Why can't we all just settle with truth? Lies will always get out of hand and often get us into a world of trouble. Often a lie will start simple and small and then get to a place where we're not even sure what the origin of the tale was. Too often we think we're smarter than we are and we can handle, nine times out of ten.... we'd be wrong.
Redditor u/19you1 wanted to know who has let things spiral because they were a little afraid of the simple truth by asking.... What's a lie you've told that has gotten ridiculously out of hand?
Hey Owen.
GiphyWork with a women for the past four years, every day says hi Owen and asks about my day, it's not my name or even close to my name and I just never corrected her and now its too late. Saveyso
Romeo oh Romeo!
Not me but my cousin. Aged 13 she created a fictional boyfriend but being a teenager with social media it wasn't as easy as just saying he existed.
What followed was 8 months of a Romeo & Juliet style romance with disapproving parents, fake accounts and bad photoshop. This ultimately ended in a dramatic turn of events when Luke the imaginary boyfriend tragically passed away of an undisclosed condition, never to be spoken of again.
She came clean after receiving a sympathy card from her friend's parents. Pabs23
The Old Lady Knows.
I smoked in high school. And for 15 years after that. We used to walk down to the shop which was around 500m from school and sit outside and smoke because the shop keeper didn't mind. So I'm down there one day and nothing unusual happens and then that afternoon I walk from school to my great grandmother's place who lived about another k or so from the school in the other direction. She was old, frail and the most amazing person ever.
Anyway she had gone past the shops in a taxi that day and saw me smoking. She brought it up about having smokes in my pocket (I did) and I said no she was mistaken etc.
A few weeks later my mum says grandma Nanny saw you smoking and you lied to her. I said she did say that but it wasn't true, she must have seen someone else. One thing lead to another and before I know it the family has decided grandma has lost her marbles and within a month the house was cleaned out and she was moved into a home.
Fast forward a couple of years and she has genuinely lost her memory, dementia is a horrible person. I never got a chance to tell her the truth because by the time I had grown up and decided she was mostly gone. I think about it regularly. Coffee_Pee_Cackle
Blame Canada.
That I was American. I didn't out right say it but when I first came i was hanging out with people, and I didn't feel like it was necessary to mention that I came from Canada. It lead to me not knowing some American culture and making me look dumb half the time cause I didn't know someone/some reference. jojothedirteater
For the Weekend.
GiphyTold my boss I'm Jewish so I can have weekends off. I now eat kosher at work, and can't order take out.
Edit: Thanks for the silver! This is my first one. no-name-life
Dedicated to the Story.
A friend in middle school pretended to be color blind. Carried the lie clean through high school. Pretty impressive dedication really. CircadianSomersault
Hey back in Middle School I did a white lie once that I was color blind to make up for some color mistake and be "different." I ended up using that line again and again to family and stuff. Friends and family started saying "you're color blind, you wouldn't know" when I would state my opinion on colors which got annoying. But actually turned out my senior year of high school I actually am color blind. The one with reds and green or whatever. I guess fake it till you make it right? miniibeast
Dearly Departed.
Not me, but I had a classmate in high school tell a teacher his mom texted him that his dad died, just to get out of a test. Boy did that blow up in his face. ConfusedDishwasher
Yee Haw!
Not me, but a server buddy of mine told me a story once about how he took the first table of the night in a super thick Southern accent (he was in theatre, so it was actually really convincing). The only problem is the people at the next table over heard him, and he had to serve them next. Long story short, this kept up and he had to talk to every single table over an 8 hour shift in a Southern accent. Johobus28
All the Randos.
When I met my college friends at 17, I told them that my first kiss was at 15 in order to hide my embarrassment at never having kissed anyone. One time they asked for the story, so I quickly made up something about a random guy I used to work with who I made out with at a party. Although this wasn't my intent, I guess something about the way I told the story made my friends (who to be fair were pretty sheltered people at the time) think I was fairly promiscuous.
From this, they gathered that I spent my time during the summers frequently hooking up with strangers. I ended becoming close friends with these girls, but unfortunately due to this they all thought of me as the 'promiscuous one' of our group for a couple years until they finally realized they'd only seen me date a handful of people. ceruleanavocado
The Ad Libber.....
