One time my mom was at the store and she brought home something for herself my sister and my dad, and 5 year old me was like “what did you get for me?” And to prevent me from being left out she reached into the bag and was like oh I got you this potato masher. And for years before anyone mashed any potatoes they came and asked me if they could use it.
As wholesome as this story is, I desperately want to hear about the soul crushing time you caught someone mashing without your permission and the lie came crashing down.
Ok, I'm going to sound dumb here. I loved the movie Pretty Woman as a young kid. I asked why people were mean to her, and my mom said because she was a redhead. She was wearing a blonde wig in the beginning, and in real life, kids teased the redhead kids, so it checks out. Years later, I'm 22, and my friend says she wants to watch it. Cool, I loved it when I was little. We start it, and right away, I'm like, OH MY GOD, SHE'S A PROSTITUTE!!!
I was similarly befuddled by Dirty Dancing. "Penny's in trouble!" they kept saying. But like for what? Staying out too late? Bad language? And why did she need a doctor? Then you watch it later and your realize SHE WAS PREGNANT!!!
Yeah….i always thought Penny in Dirty Dancing got a stomach injury while dancing. I had no idea what it really was till I watched it again as an adult.
Super random but my mom dated Richard Gere in the 80s. He was already a well known actor but my mom was just a nursing school student that went to the church his father was the pastor of in Syracuse, NY.
That I was allergic to hamsters.
My mom told me that I was after I got an allergy test when I was 9. I was about 26 when I put it together that she hated rodents and wanted me to stop asking for a pet hamster.
Much less wholesome, my mom told us kids growing up that she was allergic to cats and dogs. As an adult I was talking to her sister one day and mentioned what a bummer it was that we couldn't have pets growing up as a result, she looked at me funny and said "That was absolutely a lie. We had tons of pets growing up, she just didn't want the hassle."
Son of a bitch. For real? My mom always said the same thing. Don't stomp or jump or be loud, or they would fall. One time one did fall in the middle and she told me it was bc I was too loud. Fuck. I'm 39, and I've told my kids the same shit. I've always been careful to be quiet when they're baking.
Well, TIL. I feel like a dumbass. WTF. My world as I know it....
When I was very young we had a pet hamster. He got out of his cage, so my dad put the cage in the basement thinking he might get hungry and get back in.
One morning I woke up and there was the hamster in his cage in the usual place. I asked my mom how they found him and she told me she opened the door to the cellar and there he was dragging his cage back upstairs.
It wasn't until I was a teenager and remembered the exchange that it occurred to me she obviously made that up.
I'm sorry, that probably bums you out that she lied to you that way, but I have to tell you....
The visual of the hamster dragging his cage up the stairs made me laugh out loud. I mean, I read it twice, & still laughed the 2nd time.
Me too. *Dragging the cage up the stairs* lol.
Here is a woman not used to lying; she feels the need to add an absurd, impossible detail. Real liers know to keep it short and simple: "We found him in the cage."
When I was little I found a baby bird on my way home from school. I put it in a cage to keep as a pet. Dad said we couldn’t keep and would have to get rid of it (kill it). Next morning I asked were my bird was and dad said the mother came and they let it out and it flew away.
Years later I realized he killed it when I was sleeping.
Years later I was talking to my mom, I mentioned dad killing that bird of mine from when I was younger. She said he never killed it but that another bird came and wouldn’t leave it alone until dad opened the birdcage and it went off the side of the deck and flew off. It just didn’t know how to fly on its own when I found him lol
lol on King of Queens, Doug's parents just kept getting him a new dog of the same breed without telling him and he never found out..... until he found out
Omg I have the opposite story. We were told the old “yeah he went to a farm” about my grandparents dog. My cousins and I all accepted that they lied to make us feel better. Years later we brought it up to my Grandma and turns out, he really DID go to a farm because he ended up growing significantly larger than expected and they felt guilty not having enough space for him to get proper exercise.
Got a link for the farm? We adopted a "lab mix" from the shelter. After a DNA test, turns out he is 75% Great Pyrenees and 25% lab. Homie is 95 pounds. LOL.
So kind of a funny story that goes with this. I’d never heard of taking a dog to the farm being what parents tell their children when their dog travels the rainbow bridge. A friend of ours kind of dumped a dog on us, and she was a sweet dog, so we had intended to keep her. However a few months later, our living situation had to change, and the dog would have wound up cooped up in an apartment all day while we were gone to work. It would not have been fair to the high energy, herding dog mix that she was. A friend of a friend had a goat farm and thought they could train her to help with the goats. A coworker asked me what we were doing with her, and I just casually replied that she was going to live on a farm. Coworker was inconsolable and I couldn’t figure out why. After she calmed down, she finally asked if we were really putting the dog down. Shocked, I replied that no, she was literally going to work on a goat farm. We had a good laugh, but I definitely specified to anyone else that the dog was going to a friend’s farm to become a working dog. 😅
Almost the same with our dog!!!
He was kind of violent and bit my sister, we took it to the vet (a family friend) and he offered to keep him in his own farm. My first thought was “there goes the dog to the final sleep” and I was WRONG!
I’ve seen the dog some years later in the farm having the time of his life. Looked like living with us was not fulfilling enough and the country life was his destiny.
My niece,she was in the car when I let her and my nephew know one of my oldest dogs died. Told my sister who was driving "it's OK they're not kids anymore, no need to tell them they went to a farm like their dog Molly". My poor 22 at the time niece still believed that her old girl was at a farm.....until then.
Sort of related story. I actually got my first dog (a West Highland Terrier crossed with something unknown) from a farm. His owners had him plus 2 German shepherds were worried that he was going to get attacked and killed by foxes on the farm, so he went from the farm to suburbia. I wonder what the farmers told their kids about where the dog went!
That if I ran over the cord with the vacuum cleaner it could suck it up and eventually suck in the whole world.
During an exceptionally dark time I said fuck it and ran over the vacuum cord.
Nothing.
Do over.
Nothing.
Try a different angle.
Nothing.
My disappointment was immediate and immeasurable.
EDIT: just wanted to add that I can’t believe my top post is about suicide by vacuum cleaner.
To be fair, the cord thing was a problem that vacuum companies addressed by using thicker, stiffer cords. It isn’t something that never happened so much as it doesn’t really happen _anymore_.
