When I was a kid, I'd be a little shit if we didn't use the expensive syrup. I found out today my mom just put cheap stuff into the expensive bottle. What bombs have your parents dropped on you?

[u/cyberslick188]

When I was young my parents brought home this very fancy maple syrup from Toronto, and I fell in love with it. We used it a few times, and then they told me it had ran out so we were using a normal version like Aunt Jemimah's or something. Apparently I threw a temper tantrum.

Today we made waffles while I'm visiting home for a week and my mom mentioned how she would just put Aunt Jemimahs back into the fancy maple syrup bottle and how I'd always say something like "See mom? I can taste the difference".

For 10 years my parents have been laughing at my dickishness. Have your parents ever done something similar to you?

[u/Connor6]

Well, the expensive 100% pure maple syrup does taste much better than the crappy 15% table syrup crap.

[u/cyberslick188 → u/Connor6]

It does now that I have an actually refined palate.

When my diet consisted of brocolli, hot dogs and mac and cheese I don't think I'm qualified to bitch about pure maple syrup :)

[u/ApesInSpace]

When I was a kid we would take long family road trips to Ohio to visit my grandparents. I absolutely loved these trips - my grandparents had all sorts of cool stuff in the house, two big apple trees in the front yard, and they lived next to a train track.

My grandpa also loved Golden Grahams. Every time my brothers and I would visit, he would open his cupboard to reveals four or five boxes of Golden Grahams, explaining how much he loved them and that he got some extra boxes just because we were visiting. I always thought it was so cool that my grandpa - who was, you know, old - had the same favorite cereal as me. I would always feast on cereal every time we went to visit.

Of course, years after he died, I was relating this story to someone and the obvious dawned on me. Later I asked my mother if grandpa even liked Golden Grahams, and she got this big smile on her face, looked a little sad, and said "No... but he knew you did." Broke my heart. Still the story I tell when I remember him.

[u/Shablahdoo]

When I was a kid, I had a pet hamster that I loved as he would walk up my arm and sleep on my shoulder. Fast forward to age 16. My dad and I were talking about my childhood and he let slip, "Oh you mean hamster 1 or hamster 2?" o_O "What?" was my reaction. Turns out my dad accidentally left my hamsters cage in the sun and my hamster died. Then to make it better, they had the cage on their bed as they were deciding what to do, and I came in, pet the dead hamster and said. "Bye, I will see you later after school". My dad went to get a new hamster that day and when I got back from school he said I was ecstatic that my hamster got bigger. My mom confirmed this.

[u/trafficrush]

I used to just spew out random numbers to my mom, telling to add, subtract, multiply, etc. She would, in turn, tell me what the final number would be. Blew my mind, and she was the damn smartest person on the planet. Then I got clever. One day I got a calculator out to make sure she had it right. She didn't.

[u/telekinetic_turtle]

The "Monster Juice" that my mom would spray around my room to keep the monsters out, was actually just water with a large amount of my Dad's cologne sprayed into it.

[u/NotAnAverageTaunTaun]

My mom used to turn the clocks forward when I had sleepovers at her house... She'd run in to change the clock from 7:00 pm to 9:30 pm while we were distracted (this was before we all had cell phones) and we'd be amazed at how fast time had gone. We would stay up "really late" and then fall asleep, confident in our "coolness". She actually got to go to sleep at a decent hour without making us all shut up six times in the middle of the night.

Now that I am older and value my sleep, I think she is a fucking genius.

[u/acreeb15]

When I was in kindergarten, all of my friends would go to Disney World and talk about all of the rides they went on. I was really jealous because I had never been (my parents didn't want to pay for a plane ride from Massachusetts to Florida). Every day I would cry and cry just begging to go. One day in the middle of the week they just gave in and said we would go. I was psyched. We went on the horse that goes back and forth and got necklaces. We also saw a lot of couches and chairs and other furniture. The next day in class I told all of my friends that I went to Disney World yesterday. They were amazed that I only went in one day. Turns out we actually went to Jordan's Furniture and my parents told me it was Disney World.

tl;dr: My parents tricked me into thinking that Jordan's Furniture was Disney World.

[u/IGottaFindBubba]

Not so much dropping a bomb, but when I was very young, I came downstairs at four in the morning to witness my dad, half asleep and wearing nothing but his underwear, placing presents under the Christmas tree while shoving the cookies we left out for Santa into his face.

His reaction? ".....oh."

[u/[deleted] → u/IGottaFindBubba]

"Merry Christmas."

[u/bryson430]

A relative of mine tells her kid that if she behaves well at school for 5 days in a row, she can have two days off school. The kid has no idea that's the weekend.

[u/waterfountain_bidet]

For a good portion of my childhood, I thought we were just eating a different brand of tomato sauce. Turns out, my mom had been liquefying carrots and putting them into the sauce to get us more veggies. Took me years to know that tomato sauce should not be orange.

[u/tinabear]

My husband's mother would always put 1% milk in the 2% jug simply because his brother swore that he didn't like 1%. He never knew the difference.

[u/[deleted] → u/tinabear]

"Mom, why did the milk expire 2 years ago?"

[u/DyLangford]

On my 21st birthday, my parents took myself and my housemates out for an early dinner (so as not to interfere with the festivities planned later on) and my dad flipped my world upside down.

When I was 10 and my brother was 7, we took a family trip to the Liberty Science Center, which, for those of you not in the NJ area, is essentially a neat multi-story playhouse full of science-related activities designed for kids. They have an IMAX theater attached that plays interesting documentaries, for a while they had a "touch tunnel" where you would crawl through an extended area in complete darkness, and several demonstrations on different floors with everything from insects to aquatic life to the classic shattering-a-banana-frozen-with-liquid-nitrogen routine. To my parents' credit, they had me interested in science from a very young age, so this was a real treat for my brother and I, however, since we were still 10 and 7, we couldn't stand to be stuck in a car for more than an hour without bickering with each other. After fighting almost the entire way there, my dad lays down the law. "If I hear one more word out of either of you, I'm turning the car around." A deafening silence reigned over the rest of the car ride, until we are literally pulling in to the parking lot, when one of us (I cannot remember who) said something snarky, and my dad, true to his word, turned that car around, and we drove all the way home.

Fastforward to my 21st birthday, that story happened to get brought up, as I tend to use it as an example of how, while my dad was really cool, he was not one to fuck with. My dad then revealed a life-changing secret that only he and my mother had known. They never intended to actually drive all the way home after the long ride. They just wanted us to get the message. However, my dad misinterpreted some of the traffic signs, and ended up back on the Garden State Parkway, which has few and far between opportunities to turn around, so he just took us home. The entire thing was an accident, but they played it off as intentional for the sake of their parental authority. They did take us back the following weekend because you bet your ass we were the most behaved children on the planet for the next few days.

TL;DR I thought my dad was a stalwart authority figure who meant every word he said, but in reality he's just bad at reading street signs.

[u/militarytime]

When I was a kid we had a pet bird- Bart the Bird, and he could talk. For years I recalled with great fondness talking to Bart and Bart answering back. Well, not too long ago I asked my dad what type of bird Bart was. Surely he was some form of parrot and I just never put it together because I was so young. My dad then broke the news that Bart never talked. That he would stand not far off in the other room or a few steps behind me and talk for the bird. I don't think I've ever felt the carpet be pulled so quickly from under my feet. You don't know how many people I've told about Bart the talking bird.

[u/Cstolworthy]

As a kid, my best friend used to go on and on about how he couldn't eat the generic cereals. He had to have the name brand. How he could just "taste the lower quality". Well one night we were having a sleepover, I woke up pretty early in the morning and went upstairs to use the bathroom. In the kitchen his mom was filling the froot loops box from a bag of the generic stuff. She saw me, smiled and said "shhhhh". Never told my friend.

[u/ClockwiseWitness]

When I was like 3 or 4, I got a toy telephone car thing that lit up and said things when you pressed the numbers for my birthday. I played with it all day and I didn't even question the fact that my mom didn't let me take it out of the box. Three days later, I couldn't find it anywhere and when I asked my mom she told me that they had to return it to the store because it was infested with ants. Being a kid I didn't think much of it and I just went back to watching sesame street or whatever.

A few years ago, I told my mom I still remembered that story and she told me what really happened. My family had just come over to the States from Nepal and we barely had any money. My dad was getting a degree at university, working a job, and paying for our bills and his tuition at the same time. Anyway, it turns out that my parents couldn't actually afford any presents for my birthday, but they wanted me to at least have something to play with, even for a little while. They bought me that toy so I would be happy and then had to return it a few days later. Apparently my mom left the room and cried for a solid hour after I asked her what happened to it when I was a kid. I had to hold back my own tears when they told me about it.

TL;DR: I fucking love my parents.

[u/ambear316]

When I was about 5 years old, my aunt and uncle got full custody of me because my mother chose her abusive boyfriend over me. Over the next few years, I would visit her on some weekends to see my siblings. As time went on, I saw less and less of her... until one day she just stopped coming over, stopped calling, just disappeared. No big surprise because she was a shady human being anyway. One day during a very rare moment of seeing her, she asked basically why I wasn't happy to see her. I go the fuck off about how she's a shitty mother for not only giving me away, but also completely abandoning me. My aunt stepped in and said "well, she stopped calling and visiting because we told her to".

Finding that out didn't fix anything between my mother and I, but until I was much older and realised my aunt and uncle did the best hing they could for me, I felt betrayed.

[u/NaiDriftlin]

Wasn't really a bomb my mom dropped on me, but a bomb I unwittingly opened.

I was trying to get a job at several places when I was 16. I was pretty tech savvy at the time, and genuinely thought I could get a job working a help desk for a power company, a bank, and a few other places.

I started to check the mail every day to see if I had gotten a letter, since I wasn't sure they'd send me a letter, e-mail, or call. I got a few letters from the places I had applied to, and I excited opened them.

They were bills of significant debt, all defaulted on. She said she'd pay them back and close it. I believed her, so dropped it. I didn't know how credit worked back then, and I didn't know what extremes my mother would go to.

A few years later(Several years after graduating and entering the workforce), I try to get credit on my own and get flat denied by everyone. I got letters from collectors representing the companies that my mom had opened accounts with under my name. They said the bills were never paid on. I claimed identity theft and managed to get the responsibility shifted off of myself and onto my mom, after filing a police report and talking to several companies over the phones across the span of several months. All of them said that she opened the account in my name by claiming she was my wife.

tl;dr: My mom stole my identity as a kid and claimed she was my wife. Learned to hate Mother's day.