Someone else said they were related to me as a joke around 2004 and unbeknownst to me continued to say that...
so for years I've had people ask me about my "brother" Josh even though I actually haven't seen him in very long time.
I usually just ad lib a general response rather than making him feel silly but I'm pretty over it. ukiyozen
Reddit user WeirdJawn asked:
"Older Redditors, what do young people get completely wrong about past decades?"
As a young person, I was fascinated with the idea my maternal Grandmother lived through the transition from horses to combustion engine vehicles, the inception of commercial air travel, the creation of the motion picture industry and the invention of television.
But I've lived through vinyl LPs and 45s, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs and digital music players.
If I wanted to see a movie as a kid, I went to a theater—or drive-in—or waited for an often heavily edited version to air on TV. Then cable movie channels were introduced, followed by LP size video disc players, then Betamax and VHS, DVDs, HD and Blu-ray and now?
Digital downloads and streaming services—I haven't been to a theater in years.
GiphyTV
"Up until video rental stores in the early 80's, at school the next day every kid was talking about what was on TV the night before, as every single family was watching tv together every single night."
"With some exceptions, most people watched the same thing as their schoolmates or co-workers, just to be a part of the conversation."
~ Grimjack2
"There's something very isolating about modern media.
"You can be into a TV show, or YouTube series, and nobody else you know has heard of it."
"I'm a fan of aYouTube series—RedLetterMedia—that's pretty popular and very well regarded amongst its fans, and only one of my friends has heard about it.
~ SlashThingy
GiphyUnanswered Questions
"Probably just how often you had to accept that you couldn't find out the answer to something."
"If you had a question you could ask your family, maybe your friends, maybe your teachers, and your last chance was the check the library."
"But if the library didn't have the answer, then you just had to accept that you weren't going to get an answer (or you'd have to hope to come across that answer someday in the future)."
"Now you just ask Google and get 10 answers in just seconds."
~ john_jdm
GiphyOne & Done
"How on-time you had to be for your favorite shows because there was little to no chance you’d see that same episode again until they (hopefully) did re-runs during summer."
"I remember waiting anxiously for the nightly news to be over so I could watch my favorite TV shows."
"Commercial breaks were just mad rushes for the bathroom, or to the kitchen to get something quick to drink."
~ ladyeclectic79
"Once it was done, it was gone."
"The happy tears I cried when they finally released The Stand miniseries on DVD about a decade after airing."
~ Barrys_Fic
"I feel I was in the last generation of this, even though channels were much more prevalent and reruns of everything was the norm."
"I remember rushing off the bus with all my friends because we were absolutely SURE Goku was gonna defeat Frieza this episode. And it was a crap shoot whether or not the driver would be fast enough for us to make it."
"Years later when DVDs started becoming more prevalent, they STILL didn't put shows on collectable media regularly. You couldn't just get an entire season of a show and binge it."
"At most you could find a 'best-of' compilation of five or six of the most popular episodes, and that was only if the show was incredibly popular."
"And what I am describing here was considered 'having it good' compared to older people."
~ McFlyyouBojo
GiphySay Cheese!
"That it was incredibly common to just not have pictures of events or other things we see as important now."
"Not only did we have entire vacations where no pictures were taken, we could go months without a single picture being taken of any member of our family unless it was particularly notable."
"A trip to St Louis? No pictures. A trip to Disneyland? Maybe a picture at the entry gate or one of the souvenir pictures of us with a character."
"A trip to zoo? No pictures. An average day? Forget about it!"
"Frequently, the only pictures taken were at major holidays like Christmas or on someone's birthday."
~ bbbbbthatsfivebees
"I explained that to my kids the other day."
"What if every picture you took cost a dollar?
"And you don’t know if it’s even good until probably weeks later, as long as the photo lab doesn’t f*ck up processing."
"Or your film or pictures don't get lost in the mail going to or from the developer or they don't send you someone else's photos by mistake."
~ beebsaleebs
"You had to plan ahead to take a photo."
"'Did you remember the camera? Did you remember to buy film or flashbulbs?”