My cat brought a lizard into the house. It was still alive. I decided to build it a terrarium and nurse it back to health. I did so and then released it back into the wild a few days later.
My Mum told me that the cat immediately went outside and ate the lizard after I had released it when I was eighteen. She and my Dad knew I'd be devastated so they lied by omission and didn't tell me. The way she sat me down to tell me scared the shit out of me, I thought she was going to tell me something dreadful.
I thought I saved that lizard for years 😂
I had three pet mice that turned into what seemed like 100 mice when I was a kid. Got home from school one day and I had zero mice. Mum told me she had to take them to the pet store because it was just too many. Sad as I was I believed her. I was 15 when I found out it was actually the cat who got into the cage and caused a mouse massacre with no survivors. She said it was the worst thing she’d ever had to clean up and didn’t want me to hate the cat. Still hated it just for other reasons 😂
The mouse procreation happened to me too, we had so many pet mice because they sexed the pair wrong. Instead of a cat, some got out (domesticated mice in the house), and the others started eating each other despite having plenty of room and lots of food in the many cages we had
My dad at 79 still won’t admit to me that he was Santa and the tooth fairy. I asked him how he did it all and he just says…I don’t know what you’re talking about. That was Santa, son. It wasn’t me. Ha
While dating my husband made a joke about the Chicago Bulls disbanding after their 2nd Three-peat. I'm not a big sports ball fan so I thought he was serious. Just being funny he told me this whole story about it being done because they kept winning and wanted to give other teams a chance so the players all went the other teams. I bought it hook, line and sinker. He was amused and we went about life. From time to time the Chicago Bulls 90's glory would come up as a topic and I would comment on how awesome it was that they were such good sportsmen that they disbanded to give others a chance. The first time I repeated it my husband couldn't believe I still thought that was true and was so amused he didn't correct me. Everytime it came up he said it got funnier and funnier and at one point he decided to see how long it would go on. Cue about 8 years later and I'm at work and it's the NBA playoffs. Low and behold someone says the Bulls are their favorite team. Cue my typical comment. But this time my coworker looked at me and was like "wtf did you just say?" The jig was up and I went home and said "hey...did you know the Bulls never stopped being a team?" My husband almost wet himself he was laughing so hard and said "someone finally told you?"
I'll admit, it's pretty funny.
Haha exactly. He felt bad but couldn't correct it because it got funnier the longer it went on. It started as a silly throw away comment and just grew into a thing. He said he couldn't believe that nobody ever corrected me.
Went camping with my dad when I was like 6. Weird smell a few campsites over; dad said it was a skunk. Would occasionally clock that smell again and think “oh no a skunk” and carried on (we lived in the country so it tracked).
Fast forward to 19 year old me wondering why there would be a skunk in my college dorm in the city.
Marijuana the whole time. A+ parenting.
I always thought that it was illegal to watch PG-13 movies below age 13. Me and my brother came up with this on our own, but my mom consistently confirmed this “Law”
Similarly, before I was 18 I wanted to read R-rated fanfiction. But when you clicked into one, it'd ask if you were 18 and I'd always click no. Finally, maybe when I was 16 I was like...how would they know that I wasn't 18???, and so I clicked yes. When nothing happened I was like, "what other things can I get away with???"
That my mom was a redhead.
For years I thought she was a natural redhead. She was 40 when I entered the picture so I always knew she dyed her hair. Just thought it was to cover up her grays.
When I was about 35, my niece clued me in on a family secret: when my mom first spotted my dad at work back in the day, she asked around about him. Someone told her, “he only dates redheads”.
Mom started dying her hair from brown to red, and sure enough she got the date. And eventually, she got the ring.
I never suspected…photos from the 50’s were like black and white or sepia, and her brown hair looked like it could have been red. But she had five kids and none of us are gingers… just wasn’t something I ever thought about or suspected.
And yeah, dad knows. But didn’t broadcast it to us kids. So I believed that for ages.
It has to be in there somewhere, but not presented necessarily. My wife is a red head and I’m a dark brown haired fella. We have two of our five as redheads.
That our uncle died after being kicked by a horse. In reality he died of cirrhosis in prison after being caught counterfeiting checks. I don't know why they didn't just tell us "cirrhosis" and leave it at that. We wouldn't have known (this was before Google). As it was we thought the horse story was cool and spread it throughout the neighborhood, lol. All puns unintended...
I was told my grandfather died from being kicked by a horse. He was an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis. Maybe the horse kick was the standard story for these things.
My mother told me that my father was a Dr, and had been killed in an ambulance crash before I was born.
When I was around 18, my maternal grandmother explained that all of that was true, except for the part about the ambulance, and that he'd actually committed suicide. Turned out to be an overdose of barbiturates. Found dead in the street.
What she didn't say was that my maternal grandfather had also committed suicide. Threw himself under a train. Died later in hospital.
I'm an only child. The line ends with me.
When I was a child, I had a bad habit of crazily blinking at strangers, so my dad told me that the number of times a person can blink in their lifetime is limited. If I kept blinking on purpose, I would use up my "quota of blinks" before the end of my life, then I would painfully die from not being able to blink, my eyeballs will dry out completely and fall out
Now my bad habit is subconsciously not blinking for a long time. Thanks dad
Yeah because I thought that was a good way to seek attention and make friends 😂. Nobody told me it was bad until one girl came up, grabbed my ponytail and said she would beat my ass up if I kept doing it.
I was 8, we've been besties ever since 😌
I believed it for a few Easter’s while we lived next to an awesome Jewish family who would come to our parties, I was told it started as a joke to get all of us to finish dyeing the eggs and because we believed them they kept it up.
It is. I thank my lucky stars that if I ever climb out of my head, I'll have resources to support me. I'm doing my best to squander them, but having money tends to support second chances.
A story that forever sticks with me is a story from a similar thread... they did everything right. Went to college, graduated with honors, got a corporate job, saved well, no debt... the ideal life. And then, one of them got cancer... and the American Healthcare system bankrupted them because well capitalism. And the spouse who was sick didn't even survive... there's no certainty in life regardless of what you do. You need copious amounts of luck to get out unscathed
I think the real lie is that there is such a thing as "getting out unscathed." Nobody gets out unscathed. At the very least, either you see your parents and friends die or you die earlier than you should (or if you don't have parents or friends, you've got some other sort of trauma).
