We always think that a tiny little lie couldn't hurt anyone. Seriously, who knew that fib could grow into something that is no longer under our control and instead it controls us. Sometimes we are in so deep that the truth would hurt someone we care about. That's when it's already too late. Next time you think about bending the truth, remember it could come back to bite you in unexpected ways. Truly, you are what you deceit.
Redditor u/Buhyac asks:
Pian...Ohhh Man
That I could play the piano, I never thought it would come up and that I was safe with my lie. It did come up, more often than I thought it would. I had to make up an excuse to not play, and people started to think I was lying about know how to play. Eventually I took some lessons so that way if it came up again I could actually play something and not look like I'm completely full of sh*t. It paid off, and after I moved from that area I never told anyone I could play piano again.
I'm imagining you playing hot cross buns to prove you could play.
I legitimately cried laughing at this.
This Speaks To Me
Not me, but my hairdresser told me this a few months ago and I couldn't stop laughing...
A few years ago, he and his girlfriend (at the time) went on vacation to a resort somewhere in Spain. On the first day of arriving, they got talking to another couple they met in the hotel and just for a joke he pretended to be American by putting on an accent (he's English). He said he wasn't even sure why he did it, he was just goofing around and he thought he'd never see these people again so it was just a throwaway thing.
However, they ended up being pretty good friends with this couple and saw quite a lot of them over the course of the vacation. I guess it would have been too embarrassing/weird to come clean and tell them the truth, so he just had to go with it and put on an American accent every time he saw them. For a week.
In addition to this, he was also going through some problems in his relationship (can't think why...) so basically spent the whole trip either arguing with his girlfriend or having to get in character and pretend to be American for no other reason than his own stupidity.
He said it was the worst vacation of his life and was more stressful than being home at work.
So would he argue with his girl in American accent if other couple was present?
Presumably, yeah. Although I doubt they were arguing in front of the other couple.
Tis But A Scratch
There is a guy who I used to work with at a corporate chain steakhouse while I was going to college that had bit of a whopper. We stayed up all night partying and he didn't wake up in time for his opening shift the following day. When he finally got up he was 2 hours late and had a grip of missed calls. He was about a month away from graduating and had worked this same job all through college, so he was worried that he was going to get fired and wouldn't be able to use the job reference so his solution was to call in and tell the boss he had been in a car accident on his way to work. Now this temporarily solved the problem, but to really sell the story he ended up hiding his truck in a friend's garage and working his next 4 weeks of serving shifts with a fake full arm cast. Brandon, you're a f*cking legend.
Brandon sounds like a god.
Hell yes I am.
Well That Spiraled Out Of Control Quickly
Here we go.
When I was in 6th grade my buddy and I attempted to skip school. We planned that the next day he would stay home "sick". I would use this landline phone I had in my room which had a "hold" feature to (what I thought would) tie up the line all day so that the school couldn't get ahold of my mom (who worked from home). This is obviously long before cell phones were a thing. I would go to buddy's house and we would play Genesis all day.
So, turns out that phones don't work like that. We're hanging out and suddenly I hear a car outside. I run downstairs and hide while buddy answers the door to my crying mother who asks if he's seen me. He lies and says no. When she goes I come up and decide that I'm in big trouble and need to cover it. I plan to say some "teenagers" from the nearby high school were picking on me and chased me around a neighborhood I didn't know well. I head home and run into my dad who was looking for me. I give him the story and he seem to buy it. He takes me home where my mom is on the phone to the police. She had my school picture out and is crying. She puts me on the phone and makes me tell my story to the cop. He sounds skeptical but he accepts the story.
She then asks if I want to go back to school in the afternoon. I say I do (because it'll get me away from being grilled about it anymore at home). But at school I get grilled by my teacher and the principal. My friend informs me the entire school went on lockdown when I was "missing" because of potential abduction. I had to keep going with the "teenagers" story for years. I finally told my mom years later when I was an adult and she was pretty mad, but I was past getting in trouble for it.
Gotta love the parental statute of limitations.
You're grounded! Go to your room!
Mom I'm 35 and live 6 states over...
