Curious, Redditor melissafoxof asked:
"What lengths have you gone to keep up a lie?"
Icebreakers: Round Two
"I've spent more than eight years in the same residence."
"My neighbors are quite welcoming. Every time they see me go outside, they say hello, especially the wife. Every time, she'll wave, say, 'Hi, Rebecca!' and flash a wide smile."
"Rebecca is not my name. At this time, it would be too awkward to fix. I simply had to take responsibility for it."
- Webaurk
Fake It 'Til You Make It
"My partner and I pretended to be vegetarian for 10 years to avoid her aunt’s awful cooking."
"By the end, we were actually vegetarian."
- MikeSizemore
College Dropout
"I used to sit in my car for hours a day to act like I went out. I was too scared of my parents to tell them I dropped out of college."
"I eventually got a job and used that as a cover until I had enough to move out."
- Llafy
Not Allergic to Cats
"My brother got away with one for 15 years because he doesn’t like cats."
"Ex-SIL: 'I’ve always loved cats but he’s allergic.'"
"Mom: 'No, he’s not.'"
"Brother: 'Crap!'"
- Standard_Chemist_726
The Tumblr Years
"None of my family knows how I met my wife. They think I met her in California through a friend out there when I was in the military. We actually met on Tumblr."
"We've been married almost 10 years."
- is_my_work_account
Fake Marriages
"To f**k with one of my friends, I decided to pretend I got married to two women while on my trip to Vegas."
"To further this story, I had a photo from a photo op they had in front of one of the casinos, and whenever he was over, I started wearing one of the rings I made in jewelry class."
"He would occasionally ask how they are doing and I would bulls**t some story about saving up so they could move up here. The best part is that another friend of mine that we hung out with frequently was also in on it."
"After about three months, we broke the news to him that I was just f**king with him the whole time, and he took it well."
- Alexastria
Challenge Accepted
"I called out of work with the excuse that my truck had died when I was on my way to work."
"My manager at the time said he would give me a paid day off if I brought him a receipt for the tow truck the next day."
"I said ok, hung up the phone, and began to panic because my truck was sitting at home in perfect working order. I went to Office Max, and bought a pack of those contractor work order pads along with some receipt paper. I went home and researched average tow rates, if it’s taxed, etc."
"Then I forged a tow truck work order, went online, and found some fake receipt website where you just fill in the info and it makes a receipt you can print, printed a fake receipt with a made-up company’s name, and my friend's name and phone number on it."
"I made sure the time on the receipt matched up with when I called out, made the handwriting look almost illegible on the work order, and gave my friend a heads up that someone from my employer might be calling him to verify the tow, just in case."
"Then I took the customer copy of the fake tow work order, stapled the receipt to the top right corner of the paper, and folder it up to look as legitimate as humanly possible. I took a different car to work the next morning to make it seem more legitimate."
"I set it on my manager's desk the next morning and mentioned that I left the tow receipt on his desk when I saw him. I never heard anything about it and received the paid day off."
"I ended up selling the truck shortly after and mentioned that I had 'sold that piece of s**t' to my manager to cover my tracks even more."
- DullPiano5498
Those Darn Dissertations
"It's a long story but if you ever see me around my grandparents please refer to me as DOCTOR TallEnoughJones."
- TallEnoughJones
Dating Life Cover-Up
"I met my wife on one of those telephone chat dating things in the '90s. Basically, before OKCupid, you would sign up for a voicemail and describe yourself. We connected and went out but were both embarrassed about using it."
"Fast-forward 18 years, we continue to tell everyone we met in the music section at Borders."
- Drife1994
Lying on the Resume
"So it was sophomore year of high school, and I took one class of basic 3D modeling as an elective. Keep in mind BASIC my models were bad but what are going to expect from a 16-year-old. A little later, I was playing on a Minecraft Pixelmon server (Pokémon in Minecraft) where I made friends with the owner and became a moderator."
"The owner of the server was also on the development team of the mod and he asked in the discord if anyone has any 3D modeling experience, I said I did (not a lie), and he asked me if I could fix a current model he had that was giving him issues so I said sure (again basic, me moving the model was a miracle) but I looked up a bunch of tutorials and forcibly taught my self how to model."
