“Still Shocked”: 51 People Who Had No Choice But To Live Out The Lies They Told

This is a lie with a happy ending and I'll take it to my grave.

TLDR: Mom prayed for help to fund a trip with her kids; thinks he delivered

Background - My mother is a very emotional person and there are 5 boys in my family. So she doesn't get to have alot of emotion moments that she gets to share with her kids. We mostly just make fucn of her (in a playful way) and everyone moves on. She has cried at every big, medium, and small event in our lives, and I love that I have a woman in my life that cares so much about me and my siblings.

Background 2 - I was a jerk of a kid. But I am actively trying to make up for the patience my parents had for me.

Story - My parents are almost empty nesters and live in Colorado, last year by complete mistake all of her kids found jobs/school in Utah County, Utah. We all live about 20 minutes from each other, completely on a fluke. My mother decided she wanted to take up on one last road trip, so we flew in to Colorado, and she drove us back home. It doesnt sound like too much, but my family is poor and it was a very nice gesture. Plus there are places on the way we always used to stop at, like the Little America Hotel in WY. And the Grand America brunch buffet. All of this is far too expensive for my parents so on the way I discreetly called and payed for everything, or would sneak out during a meal to "go to the bathroom" and would slip a waiter a card.

At each stop the staff would play along and mention how the room had to be changed so they gave it to us for free, or how a kind stranger payed for our meal. And I was never caught. My family's appreciation for the amazing people of the midwest was too much for my mother and she broke down to me and told me how she had no idea how she was going to pay for our trip but she did it anyway because she wanted to be with her boys one last time before we were all too busy, or she too old. She then told me how she prayed for help and God gave it to her.

I am not religious, but my Mom is and there is no way I'm going to tell her the most spiritual experience she had had in a long time was her sneaky son.

Love you Mama.

edit: Moral of the story kids, being good to your parents can get you gold. Doooo iiiiiit.

When I was a little kid, I told my mom I really liked her tuna casserole. I was just trying to be nice and pay her a compliment since she seemed like she was having a bad day.

Pretty much every time I go to visit her she has some tuna casserole waiting for me. I don't actually like tuna casserole that much, but it's such a sweet gesture that I don't have the heart to tell her to stop. This has been going on for over thirty years now.

A couple years ago, I went to a bar in a town I didn't expect to be in very often, and I decided to don a Scottish accent and make up a back story for a fictitious version of myself.

Now, I doubt my accent would have fooled someone actually *from* Edinburgh, but by the end of the night I had a group of Americans and one bemused Australian chatting with me about the things that make the US a strange place to visit from abroad. Shots were bought, back slaps given, and a good night had; I thought nothing else of it.

...until I was dating a girl from the next town over, and she took me to her favorite bar. That bar. We walked in, someone greeted my by my "name", and I did the only thing I could do -- cheerfully donned my fraudulent accent, explained that my business trip had been indefinitely extended, and spent the next twenty minutes furtively explaining to my date that I wasn't a con man, just an ex actor with terrible impulse control.

My brother had a gf with a younger sister my age and they all came to watch me play baseball once. I was pretty smitten with the younger sister and so after the game I started bragging about how I played guitar. My brother laughed in my face and said I had got a guitar but it had been collecting dust for months and I'd never have the patience to learn an instrument anyway.

I was so embarrassed by being called out and doubted, I went home, told my mom I wanted to take lessons again, and here I am 20 years later still playing guitar every day.

Well... There's a lot about my past I keep secret from 99% of people I know or will ever know - and that is I used to be a prostitute and was hooked on ice for a few years. I've always struggled with depression and for a while I was in a very low place that led to some terrible decisions in my life. Even my family (except for my immediate family) I had to keep up a lie that I was doing these other respectable jobs and was successful in life because I was too ashamed to admit the truth. And the few genuine friends I had I confided in and eventually they gave up on me as a lost cause. Now I haven't done that job for a while and I actually do have a 'respectable' job now and have gone back to university to pursue my dreams. Fingers crossed..

When I was 13 I was playing world of Warcraft and someone asked me my age. 13 was so young so I lied and said I was 14, cause that meant I was so much more mature. Well I kept playing wow, with the same group of people, and 4 years later they thought I was 18.

Someone started asking me how my applications to college were going since I was that age. Being caught in the lie about my age I played along and asked for advice. I played along with the advice which resulted in me actually putting in a college application to a university and.... I got in. As a high school junior.

So to keep up this lie about my age I now had to finish high school quickly so I could actually go to this university that accepted me. Great part is that I was able to do this by overloading my spring semester of "Senior" year high school with online classes (yay Florida online high school). I managed to graduate high school a year early and went to university a year early to keep this lie going.

So here I am, at a university 1000miles from my home state, finished my BS and am now doing a masters, all because 14 sounded way more mature than 13 on a video game.

(Sorry for formatting, on my cell phone in the lab I am working in for my masters project, lol).