She Totally Owned It
I once got sort of unapproved access to a VIP area at a venue, and the person who got me in probably would have gotten in trouble if it was found out that they did (a fairly major musician was playing, this was the lounge area where their family and friends were watching the show, only about 20 people). When people asked why I was there, I said I was related to the owner of the venue (figured this was boring enough but would stop the questions). Instead, this really nice group of people all started complimenting me on the venue and talking to me more about it and my family.
They were really awesome people and we chatted the rest of the evening. They invited me to spend the upcoming holiday weekend at their beach house with the band. I did. No one ever found out I have no connection to the venue and don't even know who actually owns it.
Just Act Like You Belong
I was watching my buddy who was in an amateur MMA fight and brought a cannon rebel ti3 camera and was wearing sandals, a Pepsi t-shirt, and khaki shorts. I went to the bar to get a water and the bartender told me "staff get free drinks" and handed me two bottles of water for free, I figured i looked close enough to the staff there that i can sneak onto the main floor and take pictures from the stage and I did. No one questioned me and I got some horrible shots because I don't know how to properly use a camera.
It's actually quite remarkable the amount of sh*t you can get away with if you just act like you belong.
A Degree Of Lies She Didn't Expect
My boyfriend (now husband) told me he went to grad school but never graduated.
I found out around 10 years into us dating that it was a giant lie he had said to impress me. The only reason he came clean was his mother found out and told me.
Did he get his degree or did he not attend?
He claimed he attended and didn't finish. The truth was he had been accepted but never went.
He never really talked about it. It only came up when I mentioned him living off campus during graduate school and his mother was like "WTF are you talking about?"
Double Trouble
I can't think of any really big ones, but there's one weird one.
In college, a group of people I didn't know well were talking about this guy they'd gone to high school with who looked exactly like me, to the point that they were convinced I was him fucking with them by pretending to be someone else. The only difference was that my doppelganger wore glasses, and I didn't. So in order to f*ck with them a little bit, I said that I'd worn glasses in high school, but didn't anymore. I'd never worn glasses.
One of the people there that I did know well remembered what I'd said, and didn't believe me so the next time she bumped into my best friend from high school, she asked whether I'd worn glasses. He backed me up, instantly. I figured he'd just figured something was up and decided to back me up.
A decade later, with the acquisition of good vision insurance, I had my eyes checked and actually did wind up getting glasses, with a very mild prescription. Upon seeing me with them for the first time, my best friend said, "Oh wow, I haven't seen you with glasses on since high school."
I've never been sure whether he backed me up and then somehow internalized that backup and then really believed that I wore glasses in high school, or whether he just always somehow believed that I'd worn glasses. I've chosen to use it to very subtly fuck with him by photoshopping glasses onto my face in old pictures that he's going to see.
I did it recently when his sister asked me for some photos to use for his upcoming wedding. It'll probably never actually pay off, but I privately think it's hilarious.
A Tall Tail To Tell
Last year on the first day of a month-long rotation in medical school, I was telling a story and accidentally referred to my dog as my daughter.
Quickly did the mental evaluation of how embarrassing it would be to correct myself vs rolling with it and just decided to go with it and pretended I had a kid for the rest of the month. I didn't like purposely bring it up or anything, but if someone mentioned it (it was October, was asked about taking my kid trick or treating etc) I would just vaguely agree and not elaborate on anything.
"How old is your daughter?" "3 but she's 18 in do....aughter years"
It's All Fun And Games Until...
When I was 10, another kid on my school bus asked me if I played World of Warcraft. I lied and said yes.
I spent the entire rest of the year, before and after school on the bus, talking about a game I never played in my life.
One day, I was invited over when he made me login. I entered some account and claimed I forgot my password, spending the next 30 minutes trying to debug by resetting a password to an account that doesn't exist HAHA... oh my god. What was I doing?
What's In A Name?
I'm not sure if this counts, but the girl at the front desk of my gym has been calling me Justin for like 6 years. My name isn't Justin.