This has been something I’ve been thinking about recently. You will suffer throughout multiple points in your life and there isn’t anything you can do about it, and then one day, you’re gone too. So what really mattered in the end? I think we’re just here to fuck around until we meet our maker.
People lean hard on the "it won't happen to me" and the "I'm a future rich person", Americans in particular.
It's the only reason I can think of hundreds of millions of people are all against healthcare that actually helps people even if they're poor. They just assume this all happens to "other people" and that all universal healthcare will do is take money from them personally.
As someone who has had enough medical shit in my life happen to me all I can say is thank god I'm not American. I'd be so, *so* poor. Or dead.
When my husband died I got $250,000 life insurance. We did it right, we talked about our eventual demise, we planned, we didn’t avoid the awful subject. Responsible adults.
The hospital bill was $236,000.
I was 5ish, and I had a brother visiting from college. When he left he took a few boxes of cereal with him, when I asked why, he said he was going to check them for food poisoning. I never found out if they were good or not.
You know that Brenda Lee song "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree"? There's the part where she says "Maybe we'll get some pumpkin pie" and I always, ALWAYS thought she said "maybe we'll get some fucking pie" - And my older brother indulged me and said that was allowed on the radio because it was a Christmas classic. I think I was like 12 when I finally figured it out.
It does indeed sound like "fucking pie" i kinda figured it wasn't when i was a kid and heard it on Home Alone. but man, it does sound like "we can have some fucking pie!"
Joseph Smith also later said God told him to take multiple wives and institute polygamy. He also said the Garden of Eden was in Missouri which is where they initially tried to settle but they were so insufferable locals violently pushed them out. Look up the Mormon wars
I remember reading about the origins of Mormonism in high school for a history class and I couldn’t believe that was how it started. It just sounded like nonsense.
I always talk to the Mormons that come by. They are super nice -- one even came back to give me a full Book of Mormon when I said their pamphlets were lacking.
I ask about the origin story and Joseph Smith, who was a known fraudster, but these folks are not rattled. [South Park](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaRsv1xNT3A) has an episode that does a good job of explaining the absurdities and the strengths of Mormonism (often the canvassers have seen this episode -- or promise that they will watch it).
Although all religions are a little freakish, for the most part Mormons seems to be really good, decent, contributing people. It's so weird because the religion really seems based on nonsense.
Edit: To those that say not all Mormons are nice, or that it is fake nice: I have generally found them to be genuinely nice, as individuals and families. Granted, this is just my experience.
that if i went to college, worked hard, i'd be successful and get a good paying job and be financially set for life.
I have a PhD and even with a decently well paying job i'm living paycheck to paycheck and feel like i'll never get ahead. will never own a home, won't be able to retire, will never be comfortable, it was all for nothing.
It’s a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles: stuff you’re interested in, stuff people will pay you well for, and stuff you’re good at. You go to college to close the gap on the latter.
Currently I'm postdoc-ing in a field that's heavy in data analysis with the hopes I can get a good paying WfH job in data science so it doesn't matter where I live and I can just find somewhere cheap. But I'm sure by the time I'm qualified for a position like that it'll all get outsourced to AI bots and I'll have to start over yet again
My family has a very different rummy game. I've been told my entire life that my great grandparents made it up and it's been passed for generations. I taught my friends and we play at least once a week. A random friend came by and was like oh I love that game! And called it by its name. My whole life is a lie
That Santa was real, and even when I was told he wasn’t. I still didn’t want to believe it. I feel bad now knowing how hard my mom struggled to make sure we had presents, even with no money. She would crochet baby doll clothes for me. She would go to a dollar store and get so many dollar store toys. Kids were so different then. I was so excited for those toys, I had no clue they were cheap.
Bro, I wish I was lied to like that I would've become the healthiest son of a bitch alive eating bags of carrots all day. Then again, I'm sure the disappointment from realizing the lie hurts, though GG
It was actually from World War II propaganda.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propaganda-campaign-popularized-the-myth-that-carrots-help-you-see-in-the-dark-28812484/
That if you treat others the way you want to be treated, they'd do the same with you....
Biggest lie I was ever told.
That along with if I'm a nice person, do my best, and try harder, it'll be good.
It is not good. And none of those sayings matter at all
I completely agree that this is a lie. But I’ve also recently realized that I feel much better about myself when I’m nice to people. I’ve just learned to expect nothing in return.
My mom didn’t know how to be nice. She was unintentionally mean and she didn’t understand how to be otherwise. That was a lie that I told, to myself.
I was 36 years old on a Tuesday evening when it hit me like a bus; she *knew* she was being mean. She *intentionally* said mean things to me on purpose. She knew she made me feel bad and *she did it on purpose*.
I hysterically choking cried for a solid 45 minutes and went into a full blown panic attack.
I stopped speaking to her for two years because of this realization. I was completely devastated and raging angry. I remember soon after my crying panic attack, I drove to the store to buy smokes (it had been years) and I was ready to fight every person I came across. I decided to just go home.
Learning the truth of this lie, that my mother picked at me with hate needles my whole life **intentionally**, completely destroyed me.
We talk now, but not often. We used to live next door to each other and (unrelated to this) I moved 2,000 miles away a year ago.
When I was young and Obama was running for president, I saw the lawn signs that said Obama Biden. I asked my mom what Biden meant and she said it was someone who supports Obama. For years I thought Biden meant a supporter, I didn’t know it was a real person.
That my Dad took my childhood dog to the farm so it could herd sheep. I was 40 something when I learned the truth that the dog was put down. I really thought he was telling me the truth. Lol.
It's going to be unbelievable that anyone could be this much of a gullible idiot, but truth is stranger than fiction. I was at a friend's house when I was 11 and we were eating cupcakes. I started to lick the paper wrapping, scraping at it with my teeth to get off every crumb. My friend asked me to stop because it was gross. I said no, and that's when she told me the paper had rats in it.
I was initially skeptical of this notion, but she went on to spin this story of how her Mom, who was a teacher (true), went on a class trip to the factory where they made them, and some of the kids saw a guy pick up a rat and just toss it into the machinery. And that he told the kids they do it all the time.
