Someone asked about the lies people were told when they were kids – 19 people who had a sudden, tragic moment of adult realisation

If you’ve got kids, or indeed you’ve ever met a child, you’ll know that sometimes it is necessary to tell them a little white lie.

Whether it’s to stop them asking for something or encourage them to go somewhere, bending the truth slightly undoubtedly makes life easier.

But for those kids, it means they will one day have a flash of clarity that the adults in their lives fibbed to them. Over on the AskUK subreddit, user ThisIsAnAccount2306 asked: ‘What lies were you told which you only realised a lot later?’ and added their own example:

‘When I was about 6 or 7, I heard that a Masters of The Universe film had just come out. I asked my father to take me. He said he would look into it. A few days later said ‘Sorry, I can’t take you to that as it’s a 15 certificate”.

‘This was back when information wasn’t so readily available as it is now, so I didn’t question it, though I vaguely remember wondering why a film based on a cartoon would be so adult.I outgrew MOTU and forgot about it until recently I saw it online rated G for general. Lying bastard obviously just thought ‘I’m not sitting through that shit’ and made up a bullshit reason.’

And there were plenty of people with tales to tell about the time a grown up told tales of their own.

1.

‘My aunt once told me that the deer in Richmond Park sleep at the bottom of the lakes and breathe through grass straws.

‘I must’ve been five or so, and I simply accepted this knowledge as fact and never thought about it until somehow deer was the topic of lunchtime conversation when I was fourteen or so. The instant the words ‘Well of course they’d need lots of water since they sleep at the bottom of lakes’ left my lips I knew I’d been lied to, and the reactions I got a second later confirmed it.

‘My aunt doesn’t remember the original conversation at all, but I do.’
–himit

2.

‘My Dad used to tell me they weren’t handbags but hambags. He used to recite a convincing story of their origins owing to Victorian women collecting gammon from the butchers and needing a convenient way to carry the ham home. I was embarrassingly old before I realised that they in fact were not bags for carrying ham.’
–dubhghall6616

3.

‘The oft-posted, it’s illegal to have the internal lights on in the car.’
–blondererer

4.

‘When I was younger I had straw blonde hair. My nan told me to stay away from the horses in the field at the bottom of the street because they’d get confused between my hair and actual straw and try to eat it. I think she was trying to avoid me getting trampled or kicked but for some reason decided to use a fate far more terrifying.

‘It was only much later when my also blonde older sister started riding horses and not getting her scalp bitten off that I realised it wasn’t true.’
–TheClnl

5.

‘I was about seven or so and I asked my mum why she always prepared the Brussels sprouts on Christmas Eve instead of on Christmas day. She told me it’s because the Dalai Lama does his on Christmas eve and she was following his example. I didn’t catch what was wrong with this answer for several years. I also didn’t catch that she’d pinched the joke from Dinnerladies until last year.’
–VeedleDee

6.

‘I once chatted to a lady from Singapore. I’m not sure why but she decided to tell me that people from Singapore are ‘Singapese’ and gullible me thought ‘Oh like Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese… that makes sense’. And it wasn’t until I was sat in a meeting at work many years later, discussing our new Singaporean technical support team did I realise that I had been had.’
–RowlyBot12000

7.

‘I went to a friend’s birthday party when I was six at McDonald’s in the mid-nineties. His parents had hired out a long banquet table in the corner of the restaurant, balloons, banners, the lot.

‘I asked my parents if I could have the same and they told me McDonald’s didn’t do birthday parties in December (my birth month, my friends was in August). I took it as gospel and moved on. It wasn’t until I was 35 a couple of years ago and realised that what they said was nonsense, they just didn’t want to pay for it. I still love my parents, I should add.’
–griffaliff

8.

‘My fish didn’t really go back to the shop ‘because she missed her mum’.’
–satrialesporkstore1

9.

‘When I was about 6 my uncle went away to work on an oil rig, and then a few months later moved to Australia. It wasn’t until I was about 18 and speaking to one of my older cousins that I found out he was actually doing a long stretch in prison for drug smuggling.

‘My parents said an oil rig at first because they didn’t realise how serious the crime was (uncle had been playing his involvement down) but he ended up getting 15 years, so they had to change the story.’
–pintperson

10.

‘I was sat at a hotel bar with my mum while on our summer holidays — I must have been 8 or so — while she ordered an alcoholic drink for herself. The bottle had paper packaging and looked interesting so I asked her what it was. She off-handedly muttered “Cyanide”.

‘I thought nothing of it until some time later when we had returned to school, my teacher mentioned cyanide and I piped up saying “My mum drinks that!”. He told me she definitely didn’t, and I fought him on it for a while saying I had seen her drinking it out of a bottle covered in paper. I still remember the look on his face!

‘I told her a few years ago and she was mortified. She was drinking Angostura and soda.’
–spinach2point0