Now that I am a parent myself, I can look back and laugh at some of the white lies my own parents told me growing up. To be honest, I admire the creativity. Well, Redditor eatbeep asked, “What’s a childhood lie your parents told you that you didn’t realize was a lie until you were an embarrassed adult?” Here’s what people said.
1.
“That the ice cream truck bells meant they had run out of ice cream. I found out this was a lie when I was about 14.”
2.
“Whenever I asked my dad how he knew (random fact/skill/answer to any question), he’d say, ‘I went to daddy school!’ Made complete sense to me that there would be a school to teach dads how to be dads. Turns out it doesn’t exist, but we still reference ‘daddy school’ every now and then.”
3.
“The crust of the bread is where all of the nutrients are.”
4.
“That the car won’t start unless the seatbelts are buckled!”
5.
“My parents took me to the Disney store at the mall and told me it was Disneyland.”
6.
“I have a pretty unique last name so I’ve never had a middle name, when I was a kid I asked my parents why and they told me they couldn’t afford to get me a middle name as you have to pay for each letter (I have a short first name) and I believed them all the way up until my daughter was born, the nurse gave me a form to fill out with my daughters name and I asked her how much? She asked, ‘How much what?’ I said how much per letter to name her, I’ve never seen a lady look at me so confused, and in that moment it clicked that my dad was joking….”
7.
“That some zoo and theme park tickets don’t get you into the gift shop.”
8.
“My grandpa used to walk back into his bedroom to blow his nose, and would secretly take a bike horn out of his closet and honk it. My cousins and I all thought that was how it sounded. I begged him—begged him—to come to my class for show-and-tell. He declined, but I still didn’t figure it out for years.”
9.
“My dad told me once when I was little that puppies came from flowers. He probably said it just to shut me up about asking for a dog. For years after that, I kept my eye out for ‘puppy seeds’ whenever I went to Home Depot, to no avail. Admittedly, I was probably in the eighth or ninth grade when it just clicked with me that it’s obviously not where they came from.”
10.
“Living on the West Coast, my friend would show the East Coast feed of the New Year’s Eve countdown to her kiddos. They were always in bed by nine. Brilliant parenting.”
11.
“I told all my kids that things like most veggies, fish, and other healthy foods were ‘grown-up food.’ I would put some on mine and my husband’s plates and say, ‘OK, this food is just for grown-ups; unfortunately, babies can’t have any.’ Cue my then-toddler-age kids declaring, ‘I’m not a baby!’ And me making a big show of saying, ‘I don’t know… it’s really just for grown-ups… well, ok, I guess you’re old enough to have a little bit of grown-up food. But not too much! It’s supposed to be just for grown-ups.’ And then I’d take it off my grown-up plate and give them some and watch how excited they were to eat their ‘grown-up food.'”
12.
“I told my kids that they snore in their sleep often; that way, I’ll know if they’re pretending to sleep because they’ll fake snore.”
13.
“Don’t watch too much TV or your eyes will turn square. I would look in the mirror to see if they were changing shape.”
14.
“That you can’t turn the inside car roof lights on, or else you go to jail.”
15.
“I eventually found out that ‘lie bumps’ are not a form of bad karma from lying and are, in fact, just inflamed taste buds.”
16.
“When I was a kid and had trouble falling asleep (which was all the time), I would ask my parents for my ‘sleepy medicine,’ and they would take freaking forever to get it, but if I was still awake, they’d give it to me. After I got older, I understood the reason it took them so long to make it was because they were waiting for me to fall asleep naturally, but it was the biggest mind blow of my life when I was 17, and my parents casually mentioned how they faked the sleepy medicine.”
17.
“My grandma claimed she could tell when I was lying by the red line on the skin of my forehead. And I kid you not, every time I checked in the mirror, it was there. It only clicked when I was in my 20s. Every time she told me I was lying, she pointed out the red line by dragging her fingernail across my forehead.”
18.
“My mom told me that Chuck E. Cheese was only open for birthdays. If it is not your birthday, and you have not been invited to a birthday party, they will not let you in. She’s a brilliant lady, and I’m adopting the lie when I have kids.”
19.
“My toddler had a meltdown the other day after we turned off Miss Rachel because it started giving me a headache. We told her that Miss Rachel had to go to sleep so she could play again tomorrow. That didn’t work, so she got a call from ‘Miss Rachel,’ who definitely wasn’t my teenage daughter in a different room, telling her that she was tired and needed to go night night, but she was excited to play again tomorrow and to make sure to listen and be nice to mommy!”
20.
“Told our daughter that kids’ ears turn red when they lie, but only parents can see it. She would enter rooms with her hands covering her ears, and we knew we were in for a lie.”
21.
“That public pools add a chemical to the water that changes color when you pee.”
Now it’s time to add yours! What’s a harmless white lie your parents told you growing up that you can’t help but laugh at now as an adult? Tell us in the comments or in this anonymous form.
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