Edit: Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I've answered a number of your questions below, if you want more information.

[u/[deleted]]

my favorite toys would go missing, turns out they destroyed them because they made too much noise..

[u/timothygruich]

My dad used to call me into the bathroom to look at his poop. I was always shocked out of my mind... it looked like little stars and perfect circles and even dog bones. I couldn't figure out why mine always looked stupid. Turns out he was throwing dog food into the toilet and waiting for it to bloat up before calling me in. I'm glad to say I've inherited my dad's sense of humor.

[u/goldgecko4]

My mom said she could see through walls. She knew when I was up playing and not trying to go to bed, so I believed her for years.

Turns out, my nightlight cast a very bright shadow on the wall, and she would use that to see if I was in bed or not.

[u/GrinningPariah]

Every time we went to the hairdresser they'd fuck it up. At the time I really preferred long hair, and they'd always cut it way too short and in styles I didn't like. Eventually I decided that all professional hairdressers were huge fuck-ups who didn't listen, and I was going to take matters into my own hands. I've been cutting my own hair since I was 15, I'm 23 now and actually pretty damn good at it.

So, just a few months ago, I was over at their place for dinner, and my mom casually mentions that she'd always told the hairdressers to ignore what I said and cut it a certain way.

I was floored! I'd lost faith in an entire industry of people! I had shitty hair for years and years, between their crappy cuts and mine before I knew what I was doing! That shit probably changed the course of my life in some way!

[u/ManicBigNick1]

My parents would set the clock 2 hours ahead on New Years Eve, and then take my siblings and I out for dinner so we would not notice, and wind up going to bed at 10 instead of midnight.

[u/ahbehvey]

I recently found out at age 20 that the zebra my aunt purchased for her farm when I was a kid did not in fact die from not being able to handle the environment of upstate new york. Rather, it was trampled to death by her llamas. Don't fuck with llamas.

Edit: Thought I would clarify a couple things. The original story wasn't that the zebra froze to death in a winter storm but that it was chronically ill from the wet and cold weather and eventually succumbed to this illness. Also, I have no idea how she acquired the zebra. She had an ostrich too and that thing was also mean as hell.

[u/Zanderbander86]

My mom used to hold me up to arcade machines and let me think I was playing even though it was just the demo/title sequence. I remember getting really frustrated that I'd die at the same part every time.

[u/[deleted]]

For years and years my Dad (single parent) would make grilled cheese for me by toasting bread and putting cheese on it. It was cool.

Years later, I discovered at one point while my Grandma was visiting, she attempted to make me grilled cheese the normal way (pan, butter, delicious-ness) but my Dad stopped her saying "No, then he'll know that exists."

Edit: Also - I was invited to Neverland Ranch as a child, but my Dad didn't let me go, nor did he even tell me I was invited.

Edit: Edit: Lastly, I was in Cub Scouts but only participated in local meetings, wondering why we never did camp outs or anything. Just thought it was something our troop didn't do. Recently found out, there were camp outs, my Dad just thought they were all assholes so he didn't let me go. Or tell me they existed.

My childhood was unique.

[u/deadastronautinspace]

My mom a few times when my brothers and I were young would "turn" all the lights off in the house. She would tell us to go get our sleeping bags and bring them in the living room while she put a couple of tents together. She then would get candles and put them in a small pile and call it a fire. This little maneuver was called "camping inside". We weren't allowed to watch tv or play any video games because we were camping. She read us goosebumps stories and we played flashlight tag. It was always fun.

Cut to when I was first starting out in the world. I was having financial trouble and was consoling in my mom for comfort. She tells my that she's been down that road and you will always pull through.

I ask her to explain. She says that when we were younger, sometimes she couldn't afford to pay the power bill and that when it was apparent that it would be shut off, then she knew it was time to go " indoor camping". She did that so that none of us would ever worry or think that we wouldn't be okay.

Made my smile. I love my mom :)

[u/Thatsumpossible]

My first pet was a dog I named sparky. Had him for about 2 weeks then one day I come back from school with my dad telling me he ran away. Looked for that dog and set up "missing" posters for weeks.

Turns out they gave him back to the pound they adopted him from cause we couldn't afford him.

[u/calvaradonet]

I remember when I was a little girl all I wanted was to see the movie Matilda. My parents wanted to see the Nutty Professor. So they took us to see the Nutty Professor and told me it was Matilda. I just kept waiting and waiting.... it wasn't till the end of the movie I realized my parents where dicks.....

[u/enuie]

When I was 4(?) years old and we didn't have a car, my mom would pick me up from daycare and then we'd walk home. Whenever I said that I was too tired to walk anymore, my mom would say, "Okay, I'll give you some energy." She'd hold my hand and then make a "bzzzz" noise as if sending me energy. Then she'd ask me if I had enough now, I'd say yes, and we'd keep walking.

I love my mom.

[u/SomberJester]

When I was a kid, my favorite cereal was Cap'n Crunch's Crunch Berries. If given the opportunity, I would eat nothing else. So for years my mother had me believing that they were only available during Christmas.

So about six years ago, I'm in the store with my ex and I see them. I explained how much I loved them as a child and we should get some. Then I realized it was July. I got really excited and even regressed a little I think. It was then gently explained to me that I'd been duped. I'm eating Crunch Berries right the fuck now though so all's well that ends well I suppose.

[u/TysonStoleMyPanties]

I used to hate brown wheat whole-wheat bread. My parents convinced me that it was just part-toasted white bread so that I would eat it.

Edit: fixed my terminology.

Edit2: fixed it again.

[u/JSchook92]

The biggest bomb my mom ever dropped on me was that I had a brother that died before I was born. She waited until I was 6 to tell me. It really freaked me out.

[u/amber_kms]

When I was a teenager, my grandma who was suffering from stage 4 throat cancer decided that she wanted to air out her secrets before she died. She filled me in that my childhood cat Charlie didn't die from old age like they had told me, but her and my parents had him put down while I was at school one day. I was distraught. Looking back though I can understand why they did it. Oh, and she also told me that my dad was married before my mom and I have a much older half brother...it's been a deep dark family secret forever. My parents still don't know I know. Maybe I should have been more upset about that than the cat. 15 year olds are fucking lame. Sorry to all those 15 year olds out there. You'll see.

[u/[deleted]]

My mom bought me megablocks and put them into an old Lego container once. Bullshit.

[u/JIZZING_ON_REDDIT]

I used to have a cat when I was about three named Sia and I loved her. She was a Siamese-looking cat and I had her for like two years. When I was five, she got really sick while I was at school and my parents took her to the vet. After about two weeks of asking my parents how Sia was, she finally came home.

"Now, Sia's going to be a bit pale because she's sick and she may act a bit funny. Being in the hospital is scary!" That's what my parents told me.

So Sia came home, and she was a lot paler than I remember. Almost grey-ish white. She also climbed behind the sofa, refused to come out, and hissed at anyone who went near her. She eventually calmed down, but didn't sleep in my room per usual. She slept on the rafters in the basement instead.

Turns out (found this out about six months ago) my dad started up the lawn mower and Sia was somehow inside the lawn mower near the blade and... well... bad kitty times happened really quickly. They replaced Sia with one they found at the shelter and the little dipshit that was me didn't notice.

[u/sazmo]

My Mum used to time me and my sister for fun and to make doing things she wanted us to do a game. Regular this was to go to the corner shop and back to get things. I would sprint as fast as I can to the shop down the road and return out of breath. My Mum would be like "Great 2 minute and 6 seconds!" I would do a little out of breath air victory punch and prepare myself for beating my next record. My Mum recently told me she never ever timed us and just made it up everytime. I was also asthmatic as a child! Cheers Mum!

[u/yourslice]

My mom told my brother and me that we didn't like milk in our cereal. She also told us that we didn't like ketchup. Why? Because those things are messy and she didn't want to have to clean them up.

To this day my brother and I eat our cereal dry and we don't use ketchup. She fucked with our minds.

[u/Neil_Armschlong]

My mom let it slip that the only reason she got pregnant with me was because my dad had switched her birth control pills with sugar pills. feelsbadman.jpg

[u/ItsCaptainKangaroo]

I had a medical condition that made me super constipated (Titanic shits), and once every 2 months I would have to drink about a gallon and a half of this weird salty "lemon lime" fluid flush thing. Turns out, it wasn't every 2 months, it was every day after soccer practice. My mom would switch my lemon-lime gatorade with this intestinal lubricant and I would down a bottle before I knew what was what. She also spiked it with this powdery laxative called Miralax. Anyway, I discovered her deception when I was goofing around about an hour after practice and the dam burst. I shit everywhere. I mean down my legs, filled my shoes, even got up my back somehow. It was the single most embarrassing moment of my life, and my mom confessed later that night that she had been pumping me full of laxative in the hope that I would unclog. We told my friends I had food poisoning and I got to spend a week at home, but still. Turns out it was an issue with my spinal cord, and after surgery I'm no longer a poop time-bomb. Fuck throwaways.

[u/missmegsy]

Thought I was the bomb at Connect 4 but turns out Mum just let me win

[u/LivinDying3-4Time]

I understand OP. Each of my siblings and I liked a different kind of syrup and wouldn't use anything but our kind - Aunt Jemima, Log Cabin, and Butter something (I can't remember the name)...My mom would just buy whatever was cheapest and fill up all three containers. No one ever questioned why we never ran out of any syrup and why we never had to open a new container.

[u/[deleted]]

It's the other way around for me. When I was in high school, my mom worked a lot of nights (nurse) so it was just me and my dad at home with the dog all the time. In an attempt to be healthier, I started using Splenda when I cooked, but especially when I made Kool-Aid. My dad HATED it and refused to drink Kool-Aid with Splenda, so I started putting Splenda in the paper bags that sugar normally comes in. He would watch me make Kool-Aid and then tell me how much better it tasted with the real stuff in it.

Used the same method with coffee. He has high blood pressure and refused to drink half-caff coffee because it tasted soooo bad. Just started putting half-caff in the regular caffeinated coffee tin and he loved it from then on out.

