‘What’s a lie your parents told you that you didn’t figure out until you were an embarrassed adult?’ – 21 people whose folks were taking the mickey
It’s the job of our parents or caregivers to love us, protect us and guide us thought life’s tribulations. And also, it seems, to tell us fibs for a laugh which end up make us look a bit foolish when we grow up.
They’ve been chatting about this on the AskReddit page after eatbeep posed this question:
What’s a childhood lie your parents told you that you didn’t realize was a lie until you were an embarrassed adult?
And lots of faintly humiliated people jumped in with the porky pies they’d been told, like these…
1.
‘My grandma claimed she could tell when I was lying by the red line on the skin of my forehead. And I shit you not, every time I checked in the mirror, it was there.
It only clicked when I was in my 20s: every time she told me I was lying, she pointed out the red line by dragging her fingernail across my forehead.’
–SkazzK
2.
‘Rumble strips on the side of the road aren’t for blind drivers…’
–CanadiangirlEH
3.
‘That some zoo tickets/theme park tickets don’t get you into the gift shop.’
–Claire336
4.
‘My grandpa used to walk back into his bedroom to blow his nose, and would secretly take a bike horn out of his closet and honk it. My cousins and I all thought that was how it sounded. I begged him — BEGGED HIM — to come to my class for show and tell. He declined but I still didn’t figure it out for years.’
–A_Fish_Called_Panda
5.
‘Getting told off for exaggerating:
You shouldn’t exaggerate things, I must have told you a million times that we don’t exaggerate things in this family.
Said by my Dad and I didn’t realise it was his own inside joke until I was an adult and realised.’
–Free51
6.
‘I’m not allergic to coconut. They just didn’t want to share.’
–Gold_Alternative990
7.
‘I have a pretty unique last name so I’ve never had a middle name. When I was a kid I asked my parents why and they told me they couldn’t afford to get me a middle name as you have to pay for each letter (I have a short first name) and I believed them all the way up until my daughter was born.
The nurse gave me a form to fill out with my daughters name and I asked her how much? She said how much what? I said how much per letter to name her, I’ve never seen a lady look at me so confused and in that moment it clicked that my dad was joking…’
–AlligatorCannon
8.
‘THAT YOU CANT TURN THE INSIDE CAR ROOF LIGHTS ON OR YOU GO TO JAIL!’
–Sudden-Fee1553
9.
‘My parents took me to the Disney store at the mall and told me it was Disneyland.’
–Scary-Alternative-11
10.
‘My dad told me once when I was little that puppies came from flowers. He probably said it just to shut me up about asking for a dog. For YEARS after that I kept my eye out for ‘puppy seeds’ whenever I’d go to Home Depot with no luck.
Admittedly I was probably in the 8th or 9th grade when it just clicked with me that is obviously not where they came from. I wasn’t an adult but, I was way too old.’
–njo1
11.
‘Oh, I am so going to ‘win’ this thread, if this is what winning is. My parents told me my entire childhood that Kansas was black and white. Like the Wizard of Oz, right? And because I loved, and still love, somehow, my parents, I went with it. Kansas is black and white because of their views, right? An allegory.
As I got older, I asked lots of questions about this. We had a friend move to our city from Kansas. They got to him before I did. ‘Oh, it’s so nice to be in colour!’ he said. They even went on a road trip that went through Kansas where they literally changed the film to black and white film. So when they showed me the pictures from their trip, all of a sudden, it was black and white. ‘What the fuck is this?’ is what I asked.
They had to tell me the truth when I started asked really smart questions like, ‘What happens when you fly over Kansas’ and they didn’t want me to embarrass myself in front of my peers. I love my parents but I genuinely believe they had children just to fuck with them.’
–yuccasinbloom