Small town gross things you thought were normal as a child and teenager, a small list: The local bar had a 13 and up mixer every Friday.

High school students would come over to the elementary school fence on lunch to shop for girlfriends from the grade 7s and 8s.

Local 15 year old girl with 45 year old boyfriend is ostracized. All mothers at PTA meetings call her a slut and encourage you not to talk to her because she’s a ‘bad influence’

Your parents encourage you to date a customer who asked you out at the local coffee shop (when you were working) because he makes good money. You are 16 and he is 24. I’ll add more if I think of them.

Anyway the point of this thread is mostly about how insidious some of these things can be, if they’re normalized for you young enough. And I’d like to point out that my mom protected me from some of these things by rightly calling them what they were.

This didn’t stop it from being normal- it just made it seem like a part of society that sucked but was unavoidable. I’ve mentioned some of these things casually to people over the years and come to realize these experiences were def. not universal.