. As I was walking in their basement I thought I saw a sex swing out of the corner of my eye, so I stopped and saw that this, with a lot of locks on the door, was open. So naturally my curiosity forced me to snoop and wow… all I can say is they aren’t prudes after all.

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RezFidel

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Classic.

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My best friend in high school was living with hoarder parents who would leave the Christmas tree up all year round and only replaced it the week before Christmas. They even left last year's presents on the fireplace almost all year. It was better than my home so I just kind of adapted.

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Julie Rod

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At that point, just get an artificial tree that never needs replaced

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I remember I went to visit a Somali family who had basically furnished their home like a typical Somali house? They had a house with 2 bedrooms but all rooms incl the living area where matresses on the floor, all around the walls with like ethnic plaids, nice carpets everywhere, no tables or beds to be seen. It didn't look cheap (so money didn't seem to be an issue).
I asked my friend where they slept?? She explained they just choose a spot, take a blanket out of the build in cabinets and sleep there.
So nobody had a bedroom, they just slept wherever they liked.
And to eat they would take a plaid (again from the build in cabinets they had in every room) and just spread it on the floor and eat there.
Their clothes? Also all in the build in cabinets.

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Huddo's sister

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My mum bought a genuine Persian rug from an Egyptian family once and their lounge looked simar. only thing it here was two massive rugs. They just hat on the floor to eat. It's the norm in theirs and other cultures.

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I went to a rich person's house and everything needed to be spotless and clean and there was even plastic wrapping on the couch??? Like wtf you don't like sitting?

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no soap in the bathroom. You’re telling me that you poop, wipe your butt, don’t wash your hands, and then cook or eat food. Never hung out with that person again

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Ray Martin

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This is a bit over-critical. Maybe they just didn't wipe their butt, so there's no need to wash hands before eating or cooking... (yes, I'm joking)

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