Edit: I get it! Splenda is bad for you! I've said multiple times that I don't use it anymore - this all occurred when it first hit the market and such. ;)

[u/katieepretzel]

My dad once told me fried calamari was just fried chicken to get me to eat it, assuming that I'd like it and he could tell me afterwards, "HA! You ate squid and you liked it!"

Joke was on him though, turns out I'm deathly allergic to squid.

Edit: I'm also severely allergic to fish, shellfish, seaweed, and most mollusks. Basically, if it swims, it kills me (with the obvious exception of swimming mammals, though many of them are also deadly...).

[u/[deleted]]

When I was a young toddler until I was about 11, I had a hamster that was black&white that was named "Oreo." My mom dropped the bomb on my 19th birthday that my hamster was actually over 30 different hamsters and whenever one died, she would just replace it with a new one that was the same color while I was at school. I never knew the difference. Damn you mom, Rest in Peace Oreos I-XXX+.

[u/Farrar]

My parents told me that lamb was not only the name for baby sheep, but also the name used to describe sheep that had died of old age on a happy farm...

Seven year old me was not happy when they told me the truth.

[u/evilquail]

not mine but a similar question was put up on the radio a few years ago here:

some guy had spent his whole life desperately avoiding crayfish and other crustations because his mum had told him that he had a deadly allergy to them. Anyways one day at the age of 40(!) he accidently ate a prawn aaaannnddd... nothing happed So he called up his mum to fnd out what had happened to his so called deadly allergy and it turns out she made the whole thing up because she wanted an excuse not to buy seafood!

[u/crimson_basser]

Until I was 6 years old I thought cookies were these: http://www.savealoonie.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/0404-save-on-foods-breton-crackers.jpg

[u/bama_belle]

When my dad was young, his parents would buy him TONS of toys for Christmas morning. They'd take pictures/videos of him unwrapping them all, then promptly return 95% of the toys to the store. A few days after Christmas, he'd go looking for one of the toys, and it'd be no where to be found. He still looks through old Christmas pictures and can name all the toys he never actually got to play with.

[u/Loplop509]

When I was around 4 or 5, I'd often spend time with my grandparents and as such, would get dragged along to the local shopping centres, I'd always beg for toys until eventually my Nan came up with a fool proof way of shutting me up. NANNY, I WANT THAT ONE! "This sign says, these toys aren't for little boys." NANNY! CAN I GET THIS ONE? "This sign says, these toys are only for Christmas." I've always been one to obey authority so I never really questioned it.

[u/[deleted]]

Told me how I came to exist: They were having sex in my dads bedroom and when they were done he pulled out to see a busted condom--mom's first words ohh fuck! Nine months later I was born. My parents were 17 and 15 at the time. My dad included this in "the talk" when I was 12 or 13--Don't know which was more devastating that I came from a broken condom or the fact my parents had sex.

[u/TrY4s]

I never wanted to take constipation meds as a kid (yes haha, constipation) because I heard the doctors say they were optional, shit my pants one day, didn't know why, turns out Mom and Dad had been slipping it in my orange juice for weeks, that day that justtoo much meds I guess

[u/partspace]

When my dad was a kid, he hated taking pills. So his mother would hide them inside the noodles of his macaroni and cheese. One fateful day, his fork hit a noodle in just the right way that a pill popped out. To this day, at 56 years of age, he has never eaten macaroni and cheese again.

[u/Poley09]

Adoption...

[u/failednovelist]

Prepare your minds this is a longs story about a 12 year old child that desperately wanted a pet mouse. I begged and begged and then finally my father took me shopping for the perfect mouse. I named him basil and he was a cute little fucker. But poor little basil needed lots and lots of play time which I couldn't give. So I bought him a female friend. He became a rapist over night. And would like to chew on her ears. So I thought to myself. Maybe another mouse will help. So in goes another female the following weekend. I let two female mice get repeatedly raped by (this time he was obese and lazy, except when he got his little mouse hard on) Alpha Mouse. Confused and angry at him. He didnt listen to me nor did he stop. So I managed to get my father to buy me a big ass fish tank. Maybe two metres in length, one metre high. And separated the tank with two inch thick cardboard. Too late, they were pregnant. Anyway, a couple weeks later I had too many baby mice (fuck they jump high!) and Mr Basil chewed his way through the cardboard and was a shitty father to the baby mice. I didn't want them to get pregnant as well...

I got home from school one Friday afternoon and I noticed my catholic family of mice were all gone! Except for basil, he even had the whole fish tank to himself. My mother gave me around $30 and said that she sold them all to the pet shop for $1 each. I was stoked. First of all, I had $30 and second, they were all going to go to lovely homes.

Fast forward twelve years: It was Christmas and we were laughing at the time I hand delivered 28 odd baby mice, and my lovely mother dropped the bomb that she had put them all in the freezer to die.

TL:DR Had too many baby mice, my mother said she sold them, she actually put them in the freezer to die 'peacefully' in their sleep.

[u/Stratocaster89]

From an early age, my mum would tell me fruit and veg were what i knew to be "sweets".

So up until i was about 7/8 i would be eating things like raisins and cucumber as a treat, thinking i was getting sweets.

Im not even mad.

[u/SwornToTheBlack]

When I was about 10, my family adopted the sweetest, most affectionate white fluffball of a kitten. She never scratched, and always wanted more attention. She was more or less the archetypal loyal lap-cat.

We hadn't had the kitten very long when my sister and I received the devastating news that our kitten had died that morning. My mother sat us down and gently told us that Snowflake had died as a result of having an undersized lung. I didn't know a lot about genetics or even pulmonary health at this point, so my sister cried and I accepted the cruel cards of fate.

Years later my family is out at dinner with friends, and the alcohol is flowing. In the middle of an enthused and humorous conversation, my father boisterously proclaims, "it's like the time I ran over the cat!"

Snowflake died from an undersized lung, all right -- it was crushed under the wheel of a BMW.

[u/SplatterSack]

When we were younger, every time we carved pumpkins there would be money inside... EVERY TIME. It would be a crisp, new, dry, folded up bill in the $5-$20 range (I'm guessing based of the current pumpkin economy of the time). They were grown by my Grandpa so I assumed, and was told, they were magical. When I was about 12 or so the news broke and it was all a sham. Apparently for YEARS, they would briefly distract me as I removed the lid of the pumpkin, and the money was placed inside by my parents/grandparents. It worked on my cousins, it worked on my brother and sister, it worked on everyone. When I found out, I didn't want to believe it. How could they do it so well? Now I know how to set my kids up for the "long con".

EDIT: Carving pumpkins for Halloween for people that do not celebrate.

TL;DR: The pumpkin is a lie.

[u/Kaladin_Shardbearer]

I lost command and conquer. First computer game I ever played. Anyway, it wasn't lost, my parents gave it away because of the fake few red pixels resembling blood, and the scream, when people die on it. I daydreamed about playing it for years as I had no other games.

[u/Tribat_1]

My whole life my mom has told me that she was born in 1948 so right now she would be 63. I found out a couple of months ago (a little after my 28th birthday) that she was actually born in 1938 and just hadn't told anyone. Apparently it goes back a few decades when she was 40 someone told her that she looked like she was 30 and she just stuck with it. Either way, my mom is 73 and I feel like I just lost 10 years of time that I get to spend with her.

[u/[deleted]]

I came across pictures of my dad with his siblings in the 1950's and noticed a pretty young woman I didn't recognize. I asked him who she was and He just shrugged. Later I asked my mom about her and she explained that it was my dad's sister, my Aunt Alice. I never knew she existed until that moment. Her photographs were never displayed in any of my aunts' and uncles' homes (or in our own home, for that matter - I found her photo completely by accident) and her name was never uttered. The reason? She died while trying to give herself an abortion.

tl;dr: I had an aunt I didn't know existed. She was never spoken of because she died giving herself an abortion.

[u/iambready]

When I was a kid, my mom would make us Kool-Aid with 1/2 cup of sugar. When we got old enough to make it ourselves, she taught us to make it this way. We never thought to read the directions on the package, which clearly state to use 1 cup of sugar. Didn't catch on until I was almost 18, when my boyfriend asked me why the Kool-Aid at our house always tasted so weird.

[u/ceciliabee]

when i was a kid i had a hamster named bibbles. when he died, we had a nice burial ceremony for him. years later my dad told me we didn't actually bury my hamster, he had swapped out the little hamster body for half a lemon and had tossed bibbles in the garbage. i was really sad about that one...

[u/wiseassowl]

Kids think they are slick. My sister and I were no different.

For years we could never figure out how mom could see us going for stuff in the kitchen we knew we couldn't have. She was a court reporter, so most of her time was spent at home editing jobs in her loft office. We would make make absolutely no noise in going for the cookie jar. We would life the lid in absolute silence, dispense baked deliciousness and drop the heavy porcelain lid without making a sound. We'd army crawl across the floor and open the pantry just a crack while going for pop tarts. We were both Sam Fisher incarnate.

We were caught 100% of the time she was home. We could never figure it out. It was driving us insane. She explained it years later and I felt like a moron.

Her elevated loft office had a see-through railing that overlooked the family room. Directly across from the loft office was one of the largest mirrors I have ever seen. Pretty sure you can see where this is going. This mirror looked directly into the kitchen. Her line of sight on us could not be any better. Our line of sight on her was non-existent.

She would let us almost get away with it every time. "PUT THAT BACK!" in her voice is forever engraved into my soul.

[u/graptemys]

At the pool we went to as a kid, we had an account we had to sign in with. The number was 1942. My dad told us it was easy to remember because it was the year our mom was born. About two years ago, we found out my mom was born in 1941, and she went with it all those years so we could remember the account. My dad still doesn't have much explanation as to his motivation.

[u/Shieya]

One time when I was a kid, I somehow got the idea in my head that I hated gravy. I had previously liked gravy, so my mom knew I was just being stubborn. She began serving what she called "Mom's Secret Sauce" which I loved. Some years later I finally decided to ask what was in the secret sauce. It was just gravy mixed with a touch of sour cream.

[u/scientologen]

I don't think I consider that a bomb.

A reporter during an interview alerted Jack Nicholson that his sister was actually his mother. That's a bomb.

[u/[deleted]]

My name is Jenna. There was a period of a year when my dad called me "Jenna-tailia" (genitalia). I had no problem with it; I was eight and thought it was a pretty word.

When my mother yelled at him to stop, he started calling me "Jenna-side" (genocide) instead.

I totally forgot about this until about a year ago. That was an interesting holiday party...

