Parents never need to know everything...
The Truth About My Ex…
“My ‘boyfriend’ is now an ex-boyfriend and has been for almost 4 months now. When I came out of the closet everyone except my mother accepted it. We got into huge arguments when I went off to college and my whole family finally began to accept it once they found out I had a boyfriend. We lived together and my mother would find ways to indirectly ask about him. I loved him, and then we broke up.
I haven’t had the heart to tell any of them because I’m scared they’re going to spin it about how this is God’s way of telling me I shouldn’t be gay. I smile in front of all of them, but the truth is that I’ve spent half of my summer crying over my ex and how much I miss him.
Nothing helps. I don’t know how, or if, I’ll ever have the heart to tell them.”
Just Your Typical 11 Year Old Pyromaniac
“When I was about 11 or 12, I was going through my pyromaniac stage. One Saturday, I decided I would grab a steel can and fill it with Gasoline and head to the woods. Now, this wasn’t just your typical ol’ can of spaghetti-O’s, this was a 1-gallon bulk sized can…filled to the brim. I took it to the woods and decided it would be cool just to light it on fire and see what would happen. I lit it and it caught like I expected and kept burning inside the can. After about 15 mins, I got bored and went to try and put it out. In the process, I knocked the can over spreading gasoline all over the forest floor and it erupted in a ball of flame. I quickly ran back to my house to get water and I come running back with about 5 gallons. By this point, the fire had spread tremendously and my efforts were useless. I decided my best bet would be to run inside and play video games. Luckily this spot in the woods was pretty good ways away from my parents’ house so it didn’t draw my parents’ attention immediately.
After about an hour or so, the entire fire department is on scene battling the 3-4 acres of forest fire that is roaring. There was a road that runs behind my house and the fire basically engulfed all of the forest separating my parent’s house and this road. While the firefighters are trying to battle the flames, it is discovered that the house closest to the fire is a rather large cook house and cops show up and a huge bust goes down. Naturally, the fire was blamed on them and my parents just accepted that.
It is now 20 years later, and my parents still do not know nor will they ever know.”
Cinnamon Tic Tacs Aren’t Even Worth Shoplifting
“When I was in elementary school, I was at Target with my mom and sister. At the checkout counter I saw these cinnamon flavored tic-tacs, and I had to have them, because I hadn’t fully developed the whole want/need function in my brain. I knew my mom wouldn’t buy them for me, so I grabbed them (sneakily), and put them in my pocket (sneakily). I felt pretty guilty the whole way home, and didn’t make eye contact with anyone in case they could read my mind.
As soon as I was inside the safety of my home, I made my way upstairs (sneakily), and opened my hot goods.
They were awful. Easily my least favorite tic-tac. I ended up throwing them in the garbage can outside (sneakily) to avoid any suspicion. This is my shame, and I carry it alone.
The only time I ever stole anything, the fruits of my victory turned rotten in my mouth.”
They Made Up A Kidnapper
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“When I was 13 and my little bro was 11, we stayed at the mall WAY past when we were supposed to come home, like a few hours. This was the time before cell phones. On the way home, we hatched a scheme. We devised a lie that involved us being detained by a mall security guard for running down a back hallway of the mall. We even came up with a real person to base this security guard on, in case we were questioned separately. We pretty much described to our mom the pro wrestler Dean Malenko. It was perfect.
Little did we know, there was a guy in our area posing as a cop and abducting children. Mom called the cops. My brother and I separately had to give statements about what happened. The thing is, the lie held up. The cops told Mom that there was a good chance this was the guy. If I recall correctly, there may have even been a little blurp in the news about a sighting of this guy at the mall we frequented.
We threw a wrench in an investigation, caused a minor local scare, scared the crap out of our Mom, and ruined our freedom to walk to the mall by ourselves for 6 months, all because we didn’t want to get into trouble for being 3 hours late getting home.
Yeah, it was pretty stupid, but no one was ever the wiser.”
Construction Paper = Drywall
“I was 10-ish and my dad had just painted the boiler room door orange in our basement. My younger brother and I were pushing each other around on a skatebaord in basement and my dad warned us, don’t you dare hit this door with your skateboard. 15 minutes later I’m picking my brother up from the ground and looking at a hole in my dad’s orange door caused by said skateboard. Definitely not telling dad. So…
Instead I grab a piece of orange construction paper and a glue stick to ‘patch’ the hole. It matched surprisingly well. 27 years later that construction paper is still holding strong and I have never heard a word about it from my pop.”
Curiosity Didn’t Kill The Cat, I Did
“I killed the neighbor’s cat when playing baseball. This is straight out of a movie, but we were playing in the yard and when my friend pitched to me I swung and hit the cat who was jumping trying to chase a bird who had flown by me. I knew the cat was dead, I don’t want to get into detail about how I knew, but my friend and I basically took him to the woods and buried him. We bought some roses and put them on top of the grave and said a prayer.
The neighbors never mentioned the cat. They never hung posters up or even asked if we’d seen him. They just said he ran away and he’s probably dead.
I still feel freaking terrible, 20 years later.”
A Pleasant Spanish Vacation In Prison
“That the month I was ‘living a month in Spain’ was actually spent in jail. I had friends to post fake Instagram pictures for me too. I was sentenced to 1 month for driving under the influence and the month I was supposed to do my sentence happened to be at the same time as I was actually going to Spain for a month. So instead of traveling to Spain, I went to jail. No questions ever asked from my family.
