Parents are low-key experts at improv. They're constantly having to make things up on the fly to tell their kids. Whether they do it to avoid difficult conversations that little child brains aren't necessarily ready for yet or just to have a goof, we appreciate them all the same.
So, recently over on the Ask Reddit subreddit, when u/Fearless-surfur-ee posed the question, "What was the biggest lie you believed?" the responses that stood out to me, by far, were the ones that involved parents telling their kids THE most ridiculous lies. Here are 17 of the best ones:
1. "I was an only child, and my mom told me that chocolate was just for women. She would say this while eating all of my Easter and Halloween candy. I believed it for far too long."
2. "Our family was poor and lived in a house where the ceiling plaster had bowed so much that it curved downward, bulging out. My dad told me that there was a World War II bomb buried in the ceiling. I believed it for years, and it absolutely terrified me."
3. "As a little kid, my dad told me that there was a Greek god of sex called Fellatio. That was the first time I had ever heard that word. Then, freshman year of high school, I took a mythology class and asked the teacher — in class — why we hadn't talked about Fellatio. Silence. 'You know, the god of sex?' (I'm cringing hard just typing this out.) I got a nice little talk after class, and my dad almost peed his pants laughing that night."
4. "When I was very young, we had a pet hamster. He got out of his cage, so my dad put the cage in the basement, thinking he might get hungry and get back in. One morning, I woke up, and there was the hamster back in his cage and in his usual place. I asked my mom how they found him, and she told me she opened the door to the cellar, and there the hamster was dragging his cage back upstairs. It wasn't until I was a teenager and remembered the exchange that it occurred to me she obviously made that up."
5. "That you need a license for children’s parties. That was the reason why I never had a party when I was little growing up. I was told you need to get a license from the post office but that there are only a certain amount of licenses available for that area."
6. "When I was around 5 or 6, my mother, to stop me from messing with the buttons in her car, told me that the hazard light button would blow up the car. I was understandably terrified of it until I was 13 and realized how ridiculous that notion was."
7. "I was told as a child that Disneyland had an underground jail for 'bad kids.' I was always very well-behaved when we went."
8. "When I was about 5 years old, my father told me the chicken nuggets at McDonald's were made of cat paws. My naive mind believed it without questioning, and nuggets were a no-go for me for a long time. Later, I found out it was just a joke. But I believed it for way too long. I guess we saved a lot of money eating at home instead, though."
9. "My mom told me when I was 5, and my favorite dog died, that it didn't matter that dogs die because, in seven years, they respawn. So, I was like, 'Oh, fine, see you then bud; I'll be older, and we'll play again.'"
10. "That skunks were getting hit by cars on a weekly basis and that was why there was always a strong skunk smell when I went outside to play."
11. "My mom told me when I was little that I couldn't touch tiny baby animals (kittens, puppies, and chicks mostly) because the oils in my hands would rub off on them and make them sick. Turns out she just didn't want me to death grip them with my little toddler hands. I believed this until I was about 21. My friend's cat had some kittens, and when I told them this, they gave me a look. I called my mom, and she died laughing. 'You still believe that?'"
12. "My dad got sick of having to listen to the kids shows I watched as a child, so he told me that the Power Rangers and Barney died in the car crash with Princess Diana, so I couldn't watch them anymore. I didn't actually question it until I was quite old, embarrassingly."
13. "The microwave will explode if I put my face too close to it while it’s heating food."
14. "When I was a little boy, an older kid told me that girls can get pregnant if you get a boner too close to them, even without touching them. By the end of that school year, I was convinced every girl in my class was pregnant with my babies. The sad thing was, the kid who told me this wasn't even messing with me. His parents told him and his twin brother the same thing, and I guess they ran around fighting back boners for years."
15. "My dad would tell me that when the ice cream truck was playing music, it meant that it was out of ice cream. I believed that until about five years ago."
16. "My grandmother told me that women don’t fart. That was a LIE."
17. And finally, "When my dad was young, he looked a lot like Patrick Swayze. From the time I was 4, my dad told me that the man in those films was actually him. (I didn't know about Patrick Swayze at the time.) So, every time one of 'his' movies was on TV, I screamed that it was my dad. He also used to tell me anecdotes about filming the movies as proof, and I truly believed everything. Finally, when I was, like, 9, I was at my grandma's house for dinner with relatives. There was a Patrick Swayze movie on TV, and when I talked about it as if it was my dad's film, my aunt said, 'Wait, what are you saying? That's not your dad.' I was shocked."
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.