Lies are routine. Aren't they? We all tell them at some point in life. We tell them by accident, to shield loved ones from pain or to cover our tracks. There are little white lies or "Little Big LIes," or lies that change the course of many people's journey. The outcome of a lie can be surprisingly effective in soooo many ways.

Redditor _LegendaryEdmonton inquired What lie that you told had the biggest impact on someone's else life? _What fibs people tell are hilarious, sad and extraordinary.

MATCHMAKER, MATCHMAKER MAKE ME A MATCH!!

Twelve years ago, I was talking to a girl at a bar. It became quickly clear that she bored the hell out of me. I happened to see an acquaintance out of the corner of my eye. I called him over and introduced him to "my really interesting new friend." Five years later they married. They remain happily married to this day.

Gave a fantastic reference for a former coworker, who was forced out of the company due to visa issues. Midway through the reference, I realized that they thought I had been his boss (his actual boss did not like him, and decided he was not worth the trouble on a visa)

He got the job and is doing very well at his new company, and he now has a work visa for the next 6 years.

Both of my kids, 25 and 16, think that I don't believe in owls.

It started as a little joke in my teens. I'd never seen an owl in the wild and the ones in movies and in ads were ALWAYS fake. Still today everything from car insurance, eye glasses and even colleges use fake owls to hawk their products. I just pretended to be indignant and refused to believe that true owls existed and that they were merely battery-filled mechanical toys.

My wife has a great sense of humor, so spreading the idea that dad didn't "believe" that owls are real was pretty easy.

Truthfully, think about it: They are as aerodynamic as a shoebox.

They turn their heads virtuall 360 degrees.

They move like a machine.

You never see them in the wild.

In zoos they just sit on a perch... usually near a power outlet.

Their vision is bionic

Their hearing is bionic.

They have that night vision thing.

They can keep their head still in a tornado.

Where are the legs?

You can see the batteries.

Why is every owl in movies or in ads fake?

When I was in grade 8, my little brother asked my what extrapolation meant, and I told him it was the act of defecating out a window and that in the olden days, it was standard practice for pilots as there were no facilities on wooden planes.

Didn't think anything of it until years later he came home furious. He was in high school math class and the question came up, so he raised his hand and proudly answered to the confusion of his peers. Whenever he got up to use the washroom for the rest of the year, people would tell him not to extrapolate.

I once spread a stupid rumour that a kid in secondary school had his front door stolen.

Turns out some kids thought it funnier if it was stolen. So at a party at his one weekend, they unscrewed the door from its hinges and took off with the door and left it in a field.

When we were kids, i used to watch the animated Batman series with my little sister after school. One day I casually mentioned that I created Batman, and she got very excited. She told her first grade class at school the next day, and the teacher told her that wasn't true.

She didn't believe anything I told her for awhile. She's 30 now and I still get _"this isn't another I invented Batman thing, is it?" _when I tell her things.

I've told this story before, but as a kid I told my younger sister that the Easter bunny came through the drain. I thought she'd find it magical, like Santa.

She found it horrifying. We stopped having egg hunts.

My brother told my sister if the Tooth Fairy can't find your tooth she slits your throat. It was pretty traumatizing for her, I think my parents were away or something, so a relative watching us had to deal with that one.

Organized a party and invited a lot of people. My friend had been hanging out with a girl who was new in town, I invited her too.

He was, and still is, short, chubby, hairy, rarely the smartest in the room, but an unimaginably kind and nice human being. She was pretty and hanging out in a group where guys heavily outnumber girls, I though she was using him because he had a car, just to drive her around.

That day he asked me if I thought he had a chance if he made a move on her. Smelling the defeat already, I told him "absolutely dude." At least he would get rejected and be able to move on instead of orbiting her.

It worked though, and they are still together almost 8 years later...he still thanks me sometimes for helping him make up his mind...

In the mid 1980s my father convinced my mother that the St. Louis arch was a McDonalds advertisement, we were moving to St.Louis from the east coast. My mother told all her friends this. Pre internet. St. Louis was fly over country. She found out the truth after we moved and felt like an idiot. My father never let her live it down.

This isn't my lie, but my coworkers husband who suffered from what they thought was some type of dementia and MS.

Unfortunately, her husband developed severe memory issue at the age of 26 and died when he was 41. He was in and out of hospice, nursing homes and assisted living facilities. In one of the nursing homes, an elderly woman with severe dementia would not stop yelling,"Jesus! Is that you, Jesus?! Jesus, answer me! I know you're there!" She'd do this for hours every day for weeks.