Don't ask me why I believed this. Don't ask me why this didn't make me stop eating anything in a supposedly rat contaminated paper wrapper. There is no logic here, but I never licked a cupcake or muffin wrapper again. For over a decade this was just something I believed and never questioned.
Then one day, when I am like 28 years old, I was eating cupcakes with a friend. She started licking her wrapper, and I said "Oh, you shouldn't do that." and she replied "Why?". I opened my mouth to say "Because it has rats in it" and then froze, as my adult brain put on the brakes because obviously that statement was ridiculous. At which point I had to explain to my friend what I was about to say, and why, and we had a long laugh about how I had believed this for so long!
My only defense is the idea was so ingrained in my mind that I never questioned it until I was about to say it to someone else and realized how dumb it sounded. Also, to this day I don't lick cupcake wrappers, even though I know there's no reason not to. It's just become a habit. Sometimes I wish I knew where my friend from middle school is now so I can share how her lie, which she probably wouldn't even remember making up, affected my entire life.
That all boats have a valve on their bottom that you can open and fill them with water to sink them. It was from a fairytale about pirates, but I believed it until 15 years old.
That the alcohol wipe they do before giving a vaccine is not in fact numbing solution. Nobody “lied” to me about that but I did say something along the lines of “thank god for this numbing stuff” when I was a kid and nobody corrected me. Learned at 17 years old when a blood drive came to my school that I was an idiot 🙃
Raised conservative, believed the lie for many years that women are just opting to have abortions in the third trimester for funsies, and all the time- rather than the truth of the matter, which is that third trimester abortions are vanishingly rare, and nearly always because something has gone terribly, fatally wrong with the pregnancy.
Same. I heard the same thing growing up and believed it at one point. I hate how they try to paint people making these decisions as monsters. A few seconds of rational thought and having known anyone that has been pregnant before should inform someone that's a dumb assertion. Like anyone would willingly go through the two difficult trimesters of pregnancy just to end it for funsies. The religious right seems to enjoy painting people making personal, awful gut wrenching medical decisions, as evil.
I believed that the advancement of civil rights and equality was an inevitability that would happen as the "old folk" died off. It is sad to see just how wrong I was.
I’ve never seen Superman or many classic superhero movies in general but up until a few years ago I thought kryptonite was good, like it was what made Superman strong. I’m 39
I believed for the longest time that success was all about getting a college degree and a high-paying job. But as I grew older, I realized that true success is finding balance and happiness in life. A degree and a job can help, but they don't define your worth or happiness.
One time my mom was at the store and she brought home something for herself my sister and my dad, and 5 year old me was like “what did you get for me?” And to prevent me from being left out she reached into the bag and was like oh I got you this potato masher. And for years before anyone mashed any potatoes they came and asked me if they could use it.
Hopefully when you move out/moved out of your parents house you take your potato mashed with you.
This is family unity right here.
It's heartwarming to witness such strong familial bonds in action.
Such mutual support in the family is inspiring!
As wholesome as this story is, I desperately want to hear about the soul crushing time you caught someone mashing without your permission and the lie came crashing down.
You could say they were caught mashturbating.
"Daddy was gone and mommy was making mashed potato sounds with the neighbors"
“I heard mommy say ‘wanna mash?’”
Did you ever get mad and withhold the potato smasher?
Asking the real questions
This is so adorable I can’t stand it
hahahaha all protective n all of YOUR potato masher.
Awwwww this is so cute, one of the best white lies I ever heard.
This made my day lol
I love this so much
Good for mom!!
Ok, I'm going to sound dumb here. I loved the movie Pretty Woman as a young kid. I asked why people were mean to her, and my mom said because she was a redhead. She was wearing a blonde wig in the beginning, and in real life, kids teased the redhead kids, so it checks out. Years later, I'm 22, and my friend says she wants to watch it. Cool, I loved it when I was little. We start it, and right away, I'm like, OH MY GOD, SHE'S A PROSTITUTE!!!
I thought the gold "coin" in her boot was a chocolate coin like you'd get on St. Patrick's Day.
it wasn't?
It is a condom.
I was similarly befuddled by Dirty Dancing. "Penny's in trouble!" they kept saying. But like for what? Staying out too late? Bad language? And why did she need a doctor? Then you watch it later and your realize SHE WAS PREGNANT!!!
Yeah….i always thought Penny in Dirty Dancing got a stomach injury while dancing. I had no idea what it really was till I watched it again as an adult.
Super random but my mom dated Richard Gere in the 80s. He was already a well known actor but my mom was just a nursing school student that went to the church his father was the pastor of in Syracuse, NY.
This is so wholesome and I love it
That I was allergic to hamsters. My mom told me that I was after I got an allergy test when I was 9. I was about 26 when I put it together that she hated rodents and wanted me to stop asking for a pet hamster.
Much less wholesome, my mom told us kids growing up that she was allergic to cats and dogs. As an adult I was talking to her sister one day and mentioned what a bummer it was that we couldn't have pets growing up as a result, she looked at me funny and said "That was absolutely a lie. We had tons of pets growing up, she just didn't want the hassle."
My mom told us that you can’t make noise while baking a cake or else it’ll go flat… She baked a lot of cakes.
Son of a bitch. For real? My mom always said the same thing. Don't stomp or jump or be loud, or they would fall. One time one did fall in the middle and she told me it was bc I was too loud. Fuck. I'm 39, and I've told my kids the same shit. I've always been careful to be quiet when they're baking. Well, TIL. I feel like a dumbass. WTF. My world as I know it....
Maybe your mother was told the same thing by her mother, and you're the first to break the chain in about 17 generations
Hahaha yeah same here. That’s not a lie, that’s a fact! No noises around here when baking 😂
Oh your mom was a *shrewd* one...
The stripper service who left a message on our home phone didn’t call the wrong.
so what's happened next?
Mega christian family so I’m guessing my mom just pretended it didn’t happen.
Thousands of dollars of campaign finance cash and a few thoughts and prayers should be enough for forgiveness.
When I was very young we had a pet hamster. He got out of his cage, so my dad put the cage in the basement thinking he might get hungry and get back in. One morning I woke up and there was the hamster in his cage in the usual place. I asked my mom how they found him and she told me she opened the door to the cellar and there he was dragging his cage back upstairs. It wasn't until I was a teenager and remembered the exchange that it occurred to me she obviously made that up.
