Person Asks “What’s The Smallest Lie You’ve Ever Told Which Had The Biggest Consequences?”, And 30 People Deliver

When I was in elementary school, so probably like 10 years old at the time, I had this friend C. C was that small, pale, frail kid with glasses, I think everyone knows the type. No matter what physical activity this kid did, he would inevitably end up injured in some "horrific" way (i.e. twisted ankle, bruised leg) and would wind up on the ground writhing in pain. If his mother was in eyesight when this happened, which was basically any time we weren't at school, she would rush over to scoop him up and drive him to the closest hospital without hesitation. We will call this helicopter woman Ms. M.

Now me and C were good friends, and had been since the first grade. I'd often go over to his house, and he to mine. One thing to note was that looking back, I'm pretty sure Ms. M was a hoarder. Just loads of c**p piled up everywhere, could barely see the floor in her bedroom, it was nuts. Anyway, one year C had a birthday party at his house, and he invited myself and a few other close friends to a sleepover.

I guess this must have taken place in 2003 or 2004, because for his birthday, Ms. M bought C a Gameboy SP. He quickly opened it and we spent the next 3 hours huddled around C as he played whatever game came with the system. But eventually, we decided to take advantage of the last few hours of daylight outside, and went to play in the backyard. All except T, a mutual friend of C and I's. He insisted on staying inside and playing, which we let him do for a while.

Eventually we needed another player for football, so we went inside to grab T. After a few minutes of arguing, I managed to snatch the Gameboy from T, and told him I was going to hide it, so he might as well go outside. He did, and I put the Gameboy under a recliner in the living room. Well, at some point that night, somebody sat in the recliner, and the frame of the chair ended up cracking the screen of the Gameboy. Well, T knew I hid it somewhere, so the blame inevitably shifted onto me. But I didn't want to get in trouble, so I adopted the Bill Clinton defense; deny, deny, deny.

Ms. M ended up calling my mother to pick me up, and they had a huge argument while I was sitting in the car. My mom told me not to talk to C or Ms. M anymore, and that was that. I saw C at school every day, but we just sort of avoided each other. Any time I saw Ms. M, I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. Which sucked, because she seemed to be at school **CONSTANTLY** after that. Whatever, life goes on.

**BUT WAIT!! THERE'S MORE** Fast forward a few years, and Ms. M ends up bringing my family to court, claiming 75 cents a day in damages for the broken Gameboy SP. She had waited as long as she possibly could before the statute of limitations prevented a lawsuit. I think in total she was asking for close to $1000 USD.

This was so far into the future, I hadn't seen C for probably 4 or 5 years (he transferred schools not long after the incident) but he looked exactly the same at the trial as he did back then. Anyway, we have our day in court and we wait in the courtroom for hours until our case is called. We walk up to the bench, the judge takes a look at the case, and tells C and I to stand right in front of her. She leans over the bench and said something to the effect of "I'm glad that your parents have brought you in today, because I'm about to teach you both a lesson. Turning to the court to resolve an issue about a broken toy, is the most ridiculous thing I've heard in weeks. Deciding to brood on an issue for years in order to profit as much as possible from a fellow man is not a decision worthy of you young men. I hope that after today, you will have a greater understanding of what the judicial system is here for, and that it isn't a tool to get back at someone. Case dismissed."

She also had a few choice words for both of our parents, but I don't remember exactly what they were. Sorry folks! Thanks for reading.

TL;DR: Accidentally had a part in breaking a friends Gameboy SP, made like Bill Clinton and denied that s**t, got sued ~6 years later. 2/10 wouldn't do again.

Told my parents I had lost my crappy phone on a bike ride (C.2010) when I had actually put it under my bed so I could get a new touchscreen phone over my crappy Alcatel phone.

Mum went to phone shop and tripped on ledge outside shattered her left elbow narrowly missed out on having the joint replaced with surgery. To this day she can't bend her left arm past 150 degrees and can't kneel as tripping f****d her knees up big style and caused a hernia in her stomach that the NHS refuse to operate on unless it becomes life threatening. Crappiest son over here.

When I was about 13, I called a little boy ugly. At the time, my mom's best friend was driving me home from school. Of course she told my mother what I said, and my mom asked me to not say things like that. I told her I didn't call anyone ugly. It was a little lie (at first I didn't know what she was talking about), and it became this big whole ordeal about "my kid would never lie to me" and "why would I lie about this." They were best friends and they no longer speak because of this. All three of us were dumb and immature.

Not me but my my brother. When he was in 1st or 2nd grade he felt like not doing his homework for a solid week. When confronted by his teacher about this, he decided to tell her that we had a death in the family and lost an aunt. My mom is one of nine and I guess he figured the teacher wouldn't ask too many questions. He was almost scotch free until he went grocery shopping with my mom the next week and ran into the teacher in dairy. My mom was very confused when the teacher was apologizing for her loss. Both heads turn to my little bro and he has to sit there and explain it to both of them. He got grounded and my mom and I still laugh about it.

When I was little, maybe 6 or 7 years old, and I was playing with my cousin. He was/is my best friend, even if we have grown apart in the last few years.

Anyway, I told him if he jumps out of the tree onto the trampoline, he can get into the club. He jumped and jarred his knee. He screamed blue murder. There was no club. There was no entry test.