Nobody in the nursing home could console her or get her to stop. Finally, my coworkers husband had had enough.

Woman: "Jesus!! Oh, Jesus answer me!"

Him: "WHAT?!"

Woman: long pause"is that you, Jesus?"

Him: "yes! I hear you. Now go to sleep and stop yelling! You're fine!"

The woman never yelled out again... it apparently took another dementia patient and my coworkers husband lying about being Jesus to solve the problem.

There was this girl who went to my high school that was not very popular and was picked on a lot. There was a dance or something coming up, one of the ones that you get a big mum for your sweetheart for. Well, one of the ways that these kids decided to pick on her was to get her one of those mums as a "secret admirer" and send it to her, saying they'd reveal their identity to her at the thing. I overheard this in a class I had with one of these jacka**es.

I felt so mad and sorry for her that I showed up and I made myself that _"secret admirer" _and showed her a good date. F**k those people. She somehow found her confidence in life down the road, and ended up late blooming into a complete stunner. Maybe I contributed to that change in her outlook? I dunno. I'm happy for her and her husband.

I was buddies with my next door neighbor. He was always complaining. About work. About girls. He died suddenly at 26. I met his dad when he came to clean out his apartment. Dad and I hung out, and I told him some fun stories about his son. Before we parted, he put his hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eye, and said: _"tell me...was he happy?" _I looked him straight in the eye right back, smiled, and told a string of happy lies. _"Yes! He was excited about his latest work assignment! He was kicking ass playing squash at the gym! He had a crush on a new girl and was hopeful about her!" _He smiled sadly and quietly said _"Thank you."_ Best lie ever.

I told someone that I was in Foster Care with as a teen.......that I believed that she really could become a physician someday. This was a girl who many people regularly called a stupid idiot or worse. I told her that because I didn't want to be mean, not because I actually believed what I was saying.

18 years later, I found her on FB and found out that she is now an oncologist. We talked and she told me that once I told her that I really believed that she could become a doctor, she went balls to the wall and didn't stop until she got there. She says that I was the only person who encouraged her about this until she made it to college.

I think that was the best lie that I ever told.

I told my niece and newphew the only way to make the ceiling fan turn on was to hold your arms out and spin in a circle.

The fan itself is remote controlled, but the light turns on at the wall switch. Let's just say the remote is well hidden.

I'm pretty skinny, and I had just moved to a new school. A kid who was overweight told me he wished he was skinny. I told him I used to be fat and that I started running, exercising, and being more careful about what I ate, and lost a ton of weight. He looked like he hadn't heard that kind of encouragement before. I moved away shortly after. Saw him a few years later on social media and he lost the weight and looked great!

It won't impact her until someone finally calls her out on it, but I told my sister that futons were invented by a native South American tribe called the Futoni, and she's been sharing this "fact" with everyone.

About 5 years ago I was in the car with a friend. It had an old cassette player and a tape was stuck in it, so we just kept listening to hiphop beats and instrumentals. I asked him if he knew how to freestyle and he was shy at first, but when I started, it looked like he at least wanted to try it, too. It was by far the worst rapping I had heard before, but his girlfriend just broke up with him and I wanted to be nice, so I told him he was great and "has serious potential." I didn't think twice about it. A few days later he started sending me voice messages of "new tracks" he wrote and recorded. I saved them and changed the speed to 1,5. This way I could hear the lyrics in a minute without having to listen to anything else. We were friends after all. Weeks later I received more and more. Then I received messages from other friends, asking me why I am encouraging him to do this. Apparently I was not the only one he had sent the songs to. At some point he started to invite me to open mic events. Even his parents were there. There was no skill whatsoever, yet everyone kept listening to him, the same way you listen to a bunch of kids playing songs on the flute on christmas eve.

I started teaching a class and after the class finished, I was talking to my boss at the hall. One of my students came to say hello (I didn't even knew his name) and I jokingly said to my boss: "He's one of my most brilliant students, only good things await in his future." He looked a me and asked me if I really meant it, and I said "well, of course."

He became one of my best students, and even though he had average abilities, he put a lot of effort in learning and always had an optimistic outlook, even when he failed; and in the end, he ended up learning a lot and even got certified after finishing the course I was teaching.

The power was always within you, Franz.

"No, I'm not sure what happened."

Carrying my best friends secrets, why he chose to end his life, is one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life.