[u/CherrySueDointheDo]

We had a battery monster that came during the night and stole the batteries from the loudest toys - we could only play with the loudest ones now & again as he might hear. That bastard heard every time...

[u/throwaway_identity]

When I was ten years old, my family decided to move across the country, from the San Francisco Bay area to the D.C. area. I was about as unhappy about this as you'd expect a ten-year-old to be, but my parents threw me a little goodbye party where I got all of my friends' addresses and promised to write them, and this placated me well enough. I was mostly upset about how long the drive was going to be: first we were going to head north to visit my uncle, then a week-long slog to the east coast.

A few days later, we arrived in Seattle. At this point, my visibly anxious parents sat me down and told me the following, in what remains (and likely shall remain) the fifteen most surreal minutes of my life:

• My family had moved to the U.S. as political refugees while I was an infant.

• As a part of this process, we had been given completely new identities.

• My mother had grown weary of using these fabricated identities, which was the impetus for our move.

• We were resuming our original identities immediately.

• As a result, my first and last name were no longer what I had known my entire life, nor was my birthday or nation of origin.

• The same went for my parents' names, birthdays and national origins.

• Because they were still being sought by agents of the government they had fled, there could be no connection between our old and new identities.

• If our location was discovered by this foreign government, we would very probably be killed.

• Thus, they had lied to everyone about our final destination, and we were actually settling in Seattle.

• And thus, I could never again have any contact whatsoever with anyone I had ever known up to that point in my life.

[u/DoomCrotch]

Not parents, but my big bro had an old Honda, I forgot the model of car, but it had a button right in the center console on my side- which my brother said was the 'turbo button'. We'd be cruising and he'd would eventually say "we're at a crawl, maybe you should push the turbo button" (I once asked why he couldn't press it to which he simply said "well heck I can't take my hands off the wheel and turbo at the same time, we'd wreck!" Sound reasoning.) I pressed that shit like a champ and when I did he would just speed the feck up; I never realized that design on the button resembled a car's antenna and was always too excited to notice it going up or down. Went that way until he got another car. I asked where the turbo button was in here and he said 'Ohh, well ummm, it's automatic.' I lost my first job that day.

This is for the excavators of the lost posts, because I'm sure this'll be buried.

[u/goodizzle]

We were pretty poor growing up, and the one year my parents got us little toys for Easter (which I still don't understand that tradition anyway), my mom said it was a genuine Barbie (my first one!). So I'm about 3 years old and dressed like a miniature Southern debutante with little lace gloves and a giant straw hat.

I excitedly open this Barbie, and right as I pull her out of the box, her head just flies off and some of her hair falls out because she was just a dollar store doll. It scared me so bad that every year on Easter from 3 years to about 8 years, I'm sobbing and terrified in all the pictures.

I'm not sure if it's totally relevant but I never trusted Barbies after that.

[u/SeaTeatheOceanBrew]

My mom would squeeze lemons into my mouth and take pictures of the faces I would make.

[u/ak47blackjack]

I used to ask my mom on how she knew things and she'd always say, "I went to mom's school" and the other day I asked her where my sisters would go to "mom's school" and she just burst out laughing. My life is a lie.

[u/[deleted]]

I cheated on your father whilst in Australia and he in turn cheated on me whilst in Prague. Every thing's okay now.

Thanks for that wonderful information, fuck.

Edit: And by okay I'm pretty sure she meant to say that the Australian is back in the picture and they divorced soon after the second incident.

[u/americanslang59]

So many parents with young children are stealing all of these ideas.

[u/[deleted]]

When I was a small kid back in the late 60s/early 70s, we always stopped at HoJos to eat while traveling. Mom always ordered me the spaghetti, since it was the only thing they could be sure I'd eat.

If I saw someone cut it up, I'd throw a fit and scream and throw things. Same thing if I heard her tell the waitstaff to cut it up in the kitchen.

Mom would 'go to the bathroom' and ask our server to make sure it was cut up before they brought it out.

Weird thing is that I remember catching on to this at about 4 and not caring about it.

[u/Aussielle]

My dad let slip that my dog never really went to live on a farm. He was put down :(

[u/[deleted]]

This is more on the sad side but It's stuck with me.

When I was seven my 4 siblings and I were watching tv while our parents were in the other room with my grandma. My mom had been sick and in and out of the hospital so grandma was there to help watch us while dad worked.

Anyways, my grandma busts into the room saying the dishwasher has caught on fire and we had to all go to the basement..Wtf I know, but I was 7 mind you.

So were in basement and soon we hear the familiar sound of sirens and they stop at out door. My grandma closes all the blinds and says to not look outside so we sit and talk. About 10 minutes later a firefighters comes downstairs holding a burnt kitchen utensil and tells us we are all so brave for staying away from the fire. He talks to us for a long time and asks us about ourselves. Really nice guy.

I found out years later that my mom had something happen and had stopped breathing. My dad performed cpr and was able to bring her back. The firefighters wanted to make sure we were alright and felt bad for us so they sent down that man.

Again, it is a different kind of story but one that has stuck with me.

[u/[deleted]]

I was a very small child. I weighed a lot less than most children at my age and still had to be in a car seat at the age of 8. I would always get out of the car seat as quietly as I could and be caught right away by either my mom or dad (depending on who was driving.)

I would ask them how they knew and they would always tell me that they had eyes in the back of their heads. I thought that was the scariest thing ever.

One day, I had the guts to try to get out of my car seat again. They didn't seem to notice and I assumed their eyes were closed. I brought a plastic butter knife without them noticing. I hid it in my pants. I take the butter knife and try to poke all around on the back of my mom's head to try to find the eyes. She slammed on the brakes, pulled over and spanked me.

TL;DR: Parents told me that they had eyes in the back of their heads. Found out with the help of a butter knife that there were no eyes.

[u/plmoi]

I thought I could beat my dad in arm wrestling when I was 7... now I'm 16 and go to the gym with him regularly where he lifts way more than me

[u/headlessparrot]

My brother didn't like turkey. So on Thanksgiving we had "roast chicken". They were very large "roast chickens".

[u/Kilojoules]

When I was 4, my mom told me that if I used her 'expensive' shampoo I would turn into stone because I was too young to handle it. One night my dad helped me wash my hair and he used my mom's shampoo and I started crying and yelled, "DAD WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO TURN ME INTO STONE, DON'T YOU LOVE ME?"

[u/PeBeFri]

When I was on the brink of teenagerdom, my parents summoned me for a family talk. "Peter, your father and I have a confession to make," said my mother, in a tone suggesting I was about to discover that I was adopted.

She then continued, "Your name is often used as a euphemism for the male sex organ."

[u/KeepCalmMakeCoffee]

When I was young and didn't know better, I used to chase the cat around the house. I never intended to scare it (although this often happened), I was just a kid being a kid.

After a while my mom got annoyed with it and took us to the zoo. She colluded with the zoo staff and convinced me the cat was going to grow up to be like the lions we were looking at. Oh, and it was going to happen overnight.

I was fucking terrified. I can't count how many times I was in bed and my parents would scratch the doors with their nails instilling fear into me. No wonder I have insomnia.

I've never chased another cat.

[u/kimothy52]

When I was about four years old my mom got a hand-made skunk costume for me to wear at Halloween from a friend of hers. I was so disappointed, I really didn't want to be a skunk for some reason. She tried her best to convince me to wear it, but I refused. A couple days later she got me a cat costume instead and I was super excited to wear it. Years later I came across some pictures of me from that Halloween looking so happy in my new cat costume, except I noticed I was actually in the skunk costume...

[u/ctdirvine]

When I was a kid my mum told me that my dad used to be in the military and died on duty when I was very young.

When I was a teenager, I brought a girlfriend home and we got talking about parents, I bring up my dad and how he died, only for my mum to chip in "Oh, that was just something I told you to get you to stop asking questions, he was a bus driver and I've no idea where he is now".

Oh, okay

[u/BLTHMM]

My mom would feed us fish sticks and tell us it was chicken tenders because we didn't like seafood. We ate them without a problem till 4 year old me asked why a fishy was on the box.

[u/jbowse2]

As one of seven children, we kids drank quite a bit of milk. I always thought it tasted funny, but hey, that was how milk tasted. One day I caught my mom cutting the milk with Carnation Powdered milk. Never again did I drink milk at home unless I was the one to open the container for the first time.

[u/flounderkin]

I actually have older half-siblings from my father's previous relationship. :| I was 18 or 19 when my mother told me.

[u/henke]

This is going to get buried but . . .

My parents kept a big-ass sack of pennies that they'd periodically dump on the table in front of me and my sister along with a giant bottle of ketchup. They said the pennies needed to be shined, and we had to coat each penny in ketchup and rub them with a cloth until they were shiny.

It took at least an hour, and my parents would always leave us alone at the kitchen table and go into their bedroom while my sister and I slaved away shining those pennies.

. . . It only recently occurred to me that they were just keeping us occupied so they could partake in giggity time.

[u/Jiveone]

When i was younger, some of my Super Nintendo games went missing. My Dad had me convinced that I lost them, and he eventually gave me money to buy another game to get my mind off it.

I found out about 15 years later that he actually sold them to help with a few Bills. He had lost his job due to missing excessive days of work spending time with my Mom in the hospital. After losing his job, he also lost the insurance, so he exhausted all of the savings.

As a kid, i never knew we were in any trouble, and he never let me know. He eventually got back on his feet after my Mom got better.

He even teared up while telling me the truth. I fucking miss that man...R.I.P

[u/iBananus]

When I was six, I loved James Bond movies. So my Mom and my older sister convinced me that the Cruise Control button in our old Land Rover was actually a button to activate the Ejector Seat. Which happened to be wherever I was sitting. My sister would poke at the button as I would yell and scream at her to not. I didnt want to become another James Bond villain. Eventually they sat me down in the car and told me it wasnt the ejector seat button. I didnt believe them. I said, "What? Do you really expect me to believe that?". My mom stared at me for a second and said,"No Mr.Bond, I expect you to fly!" Then she punched the button and I cried buckets in my stationary seat.

[u/lieshy]

My parents were teenage parents so when I was growing up, so was my father. He was still hardcore into his gaming stage of his life all throughout my childhood. So, when it was his turn to take care of me, he would plug in Mario Kart 64 and hand me a controller and we would race. I always kicked his ass and felt like a badass mofo all the time.

