Lying to others is a dangerous game. Sometimes, a small lie can save a friendship or keep your parents believing that you’re doing really well (when you’ve actually dropped out of school to follow Rihanna on tour). Yet some deceits can also lead to ruination and destruction. Sometimes, a small lie you told when you were 12 — about being allergic to peanuts just because you didn’t like them, for instance — becomes so deeply accepted by others that you have no choice but to keep it going until it becomes an actual part of your personality.
Usually, the people telling that last kind of lie aren’t ever going to own up about it to their friends and family. Fortunately for us, these same people will happily spill their secrets on Reddit, where a thread about lies that “have gotten so out of hand that they’ve become part of your life” is currently blowing up with confession after confession of (mostly) benign wrongdoing. Some lies, it turns out, have even benefitted the person who told them.
Let’s start with a small lie. Here’s the story of someone who pretended he didn’t know how to tie his own shoes:
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. It was around the time when Liam Neeson got his shoe tied by Olivia Wilde and I was crazy jealous because I really liked Olivia Wilde since watching House.
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.
Meanwhile, here’s the tale of someone who doesn’t really like tuna casserole but will be forced to eat it until the day his mom can no longer handle the hassle of making it happen:
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 30 years now.
Here’s one we’ve all told after a wild night out:
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.
However, with time, many of the lies become way more complex. Exhibit A:
A girl I lived with two years ago thought I was stealing her yoghurt 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.
Edit: Yeah I ate the f*cking yoghurt and it was delicious. Also am not a guy!
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.” ( ͡° ʖ̯ ͡°)
And exhibit C, a story so strange that most people assume it’s been made up. What do you think?
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, cause 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 1,000 miles from my home state, finished my BS and am now doing a masters, all because 14 sounded way more mature than 13 on a f*cking video game.
(Sorry for formatting, on my cell phone in the lab I am working in for my masters project, lol)
But sometimes these stories have truly happy and inspiring endings:
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
Kind of motivational, really. Lie, face your fears, save lives and become a hero. Who else is in?