From the tale of a strange bird that steals pretty hair to relating the origins of ice cream to pine cones in a twisted story, people share the strangest lie their parents told them when they were a kid.
(Content has been edited for clarity)
Chest Hair Growth Pain
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“My dad told my brother that growing in chest hairs is an excruciatingly painful process. Days later, as my brother walked past my dad in the living room, my dad clutched his chest and screamed, ‘AAARRRGGHHHH! Another chest hair!’ It scared the light out of my brother. He believed it until he grew his own.”
Women Coughing Up Hairballs
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“I was born with a full head of hair and my mom said that she knew I would have lots of hair because she would cough up hairballs while she was pregnant.
It took until high school anatomy class for me to realize there is not a direct connection from your uterus to your throat.
Also, women don’t cough up hairballs.”
How To Tell If Someone Is Lying
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“My parents told me that you can tell if a person was lying by looking at their tongue.
I believed it because they ALWAYS knew when I was lying.
How? Subconsciously if I was lying, I wouldn’t want to show my tongue and would put up a bit of a struggle. If I wasn’t? I whipped it out straight away as if to say, ‘SEE! SEE! IM NOT LYING! TOLD YOU SO!’
Pretty genius and I’ll use it on my kids. It really taught me to own up to my mistakes vs lying and getting a worse punishment.”
Celebrating ‘Swedish New Year’
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“One New Year’s Eve, when our daughter was about five, she decided that she wanted to stay up until midnight. By 9 pm, she was overly tired and generally foul. By 9:30, we had enough. We explained to her that since her dad is Swedish, we celebrated Swedish New Year. Which we conveniently decided took place at 10 pm. We all made it to bed by 10:30. For the next few years, we celebrated ‘Swedish New Year’ until she was old enough to put the pieces together and realize that she had been lied to.”
The Nice Witch Candy
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“When I was a kid, my parents told me and my brother about the candy witch. She was a nice witch who came on Halloween night when you were sleeping and took most of your candy but left a present in return. So my brother and I got to keep 10 pieces of candy and the rest went to the candy witch, and when we woke up, we had awesome presents waiting for us. And that’s how my parents got to eat all our candy and prevented us from eating a ton. Super smart and will be using on my own kids.”
The Broccoli Truck Doesn’t Even Deliver Broccoli
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“My father somehow convinced me that the brown UPS delivery trucks were called ‘Broccoli Trucks.’
No, they didn’t deliver broccoli, they delivered packages. No, they were not associated with broccoli in any way at all. So, why were they called broccoli trucks? Darned if I know. Dad logic.
I learned the truth about things far later than I should have — in middle school, actually — when I offhandedly remarked that I’d seen a broccoli truck in the parking lot. My teacher overheard me and asked me to point it out, then gave me a look of skeptical confusion when I indicated the UPS truck. That was the moment when I realized my dad might have made up the whole ‘broccoli truck’ bit. I wound up trying to explain that it was a family tradition to refer to delivery vehicles by odd names, but everything I said only seemed to make my teacher grow more suspicious.
Upon hearing the story from me, my father did a very poor job of restraining his laughter.”
The Strange, Hair Stealing Bird
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“When I was a little girl, my parents and I were on our way camping. We drove through a town in Washington called ‘Skamokawa.’ It was a funny word, so of course, my dad had to start saying it out loud to amuse himself. I was three or four years old and figured that ‘Skamokawa’ must be a thing and not the name of a town.
‘What’s a Skamokawa?’ I asked.
My parents were bored, we had been in the car quite some time, and so they took the opportunity to spin one of those elaborate parents lies that you get to tell your kids. ‘Well, a Skamokawa is a kind of bird that lives in this area,’ my mom said.
‘Yeah, this bird lives in the trees over there on the side of the road and looks for people with nice hair. They especially like long hair, like yours,’ my dad continued.
‘Exactly. When the Skamokawa bird sees someone who’s hair it really likes, it swoops down from the trees… and… rips off your hair to make a nest!’ my mother cackled.
Now, this disturbed me greatly, and I could not let it go. Finally, we got to the campground, we set everything up, had dinner, and sat around the fire. I kept asking about this strange bird because I had really nice hair and I was not about to have my life ruined. My parents evolved their elaborate tale, made up pretend cases of people who had their hair stolen by this imaginary bird.