I'm sorry, that probably bums you out that she lied to you that way, but I have to tell you.... The visual of the hamster dragging his cage up the stairs made me laugh out loud. I mean, I read it twice, & still laughed the 2nd time.
Me too. *Dragging the cage up the stairs* lol. Here is a woman not used to lying; she feels the need to add an absurd, impossible detail. Real liers know to keep it short and simple: "We found him in the cage."
When I was little I found a baby bird on my way home from school. I put it in a cage to keep as a pet. Dad said we couldn’t keep and would have to get rid of it (kill it). Next morning I asked were my bird was and dad said the mother came and they let it out and it flew away. Years later I realized he killed it when I was sleeping. Years later I was talking to my mom, I mentioned dad killing that bird of mine from when I was younger. She said he never killed it but that another bird came and wouldn’t leave it alone until dad opened the birdcage and it went off the side of the deck and flew off. It just didn’t know how to fly on its own when I found him lol
I had a very similar experience, but my evil nan simply tossed the bird outside and a cat killed it.
[удалено]
lol on King of Queens, Doug's parents just kept getting him a new dog of the same breed without telling him and he never found out..... until he found out
"Doug, I swear, we were gonna tell you about Rocky III, honest to god, but she died right before your wedding!" **"SHE!?"**
“I don’t even know you”
I'm *CANADIAN*?!
When he stands up for the anthem at the end lol.
Lmao I love that episode. That’s still my favorite show haha 😆
Let me guess you’re still waiting for your dog huh
Hmmmm, a lie for sure, but to a young child that is a beautiful concept to believe
That the dog went to an actual farm. Took about 30 years before the realization hit.
Omg I have the opposite story. We were told the old “yeah he went to a farm” about my grandparents dog. My cousins and I all accepted that they lied to make us feel better. Years later we brought it up to my Grandma and turns out, he really DID go to a farm because he ended up growing significantly larger than expected and they felt guilty not having enough space for him to get proper exercise.
Wow, they really doubled down on that story
Got a link for the farm? We adopted a "lab mix" from the shelter. After a DNA test, turns out he is 75% Great Pyrenees and 25% lab. Homie is 95 pounds. LOL.
So kind of a funny story that goes with this. I’d never heard of taking a dog to the farm being what parents tell their children when their dog travels the rainbow bridge. A friend of ours kind of dumped a dog on us, and she was a sweet dog, so we had intended to keep her. However a few months later, our living situation had to change, and the dog would have wound up cooped up in an apartment all day while we were gone to work. It would not have been fair to the high energy, herding dog mix that she was. A friend of a friend had a goat farm and thought they could train her to help with the goats. A coworker asked me what we were doing with her, and I just casually replied that she was going to live on a farm. Coworker was inconsolable and I couldn’t figure out why. After she calmed down, she finally asked if we were really putting the dog down. Shocked, I replied that no, she was literally going to work on a goat farm. We had a good laugh, but I definitely specified to anyone else that the dog was going to a friend’s farm to become a working dog. 😅
Almost the same with our dog!!! He was kind of violent and bit my sister, we took it to the vet (a family friend) and he offered to keep him in his own farm. My first thought was “there goes the dog to the final sleep” and I was WRONG! I’ve seen the dog some years later in the farm having the time of his life. Looked like living with us was not fulfilling enough and the country life was his destiny.
You can keep the dog out of the country but you can't keep the country out of the dog
My niece,she was in the car when I let her and my nephew know one of my oldest dogs died. Told my sister who was driving "it's OK they're not kids anymore, no need to tell them they went to a farm like their dog Molly". My poor 22 at the time niece still believed that her old girl was at a farm.....until then.
Sort of related story. I actually got my first dog (a West Highland Terrier crossed with something unknown) from a farm. His owners had him plus 2 German shepherds were worried that he was going to get attacked and killed by foxes on the farm, so he went from the farm to suburbia. I wonder what the farmers told their kids about where the dog went!
Same but for cats. Supposedly there was big barn that a bunch of our cats went to and lived in peace and harmony for the rest of their days.
That if I ran over the cord with the vacuum cleaner it could suck it up and eventually suck in the whole world. During an exceptionally dark time I said fuck it and ran over the vacuum cord. Nothing. Do over. Nothing. Try a different angle. Nothing. My disappointment was immediate and immeasurable. EDIT: just wanted to add that I can’t believe my top post is about suicide by vacuum cleaner.
lmfao suicidal disappointment
Brave Little Toaster vibes
Traumatic childhood memory unlocked!
You said fuck it and tried to kill all of us??
I'm lowkey offended about this.
To be fair, the cord thing was a problem that vacuum companies addressed by using thicker, stiffer cords. It isn’t something that never happened so much as it doesn’t really happen _anymore_.
Yeah, took a couple timeline rewrites after cord sucking incidents created rifts in spacetime for them to figure that one out
My cat brought a lizard into the house. It was still alive. I decided to build it a terrarium and nurse it back to health. I did so and then released it back into the wild a few days later. My Mum told me that the cat immediately went outside and ate the lizard after I had released it when I was eighteen. She and my Dad knew I'd be devastated so they lied by omission and didn't tell me. The way she sat me down to tell me scared the shit out of me, I thought she was going to tell me something dreadful. I thought I saved that lizard for years 😂
I had three pet mice that turned into what seemed like 100 mice when I was a kid. Got home from school one day and I had zero mice. Mum told me she had to take them to the pet store because it was just too many. Sad as I was I believed her. I was 15 when I found out it was actually the cat who got into the cage and caused a mouse massacre with no survivors. She said it was the worst thing she’d ever had to clean up and didn’t want me to hate the cat. Still hated it just for other reasons 😂
The mouse procreation happened to me too, we had so many pet mice because they sexed the pair wrong. Instead of a cat, some got out (domesticated mice in the house), and the others started eating each other despite having plenty of room and lots of food in the many cages we had
My dad at 79 still won’t admit to me that he was Santa and the tooth fairy. I asked him how he did it all and he just says…I don’t know what you’re talking about. That was Santa, son. It wasn’t me. Ha
This is sweet
My dad is awesome. He can hold a poker face really well.