Guy on the bus to work started calling me Mike one morning and I should have told him that wasn't my name but I secretly liked it. 18 months later I still haven't told him. I even had to warn my daughter who started getting the same bus as me in the morning what had happened. She found it hilarious. I'm in too deep now. Mike is now my name for 40 minutes every morning Monday to Friday.
You're a phony!!!
A big fat PHONY!!
Practice Makes Perfect
Used to get my nails done when I lived in China with a friend. We told elaborate lies about her "rich husband" and my "useless boyfriend" to the ladies who did our nails as a way to practice vocabulary in Mandarin... I was leaving in like a few months so it was easy but she had to find pictures of babies and weddings and dresses to use. I just had to remember that my bf was a doctor and probably cheating on me and she had to choose baby names.
That's better than my friend who implied that we were together to our nail tech. I facepalmed when she did that.
What A...Richard
There was a guy in high school. We had classes together starting in 9th grade, but he went to my school since kindergarten but we didn't have a class together until we were teenagers. For some reason, I thought his name was Richard. First day of class he comes up and sits in front of me and I just smile and say "Hey Richard." and that's that.
Every time we worked on a project together. Every time I passed him in the halls. For years, I'd called him Richard. We had a project together in a class and it was a week of hanging out together at the library and EACH OTHERS HOUSES. I called him Richard in front of his MOM! I introduced him to MY PARENTS AS RICHARD!
He always responded to Richard, always got MY name right. Never tried to correct me. I wrote our names on the project and handed it in. I got asked by the teacher the next day. "Who is Richard? Wasn't your partner Charlie?"
For nearly 10 years I'd been calling this boy named Charlie, Richard. And no one ever corrected me, not even his mom. I asked him after class why he never corrected me and he just said it was weird and he didn't know how to handle it. And as time passed he figured it was too late now. What a D*ck.
What a Richard.
A Tough Pill To Swallow
When I was dating my husband, his mom wanted us to stay the night. I really, really didn't want to. Told her I needed to go home due to not feeling well and thinking I had a fever. She offers me Tylenol and I said I couldn't have it because I was allergic- not sure why I said it.
Anyways, my husband overheard it and I later didn't want to tell him I had lied to his mom. We're married now. I recently had to go to the ER due to breaking a bone and was in so much pain I couldn't talk. He told the nurse I was allergic to Tylenol. He then went to my surgery and doctors appointments with me after that and I had to continue to say I am allergic to Tylenol.
My "Tylenol allergy" is now all over my medical records.
April Fooled
Long ago, Discovery Channel had a special on prehistoric pigs. It aired on April 1st, and being a 12 year old who was "smart" and "knew how to think critically," (i.e. didn't think to look into the special and find out if it was the real deal as I thought i knew everything), i assumed it was a joke show put on by the channel.
A few months later, they re-aired the special. My dad happened to be watching it and, nerd that he is, called me in excitedly to show me this prehistoric pig programming. I scoffed and said, "Dad, it's fake. It was made for April Fool's and now they're showing it again."
"OH," he said, and laughed and laughed.
Here's the thing - I was wrong. The show was about a real animal that really existed. I discovered this a few years later on the internet.
But by now my dad had started using these fake giant pigs as a conversation starter! Not only that, but he's flipped the story a bit - now he's the one who saw the show on April 1! And, 23 years later, the man STILL BRINGS UP THIS F*CKING SHOW. Because he thinks the idea of what he calls "dinosaur pigs" is HILARIOUS.
I thought of telling him, but it's too deep now. I go to my grave with this one.
EDIT: Holy s---, this got some upvotes. FWIW, the people linking various dinopig wikis in the comments, I honestly have no fucking clue which one it is. Probably the entelodonts, but I can't say. As for which documentary it is, folks linking YouTube vids, that I'm also fuzzy on. This is a doc I saw before Discovery lost its damn mind, sometime between 1996 and 2000 - I was definitely in middle or very early high school, because of the house I remember seeing it in. So, ages 12-14. My memory says it was called "when pigs ruled the earth/world" and that it aired around the time those walking with dinosaurs documentaries exploded. Anything produced in the aughts is right out.