There was a man in the next campsite over, sitting with his family. He must have been listening to us for awhile, because eventually he wandered over and said, ‘You know, everything they said was true. I’ve seen a Skamokawa bird. And…it took my hair.’
I was having none of this. No, random dude, I’ll call your bluff. But this guy took off his hat and he was completely bald. He pointed to a scab on his head, ‘This is where he got me!’
I screamed! My parents laughed, and I was afraid of these birds for the rest of the trip.
Years and years later, I am 26 years old and sitting around the dinner table with my family. We weren’t talking about anything in particular, but this story about this bird cropped back up in my head. The entire time, I had assumed this story was real because that strange bald dude corroborated it so masterfully. It suddenly occurred to me that it wasn’t true.
‘OH MY GOD MOM. SKAMOKAWA BIRDS AREN’T REAL, ARE THEY?’
The table fell silent and my mom burst out into laughter, ‘No, but god bless that random guy in the campsite next to us. He just happened to be bald and HAPPENED to have a scratch on his head. I can’t believe that worked out so well.'”
Adopted From The Zoo
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“When I was a kid (starting from the time I was about 4), my parents told me I was adopted from the zoo. They told my brothers and my entire family to tell me the same story. The reason they said this is because my tailbone sticks out farther than it should. (IT IS WEIRD. I KNOW IT. DON’T MAKE FUN OF IT).
My third-grade teacher asked me to bring in a photo from where I was from. I moved to Florida from New York and I brought her a picture from one of the zoos up there. I explained the story about how my dad stole a monkey from the zoo and cut off my tail just far enough so I became human.
Needless to say, she called my parents and they then had to explain to me I wasn’t adopted from the zoo.”
Crushed Dreams Of Winning A Contest
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“I entered a singer/songwriter contest when I was in maybe second grade. I won something at state level and I was told I was going to get to go to nationals. However when it came time for nationals, I kept asking when we got to go, and my mom told me they lost my tape. And since they lost my tape, I couldn’t go. It took until after high school before I realized that probably wasn’t the truth. In all honesty, my mom and dad were not doing that great in life around that time and I imagine they forgot or couldn’t afford to take me. Or maybe I didn’t even make it to nationals, who knows. All I know is I was upset about it for a very long time.”
Relating The Origins Of Ice Cream To Pine Cones
“My father once tried to convince me — then age five — that if I didn’t finish eating my dinner, the ice cream in the refrigerator would turn into pine cones.
It was intended as a subtle means of encouraging me to ‘clean my plate,’ but the plan kind of backfired on him. After listening to his description — which was as detailed as it was fascinating — of how this would happen, I decided that I was more than happy to sacrifice my dessert for the chance to witness the transformation firsthand. From what I recall, it involved the condensation of the ice cream into something resembling a large marshmallow, which would then turn brown and crack before finally expanding outward into its pine cone form.
‘Is that where all pine cones come from?’ I asked.
‘Oh, no,’ my father replied. ‘Pine cones come from pine trees, but they use pine cones to make ice cream.’
‘How?’
There’s a voice that my stepmother refers to as ‘The Max Voice,’ which apparently the men in my family use when we’re telling tall tales. Thinking back, I can remember my father using exactly that tone as he spun his web of good-natured lies.
‘Well, you see,’ he told me, ‘the people who make ice cream have to collect the pine cones from the forest every fall. If they wait until it gets too cold, the pine cones will turn into ice cream on their own.’
‘Like snow?’ I asked.
‘Exactly like snow,’ answered my father. ‘After they have all the pine cones, they put them into a big tank and suck all the heat out of it. The pine cones fluff up into marshmallows, and then they turn into ice cream.’
I eyed him with as much skepticism as a 5-year-old could muster, ‘Is that really what happens?’
‘Absolutely!’ my father replied. ‘The next time we go up to Nana and Papa’s condo, try smelling one of the pine trees. They’ll smell like vanilla because those are vanilla ice cream trees.’
‘Are there chocolate ice cream trees?’ I asked, my voice full of excitement.
My father nodded, ‘I’ll tell you about them while you finish your dinner.’