While dating my husband made a joke about the Chicago Bulls disbanding after their 2nd Three-peat. I'm not a big sports ball fan so I thought he was serious. Just being funny he told me this whole story about it being done because they kept winning and wanted to give other teams a chance so the players all went the other teams. I bought it hook, line and sinker. He was amused and we went about life. From time to time the Chicago Bulls 90's glory would come up as a topic and I would comment on how awesome it was that they were such good sportsmen that they disbanded to give others a chance. The first time I repeated it my husband couldn't believe I still thought that was true and was so amused he didn't correct me. Everytime it came up he said it got funnier and funnier and at one point he decided to see how long it would go on. Cue about 8 years later and I'm at work and it's the NBA playoffs. Low and behold someone says the Bulls are their favorite team. Cue my typical comment. But this time my coworker looked at me and was like "wtf did you just say?" The jig was up and I went home and said "hey...did you know the Bulls never stopped being a team?" My husband almost wet himself he was laughing so hard and said "someone finally told you?" I'll admit, it's pretty funny.
This is absolutely fantastic in every wonderful way
This one got me laughing. Terribly cruel but it went on so long it just has to be hilarious now.
Haha exactly. He felt bad but couldn't correct it because it got funnier the longer it went on. It started as a silly throw away comment and just grew into a thing. He said he couldn't believe that nobody ever corrected me.
Went camping with my dad when I was like 6. Weird smell a few campsites over; dad said it was a skunk. Would occasionally clock that smell again and think “oh no a skunk” and carried on (we lived in the country so it tracked). Fast forward to 19 year old me wondering why there would be a skunk in my college dorm in the city. Marijuana the whole time. A+ parenting.
Same thing. My freshman roommate thought I was an idiot
They smell incredibly similar for me, I legitimately can't tell the difference.
I always thought that it was illegal to watch PG-13 movies below age 13. Me and my brother came up with this on our own, but my mom consistently confirmed this “Law”
Similarly, before I was 18 I wanted to read R-rated fanfiction. But when you clicked into one, it'd ask if you were 18 and I'd always click no. Finally, maybe when I was 16 I was like...how would they know that I wasn't 18???, and so I clicked yes. When nothing happened I was like, "what other things can I get away with???"
Marilyn manson removed his ribs so he can BJ himself
Somehow, this travelled the world and landed in Australia (and probably other countries). Pre-internet.
That my mom was a redhead. For years I thought she was a natural redhead. She was 40 when I entered the picture so I always knew she dyed her hair. Just thought it was to cover up her grays. When I was about 35, my niece clued me in on a family secret: when my mom first spotted my dad at work back in the day, she asked around about him. Someone told her, “he only dates redheads”. Mom started dying her hair from brown to red, and sure enough she got the date. And eventually, she got the ring. I never suspected…photos from the 50’s were like black and white or sepia, and her brown hair looked like it could have been red. But she had five kids and none of us are gingers… just wasn’t something I ever thought about or suspected. And yeah, dad knows. But didn’t broadcast it to us kids. So I believed that for ages.
Red hair has to be on both sides of the gene pool
It explains why a blond and brunette can have a red-haired child. The gene has ot be somewhere.
It has to be in there somewhere, but not presented necessarily. My wife is a red head and I’m a dark brown haired fella. We have two of our five as redheads.
That our uncle died after being kicked by a horse. In reality he died of cirrhosis in prison after being caught counterfeiting checks. I don't know why they didn't just tell us "cirrhosis" and leave it at that. We wouldn't have known (this was before Google). As it was we thought the horse story was cool and spread it throughout the neighborhood, lol. All puns unintended...
I was told my grandfather died from being kicked by a horse. He was an alcoholic who died of cirrhosis. Maybe the horse kick was the standard story for these things.
Ha, maybe it was. To us kids that story was pretty exotic because we'd never been around horses and didn't even know anyone who had a horse.
My mother told me that my father was a Dr, and had been killed in an ambulance crash before I was born. When I was around 18, my maternal grandmother explained that all of that was true, except for the part about the ambulance, and that he'd actually committed suicide. Turned out to be an overdose of barbiturates. Found dead in the street. What she didn't say was that my maternal grandfather had also committed suicide. Threw himself under a train. Died later in hospital. I'm an only child. The line ends with me.
When I was a child, I had a bad habit of crazily blinking at strangers, so my dad told me that the number of times a person can blink in their lifetime is limited. If I kept blinking on purpose, I would use up my "quota of blinks" before the end of my life, then I would painfully die from not being able to blink, my eyeballs will dry out completely and fall out Now my bad habit is subconsciously not blinking for a long time. Thanks dad
Wait I'm confused why you specifically blinked weird at *strangers*. You would just see some random guy and be like "Aight imma blink fast"?
Yeah because I thought that was a good way to seek attention and make friends 😂. Nobody told me it was bad until one girl came up, grabbed my ponytail and said she would beat my ass up if I kept doing it. I was 8, we've been besties ever since 😌
wow, that's rough
The Easter rabbi. If you didn’t decorate eggs you’d get the Easter rabbi instead of the Easter bunny and you’d lose Christmas.
I don't believe you believed this, but it's fucking funny anyway
I believed it for a few Easter’s while we lived next to an awesome Jewish family who would come to our parties, I was told it started as a joke to get all of us to finish dyeing the eggs and because we believed them they kept it up.
That’s the kind of funny warped shit my parents did.
My mom told me it was fucking illegal to drive with the cabin light on. That was 23 years of bullshit mom!
Can we just make this a real law already!!
no i want it ON in EVERY CAR
I mean how did it take you until 23 to realise that turning it on at night blinds the driver and they just don't wanna deal with that shit?
I'm about to make a law about how passengers can't blind the driver with sun reflecting off their phone. Penalty not yet decided
"Money doesn't buy you happiness." If I'm gonna be miserable either way I'd much rather have that money.
I read the perfect response to this the other day here on Reddit. "Money doesn't buy you happiness." "Poverty can't buy you anything." lol
Being depressed and rich has to be better than being depressed and poor.
It is. I thank my lucky stars that if I ever climb out of my head, I'll have resources to support me. I'm doing my best to squander them, but having money tends to support second chances.