I was scared of heights and would get sick by the sight of blood. needed a job, lied about all this to become a firefighter.

I love my job, drive an ambulance too and overcame my fears.

Pretty silly but I think it fits the bill. When I was about 5 I remember being in the bathroom and brushing my teeth. My mum was there and berated me for something. Later, being a sensitive child, I was crying in bed about it. My parents came in all concerned and my mum asked: "was it because I yelled at you earlier?". Embarrassed at being caught out so easily I said " no.. I'm sad because.. Because I can't swim". Soon after I was taken to swimming lessons. I hated swimming.

I'm the kind of person that always leaves my shoes tied and just slips them on. I'm dating this girl for a couple months and then one day my shoe gets untied but I'm too lazy to retie it. It really bothers her and she insists on me tying it. I really don't want to bend over and do it for some reason. It was around the time when Liam Neeson got his shoe tied by Olivia Wilde and I was crazy jealous because I really liked Olivia Wilde since watching House.

She eventually asks me "Don't you know how to tie your shoes???". In my head I'm seeing Liam Neeson getting his shoes tied by Oliva Wilde and how cool it looks. So I say "No... I never learned how, you can't tell anyone..."

To this day, when my shoe gets untied in public she will pull me off to the side away from other people and secretly tie my shoe. For some reason it makes her happy and it's the sweetest thing ever. I can't understand how she would even tolerate a grown man who doesn't know how to tie his own shoe! I'll never be Liam Neeson cool, but I've found my Oliva Wilde.

I had a coworker tell me he got married on accident. It was Christmas morning and he bought his girlfriend a ring as a Christmas present. They were both sitting around the tree and when she opened it she started to cry and said "well are you going to ask me." Thats when he realized what he had done. He got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. Moral of the story, don't ever buy a ring for a girl unless you are planning on marrying her.

That I am a functioning and productive member of society. Day 13,687 and they have no idea.

I am a professor and many times I will tell personal stories in an effort to demonstrate tough concepts. About half of these stories I made up at some point.

I don't remember which ones are real and which ones are lies. So I just go with them and don't worry about it.

When I was a kid, for birthdays, my mom would always gets us whatever cake we wanted (chocolate, vanilla, cookie, ice cream, etc.). Well, one year (I was probably about 8 or 9), she got me an ice cream cake. I don't like ice cream cake AT ALL... it's not even cake! I like Cake, I like Ice cream, but not ice cream cake! Well, she was so happy that she "had gotten my favorite cake and flavor right" that I just went along with it....

Then next year, I got another ice cream cake.... still didn't say anything, not wanting to hurt her feelings again. And again the year after that. This has been going on every year since and I'm now 30....

Only my wife knows that I don't like ice cream cake, so each year she secretly gets me a cookie cake for at home and we don't tell my mom.

Met my wife on one of those telephone chat dating things in the 90's. Basically, before OKCupid, you would sign up for a voicemail and describe yourself. We connected and went out but were both embarrassed for using it. Fast forward 18 years, we continue to tell everyone we met in the music section at Borders.

While me and my SO were still dating (maybe 2 weeks or so in), she winked at me when i walked into the pub she worked in. Me being the goof that i am winked back but messed it up on purpose and just sort of shut my eyes tight for a second, making her believe that I couldn't wink.

Now it's over 6 years later and she still doesn't think i'm capable of winking.

One of my favourite things to do is just stand behind her and wink normally, purely for my own amusement.

My sister has told our family that she was abducted by aliens. She says that that they come and take her once every few months and perform experiments on her. My parents found her an abduction support group and she has to go to meetings once a month. This has been going on for 7 years now. She told me that she was going to tell them initially it was an April Fools Day prank but she let it slide a little too long. Now look what happened.

Someone at work, who is grungy, a chain-smoker, and never washes her hands, made a carrot cake and was asking people to try it. I told them I was allergic to carrots. I love carrots. To this day whenever I order or bring a salad to work I have to have it with no carrots.

A lie I tell myself everyday - that I absolutely love my job

In reality, I like my job in that it is what I know to do best that will earn me money that pays my bills and a bit more, keeps me in a country that I like living in and honestly, I don't have any other hobby that is considered a productive use of my time

I'm envious of people who give up a paying job, take the risk of following a dream or a hobby and find happiness and eventually succeed in converting their hobby and passion into a vocation but I'm not one of them

So every morning, when I wake up, I tell myself that I absolutely love my job and that I will do it to the best of my ability and that I will never regret working in IT but I that's not really entirely true.

When I was 10 I learned i could make myself throw up, so I used this to get out of school for like two weeks. My parents couldn't figure what was wrong with me because I didn't have a fever or anything. My aunt had the idea that I was allergic to red food dye, because her grandson (my second cousin) was. I just kinda rolled with it, and so for years my house never had red Gatorade it strawberry pop tarts etc.

I eventually told my parents I was faking it when I turned 20, they were not amused.

I've been holding in my stomach for about 15 years now.