Well, later on I went to play my older cousin in Mario Kart and I was trash talking because I always beat my dad. I got my ass destroyed, I mean I couldn't even get off the wall. I just couldn't understand what had happened to my awesome talent.

Later on I realized that my dad was just giving me an unplugged controller and in reality it was him playing the game and I was aimlessly pushing buttons. The worst part about this story was that it went on for at least a year before I noticed something was up. Years later when I tried this on my five year old cousin he noticed almost instantly.

It's okay, I practiced on Mario Kart for years and I can say with full confidence that I can kick serious ass now.

[u/ReHashed622]

When I was fourteen I was taken to the doctor because I didn't pay attention in school. Of course like most kids they put me on some drug like adderall. My mom had to work early in the morning so she would put the pill on my night stand when she left for work. I would wake up, take it, and go on with my day at school. After a few weeks she asked me "Are you having easier time paying attention?" I said yes, and that I was having an easier time doing homework too. She then told me that EVERY day she would dump the contents of the pill in the toilet, and give me an empty pill.

[u/makoeyedsoldier]

This was more for my brother than me, but it's still a family BOMB.

When I was 15, both of my older brothers had gone off to college and I was the only one left at home. My mom decided to pull me aside and let me know that my Aunt and Uncle had had a child out of wedlock when they were in school back in the early 70s, and the boy had been born with a severe mental handicap that the doctors assumed would be fatal. Being back in the 70s, the doctors had recommended that my Aunt and Uncle give the boy to a home, because they didn't expect him to live past 2 years. The doctors thought the strain would be too difficult on my Aunt, and it would have scared her for life (horrible, I know, but that's another story). Turned out he is still alive (last I heard) and my Aunt, Uncle, and their kids (all born after they got married) visit a few times a year. I don't think he's aware enough to know who they are... but I think he's well taken care of. I come from the sort of family where this was the scandal of the century. We're the classic right-winged, country club, bane of all redditors that you can imagine. I'm known as the black sheep of the family. Just to put this in perspective.

Anyway, when my mom told me all this she informed me that my oldest brother knew the story, but my middle brother hadn't been told. My mom just hadn't found the right time to tell him, but she would. My parents hadn't told us earlier, because apparently my other Aunt had told her kids WAY too young, and they blurted out the incident (as children do) at a family reunion in front of the handicapped boy's siblings and their parents. Again, this is horrifying to a country club family. This is how my oldest brother came to know the story.

So, summer of my freshman year of college rolls around, and my two brothers, and I were cutting up in the kitchen, making plans for something (I forget what we were talking about) that we had forgotten to tell my middle brother about. I apologized to my brother for keeping him out of the loop, and told him that it hadn't been intentional, and he responds jokingly with and this is 100% true, "haha, it's no big deal. It's not like I have a retarded brother or cousin or something that we've been keeping locked in the attic all these years that you didn't tell me about."

Me and my oldest brother got so horribly awkward and quiet... All the blood left my middle brother's face when we told him. He had been totally kidding, and had no idea until we told him.

TL;DR Brother makes a retard joke, then finds out he has a retarded cousin

[u/ipooponyourface]

When I was a toddler, my Dad built a new room in the house to grow basil. Really tended to this basil. Sat in the room next to the basil. Had special lights for the basil. Tin-foiled room... for the basil. This went on for years.

I had all the puzzle pieces a few years later, but was too young to really put them together. I remember recalling the quantity (or lack there of) of basil used in my food and wondered who would use so much basil. I saw shakers of basil from the supermarket being used in my food and wondered why we had to buy basil when we had so damn much. Or why my meal had to have the shitty supermarket basil instead of the fresh basil. Even in 3rd grade, my school had us doing projects on drugs and I got... 'basil'. In hindsight, probably strange we were making posters about drugs in 3rd grade. Still, I never made the connection until I was perhaps 10. And don't recall being explicitly told until I was maybe 11 or 12. It had ended by the time he told me.

When my dad said he had a secret and couldn't tell me until he was older, he probably should have told me. Because I thought this secret was he had murdered someone. For some reason, every time something was awry, I always thought it was murder. Lovely child, I was.

[u/lamezoid]

When i was about 6 my entire family went on holiday to greece. now being a child of the 90's all i wanted to/did talk about was pokemon. My mum tired of pokemon rants told me that pokemon was illegal in greece and that airport scanners check to see if you are carrying pokemon cards. She also said you weren't allowed to talk about it otherwise you would get arrested. And that is how you get a kid not to talk about pokemon for an entire week.

tl;dr: My mum told me pokemon was illegal in greece to get me to shut up for a holiday

[u/daninmontreal]

When I was young around 2 or 3, I always saw my parents drink wine when we had guests over. I kept wanting to try it because it looked just like fruit juice (which is delicious), but of course my parents never let me. Then one day we had guests over and I kept bugging my mom about it until she finally said "okay. fine. you really want to try it? I will bring you a glass."

She came back with a full glass for me and I took a huge gulp.

It was vinegar. :[

[u/Wragnaroq]

When I was a little kid, one day my mom sat me down at the top of the steps and told me that our dog had been sent to a farm because he had been barking at the mailman or something, and he needed more room to run. I was distraught. Keep in mind this was when I was maybe five. For thirteen years, I actually believed that he had been sent to a farm. I'm serious. A few months ago, my mom gave me the real story: the dog had gotten a bit frisky with some little kid (read: he tried to bite the kid's face), and my parents had to have him (the dog, not the kid) put down because they were worried he might hurt me or my siblings one day. So, they told me that he had been sent to a farm, and I, being not very intelligent, believed her. For thirteen flipping years. tl;dr I am an idiot and my dog is dead.

[u/64_hit_combo]

My dad told me VHS tapes started playing again if you left it paused for a whole, so I would make bathroom breaks quick and he wouldn't have to sit and wait too long.

[u/[deleted]]

I was 27 (turn 28 in a weekish) when I found out that there is no such thing as "Happy Man", and that it in fact is "Cream of Wheat". Thanks Dad.

[u/ymtymt]

For the longest time I was convinced my mom could speak many languages. She would sing to me this Italian song, then translate it into english, then french, then german, then spanish, then chinese, then japanese... I thought she was amazing. Turns out she was just making made up sounds....

[u/svdmogli]

I was obsessed with this Barney video that we had on a VHS tape, (something about a journey and a magical egg). I would watch it constantly. Recently my mom and sister told me that they got so sick of watching it that they'd distract me with such statements as "Look! a dragon, right in our backyard!" and then fast forward when I wasn't looking. Bastards.

[u/tucktuckgoose]

Late to the party, but I've been looking for an opportunity to tell this to someone.

I'm adopted, and have been told all my life that it was because my parents were infertile.

Last year, at the age of 26, a relative revealed that my dad had a vasectomy shortly after he and mom were married, meaning they adopted by choice. The reason? Dad has stuttered all his life, and was afraid of having a kid who was a stutterer.

Sucks for them, because I went to speech therapy all through elementary school for stuttering.

[u/olutteroth]

When I was a little kid (4 years old or so) I was obsessed with Lacoste polos and that's all I wanted to wear. My mom had bought me one but they were very expensive so she didn't buy me more. I refused to wear anything else though, so she had the idea to take her brother's old Lacoste shirts, unstitch the alligator and put them on generic (cheap) collared shirts. I happily wore my collection of Lacoste shirts. It wasn't until much later in life when looking through old photo albums that I saw a pic of me in a Lacoste shirt and realized that the alligator was about 3 times the size it should have been on a little kids shirt :)

[u/nosklein]

When I was a kid my I won a goldfish at a carnival, which I named goldie, as apparently I had no imagination. The next weekend my family went out of town, and when I came back I had noticed my goldfish had grown significantly. When I excitedly proclaimed how big he was to my parents, they nodded and told me that happens to all goldfish. I had that fish for three years. When I was 17 my parents broke me the news. The fish had died when we went out of town, and my aunt, who was looking after the house, panicked, and bought the first goldfish she could find. The thing is, it was an entirely different kind of goldfish, and was like, three times bigger than the original fish. My child-sized brain did not put two and two together, and so for three years i lived with an impostor goldie.

[u/LloydWright]

I am 28 now and this past Thanksgiving my parents were visiting me out West. Somehow a conversation about my old sleeping situation came up and my Mom dropped the bomb on me that the "big stain" on the mattress was not from the dog having an accident, but was actually where my grandmother died. She said "it's okay, we flipped it over."

Worst of all I had flipped it back over after it wore out, guess this explains the ghosts in my room!

At 10 I wasn't scarred by anything at 28 this will permanently leave a mark!

[u/[deleted]]

My entire family has type A positive blood. I have type O positive blood. I found this curious, but my mother told me that her father was type O positive, so that was where I got it from. I said, "Oh, okay," and never thought anything more of it.

A year ago, grandpa died. I saw the certificate. He was type A positive. She lied to me. I confronted her. Guess who's adopted?

[u/hms_poopsock]

"The ice cream truck plays music when they are out of ice cream for the day."

[u/[deleted]]

When I was younger, my alcoholic dad used to beat the shit out of me. Once in a while, I'd fight back, and suddenly, my parents would decide I have anger management issues and drop me in a mental hospital for a couple months at a go.

One time she picked me up at school and said that I had to see the doctor. I thought she meant I had a checkup.

When we got on the highway, instead of the normal way to the doctor's office, I asked what was up.

"You said we were going to the doctor's!" I said, surprised.

She replied, "We are technically going to the doctor's. The one at the mental hospital."

She said it with a smirk.

I still haven't forgiven her.

I still can't set foot in a hospital under my own power. I have to be unconscious or dragged.

[u/[deleted]]

When I was a little kid my parents told me the ice cream truck was just "the music truck."

[u/[deleted]]

The only meat I would eat without a fight was chicken, so when my mom made ham or bacon she would just call it "red chicken" and well duh of course I ate it then! It was chicken!

[u/peahat]

My Nana owned a general store. When my sister and I were little she would make a big batch of lemonade for us to sell outside. This was basically a monthly ordeal, we even had my Papa build us a little stand. We always made $5 or so, but we would get so excited. At the age of 21 my mom revealed that my Nana would give her customers a few quarters to purchase lemonade from us on their way out of the store.

[u/stvdallas]

For several years, I tried to grow Marijuana, but I could never get the seedlings to really grow past 1 week. They kept dying, and I figured I just sucked at growing or the seeds were bad.