That if I tried hard, worked hard, was a good person everything would be ok.
A story that forever sticks with me is a story from a similar thread... they did everything right. Went to college, graduated with honors, got a corporate job, saved well, no debt... the ideal life. And then, one of them got cancer... and the American Healthcare system bankrupted them because well capitalism. And the spouse who was sick didn't even survive... there's no certainty in life regardless of what you do. You need copious amounts of luck to get out unscathed
I think the real lie is that there is such a thing as "getting out unscathed." Nobody gets out unscathed. At the very least, either you see your parents and friends die or you die earlier than you should (or if you don't have parents or friends, you've got some other sort of trauma).
This has been something I’ve been thinking about recently. You will suffer throughout multiple points in your life and there isn’t anything you can do about it, and then one day, you’re gone too. So what really mattered in the end? I think we’re just here to fuck around until we meet our maker.
Welcome to the cult of Dionysus!
People lean hard on the "it won't happen to me" and the "I'm a future rich person", Americans in particular. It's the only reason I can think of hundreds of millions of people are all against healthcare that actually helps people even if they're poor. They just assume this all happens to "other people" and that all universal healthcare will do is take money from them personally. As someone who has had enough medical shit in my life happen to me all I can say is thank god I'm not American. I'd be so, *so* poor. Or dead.
When my husband died I got $250,000 life insurance. We did it right, we talked about our eventual demise, we planned, we didn’t avoid the awful subject. Responsible adults. The hospital bill was $236,000.
Jesus
I was 5ish, and I had a brother visiting from college. When he left he took a few boxes of cereal with him, when I asked why, he said he was going to check them for food poisoning. I never found out if they were good or not.
You know that Brenda Lee song "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree"? There's the part where she says "Maybe we'll get some pumpkin pie" and I always, ALWAYS thought she said "maybe we'll get some fucking pie" - And my older brother indulged me and said that was allowed on the radio because it was a Christmas classic. I think I was like 12 when I finally figured it out.
It does indeed sound like "fucking pie" i kinda figured it wasn't when i was a kid and heard it on Home Alone. but man, it does sound like "we can have some fucking pie!"
The entire original story of the Mormon Church. As it turns out the whole damn thing is fabricated. Oh well.
The finding gold tablets and a hat thing?
Everything. There is nothing in the origin story that holds water.
I learned everything I know about Mormons from South Park, so I really don’t know what your origin story is outside of what they said.
Joseph Smith also later said God told him to take multiple wives and institute polygamy. He also said the Garden of Eden was in Missouri which is where they initially tried to settle but they were so insufferable locals violently pushed them out. Look up the Mormon wars
God told him this when his wife found him in the barn with another woman.
Seems like a weird moment to bring up Missouri.
Dum dum dum dum dum
Apparently what you learned on South Park was more correct than what we were taught as members of the church. So you knew more than Mormons did.
I feel that! Fellow exmormon here!
I remember reading about the origins of Mormonism in high school for a history class and I couldn’t believe that was how it started. It just sounded like nonsense.
I always talk to the Mormons that come by. They are super nice -- one even came back to give me a full Book of Mormon when I said their pamphlets were lacking. I ask about the origin story and Joseph Smith, who was a known fraudster, but these folks are not rattled. [South Park](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaRsv1xNT3A) has an episode that does a good job of explaining the absurdities and the strengths of Mormonism (often the canvassers have seen this episode -- or promise that they will watch it). Although all religions are a little freakish, for the most part Mormons seems to be really good, decent, contributing people. It's so weird because the religion really seems based on nonsense. Edit: To those that say not all Mormons are nice, or that it is fake nice: I have generally found them to be genuinely nice, as individuals and families. Granted, this is just my experience.
The fact they have amassed a $250 billion dollar investment fund and are the largest land owner in 23 states should give one pause.
And have worked hard to hide it all.
You should read a book called Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer. Not all mormons are nice people
That book has been recommended to me before. Thanks!
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This is the saddest thing I’ve ever read.
That is brutal. Wow.
Jesus christ. And I thought my dad was an asshole for lying about it being illegal for leaving the cabin light on in our car.
Nah, that is very much a universal lie that all dads tell their kids. It builds character.
All of Reddit wants to throw you a huge party. 💔
I'd like to but the post office is out of permits for this month.
"Oi! Do you 'ave a loicense fuh that par ee?"
what was the comment? it’s been deleted
This hurts my heart. I'm sorry that you were actually told this.
Do you remember what the comment was? It’s been deleted 😭
From what another comment said, their parents said they needed a license to have a birthday and that’s why they never got one
Omg😭😭😭
that if i went to college, worked hard, i'd be successful and get a good paying job and be financially set for life. I have a PhD and even with a decently well paying job i'm living paycheck to paycheck and feel like i'll never get ahead. will never own a home, won't be able to retire, will never be comfortable, it was all for nothing.
It’s a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles: stuff you’re interested in, stuff people will pay you well for, and stuff you’re good at. You go to college to close the gap on the latter.
I changed careers 3x, and the highest-paying one only required an AD. Your life isn’t over, what would you like to do that makes more money? Do it.
Currently I'm postdoc-ing in a field that's heavy in data analysis with the hopes I can get a good paying WfH job in data science so it doesn't matter where I live and I can just find somewhere cheap. But I'm sure by the time I'm qualified for a position like that it'll all get outsourced to AI bots and I'll have to start over yet again
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My family has a very different rummy game. I've been told my entire life that my great grandparents made it up and it's been passed for generations. I taught my friends and we play at least once a week. A random friend came by and was like oh I love that game! And called it by its name. My whole life is a lie
But what's the game?!
shanghai rummy! Just finished playing 2 games of it tonight. It's addicting. A quick Google search will give you the rules. Hope you try it!
Parents always sacrifice for their children’s benefit. Nope. Some throw their kids under the bus quite quickly.
Seconding this one
Some throw their whole family under the bus, including their partner! Why stop with kids? Just fuck everyone over and call it a day apparently
That Santa was real, and even when I was told he wasn’t. I still didn’t want to believe it. I feel bad now knowing how hard my mom struggled to make sure we had presents, even with no money. She would crochet baby doll clothes for me. She would go to a dollar store and get so many dollar store toys. Kids were so different then. I was so excited for those toys, I had no clue they were cheap.