He kept the story going for quite a while, and by the time that he was done, he had more or less confessed to the deception. I didn’t really mind, though, because he was more than happy to placate me with ice cream… and I didn’t care what its origins were.”
The Lie To Get Free Lunches At School
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“My mom always told me as a kid that I was something like 1/16 or 1/32 Cherokee Indian. For various reasons, I haven’t talked to her in about two years.
Earlier this year, my wife and I decided to get one of those online DNA kits through one of the major genealogy websites. When I got my kit back about six weeks later, no Native American markers came up at all.
My parents (Dad and Step-Mom) came to visit a couple weeks after I got the results back, and I mentioned that it was weird they didn’t pick up the trace of Native American blood in me even though I was sure my bio mom had told me that when I was younger. My step-mom immediately said, ‘Oh honey, she just made that up.’
Turns out she wanted to get me free lunches at school as a kid and lied to me and whoever would listen to it. I never did get free lunches, and I don’t know why the lie persisted for so long.”
Hair Is Like A Plant … Wash It Often
“When I was a kid, say 8 or 9, I didn’t like to wash my hair, and I liked to grow it long. I was so proud of my long, greasy, oily hair. Until one day my dad, who hated it, took me on a surprise visit to the barber shop and got it trimmed nice and proper.
I was devastated. I was so upset, I cried for hours. My resourceful mother, however, took this as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.
She comforted me and very cleverly told me that hair was like a plant; if I wanted it to grow and to grow quickly, I needed to water and wash it every day. This made absolute sense to my 3rd-grade brain, and I immediately jumped in the shower and lathered away. To her credit, I’ve washed my hair every day since that day.
I never really gave what she said much thought, though. Even long after I stopped growing my hair out and began cutting it short (haircut every three weeks now), I always just remembered that she had told me that and just accepted it.
After one haircut that left my hair shorter than I would have liked, at the ripe age of 18, I was getting ready for school, washing my hair, when I thought to myself that as long as I washed my hair every day, my hair would grow out to proper length in no time.
Because hair is like a plant. ‘Hair is like a plant,’ I thought.
I thought about this more and more until I was fully wrapped in thought, just standing completely still and silent underneath the showerhead at my realization.
‘… that makes absolutely no sense.'”
Strange Green Dried Plant As Fish Food
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“Growing up in southern California, my family owned a tropical fish hatchery. While digging through drawers and furniture as kids do, I find a big Tupperware container under the couch, full of this skunky green dried plant. I take it to my parents and ask them what it is. ‘It’s fish food, honey!’ I asked why it was hidden under the couch. ‘It’s special fish food, it makes the fish extra happy.’
We had a 150-gallon tank in the living room along with dozens of 20-50 gallon tanks in the hatchery. Due to catching whiffs of ‘fish food’ smell at night, I was convinced my parents were feeding the fish without me after I went to bed. Early one morning, I took all of their ‘special fish food’ and fed all of the fish for them. They were not pleased.”
Not Blaming The Parents For These Lies
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“My parents had very little money to spare when I was a wee lad. They told their children two things that we all believed for a very long time:
1) That Santa only brought the things in the stockings. Asking Santa for items that wouldn’t fit in the stockings (pretty much everything we wanted) would be fruitless. And we knew our parents couldn’t afford what we really wanted. So we just didn’t ask. Also, we got fruit in our stockings.
2) The toy store was a museum, sort of like a petting zoo. We could visit. We could touch the toys and play with them, but we couldn’t possibly buy them.
Now you may wonder how we could have believed these things. After all, there were plenty of movies and cartoons that seemed to clearly indicate that Santa brought big presents – and there were clearly cash registers at the ‘toy museum’ – but somehow or other, we bought the lies. For quite a few years. Enough for them to get on their feet.
I don’t blame them a bit.”
Potty Training Done Right
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“My little brother was very difficult to potty train. He was lazy and just did his business in his pants if he needed to go. My parents tried every positive incentive in the book to get him to use the toilet, but there was nothing that could overcome the connivance of going in his pants. I remember vividly when my parents decided to tell my brother there was a secret, Gestapo-esque police force known as the ‘underwear police’ that took people who went to the bathroom in their pants after the age of 4 to some sort of rehabilitation prison. This alone was enough to scare my brother straight, but to top it off, as my parents were explaining this to him, some guy was pulled over by the police right outside of our window. My parents jumped on the situation, explaining to my brother that the man was being taken away for peeing in his pants past the age of 4. My poor brother went to the bathroom every two minutes that night, and has been potty trained ever since.”