"Over the course of the next year and a half I kept teaching myself and learning and I'd say I got pretty good at 3D modeling, and for a brief stint (before I left the project) I became the head 3D artist of the whole project and made decent money."
"Mage (sever owner and dev of the mod), if you are seeing this, sorry for the lie, and thanks for the opportunities."
- Graphics159
Edwardian Names
"Not me but when I started as a newspaper journalist 20 years ago our leader writer was a man called Edward."
"I only found out when he retired after 45 years with the paper that his name wasn’t Edward at all. When he started aged 16, one of the paper’s owners showed him around and had misheard his name."
"He was too nervous to correct the owner so he went by the wrong name for nearly 50 years. His real name is Dudley."
- Jackamo78
The Great Leaf War
"I once worked in a smallish and pretty casual office. There was a park nearby where I'd go for a walk at lunch and sometimes I'd sit in the grass and do a few stretches before heading back."
"Well, one day I guess a decent amount of leaves had gotten stuck to my long sweater. I went to the bathroom when I got back and a handful fell on the stall floor without my awareness. Not too long after, someone came out, wondering who would put a pile of leaves in the bathroom and why."
"It blew up very quickly and spread around the office. I knew it had to be me. Being the 'outdoorsy person,' I was questioned a few times."
"At the time, I was very shy with a back corner desk where I'd pop in headphones and do my editing work, I definitely did not want attention so I denied it and acted clueless when asked, thinking it'd end with the day."
"It did not. The next day, my manager was greeted by a small pile of leaves on their desk in the morning. It became a war, it went on for weeks. I was too deep to admit the truth now."
"Leaves on desks, leaves dropped on heads, leaves stuck to the backs of shirts. It finally culminated on Halloween when TWO women from different departments came in dressed as piles of leaves. I never said a word!"
- EarthCadence
Party Rendevouz
"I didn't want to go to a neighbor's party, but they could see my car, so I drove to a town 40 minutes away just to have an excuse not to go."
- RevaniteN7
Faking Illnesses
"I had surgery for something that wasn’t even an issue."
"When I was in middle school, I enjoyed faking being sick so I was able to skip school, especially if that meant my parents were at work and I was all alone. I was able to make hot chocolate and play video games all day. It was a great time."
"At the time, I didn’t think much about the excuses I used, so most of the time it was just a 'sore throat.'"
"After having used that excuse several times over the period of a year, my parents finally took me to the doctor to have my throat looked at. They did find one of my tonsils was noticeably larger than the other one and figured this could have been the cause of my issues. So they suggested surgically removing it."
"I was around 10 years old so I didn’t realize what surgery really was so I didn’t come clean."
"A few weeks later, I was on the surgical table."
"To this day I haven’t told my parents about it. I’m 26."
"On the positive side, I was ordered to stay home from school for 14 days after the surgery and the doctor told me to eat lots of ice cream. So it was a win for me, I guess."
- Fhital
Exaggerated Education
"In my early 20s, I worked as an in-home caretaker of the elderly. When I was first hired by the company, I was sent to a lot of one-day jobs. If the client’s regular caregiver was unavailable, I would go fill in and then never see them again."
"Being a young lady, they ALL would ask me if I was in college, which I wasn’t. I was a college dropout. And soon I got sick of the disapproving faces of these seniors whenever I would answer that I was not in school."
"One day, I arrived at another client's home who was new to me. Sweet older couple. They asked me, as they all did, if I was in school. I was convinced I would never see these guys again, as was true for every client of mine up to this point, so I just answered, yes, I’m in nursing school."
"I ended up being their regular caregiver for over two years. They often asked me how school was going. My best friend was actually in nursing school, so I always just parroted whatever she told me she was learning, lol (laughing out loud)."
- breakfastfordinner11
While lying may never be the best policy, most of the lies here seemed to be more so out of ease than out of maliciousness.
That said, these Redditors also made it clear that lying can be difficult to stop once it's begun.