~ brazilliandanny
GiphySo Few Options
"It's an exceptional AMOUNT of media to consume now. In the 90s, you had 3-4 super popular channels, and 4-5 low rated channels. They all showed one show at a time."
"Now we have a dozen streaming services with infinite media options."
"It's becoming increasingly difficult to engage in office conversation because so much content is available, people do not have to stray as far from their interest to consume content they want to consume."
~ MemeTeamMarine
Smoking Or Non?
"They understand restaurants had 'smoking sections' and that bars & clubs were filled with cigarette smoke. But I don't think many understood how pervasive smoking was."
"Non-smoking areas or sections didn’t exist before the 1980s. There were ashtrays and people smoking literally EVERYWHERE."
"Jury boxes had ashtrays in front of every juror. Judge smoked, lawyers smoked, the gallery smoked."
"You smoked on planes, trains, busses, taxicabs, and in all transportation centers."
"You smoked at the library, the PTO meetings at schools, the town hall and all city offices. Hell, you could smoke at the courtyard at my High School as a student."
"You smoked in the elevator and on the escalator. The mall. The grocery store. Sports venues. Doctor's offices. Hospitals. Sitting at your desk at work even if you were in a cubicle or open area."
"The movies. The plays, opera, concerts and every other public performance, people smoked."
"A non-smoker would come home often smelling like smoke. One was constantly surrounded by smoke. It was insane."
~ parkerjh
"You literally made ash trays as a grade school art project, that’s how common it was."
~ _Poffertje_
GiphyWhat Choices?
"Probably under estimating how few choices there were."
"Today, it seems like everything imaginable is available in a variety of sizes, delivered to your door over night."
"Catalogs and mail order had 4-6 week delivery."
"Malls were the best thing ever—all the stores in one place, a wide variety of products and sizes and not downtown."
~ 2Loves2loves
"And also just how little people knew they were missing out. If it wasn't on network evening television (Channels 2, 4, 7, 9, and 11), or on a store shelf in your town, or in the Sunday newspaper... it simply didn't exist for you."
"If you had an inkling something existed—say, tin foil that comes in sheets instead of one giant roll—you could go around asking people, if you wanted. But you were more than likely to just get a shrug and, 'Why would you want such a thing?'."
"Let's say you were particularly enterprising, so you dial '0' and ask the operator for the number for corporate headquarters of Reynolds Aluminum Foil, if you knew the city it was in. Because there was no internet, and the only way to find a number was by dialing '0' and speaking to a telephone operator."
"But even if you spoke to someone at Reynolds, they had no way to exchange money for goods at that level, and they probably would just tell you they sell it in the Ohio area, and that would be that."
"You went to the market. They have one brand of pancake mix, and no one had ever heard of anything different, and why would you want a different brand, anyway?"
"Then you go to the hardware store, and they carry one brand of paint, and no one had ever heard of any other brand of paint."
"And it was that way for a long, long time."
~ nOwsL-ACEna-pe2323
GiphyOne For the Road
"How common drinking & driving was."
"Until MADD came along, people did this routinely."
"It's where 'one for the road' originated."
~ HailRoma
"Yes! When my friends and I had our 18th birthdays in late 1979, the thing to do was to celebrate by driving through Beer Barn, where you could literally drive-through to get beer, wine, wine coolers, whatever."
"Then open them up and drive while drinking. At 18. This was in Texas."
"It also was not uncommon for my dad to drive while drinking when he was taking us wherever at night."
"Zero education on why you should not do that."
~ emeraldcity4341
Good & Bad
"I am definitely older (born in 1949 so Baby Boomer)."
"What today's young people don't appreciate is how, growing up, we had to invent our own sources of fun."
"There were no video games (which I enjoy playing), just 3 channels on a black-and-white tv (we didn't get color until 1967), and no real entertainment aimed at kids."
"All we could do is interact with each other and play established games like marbles or maybe an organized sport like Little League baseball."
"There was a baseball diamond, overgrown with weeds, across the street from us, but mostly we played in the woods that surrounded us, climbing trees pretending to be pirates or some such.
"I loved the bookmobiles that would visit my street, and I must have read every biography (all bound in blue covers) in my elementary school library."