The Half Alien Child Of This Alien Mom
“My mom and I moved into an apartment building with a detached parking garage when I was 5 or so. You could look out on top of the parking garage from our dining room window and my little kid mind was blown that the top could be flat. I asked my mom why the top was so flat? Why didn’t it have a normal roof?
She told me the roof was flat because she was an alien and it’s where she parked her spaceship. She was from the same planet as the characters in Third Rock From the Sun and she was friends with them. She told me I couldn’t see it because I was only half alien, and only whole aliens could see her spaceship.
I accepted this answer with no question. I was a weird kid and assumed it’s because I was half alien. Took until sometime in middle school when I realized I’d been bamboozled.”
What’s Actually In That Freezer?
“We had this broken deep freeze that we kept outside due to lack of space. We kept a padlock on it because during the time we used it, we kept a ton of meat in it and we didn’t want it being stolen. I don’t actually remember the time of the freezer being used, I just remember it being outside our house, developing rust for a very long time. My mom had lost the key to the padlock, so her boyfriend thought it would be funny to tell the kids my mom’s ex-boyfriend was in there. You could lift the lid maybe half an inch, so you couldn’t see inside but you could smell it. Obviously, it smelled like a rotting freezer, but as kids, we completely believed that a dead body might have been in there. We still joke about it to this day.”
This Father’s Lie That Served Two Purposes
“I asked my dad why he didn’t have any hair. He told me he had opened the window in the car while he was on the expressway, and the wind was so strong his hair all blew off and went down the drain. Now I realize the story served two purposes: to avoid talking about why he was bald and to get me to stop putting the car window down when my parents were driving.
At the time, I took it 100% seriously and never put the window down again because I didn’t want to be bald. It took me until I was 10 or so to realize it was a lie.”
It Will Give You Pointy Ears!
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“My mom convinced me that drinking aspartame when going through puberty would cause one’s ears to become pointy. I believed this as I was young enough to trust my mother with my health. Steered clear of Diet Coke for years until I brought this up during a high school health class. My teacher in the most polite way possible explained I was just an idiot and aspartame doesn’t cause pointy ears!”
The Color Changing Fish
“My mom told me that beta fish change colors when left in the sunlight for too long, so whenever I came home from school and the fish tank was in the windowsill and Tommy the fish was a different color, I just thought it was a normal thing. Turns out that’s not actually true, my cat just kept killing my fish and my mom would buy me a new one each time. This went on for three years until mom finally told me that ‘Tommy’ had died but it wasn’t until a couple years later when I was talking to some friends that I realized that betas don’t actually change color when left in the sun.”
Growing A Beard By Watching Tv
“My dad told me and my siblings that if we watched too much TV, we would grow a beard. We would be in tears sometimes after watching TV for a couple hours because we actually believed it. My grandma eventually told us it was fake by the time I was about 8 because she was tired of hearing us telling each other we’re growing a mustache. I think she just wanted us to shut up and watch TV.”
A Single Mother’s Forbidden Rule
“My parents got divorced somewhat early on, so my mom spent years being a single mother with four kids. Unsurprisingly, we were poor and didn’t have dessert all that much. When she would be able to bake a cake, we were forbidden to run or jump in the house because that would make the cake ‘fall’ and be ruined. Of course we weren’t willing to mess that up, so we would be quiet for an hour – which was exactly the intention.
Only somewhat ashamed to admit, I was in my early twenties, relaying this ‘fact’ to my girlfriend, when it hit me what my mother had done.”
Heating Up Meat In The Microwave Is A Serious Crime!
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“My parents told me that it was illegal for a kid to heat up meat in a microwave. They were just getting annoyed at me heating up things like ham and getting chunks all over the microwave. I once cried because I heated up a sandwich with ham in it and didn’t realize until after it was out. My brother was so confused when I went bawling to him about how I was going to go to jail for putting ham in the microwave.”