Being home for the holidays often makes you feel like you’re in high school all over again. One of the most flashback-y things is remembering how your parents used to come up with creative ways to make sure that you and your boyfriend/girlfriend didn’t sneak into each others’ rooms at night — or how they still keep you guys separated, even though you’re 30. We polled some of HowAboutWe’s friends about their funniest “not under my roof!” stories.

“On a [coed] high school trip, one of the chaperones sat out in the hallway all night. But someone switched his coffee for decaf, so he fell asleep.”

“My mom used to tell stories about bringing boyfriends back home. My grandfather had a speaker system set up throughout the house so when he thought they were alone too long, he would blast Cantorial music into the den.”

“They put our dog’s bed just outside of my door, so that if I opened the door and woke him up his loud barking would wake up everyone else in the house.”

“My parents put masking tape on the outside of the door frame, which meant that the tape would rip if I opened the door in the middle of the night.”

“There was a heating vent that connected my bedroom with the dining room in the house where I grew up. If I was upstairs with a boy, even though the rules of open door and lights on were observed, my parents would hit the vent with a broom as if they were cleaning it, but really they were letting me know that they were just down below and listening.”

“They sent a younger sibling upstairs to ‘investigate.’”

“They hung sleigh bells on the guest room door so that they’d have an alarm system if my male guest snuck out or if I snuck in. (The worst part? I was the one who suggested it — sarcastically, of course — when they were fretting about the potential for funny business going down.)”

“My boyfriend’s family always has huge Thanksgivings. One year they had so many people coming that they had some of the guests staying at their friends’ house down the street – including my boyfriend. That’s right – separate rooms weren’t enough for us, we got separate houses.”

“My mom would go to sleep in my bed, so if I came home late or brought my boyfriend in for few minutes, a nasty surprise was waiting.”

Did your parents take any measures to head off holiday hookups? Tell us in the comments.

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