We all do it. Without even necessarily realizing it, you tell a small lie. However, sometimes this lie continues to grow if people continue to believe it.
Here, people share a lie they told that ended up getting way too out of hand.
1/29. A girl I lived with two years ago thought I was stealing her yogurt out of the fridge. I told her it couldn’t have been me since I’m allergic to dairy, and now I still can’t eat dairy in front of her or anyone from that friend group. She made me a dairy free cake for my birthday – the guilt is eating me alive.
2/29. I had a coworker tell me he got married on accident. It was Christmas morning and he bought his girlfriend a ring as a Christmas present. They were both sitting around the tree and when she opened it she started to cry and said “well are you going to ask me.” Thats when he realized what he had done. He got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. Moral of the story, don’t ever buy a ring for a girl unless you are planning on marrying her.
3/29. I work with a number of women (and men for that matter) who all have children. When we all first started working together they asked me if my wife and I have kids – I said no. I have zero interest in hearing about their kids or talking about mine.
So years later I’m the guy without kids and it’s wonderful. My boss who I’ve known for 18 years actually knows my son and doesn’t care, he actually thinks its funny.
Son is in his mid 20s and has been out of the nest for years to technically I don’t have kids, just an adult son.
4/29. When I first started dating this girl I told her that I don’t like porn.
Flash forward 6 years, we’re married and watching an episode of “Friends” where one of the girls thinks her bf doesn’t like porn. My wife turns to me and says “well not ALL guys like porn! You don’t like it, right?”
Me: “That’s right, honey. It’s not for me.”
5/29. When I was younger I walking home at night and the street lights were off, I got scared and starting running, knocked myself clean out on a lamp post. Someone walking their dog found me and called the ambulance (story continued on the next page…).
Continue onto the next page for more!
I was that embarrassed when I woke up I told the nurse I was mugged (I was 12). My parents turned up at the same time as the police. I gave a description that sounded a lot like gonzo from the muppets and police were searching the area with sniffer dogs.
Thank the lord nobody was arrested and I still haven’t told my parents.
6/29. I’m the kind of person that always leaves my shoes tied and just slips them on. I’m dating this girl for a couple months and then one day my shoe gets untied but I’m too lazy to retie it. It really bothers her and she insists on me tying it. I really don’t want to bend over and do it for some reason.
She eventually asks me “Don’t you know how to tie your shoes???” In my head I’m seeing Liam Neeson getting his shoes tied by Olivia Wilde and how badass it looks. So I say “No… I never learned how, you can’t tell anyone…”
To this day, when my shoe gets untied in public she will pull me off to the side away from other people and secretly tie my shoe. For some reason it makes her happy and it’s the sweetest thing ever. I can’t understand how she would even tolerate a grown man who doesn’t know how to tie his own shoe! I’ll never be Liam Neeson cool, but I’ve found my Olivia Wilde.
7/29. For some reason when I was a younger kid, I really really wished I was German. I do have a very German last name, but I’m really only like 5 percent German. But I would always tell people I was 100 percent German (I would say both my grandparents on both sides were straight from Germany, so both my parents were 100% German).
It didn’t really go as planned, and whenever we would learn about the Nazis in history people would stare at me, and the teacher would even ask me for my insight on it. One time when German exchange students visited our middle school for a day, I was assigned to be their tour guide because they would want someone “like them”. When high school rolls around, all my friends assumed I would take German as my language class. So since I was the “german girl” I did. Hence me learning German and now constantly being asked to speak German to people to prove that I’m German. I’ve also studied German customs and culture just so people believe me. Screw my 12 year old self for having such a weird obsession with Germany.
8/29. I was scared of heights and would get sick by the sight of blood. needed a job, lied about all this to become a firefighter.
I love my job, drive an ambulance too and overcame my fears.
9/29. I dislocated my knee dancing like a maniac whilst drunk in January. Ended up on crutches for three weeks. Told everyone at work I did it bending down to grab something from the freezer because I didn’t want them to think I was a drunken maniac. People at work are still shocked that I dislocated it so ‘easily’ and keep saying how unlucky I am and bringing the sympathy.