The injury plays up till this day. It affected him when he was playing gridiron (he had to give it up), it affected him when he joined the army and again when he become a cop. I'm worried one day he dies because of that knee and I'll blame myself for it.

[FYI:] Gridiron = American football. I'll never make that mistake again. When I said I'm afraid he'll die because of his knee, I meant in some kind of job related incident. I know where he works as a police officer there are a lot of violent bogans (the worst kind of bogan).

I told my 3 year old son I was God just to be funny. No matter how many times I tell him I am not God, he still thinks I am to this day.

My step grandpa would call after my grandma died once in a while "about his car" and then turn it into a chat. He always thought I was my brother over the phone and most of the time I corrected him.

Ever since my grandma died, he literally started drinking himself to death. I saw him a few months after her death and he was REALLY skinny and barely still with it. I remember holding back tears as he tried to tell me a joke. This sad, incredibly weak old man who was a few weeks from dying was mustering all the strength he had to tell me a joke. It was actually pretty funny too.

He was always kind of an a*****e, which for some reason made me so much more sad to see him like this. I sometimes wonder why that is.

Fast forward a few weeks. He called our house to speak to my brother, who is a mechanic, to ask him a question, "about his car"

I answered, and again, he thought I was my brother. I tried probably about 10 times to correct him but he kept talking without much of a chance for me to say, "let me go get my brother"

Anyway, the "small lie" is that I had a 20 minute conversation with my step grandpa who thought I was my brother the whole time. He asked me a lot of personal questions and I did my best to answer them the way I thought my brother would. Idky, but for some reason when I remember this it makes me feel horrible. Also this was likely the last time he talked to anybody before he went to the hospital and died.

When telling stories [online] I change up a few details. Like if I'm 18 I'll say I'm 17 or 19, I'll say I live in a town one town over, stuff like that. The point is, if someone gets [mad] at me (which happens pretty regularly) they won't be able to doxx me.

Well someone tried to doxx me anyway, and they somehow came to the conclusion that I was this kid a year below me in the same high school as I was at at the time.

So I had to both try and convince the doxx guy that that wasn't me, and I had to go to this kid and explain that I'd somehow accidentally stolen his identity and he should watch out for a crazy dude on the internet.

I must have put enough doubt in the doxxer's mind cause nothing really happened after that.

Not my lie but was told to me by my college roommate, and has pretty much upended everything I ever thought I knew about the world or the human condition:

On the first day of college me and my 3 roommates (randomly assigned, never met) move in to our apartment. It happens to be roommate X's birthday on the day we move in. He casually mentions that he just turned 18, we wish him a happy birthday, nothing out of the ordinary, right?

WRONG. Fast forward to 3 years later, exactly 3 years to the day. We take roommate X out for dinner on what should be his 21st birthday, obviously intending to pour drinks down his throat until he can't remember his name. We're at the table telling the waitress to "take care of him" "its all on us" "he just turned 21 break out the beer bong!" etc. She cards him kind of as a joke, looks at his ID, and goes, "uhhhh... you just turned 22? Not 21?". We all assume she made a math error, but he sheepishly just nods his head and grabs for his ID back.

At this point we can't just pretend like nothing happened and ask him how old he had turned on that day. He looks around like he's looking for an escape route and eventually says "21...". I'm skeptical at this point, so I ask to see his ID. He hesitates but realizes there's no way out and hands it to me. Sure as the sunrise this kid is 22 years old. At this point the waitress has been standing around awkwardly for a few minutes and eventually just peaces out.

Now you may be thinking that this was one casual lie/mistake that he made on the very first day and just never had reason to correct. But think back to college. Think of all of the subtle lies this kid must have told me, our other roommates, hell almost everyone he ever met over the course of that 3 year period, to never, *ever* let it slip that he's actually a year older than we all think. We even went through basically an entire year of "not being able to buy alcohol" thinking he was 20 like the rest of us, when he was actually 21. I can't even count how many parties we had where we had to hustle hard just to get a couple of cases of Natty Ice, and this guy could have solved them all by just admitting his lie. But he never did.

This hit me really hard, and for the life of me I can still not explain why I am so confused or upset or offended or IDONTKNOWWHAT about this. For weeks afterward the only conversation we would have is me asking him why he would lie about something like that, how many times he must have almost slipped up and told us the truth, and JUST WHY on earth he would go so all in on such an inconsequential lie. He never had an answer at all. Not even "I was trolling" or "I thought it would be funny." Just kinda shrugged and went "idunno". And that's got to be what gets me the most. The possibility that there really was no reason for this lie, and that I just got trolled for 3 years because this guy accidentally said 18 instead of 19 and was too embarrassed or lazy or whatever to ever correct himself. It's now 6 years later and this thought train still keeps me up at night sometimes.

*I just want to know why*

I remember back in kindergarten, there was this girl in my class that really hated me and would just be overall mean. One day, I got fetched from school drenched in sweat and out of nowhere I told my mom *mean girl's name* dropped water over my head. That led to me, my mom, her and her mom in the principal's office with everyone mad at her whilst she cried. I think she apologized... But anyway, what with two angry moms and a principal I think I would too.