Now, I knew my friends would notice, so I had to tell them and they were the best and helped me keeping this a secret. This was the first (and last) time I had ever been into any trouble. The most awkward bit was to figure out excuses for not driving the following year.”
The Resignation From Church
“I put in my resignation as a member of the Mormon church, which I was raised in. I’ve been out 5 years but recently took the plunge to take my name off, my mom has no clue. It would probably devastate her to know I don’t believe in her religion or in God at all. She thinks I’m ‘inactive’ and basically just lazy, so that’s why I don’t go to church and married a non-Mormon.
I don’t know if I can ever be honest with her without her hating me.”
The Water Grabbed His Baby Brother!
“I will never tell my Dad that I dropped my baby brother in the ocean and almost completely lost hold of him before managing to grab onto his ankle and drag him back up. I was about 15 at the time and my brother was about 1, so I was holding him on the beach while the rest of my family was off playing in the water. I waded out to where the water was not quite up to my waist, because my little bro loved getting splashed when a wave would come in. The surf was calm and he was laughing so I thought it was all good. All of the sudden the tide pulls out dramatically and comes back in with a wave that is like twice the size of the ones we have been getting for the past 10 minutes. I try to turn my back and hustle for the shore but it catches up really quickly and slams into us, crashing up all the way to my face. I am blinded by seawater and the force of the wave knocked my brother out of my arms. I instantly went into full panic mode and groped wildly around in the dark water. I still can’t see anything because of the salt water stinging my eyes, but I miraculously grab hold of his ankle and yank him up from the receding water. He spluttered and coughed a little bit but was surprisingly fine without even any crying or anything.
I got the heck out of the water and stayed on the beach with him after that.”
A 17-Year-Old’s Dream
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“I’m sure it’s not life and death, but, I don’t think I’ll ever find the gall to tell my parents about this specific high school experience. My buddy inherited an apartment in the downtown area of our relatively suburban city. I use the term inherited loosely because it’s not like his family died or anything, they just moved somewhere else and still had the lease paid for half a year. Anyways, as a bunch of 17-year-olds, we did the only logical thing: turn it into a hang out paradise.
Before college, before officially moving out, we put in money to furnish the place. We hung out there every weekend. Word spread through school and we (who were not so cool but not lame, right in the casual middle-type) started throwing parties people showed up for.
It was really great until we got so many complaints we got evicted.
Good times. Come to think of it, someday I’ll bring this story up at the dinner table.”
An Eight Year Old Who Fixed A Bullet Wound…With Duct Tape
“I shot myself in the leg when I was 8 and fixed the hole with a wad of toilet paper and some duct tape. There’s still metal in there 20 years later.
The Details:
In my memory the bullet was huge, but in reality was likely just a .22LR. I have since seen a doctor, when I was 15, and he said the remaining metal wasn’t worth the risks of removal. It’s inert and mostly embedded in my shin. (This makes me like 0.00001% more Wolverine than you) The wad of toilet paper was actually 2 whole rolls of it, but at least half of it was flushed to hide the evidence. The fragments are too small to set off metal detectors. Next time I go through I’ll ask them to wand my leg and see if the wands can sense it though.
The Story:
The story is pretty boring. My cousin and I were messing around with a fire behind his garage. Making flame throwers out of things that we’re lucky didn’t explode in our hands, like WD-40 cans and the like. In our horsing around my flamethrower, actually I think it was my cousin’s flamethrower, was knocked into the fire and I fished it out. While inspecting it I accidentally shot myself. This all happened pretty late at night the evening before a wedding so all the adults were wasted and we snuck into the downstairs bathroom to tend the wound.
Seems to be a right of passage in my family. My dad was shot for the first time when he was 9. Some crazy guy in a boat with a weapon who ended up having to spend 2 nights in jail for it. My dad shot himself when he was 15, in the foot, and all the blood made his little brother faint so my dad had to carry his little brother out of the bush with a hole through his boot.
So I come by the shot wounds honestly, at least.”
Lost In In A Dark, Dark Wood
“That I got lost in the woods hiking. The police had to rescue me. It was a whole big scene. I texted my parents with the little battery life I had on my phone and told them I was staying at a friend’s so that they wouldn’t worry. The police eventually found me, and I got home at 5:00 AM. They thought I was at a friends, and I’ve never told them the story. It was a day hike around a lake. Here’s how it went:
I was alone and yes, totally scared. It was early April, so the conditions were a mess and I couldn’t start a fire. I really didn’t think I was going to be found because I was so far off the trail. Luckily, my cell phone GPS signal gave them a rough location and at 3:00 AM I heard the police shouting my name and I ran in their direction for what seemed an incredible distance, falling through snow and down ridges in the dark. It sucked.
I started hiking at 9:00 AM but when I got to one section of the trail, the markers completely vanished because the trees had fallen. It was 3:30 AM at that point, and I didn’t have enough daylight to turn back. I assumed that since the trail went around the lake, that if I followed the edge of it, I would make it back. I did that for about two hours and then hit a huge hill and I couldn’t see the edge of the lake beyond it. It was sunset and I knew I was lost.
As soon as I realized I was lost, I immediately called the police. I lied to my parents because I didn’t want them to freak out, and I needed the phone battery to talk to the people trying to find me.”