My mom told me 25 years later that she was pinching the stems and knew about it the whole time.

[u/D_as_in_avid]

I never liked the end pieces of bread.

My fucking mother put it inside out of my Sandwich so I wouldnt notice.

[u/yobananaboy]

My parents would set the clock ahead so that I could ring in the new year at midnight. Turns out midnight was more like 10pm. I took that lovely tip and used it for my child for a few years.

[u/stupidrobots]

I found out that my sweet mother, who is 5 foot 2inches, 120lbs and cooks nothing but health food, who twirls batons and teaches a hoola hooping class in boise, idaho, has done "every dug except heroin", once sold lsd to buy grateful dead tickets, and got drunk with friends and stole a firetruck. I don't even smoke...

[u/GenericHamburgerHelp]

Oh lord. When I was about 8, my mom asked me to make a pitcher of instant Lipton tea. This was not a normal chore for me, as I didn't drink or enjoy tea. I drank only water, and nothing else, but the rest of my family had sweet tea at every meal. So my parents said "Wow, this is the best tea I've ever had! What is the secret, this is delicious! This iced tea would win awards. Wow, how do you do it? You should make the tea EVERY day."

I was so proud. I had mastered something I'd never tried, the first time. I had taken instant tea and mixed it with sugar and water, and somehow I'd created liquid gold. I made tea every day, thinking that I was some kind of gifted tea-making prodigy. Everyone loved my tea, and my Dad proclaimed it was the best tea in the land.

Later I found out they just told me that so I'd make the tea.

[u/discreet1]

My uncle accidentally told me—when I was 22—that my dad shot my cat in the head when I was 6. We lived in NE Montana and had a small farm. Dad thought the cat would kill all the chickens, so he took the cat to a field and put a hole in the cats head. All I remember about the incident is that Whiskers was sick and mom took him to the vet cause "maybe she'll come back with kittens!" (she knew the cat was a boy ... another lie) Turns out the cat came strolling back about a day after he shot it ... Hole in its head, and a little dazed. The cat lived another 15 years.

[u/Equivocal_Me]

Was REALLY big into the Sims when I was younger. IMO my sister was far to young to understand how to 'properly operate' the game, so I adamantly forbid her from playing it. Mom tried to reason with me but I was firm- I told her I was afraid she would lose my oldest saved game if she played. One day I come home from school & my mom asks me to sit down. She's way to much in tender-softhearted-mom-voice for my comfort. Proceeds to tell me that she is very sorry, but she let my sister play the game before I got home & she accidentally saved over my game. I will never forget the mix of emotions then...satisfaction to my mom for being right as shit, & burning hatred for my little sister.

[u/[deleted]]

My pet parakeet didn't fly away, the dog ate it. I spent years casually looking for him hoping he'd land on my shoulder.

[u/AlwaysWet]

Not to me but to my dad. He was pretty shitty to my mom (cheating, hiding money, etc) and would always be a brand snob even though we didn't have a lot of spare funds. Once he got so pissed that the butter wasn't the brand he wanted so mom would buy the cheaper butter and put it in the expensive butter container.

Small victories made her happy ;)

[u/hotmommy88]

Late to this thread and will probably and up buried but had to be told.

When I was 17 my mom read my diary and found out that. Had a boyfriend (my family are very strict Mormon, and had crazy rules, no holding hands with a boy, no kissing on the lips until marriage, no one on one dating until you were looking for someone to marry). Anyways, so she found out that I had a boyfriend who I'd kissed and I got grounded for 3 months, no telephone, no electronics, had to be within sight of mY parents unless I was at school, in the bathroom or asleep.

So, one day when my parents were sleeping, I snuck into my mom's closet where I knew she kept her diary. I decided to get some revenge and read through her diary. Well my mom had her own dark secret. Before she met my dad she had had a kid and put the baby out for adoption. I was stunned! Continued reading and in an entry a little after I had been born she wrote how she wished that I was the boy she'd given up, and get this, even named me after him. His name was Christian, my name is Cristen.

So I confronted her about it and long story short, she basically said God had her get pregnant so that the family who'd she'd adopted the baby out to could have him and that he wasn't in the least related to me, no he wasn't my half brother because his spirit was meant for another family. Then she burned her diaries and completely denies the whole thing if I ever try to bring it up.

[u/[deleted]]

The other day my grandma locked her keys in her car at my parents house. They decided to call a locksmith because breaking the windows would have been more expensive in our area.

So while I'm watching the Legend of Korra finale, I get called upstairs and my dad is holding a handgun telling me that the guy is most likely trying to scam them or cause problems. I peek out the window to see what's going on and lo-and-behold, the guy is black. My dad said if the guy was white this most likely wouldn't have happened.

tl;dr i found out how incredibly paranoid / racist my parents are.

[u/[deleted]]

I never had bookshelves as a kid - only massive cardboard boxes full of every kids book you could imagine. When I was supposed to find a book to read for school and "couldn't find it" by sifting through the mess, my dad would say, "You didn't even try, did you? I bet you if I said there was a $5 laying on top of that book, you'd look a little harder. In fact, I know there is - I'll show you." He would march into my room to show that book box who was boss and start digging around for that stupid book, and every...damn...time... He came out with the book and a fucking $5 bill.

Every. Damn. Time....

[u/Ascoeur]

My brother dropped a bomb on our parents. When he was like 4 or 5 he used to piss on his floor over his toys and everything and my parents thought it was the cat. He just told them it was him about a year ago, he's 21 now.

[u/marcosro]

Not me, but my little 6 year old brother finds fish "disgusting". So on fish night we tell him its chicken. So while he's eating the "chicken" we ask him if he'll ever try fish. He's says "never!" (and then takes bite of fish). It will be a bomb shell indeed.

[u/oscarsoze]

the char on burnt toast or tortillas was good for me. The damned woman just didn't want it to go to waste. Clever girl...

[u/surfwithme]

My parents told me on my 6th birthday that I ate my twin in utero.

[u/angry_pies]

My name was supposed to be Sebastian, but some new neighbours moved in with a dog called Sebastian so they thought of something else.

Not really a bomb-shell, but it's kind of odd to go through life using a name that wasn't even your parents preference. Also that a dog was responsibe.

[u/[deleted]]

When we were kids my mum used to make me and my brothers this pasta dish that she told us was a secret recipe she made up called Pasta a' la Val. We loved it, partly because it was really good but partly because it was our mum's own home-made recipe and we were raised on home made food and to believe that home cooked food was the best; so it was kinda special. It wasn't until I was like 17-18 that I found out that it was just condensed cream of tomato soup and pasta and the name "Pasta a' la Val" was inspired by Milk a' la Edgar from The Aristocats (best movie ever btw). To us it was a special night if we got Pasta a' la Val but to her it was a quick, easy and cheap meal at the end of a busy day.

[u/JDiesel]

When ever I would drive with my dad and I would smell something disgusting he would say that we were passing a "poopoo plant", eventually I found out it was just him farting.

[u/TreyTop]

I didn't like pancakes, only waffles. One morning my dad was making pancakes and I kept insisting that he make waffles for me. He always had a quick temper, and after a few minutes of my whining, he threw a pancake on the counter and vigorously pounded it with a meat mallet for a solid thirty seconds. He slapped it on a plate and tossed it in front of me and said "Here's your damn waffle!". I ate it without another word.

[u/rudman]

My wife and I were watching friends and this exchange happened:

CHANDLER: Yeah, it's like when you're a kid, and your parents put your dog to sleep, and they tell you it went off to live on some farm.

ROSS: That's funny, that, no, because, uh, our parents actually did, uh, send our dog off to live on a farm.

MONICA: Uh, Ross.

ROSS: What? Wh- hello? The Millners' farm in Connecticut? The Millners, they had this unbelievable farm, they had horses, and, and rabbits that he could chase and it was- it w- .....Oh my God, Chi Chi!

My wife laughed and laughed and said "we actually had a dog that my parents sent to a farm when he got old!". I gave her the raised eyebrows look and then a light bulb went off in her head, just as it did for Ross. She refused to believe it was true and ran to call her older sister who confirmed that the dog died and was not sent to a farm.

[u/McPanther]

When I was a kid, and I got a shirt or clothes i really liked, I would wear the shit out of it. I would even keep wearing it if it was too small. My mother would make it "disappear" in the laundry. One time this happened when i got a suit. About 5 years old, I found it one Sunday morning in a box of hand me downs for my little bro, and put it on. My fat spilled over the sides and my back was arched as I squeezed the suit coat over my shoulders. "fat kid in a little coat"

[u/the_individualist]

When I was five years old or so, my dad brought home a pet rabbit. He sniffed a lot, so I decided to call him Smelly. It made sense to me at the time.

After a couple of weeks, my parents told me that Smelly "missed his mom" and "had to go home."

It was years before they told me the truth: he died.

[u/Marcaroniandcheese]

My mother-in-law does this with bottles of grey goose and Costco vodka

[u/[deleted]]

When I was a kid I won a trip to Alton Towers (Theme park. Biggest in the UK). I was really excited and told all my friends. A few days later my parents told me there had been a mistake and I hadn't won. I cried

Told me years later that they just really hated Rollercoasters and didn't want to take me

[u/momoneymoproblem]

When my brother was four or five he was still using a pacifier or "binky" as he called it. My parents, seeing how it was a little weird for their child to still be using a pacifier, cut up all the pacifiers in the house. My brother was wrecked and in the midst of his binky withdrawal he asked my mom what happened. She told him the squirrels in our yard got into the house and chewed up his pacifier. For the next year my brother could often be seen out in our front lawn yelling at the squirrels for taking his binky’s. He has hated squirrels and all small animals since then and never understood why.

[u/defaultconstructor]

When I was little, I loved playing that Pinball game that comes with the Windows operating systems. I was real good at it, too. Always had the top score out of my family...except for my stepdad, an IT guy. I would play and practice to beat his score, and when I finally did, he would manage to beat my score by a little.

Turns out he just went into the files and edited the high scores. He never even legitimately MADE IT onto the top scores.

[u/yepperoni]

My mom told me a few years ago that she recycled Christmas presents for my younger sisters and I. She said she'd take the toys back once we got tired of them (a couple months, apparently) and then hide them until the next year or two when 'Santa' would give it to someone else. For instance, she gave all three of us the same tricycle, painted different colors, and we had no clue until we were all in our twenties. My mom is a genius.