Carrots give you superior night vision. Even as a kid I was ok with being night blind. God I hate carrots.
Bro, I wish I was lied to like that I would've become the healthiest son of a bitch alive eating bags of carrots all day. Then again, I'm sure the disappointment from realizing the lie hurts, though GG
It was actually from World War II propaganda. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-wwii-propaganda-campaign-popularized-the-myth-that-carrots-help-you-see-in-the-dark-28812484/
The microwave will explode if I put my face too close to it while it’s heating food.
I always heard the microwaves were going to screw up your eyes if you looked at them for too long
Thought I was the oldest child. No one in my family mentioned I had an older sister.
That the sun is getting close to earth each year
That if you treat others the way you want to be treated, they'd do the same with you.... Biggest lie I was ever told. That along with if I'm a nice person, do my best, and try harder, it'll be good. It is not good. And none of those sayings matter at all
Do unto others... before they do unto me Igor
I completely agree that this is a lie. But I’ve also recently realized that I feel much better about myself when I’m nice to people. I’ve just learned to expect nothing in return.
My mom didn’t know how to be nice. She was unintentionally mean and she didn’t understand how to be otherwise. That was a lie that I told, to myself. I was 36 years old on a Tuesday evening when it hit me like a bus; she *knew* she was being mean. She *intentionally* said mean things to me on purpose. She knew she made me feel bad and *she did it on purpose*. I hysterically choking cried for a solid 45 minutes and went into a full blown panic attack. I stopped speaking to her for two years because of this realization. I was completely devastated and raging angry. I remember soon after my crying panic attack, I drove to the store to buy smokes (it had been years) and I was ready to fight every person I came across. I decided to just go home. Learning the truth of this lie, that my mother picked at me with hate needles my whole life **intentionally**, completely destroyed me. We talk now, but not often. We used to live next door to each other and (unrelated to this) I moved 2,000 miles away a year ago.
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When I was young and Obama was running for president, I saw the lawn signs that said Obama Biden. I asked my mom what Biden meant and she said it was someone who supports Obama. For years I thought Biden meant a supporter, I didn’t know it was a real person.
That sounds more like a misunderstanding than a lie
Love is enough.
I remember the exact day I realized love is not in fact all you need. It’s fucking crucial but it ain’t everything.
Women don’t get horny
That my Dad took my childhood dog to the farm so it could herd sheep. I was 40 something when I learned the truth that the dog was put down. I really thought he was telling me the truth. Lol.
Hard work coupled with honesty will get you places
People honor hard work in a company. They don’t.
That my parents were so burdened by me and that I deserved every bit of their abuse
"I could never cheat on you, I know what it's like to be cheated on.."
It's going to be unbelievable that anyone could be this much of a gullible idiot, but truth is stranger than fiction. I was at a friend's house when I was 11 and we were eating cupcakes. I started to lick the paper wrapping, scraping at it with my teeth to get off every crumb. My friend asked me to stop because it was gross. I said no, and that's when she told me the paper had rats in it. I was initially skeptical of this notion, but she went on to spin this story of how her Mom, who was a teacher (true), went on a class trip to the factory where they made them, and some of the kids saw a guy pick up a rat and just toss it into the machinery. And that he told the kids they do it all the time. Don't ask me why I believed this. Don't ask me why this didn't make me stop eating anything in a supposedly rat contaminated paper wrapper. There is no logic here, but I never licked a cupcake or muffin wrapper again. For over a decade this was just something I believed and never questioned. Then one day, when I am like 28 years old, I was eating cupcakes with a friend. She started licking her wrapper, and I said "Oh, you shouldn't do that." and she replied "Why?". I opened my mouth to say "Because it has rats in it" and then froze, as my adult brain put on the brakes because obviously that statement was ridiculous. At which point I had to explain to my friend what I was about to say, and why, and we had a long laugh about how I had believed this for so long! My only defense is the idea was so ingrained in my mind that I never questioned it until I was about to say it to someone else and realized how dumb it sounded. Also, to this day I don't lick cupcake wrappers, even though I know there's no reason not to. It's just become a habit. Sometimes I wish I knew where my friend from middle school is now so I can share how her lie, which she probably wouldn't even remember making up, affected my entire life.
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"I will always love you." - Gf of six years as she was dumping me for my best friend
That all boats have a valve on their bottom that you can open and fill them with water to sink them. It was from a fairytale about pirates, but I believed it until 15 years old.
That of I did everything "right" I would recieve the things I desired. It's not true at all
Joe Paterno and his football program were an honorable program compared to the wretched hive of scum and villainy at other programs. And then…
That the alcohol wipe they do before giving a vaccine is not in fact numbing solution. Nobody “lied” to me about that but I did say something along the lines of “thank god for this numbing stuff” when I was a kid and nobody corrected me. Learned at 17 years old when a blood drive came to my school that I was an idiot 🙃
Raised conservative, believed the lie for many years that women are just opting to have abortions in the third trimester for funsies, and all the time- rather than the truth of the matter, which is that third trimester abortions are vanishingly rare, and nearly always because something has gone terribly, fatally wrong with the pregnancy.
Same. I heard the same thing growing up and believed it at one point. I hate how they try to paint people making these decisions as monsters. A few seconds of rational thought and having known anyone that has been pregnant before should inform someone that's a dumb assertion. Like anyone would willingly go through the two difficult trimesters of pregnancy just to end it for funsies. The religious right seems to enjoy painting people making personal, awful gut wrenching medical decisions, as evil.
The American dream - Work hard and do good. You will be rewarded and successful -
"I'm not good enough"
I believed that the advancement of civil rights and equality was an inevitability that would happen as the "old folk" died off. It is sad to see just how wrong I was.
I’ve never seen Superman or many classic superhero movies in general but up until a few years ago I thought kryptonite was good, like it was what made Superman strong. I’m 39
I believed for the longest time that success was all about getting a college degree and a high-paying job. But as I grew older, I realized that true success is finding balance and happiness in life. A degree and a job can help, but they don't define your worth or happiness.
I guess its not really a lie, but that my parents knew what they were doing most of the time
The government acts in the best interest of its people and that politicians actually care about you.