Now I just feel like a fraud.
10/29. A couple years ago, I went to a bar in a town I didn’t expect to be in very often, and I decided to don a Scottish accent and make up a back story for a fictitious version of myself.
Now, I doubt my accent would have fooled someone actually from Edinburgh, but by the end of the night I had a group of Americans and one bemused Australian chatting with me about the things that make the US a strange place to visit from abroad. Shots were bought, back slaps given, and a good night had; I thought nothing else of it.
…until I was dating a girl from the next town over, and she took me to her favorite bar. That bar (story continued on the next page…).
Continue onto the next page for more!
We walked in, someone greeted my by my “name”, and I did the only thing I could do — cheerfully donned my fraudulent accent, explained that my business trip had been indefinitely extended, and spent the next twenty minutes furtively explaining to my date that I wasn’t a con man, just an ex actor with terrible impulse control.
11/29. I once told people I had been bitten by a venomous snake to get out of work for a few days…. I had already called in sick a ton of times and just could not face them if I did it again. I am young and in good health, there is just no way even an old frail person is ill as much as I am calling in… So yes, snake bite. They knew I kept venomous and I thought, “This is a great idea.”
Turns out they were fascinated and wanted to see so I had to wrap my foot up in a huge bandage and hobble around for weeks. Luckily I was moving to another job I actually didn’t hate a few weeks after that. I didn’t have to deform my own foot or actually let one of my venomous bite me so that I would not get busted… I was not far off doing so!!
12/29. When I was a kid and playing on Xbox live with people from all over the world, I used to put on this Dutch-sounding accent when talking to new people, partly because I didn’t like how my normal accent sounded, especially when hearing it back, and also because I was/am weird.
I met some good friends throughout the year or so that I did it. I’m still in touch but no where near as much as we used to be, we’ll have a Skype call every now and again, and even after 6-7 years, I still put the accent on to them. Obviously with us being good friends, I also lied about an awful lot of background things. It’s like I created this other person. I never intended for it to go like this, but I could never tell them I’ve lied about my accent, which stemmed in to a bunch of other things… and even now after all these years… I’m the Dutch guy that has only ever spoke english.
13/29. While me and my SO were still dating (maybe 2 weeks or so in), she winked at me when I walked into the pub she worked in. I, being the goof that I am, winked back but messed it up on purpose and just sort of shut my eyes tight for a second, making her believe that I couldn’t wink.
Now it’s over 6 years later and she still doesn’t think i’m capable of winking.
One of my favourite things to do is just stand behind her and wink a bunch, purely for my own amusement.
14/29. When I was a little kid, I told my mom I really liked her tuna casserole. I was just trying to be nice and pay her a compliment since she seemed like she was having a bad day.
Pretty much every time I go to visit her she has some tuna casserole waiting for me. I don’t actually like tuna casserole that much, but it’s such a sweet gesture that I don’t have the heart to tell her to stop. This has been going on for over thirty years now.
15/29. I am currently studying Chinese in Beijing. My Chinese isn’t that great and listening is by far my worst skill. So I will often get asked questions that I think I understand but don’t. For instance, I was asked if you can haggle prices in America and I told the class you can. Since I am the only American in the class, nobody knows any better. All my lies are small, and completely accidental, but there are so many of them. If anybody in that class actually goes to America they are going to be in for a big surprise. And if any of them spoke English they would know I am not an 18 year old from a small town with no buses, trains, or taxis, who doesn’t know how to properly use a fork and knife.
Continue onto the next page for more!
16/29. I have to pretend to have a bad memory because when I remember small or insignificant details people tend to get a little weird about it.
17/29. I am a professor and many times I will tell personal stories in an effort to demonstrate tough concepts. About half of these stories I made up at some point.
I don’t remember which ones are real and which ones are lies. So I just go with them and don’t worry about it.
18/29. In an ironic twist of fate, I used to tell people that I had a heart condition, and that’s why I took pills daily (it’s actually Prozac).
Found out about a year and some change ago that I do, in fact, have a heart condition.
I lied so hard that I retroactively gave myself a heart condition.