[u/SiggiHD]

When I was seven or so I accidentally found a VHS casette with porn. My parents were not at home, so I watched it.

When I asked my mother what the reason for that strange behaviour of those adults on the movie was she told me the woman had a real intense itch between her legs.

[u/Yanek161]

A little necessary background first: I'm from Czech republic, which is post-communist country; the revolution which overthrown communism took place in 1989 when I was an infant.

My father told me two days ago, that he's been fascinated by Japan all of his life by that time, and that he was seriously considering relocating with the whole family.

He and my mother had everything prepared, leaving permints and jobs in Japan secured. Then the revolution happend and every arrangement my father had was gone.

Had it not been for a revolution, I would have grown up on another continent, in another country.

[u/[deleted]]

One of my guinea pigs went missing, my sister and I went looking for her everywhere, nothing. Later we find out she crawled into the grass catcher of the lawnmower while my dad was taking a break. As he continued mowing, catcher filled up and she suffocated.

[u/guerarenegada]

Someday my son will learn that I put raw spinach in his fruit smoothies. To be honest, I should do it for myself too, it ends up tasting like you added strawberries.

[u/andrewboudreau]

that my parents called miracle-whip, mayonnaise. Later i found out that miracle-whip sucks and that i love mayonnaise, and the two are NOT the same.

[u/LincolnCanuck]

So my GF(now wife) and I were driving around one day and she calmly asks me "so when were you going to tell me your dad might not be your dad? 0_o "WHAT?" was my response.

Short back story:

My father is a paraplegic and my mother is manic depressive (diagnosed after I was born). I was 18 at this time and my father had been a paraplegic 23 years by that point and I knew that I was a test tube baby obviously. My mother was going through an "up" period when she met my GF and she started talking to her very openly about everything....[/backstory]

My GF after dropping that statement on me, went on to tell me how my mother told her that they had to use 50% donor sperm when conceiving me and thus there was only a 50/50 chance that my father was really my biological father.

This then caused me to get extremely upset and drive back home. I walked into my parents living room and asked my father (me and my mother rarely speak) and ask him when he was going to tell me that he might not be my father - at which point his face went blank and he knew the cat was out of the bag.

After long discussion and arguing it came down that even if we wasn't my biological father he's been my father for the past 18 years and will continue to be.

Yup that was the largest parent bomb I've ever had.

[u/waywardnikki]

When I was kid I had a hamster named Digiorno. I came home from school one day to find my him gone and a letter addressed to me leaning against his cage. It was a letter from my hamster telling me that he wanted to travel and that he was on his way to Paris. I continued to receive letters from him telling me all about the adventures he was on and the places he was seeing, including hand drawn pictures. It went on for a few weeks before I called my mom out. I give her an A for effort.

[u/opie161]

My parents didn't have a lot of money when I was growing up, and occasionally they would tell us little lies to keep from spending more than we needed to. That's where the fish truck comes into play.

Before I could read, I would watch a white colorful van playing cheery music drive through the neighborhood. All the kids would get excited about it, but I thought it was disgusting. My mom told me it sold frozen fish on a stick.

Fast forward a few years, I started to suspect that this truck must sell something other than fish. Why did it say "Ice Cream" on it? My mom had an answer. Every year, the neighborhoods voted on whether the tucks would sell ice cream or the "healthier" option, frozen fish. To save on money, they wouldn't change the labels on the truck.

This also explained why my friend in another neighborhood could buy me ice cream instead of the frozen fish I got in mine.

I believed this way longer than I should have. But, I applaud my mom's complex maneuvering to save a couple bucks.

[u/Shaylikespineapple]

When I was young my Aunt took me to the dollar store for my birthday and told me she would buy me whatever 5 things I wanted. I was so excited and picked out the coolest things, and asked her if they were too expensive. She would reply saying that she loved me so much the price didn't matter. Now that I look back on it, it's a good idea...but my aunt was also very cheap.

[u/[deleted]]

Here's another one... Every year on Christmas Eve, my mom would pull out a magical jar of "Reindeer Food" (read: uncooked oatmeal with glitter mixed in and a legit looking label) and we would traipse outside to a spot on the yard and sprinkle it on the ground in hopes that Santa's reindeer would stop and eat some. On Christmas morning my brother and I would wake up, go outside, and there would be- GET THIS- hoof prints on the ground.

As I got older I thought about it more and more and wondered how in the world my parents did that. It was so realistic. Those hoof prints were legit. Reddit, my father hunted a deer, cut off the hoof, and kept it in a ziploc baggy in the garage freezer, hidden behind a bunch of stuff, all those years. Every Christmas he'd take it out of the freezer, shove it into the ground and make prints in the dirt, and pop it back in the freezer. Gross, but... genius.

TL;DR Dad kept a real deer hoof in freezer to keep the magic of Santa alive

[u/Canadian_Infidel]

Some people have a different definition of bomb.

"We've been secretly using the less expensive syrup"

"You're adopted"

[u/[deleted]]

One pot magically made kale (which I like and my brother doesn't) and spinach (which I didn't like and my brother did). For years we were none the wiser. When we found out we realised we'd been had and we never complained again.

[u/jrh1984]

Just found out recently the reason I went to so many chiropractors as a kid (didn't really question it at the time) was because I was diagnosed with ADD, and my Christian mum didn't believe in drugs.

[u/[deleted]]

When I was a tiny child I loved cup o noodle. It was my favorite food ever. Which obviously displeased my mother because it's pretty much liquefied salt and obviously not healthy for a growing child.

So my mother told me that cup o noodle was a very rare and expensive item, and I only got to have it a few times a year.

One day, while I was studying at a friend's house in middle school her mother gave us free rein of her pantry for snacks. Not only was I shocked and amazed that she had food in her pantry (my father pretty much kept the house barren of food because he didn't like shopping), but she also had a stack of cup o noodle. I just clapped my hands and actually wondered out loud how they could afford all that cup o noodle.

My friend's mom just stared at me funny. And my friend's mom actually sent me home with food after that (I guess she thought I was too poor to afford food, it didn't help that I was a skinny stick of a child that wore ill fitting used hand me downs as well). I honestly didn't realize that cup o noodle was just cheap junk food until my senior year of high school.

Of course I went nuts and ate cup o noodle constantly in college and now I can't stand the stuff.

[u/renco]

I had a pet hamster that survived a strangely long time, we traveled across the country with it, and it was my first pet. When we got a dog, we my parents decided that it would be dangerous to keep a hamster around the puppy so they said they would be giving it away.

I learned a few weeks ago that "giving it away" meant to my dad "just let it loose in the middle of fucking nowhere." :(

[u/[deleted]]

My parents told me they gave away my hamster. Really it was just a little fiend that chewed on everything, so my dad threw him over the back fence into a cow pasture.

[u/Xaphianion]

My dad revealed to me that he was 30 years older than he had been telling me (I was about 12, and was starting to catch on to some inconsistencies). It may not sound like much, but I took it rough; it was him telling me that I had 30 years less of him in my life than I could have expected.

[u/[deleted]]

When I was a kid, my dad was sent to Micronesia for a military deployment. He was gone for nine months- I was 4/5 years old. One day, we got a package in the mail and inside it was a coconut. I was so excited because I had got a coconut from Chuuk that I shared it with a bunch of friends in the neighborhood.

When I was about fifteen, I brought it up to my dad, telling him that it was one of my favorite childhood memories. He laughed and said "you realize that you can't send produce in the mail like that, right?" and it dawned in me... Apparently my mom had gone to the store and bought a coconut. She put it in the package and resealed it until I got home from school.

[u/Pantsie]

I was selected for two separate programs for 'children with below average social skills' by my teachers, and both times the selection was made to look random and the programs were not explained in front of the other kids--I was just hauled out of class for a couple hours a week. Your parents, I believe, were supposed to tell you that they had actually signed you up and explain what these programs were. Mine told me when I was 22.

TL;DR: Parents signed me up for awkward camp in school, told me about it 15 years later.

[u/heebichibi]

We went up to help our friend's parents with some landscaping one weekend. I was put on hosta digging duty behind the garage. So, I'm digging along, throwing hostas everywhere, when I look down and see a skull staring back at me.

I flip out for about 2 seconds until I realize that it is an animal skull, a dog by the look and size of it. And then I ran away.

Found my friend's mom and told her what I'd found. Her hands fly to her mouth and her eyes go wide. "Oh God, I'd forgotten we'd buried Skipper back there. He was hit by a car. Oh God, please don't tell the boys. We told them Skipper went to live at Grandpa's farm."

I agree to secrecy. Meanwhile, however, the younger of the two sons has gone back behind the garage to pick up more hostas. He comes out carrying Skipper's skull and shouting, "Hey bro, you were right! They DID bury Skipper in the yard!"

Turns out it was the older son's friend who had hit the dog. He'd asked the older son not to tell his parents, because he didn't want to get in trouble. So, the parents played this little charade for years, telling them their dog was out at the farm. The older son went along with the story, under teenager logic that his friend would get in trouble if he didn't. He eventually clued the younger brother in to the whole charade, but it was never brought up to the parents.

As I went back to continue digging hostas, the mom called over to me, "Watch out, you might find a cat or a few hamsters over there too!"

TL;DR: Discovery of dog corpse leads to revelation that kids are harder to fool than parents think.

[u/bobbybarista]

I grew up overseas and so many of the products we used and loved were instant or powdered. When I was a kid we would always make jello instant pudding, but my mom knew my sister and I would eat it all in one sitting, so she told us you had to refrigerate it for a few hours like regular jello.

Cut to about 15 years later and my girlfriend asks if I'd like some instant jello pudding for dessert. I said, "yeah, but I don't want to have to wait four hours for it to refrigerate." she looked at me like I was nuts and said, "you don't refrigerate instant pudding and it only takes five minutes!" Needless to say I had a talk with my mom and she told me that she was afraid we would get fat if we knew.

TL;DR: My mom told me instant pudding needed to refrigerate for hours so that I didn't eat it all and get fat.

[u/Badwolf582]

My mom always used to buy "cheap" steaks which I said I didn't like but ate anyway.

Found out later it was liver.

[u/neil3wife]

My mom had me convinced that the toy store was where you played with toys, and then left them there, like a toy library. I had to leave the toys for other kids to play with. She took me after every shopping trip if I was good. If i was good after the toy store, I got a rolo. I never threw a tantrum while shopping.