"It was a different era with many fewer distractions and much more time for sustained imagination."
"Being a different place and time, we developed different skills for interacting with the world and each other than young people do today."
"Was it better? That's hard to say. We tended to have an insular view of our own little world, while today it is hard to escape what it happening everywhere on Earth."
"We had to wait days for a letter to arrive, and we shared a party phone line with our neighbor's phone. That is a far slower pace than today's instantaneous texting culture. (Yes, I do text.)"
"Some things have been lost while others have been gained. That's the way it always will be. Just wait."
~ BOBauthor
GiphyIn Chilton's article—referenced at the beginning—he stated:
"We [Gen X] will be the last generation to know the world without...
- Cable TV
- Cell Phones
- The internet
- Seat belt laws
- Remote controls for the TV"
What would you add to the list?
We all love our pets.
And be it a dog, cat, parrot, or turtle, we all like to think our pet is cuter and smarter than everyone else's.
Most of the time, that is purely owing to our unending love for them.
But every now and again, we might witness our pet do something truly extraordinary, leading us to believe that our pet truly is the smartest animal on earth.
Redditor CoreyMatthews was curious to hear about the times people were truly blown away by the intelligence of their pets, leading them to ask:
"Pet owners of Reddit, what are some examples of your pet doing something that made your realize how intelligent they are?"
Talk About Coordination!
"I watched both my cats sit in the hallway and roll a ball back and forth between them gently and on purpose."
"They both know how to open doors."- TurbulentStep4399
The Real Truth About Cats And Dogs
"I had a cat that learned to turn on my radio so I would think the alarm was going off and get up to feed him."
"He and my dog would also team up on me in various ways."
"The most memorable was when I had gotten a little water pistol to squirt the cat when he got on the kitchen counter."
"I always kept the water pistol in the very back corner of the kitchen counter."
"I got home one day, and the water pistol was chewed to pieces on the floor."
"It was too far back on the counter for the dog to have reached it by herself (and it’s not the sort of thing she would normally have liked to chew on), so the only explanation is that the cat climbed onto the counter, pushed the water pistol across the counter until it fell on the floor, and then convinced the dog to chew it up."- TheBat3
More Than Most People Can Say About Their Children!
"My 6 month old kitten will alternate bringing his mylar ball to me or my husband to throw--taking turns."
"He plays fetch better than my dog did."
"He puts his toys away at bedtime."
"I have a small basket that we keep his toys in."
"At bedtime, I'll tell him, 'Let's pick up your toys' and he will get any toys that hasn't been eaten by the couch and drop them in his basket."
"No hard balls/toys as he can't pick those up with his mouth."
"I pick up those."- Danivelle
cat playing GIFGiphyThe Female Of The Species...
"I had two Shelties and one large dog bed."
"The female Sheltie did not want to share the bed with her brother, so whenever he was lying on it she would go to the door and start barking like crazy at … nothing."
"He would leap up barking and race to the door to guard the house alongside her and as soon as he got out of the dog bed, she would run back and curl up in the middle of it."
"He never caught on."- NoNefariousness104
Always On The Lookout
"My dog greeted me at the garage door when I got home."
"He then had me follow him to my daughters room, then my sons room, then the front door."
"My mother in law had picked up the kids."
"He was telling me that 'this one and this one are gone and went that way'."
"Let’s go get them!'”- YourFriendInSpokane
Asking Permission Never Goes Unnoticed
"I had a blue heeled mix that was crazy smart."
"Two of many examples:"
"He was occasionally allowed to eat table scraps off of a plate but was never allowed to beg."
"He had to wait until the plate was put on the floor."
"One day I was caught up working on my laptop and had put the scraps from my dinner on the couch on a plate next to me."
"An hour or so went by and I saw him pick up the plate off the couch and put it on the floor so he was allowed to eat it."
"He slept in my room and was getting up in years."
"One night after I was settled in bed he let me know he needed to go outside, thinking an older bladder, I got up to take him out."
"Instead he went to the kitchen and turned to look at me."
"Curious I followed him."
"Same thing , he went to the family room and waited for me."
"When I turned on the light, he went to an end table near the TV where one of my teenagers had left an uneaten piece of fried chicken."