19/29. When I was 13 I was playing World of Warcraft and someone asked me my age. 13 was so young so I lied and said I was 14, cuz that meant I was so much more mature. Well I kept playing WOW with the same group of people, and 4 years later they thought I was 18.
Someone started asking me how my applications to college were going since I was that age. Being caught in the lie about my age I played along and asked for advice. I played along with the advice which resulted in me actually putting in a college application to a university and…. I got in. As a high school junior.
So to keep up this lie about my age I now had to finish high school quickly so I could actually go to this university that accepted me. Great part is that I was able to do this by overloading my spring semester of “Senior” year high school with online classes (yay Florida online high school). I managed to graduate high school a year early and went to university a year early to keep this lie going.
So here I am, at a university 1000 miles from my home state, finished my bachelors degree, and am now doing a masters, all because 14 sounded way more mature than 13 while playing video games.
20/29. Pretty silly but I think it fits the bill. When I was about 5 I remember being in the bathroom and brushing my teeth. My mum was there and berated me for something. Later, being a sensitive child, I was crying in bed about it. My parents came in all concerned and my mum asked, “Was it because I yelled at you earlier?” Embarrassed at being caught out so easily I said, ” No.. I’m sad because.. Because I can’t swim.” Soon after I was taken to swimming lessons. I hated swimming.
Continue onto the next page for more!
21/29. Gents, when you ever meet a girl that for some reason falls for you head over heels, and worships the ground you walk on, be very careful when she asks you whether you love her.
I’m now married to her for four years and she’s so god damn adorable that I don’t have the heart to tell her “I’m not sure.”
22/29. That I am allergic to bees. I was so scared of them in grade school and junior high, that I convinced everybody that I am allergic so they don’t judge me when I run from bees.
23/29. Met my wife on one of those telephone chat dating things in the 90’s. Basically, before OKCupid, you would sign up for a voicemail and describe yourself. We connected and went out but were both embarrassed for using it. Fast forward 18 years, we continue to tell everyone we met in the music section at Borders.
24/29. Told my employer that I was Jewish. Not Jewish. Had to research all the holidays, pick a temple to be a member of, etc.
Had to get a new job.
25/29. The night I met my now wife, I was tripping balls something serious. We were at a friends party and there was drugs and I was on said drugs.
Well I see this cute girl with an awesome (or what I thought was awesome at the time) tattoo so I walk up to her and commented on it (story continued on the next page…).
Continue onto the next page for more!
Just way too over enthusiastic about the whole ordeal. So she falls for me and we’ve been married for almost 3 years now.
The lie is that we don’t actually tell anyone (parents and the like) that we met at a party while high as a kite, because that would be very bad coming from rather conservative families. So we tell everyone that we met on the moon during a highly classified mission. It was said mainly as a joke in the beginning but we’ve committed to it now so that’s our story of how we met.
There’s no way anyone can seriously believe it, but no ones questioned it ever.
26/29. My brother had a gf with a younger sister my age and they all came to watch me play baseball once. I was pretty smitten with the younger sister and so after the game I started bragging about how I played guitar. My brother laughed in my face and said I had got a guitar but it had been collecting dust for months and I’d never have the patience to learn an instrument anyway.
I was so embarrassed by being called out and doubted, I went home, told my mom I wanted to take lessons again, and here I am 20 years later still playing guitar every day.
27/29. When I was a kid, I got the bright idea to put a knotted cherry stem under my tongue, and then show my sister an untied stem and magically tie it in a knot in my mouth in seconds. Fast forward about 20 years my entire extended family thinks I have this weird ability to tie knots with my tongue… it’s a complete lie. At this point I refuse to do it, and get, almost defensive when people bring it up or ask to show it again.
28/29. Everyone I work with thinks I watch The Walking Dead- I haven’t viewed it since Season two. Now I find myself reading the synopsis of episodes the day after they come out just to perpetuate the lie.
29/29. I have a horizontal scar on my stomach from a surgery I had when I was a baby. For some reason in elementary school I would tell everyone that it was from when a bear attacked me.
I’m now almost 30 and people I went to elementary school with still recognize me in public as that guy that got attacked by a bear.