Recently, u/MrBowls asked the people of Ask Reddit, "What’s a harmless/non-serious secret you’ve kept forever?" Here are some of the best answers...
1. "I was mad at my Dad for something. So, I added extra chilli powder and hot sauce to our family chilli as revenge."
"Turns out my family never really added enough seasoning to the chilli as it was, and the food actually tasted a lot better as a result of my revenge tactic."
2. "Only my immediate family know I threw a birthday party when I was 13 and no one came."
"I remember sitting at the window crying, looking out for any cars to come."
3. "Every Christmas I would write a fake Christmas newsletter and send it to my parents."
"I made up this guy believable enough that my dad thought maybe he had worked with him at some point in the past. I had a spreadsheet to keep track of his job, wife, children, grandchildren, holidays, etc."
4. "I once told a girl I was dating I loved the dish she cooked for me. In reality, it was terrible."
"25 years later, my wife is still cooking it at least once a month because it's my 'favourite.' I've never been able to tell her, but now I've let my eight-year-old daughter in on it. She'll prance up to my wife and say, 'Let's cook Daddy's favourite tonight!'"
5. "When I was like nine my parents had incense and I thought it was weed so I tried to smoke it out of an incense waterfall machine. Didn’t go well."
6. "I'm the culprit of the 1986 pudding cup incident. Not my younger sister."
7. "I hid my tooth under my pillow for the 'tooth fairy' to find and give me money. I knew it was my dad giving me money."
"So, after he slipped cash under my pillow and threw the tooth away, I sifted through the trash and showed it to him and said I lost another tooth."
8. "My son was really into digging holes because he was convinced he was on top of some old ruins. Kept bringing small old things into the house that he was so excited he discovered."
"To this day, he doesn’t know I’d been going to the flea market every Saturday and buying small bits of old-looking junk and planting them in the hole for him to find."
9. "My wife lost one of her favorite pair of gold earrings that her parents gave her. I took the one she had around our big city to jewellers and shops until I found a matching one."
"Eventually found one, bought the pair. Dirtied it up at home and let her “find it” in her sock drawer. Still have the other hidden in my desk in case she loses the other."
10. "My dad is a doctor. When my daughter was little she was terrified of hurting her ankle. Anytime she got the slightest twinge or rolled it slightly, she was convinced it was broken."
"My dad would take her to the office and run a foetal heart doppler over her little ankle and tell her it was an X-RAY machine and her ankle was fine."
11. "My secondary school was small, and on Valentine’s Day senior year I bought every girl who hadn’t been bought a rose one, to be delivered from 'your secret admirer'."
"I did it because I never got anything on Valentine’s Day in secondary. Anyways, one of the girls got the rose and was convinced it was her crush, which led to him taking credit, then dating her, and then going to prom with her. It was cool to me that it actually made someone happy."
12. "I sometimes walk my friends' dog and they'd run out of poo bags. They have a stack of animal supplies unopened under the counter. I was ferreting about there and found an engagement ring hidden away!"
"I overstocked the poo bag caddy so she wouldn't need to go hunting in that corner any time soon. I had to sit on that for nearly four months before he proposed."
13. "I sent my mom flowers for her birthday once but they didn’t put my name on the card, she assumed they were from her dad since she was talking to him about flowers a few days before."
"He passed away a month later, she always talks about how glad she is her dad sent her those flowers before he passed."
14. "When my brother was four he won a stuffed animal from a claw machine and it was his favourite thing ever. He left it on the floor and the dog decided to tear it to pieces during the night."
"I spent $40 trying to win another one and put it under his bed for him to find."
15. "My mom won a prize from SiriusXM at the beginning of the pandemic that never arrived even after she followed up."
"I finally found a record store with the items she won, paid for them, and arranged with them to use a generic shipping label and include an apology for the delay and congrats for winning label."
16. "As a previous nanny, I've seen many first steps and heard many first words, but I never share that."
"When I leave I say something like, I think little one is soooo close to walking/talking! It's a special moment parents deserve, who am I to take that from them?"
17. "I ate the crumble off the top of my mom's apple crisp and blamed it on the cat."
18. "My younger sister and I would sneak a Christmas present from under the tree, surgically remove the tape, carefully unwrap the gift to see what it is."
"We would then wrap it back exactly how it was and put it back under the tree."
19. "I sometimes tell people I got fourth place in a robotics competition."
"They only named three winners. There was no fourth place. But that technically makes me and every other non-winner fourth place."
20. "My best friend streamed on twitch for one year, and I was all of her viewers."
"She regularly streamed to one viewer (me), so I made multiple accounts and pretended to be a stranger who would talk to us during stream."
21. "When I was a teenager I threw a relatively small house party while my parents were away on holiday. The wooden floor in one room got scratched somehow during it."
"When my parents came home and noticed I 'confessed' by telling them I had tried using a skateboard on the treadmill but it slipped and damaged the wood. My mom still brings it up as an example of how I'd be a terrible criminal and could never get away with anything."
H/T to u/MrBowls and Ask Reddit for having this discussion.
Let us know in the comments what your best kept secret is!
Note: Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Additional thumbnail credits: Getty Images / NBC / TLC / PBS