"He stood and stared and it and then turned to me and I swear he asked if he could have it."
"I laughed and took the meat off the bones and put it in the floor for him, after which we both went back to bed."
"How he knew that chicken had been left there is beyond me!"
"I could share dozens of stories like this."
"He was as smart as most humans I know."
"I will miss him forever."- JCKligmann
dog human eating GIFGiphyPeeing With Purpose
"My mom's cat had a urinary infection."
"So he peed a tiny bit in the bathroom sink and waited by it for my mom to see it."- HyliaSerket
Everyone Wants A Little Attention Every Now And Then...
"A small thing, but my cat will paw at my hand when he wants to be petted."
"The first couple times it happened, I didn't think anything of it, until I realized one day that he basically had me trained/conditioned to pet him whenever he nudged or pawed at my hand."- Square-Raspberry560
And You Thought All They Could Do Was Change Colors
"My chameleon will look me square with both eyes and make a chomping movement with his mouth when he’s hungry."
"He’ll also pat at the glass if he wants to come out."
"He’ll hold a grudge, calculate ways to go or get what he wants."
"One of my Boas will only look at me when hungry."
"She had a go at caudal luring whilst doing it the other day."
"Like 'look, dude, I know you bring the food'."
"I’m hungry, look I’m even trying to lure you to give me some food'."
"It worked."- Ugglug
GiphyA Kind Gesture Is Never Forgotten
"My brother’s cat, Coconut."
"We live 2,600 miles apart."
"The first time I met her, I gave her a little pink fuzzy kitty toy."
"2-3 years later was the next time I was able to visit her again for the 2nd time ever."
"She immediately disappeared & came back with this filthy, dusty, brown toy that had obviously been hidden away somewhere."
"We dusted it off & it was the toy I had gifted her years before."
"She remembered me."
"My brother said he had never seen the toy again until that day."
"She’s also very precious with her toys & will leave them outside his bedroom door as bribes."- emilyyancey
Innate Obedience
"When she was a baby I said, 'Go get your toy!' in the same pitch I always do."
"Never trained her with that phrase."
"She went a grabbed her toy and came back."
"I tested her again the next day and the next day."
"She went to her toy pile and brought back a toy each time."
"She picked up the phrase by herself."
"She's also the first dog I've had that looks at planes in the sky when they fly overhead and recognizes dogs on TV even on mute."- Spare-Bread8416
Get The Tissue Ready...
"I have two cats and a dog."
"A little backstory about my dog:"
" I don't know anything about dog training."
"I wasn't even thinking about adopting a dog but it seems like it was one of those things that 'meant to be'."
"My sister found him on the street at a winter night."
"We thought he was lost and there is an owner looking for him."
"Because where I live we have so many strays and you wouldn't see many 'specific breeds', they are just strays and specific breeds have an owner 99% of the time."
"So we took him home and start to search for the owner but it was obvious that poor dog went through some sh*t."
"And we learned about his story from an animal society; that he had a few owners but all of them left him to the streets because he was barking a lot (we haven't heard him barking even once during that time), he was peeing everywhere (he did it once and that was probably because he was nervous of being in a new environment and that was it), he wasn't listening at all (we had 3 cats at that time and I said no one time when he tried to run at them and that was it, never did it again)."
"And we learned that he has been in the shelter twice with big wounds."
"And I said I'm not going to let him go through more, he stays with us."
"He learned how to let me know he needs to go out all by himself."
"He learned to pee on the pads all by himself on the days that I can't take him for a walk."
"He learned to give me my slippers when I come home all by himself because I wear slippers when I get home."
" He learned how to clean his face by watching cats doing it."
" I still don't know how to train a dog other than a few basic stuff."
"He just learns."
"That's been a really long comment."
"So I'm going to leave that how I know my cats are clever for another time."
"Thank you for reading my sweet dogs story."
"I'm glad to have him and I don't know who was lucky about all those; me or him."- LittleBitOff2Day
dog pies GIFGiphyNever underestimate your pets.
As sometimes you have no idea of the things they might see or notice.
Making it all the more important to give them the love and attention they deserve.