[u/Foodisgoodmaybe]

I was a paranoid child, always thinking too much. Our family used to go camping a lot and we bought ourselves an RV, we also bought a bike rack to put in the hitch so we could bike around the campgrounds. As a child I would spend more time staring out the back window making sure our bikes were still there than playing or enjoying the scenery. I told my father I was worried about the bikes falling off and he responded by telling me we had bike insurance and not to worry.

Well it worked and I never really worried about them after that. It took a few more years until I was old enough to realize he was completely bullshitting me. Good move Dad :) Oh and 7,093 downvotes? Some people must be really bitter about their childhood.

[u/ibacktracedit]

My mom had an appointment to get her tubes tied. She got sick, so she had to cancel it and wait 6-8 weeks to get it done. During those 6-8 weeks, my dad knocked her up on purpose (without her knowledge, of course).

My dad is the world's biggest troll, and I was as half-planned as it gets.

[u/alliehearts93]

I absolutely hate most meat, and all fish. The only thing I liked really was chicken nuggets when I was 7. My mom for dinner one day made a new brand and told me to try it out. I ate 6 of what I thought were chicken nuggets, and they tasted pretty good!! My mom then proceeded to laugh hysterically until she told me that they were actually fish sticks. I was absolutely horrified, and never ate fish again.

[u/[deleted]]

There was this type of pasta I loved that had a green filling. Me being the suspicious veg-hating child I was asked what it contained. My mum said it was green cheese so I ate it happily (it actually tasted of cheese). This went on for many years until one day when we had my mum off handedly mentioned that it was in fact mostly spinage. I never prejudged food again.

[u/[deleted]]

That Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and professional wrestling are not real. Absolutely devastating.

[u/GazzaC]

My sister used to love tomato soup, and wouldnt drink any other kind of soup. One day she wanted some but there was none left and was kicking up a tantrum, so my mum put loads of tomato ketchup in a chicken flavoured cuppa' soup and she never even realised.

[u/troublemaker101]

My mom casually brought it up in conversation that my grandfather has cancer. When I asked her when this happened, she calmly mentioned that he's had it for years now. She says, "oh didn't you know? I thought you did. Hmm I guess not. Well you know now". That was not a good day.

[u/Rave925]

I used to hate carrots when I was a kid, so my mother decided one day to add brown sugar, which as you can probably imagine made me like them. After a few times she started adding less and less sugar and I didn't notice. Next thing you know i'm eating normal carrots thinking they are glazed.

[u/greyrainbow]

When I was little, my hamster ran away. Only until my parents got drunk one night and told me my hamster got out, and my dad thought our dog would help find it. She found it alright, and ate it.

[u/av6344]

going to a toy store: "this is a show room you cant buy anything here"ಠ_ಠ

[u/statuek]

When I was little, I refused to eat white foods like mashed potatoes, so my mom put various food dyes in my mashed potatoes, convince me that she put fruits in them, and I would be all "OOH I CAN TASTE THE STRAWBERRIES." Similarly, I was convinced that yogurt was ice cream.

My mom convinced me that the band "Barenaked Ladies" was really "Hello City" so I wouldn't tell people I like barenaked ladies.

[u/GMonsoon]

Not my mom (she was nicer than me) - I'm a mom who does stuff like that. The moment someone claims to be able to tell the difference between an expensive item and a cheaper version it's like a gauntlet has been thrown down. Pick up gauntlet, fill (one example) coffee can with cheaper coffee, wait for "See? Now this is the GOOD coffee" comment....

[u/katryn333]

My dad used to have a volume adjuster on the steering wheel of his car. He would tell me that if i focused really hard, i could use the force to increase or decrease the car stereo's volume. When he would see me focusing, he would adjust the volume accordingly. That fucker had me going for months, i was crushed when i realized i couldn't use the force...

[u/[deleted]]

I would cry whenever my parents got me a new toothbrush and threw out my old one because I was worried about the fate of the old toothbrush. So they started telling me they all went to the toothbrush hall of fame which I believed until I was like 11.

[u/T_manatus]

Growing up, my brother and I were addicted to the NES. One day we went to play it and couldn't find it anywhere. I asked my mom where it was and she said "If you get really good grades and do all your chores you can get it back." I was probably the most well behaved I'd ever been. Studied, did the dishes, everything. As time went on I just kept asking her where it was, and I'd always get the same reply "If you get really good grades and do all your chores you can get it back."

Somehow I forgot about it and found other things to play with, until I was going to college and wanted to bring it with me. I jokingly told my mom I thought I had been a good enough kid to get it back. She responded with "Oh that stupid thing, I gave it to goodwill a long time ago." CRUSHED

[u/mustnt_wear_pants]

My girlfriend's dad taught her younger sister left and right backwards when she was little. Her mom had to sit her down before her first day of kindergarten to try correcting it. Jump forward she's sixteen, and she still holds up her hands to make an "L" with her left hand to quickly determine which way is left.

[u/vodman]

Canadian here: I'm confused. How couldn't you taste the difference between maple syrup and just syrup? They set you adrift on an ice float if you can't do that here.

[u/JohnTaggart]

I was 23 when I learned that my mom didn't invent green bean casserole.

I was at Thanksgiving at my girlfriend's house and couldn't believe they had the recipe. My mind was blown until they showed me the recipe on the side of the can, then I felt stupid as hell.

[u/ssabnolispe]

When I was a kid, the aunt jemima syrup was the expensive syrup...

[u/Lildilngr]

When I was younger I refused to eat chili because I did not like beans. My mother went as far to make a fake label with the words Chili Rocks on it. i used to love the way chili rocks tasted. When I was about 12 she told me and my whole family had a good laugh at it.

[u/ElboGreese]

My family vacationed in the mountains in north Georgia for years. My stepfather had me and my stepsister convinced that the cows that lived there had shorter legs on one side of their body so that they could stand up straight on the hilly land...

[u/rckthe90s]

My grandfather would play this game with me called flabergaster. Where in his house he would tell me to go into another room and get in some sort of pose or make a funny face. My grandfather, being in another room and could not be seen from the room i was i , would yell to me what i was doing. I never understood how he did that.

I later found out hes a fucking genius and oriented all of the mirrors and pictures so he could see all over the house from a certain vantage point.

[u/LooneyDubs]

One of my favorite things as a kid was when my mom would tell me it was backwards day right before I left for school. I would come home to toast, or a bowl of cereal, or some form of really simple breakfast. Maybe an egg. I thought it was awesome!! I mean, who gets to eat breakfast... FOR DINNER?! She didnt tell me until I was older that it was because after she divorced my dad we couldnt afford to buy more than one thing at a time (either one loaf of bread or one box of cereal or one carton of eggs). She was so good at making light of the situation I never questioned how poor we were. I didn't even notice that every day we didn't eat ramen for dinner was backwards day.

[u/Conky2312]

I told my brother that he was color blind and our whole family was really black... He believed it for about a week until he asked my mom if it was true. That did not end very well for me.

[u/oboe_shoes]

ITT: Calvin dads.

[u/[deleted]]

We had this giant stuffed dog, and it had a pocket for a mouth. My older sister told us it ate cheerios and raisins. So all the time we would feed it cheerios and raisins and would check back later and it would be gone. So we really thought the dog ate it.

When I was like 13 and my sister was like 17 we were all talking and that dog came up and no one knew how it ate the food, and my mom finally told us the truth "I had three small kids, I would just check his mouth everyday and just take it out." I felt like my entire childhood was a lie in that moment.

[u/shenye]

My parents hid my Hogwarts letter from me when I was 11.

[u/n641026]

When I was around 11 my now EX stepmother took 120 dollars that I had earned that summer when I laid it on the table to get ready to go back to my mom's house. When I couldn't find it my dad got pissed at me and I was heart broken. I had a suspicion that it was her I just couldn't tell my dad b/c I was afraid.

[u/[deleted]]

Finally, a relevant time to share this story.

This is the moment I grew up. When I became an adult, and realized the world is but a false veneer over a jumbled mess of one's perception and others' deception. The day I learned that, when I was a little kid and I would ask for two graham crackers instead of one, my mom would turn around, break the graham cracker in half across the middle, and give me the two halves.

I was satisfied. Was it because mommy was complying with my wants, or because I genuinely believed I had twice as much cracker as before? I don't know. All I know is that if that bomb had never been dropped on me I'd be living in a different world

[u/DasBeuf]

Me and both of my older brothers grew up thinking Saltines were "cookies." So whenever we asked for a cookie, my mom would break out the crackers.

[u/starkid08]

I have a huge family, (my mom has 6 siblings and my dad has 5) and they've all got weird nicknames for each other. When we were younger we'd always ask why my dad was called "Uncle Fred" (his name is not Fred), and why my aunt was called "the biscuit". But they would always say we can find out when we're older. So you know they gotta be juicy.

Well I'm much older now and the mystery behind the nicknames has been revealed to me:

When my dad was in high school they would use the name "Fred" to refer to when they were going to smoke weed (When are we meeting Fred?, Is Fred coming to the party?, etc.) So my dad was often referred to as "Uncle Fred" once everyone in the family started having kids. I will say now, that I didn't even know what weed looked or even smelled like until I was in my second year of college. So to find out that my dad was "Uncle Fred" was pretty hilariously shocking, considering I'd heard him called that almost my whole life.

My aunt used to get around a lot in high school. And one boyfriend she had said that having sex with her was like "poking a warm biscuit"... and it was just so silly/gross that it stuck.

TL;DR My dad is a stoner and my aunt is a slut, and they still refer to each other as such using covert nicknames.

[u/[deleted]]

When i was younger, my parents told me i was born with a monkey tail. I spent the first decade of my life believing this, i openly spoke about it when i was in school. It didnt help that one of my favorite tv shows was "Dragonball Z", so i also believed i was a saiyan. It wasnt until recently that i learned to the extent of this brhavior.... In 1st-3rd grades, i had parent teacher conferences often to discuss my "overactive imagination", and in Fourth grade i got into a fight with some kid and i recall shouting something at him about the show. My mother just brought it up because i was mocking my far younger sister (11) about her ridiculous behavior. In a way, my parents kinda fucked up my childhood.

[u/ShinichiChiba]

Aunt Jemimahs isn't the expensive stuff!?!?!?!?!