What’s a “harmless” lie your parents told you that you believed way too long?

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What’s a “harmless” lie your parents told you that you believed way too long?

Comments

  1. k-princessflor Avatar

    If you sit too close to the TV, you’ll go blind

  2. gruthscout Avatar

    If you swallow gum, it stays in your stomach for 7 years

  3. SweetPotato251997 Avatar

    If you eat sunflower seeds, they will grow inside you and you will die.

  4. f-simplesiren Avatar

    Turning the car light on while driving is illegal

  5. ifitnessfreak Avatar

    Santa’s watching you year-round with hidden cameras 👀

  6. -cradiantrays Avatar

    If you lie, your tongue turns black

  7. -iexplorerella Avatar

    The ice cream truck only plays music when it’s out of ice cream

  8. teaansconesx Avatar

    If you don’t sleep early, the monsters come out

  9. mermaidunearthed Avatar

    That the god of my childhood religion is real

  10. thesassybabef- Avatar

    The tooth fairy needs your teeth to build her castle 🏰

  11. booked462 Avatar

    I led my kids to believe that Chuck E Cheese was only for birthdays. “Maybe someone will have a birthday soon and we can go back.”

  12. Kaihann Avatar

    You can’t be buried besides us if you get a tattoo. It’s forbidden in our religion.

  13. tollboothjimmy Avatar
  14. nb75685 Avatar

    That my mom had eyes in the back of her head.

    I still remember “playing” with her hair but secretly trying to find her extra eyes 🤣

  15. lvsmbdy Avatar

    All the things that made you pee in bed. As a child my parents told me that being barefoot, having my back unshielded from cold, playing with fire, etc all made me pee in bed.
    It wasn’t, it was trauma.

  16. insanity-humanity Avatar

    If you drink coffee you’ll get fleas in your stomach

  17. onlyBotsdownvote-me Avatar

    You can start at the bottom of a company, and if you apply yourself and work hard, then you can get promoted and one day, you may even be the President.

  18. No_Bandicoot2306 Avatar

    That we were related to a famous baseball player with he same last name.

    …which, TBF was a lie my dad passed down from his older brother who lied to him about it when they were kids. Older brother prank that finally came to light one Christmas, 50 years later (much to Uncle Don’s amusement).

  19. aj_ramone Avatar

    My mum told my sister Ham grew on trees so we’d have to wait for more to grow. She was having a meltdown because I ate the last of it.

    She was like “fine I’ll have cheese”.

    Fast forward a decade this bitch asks me with a straight face “What tree was it that has ham on it?”

    I sat there and just stared at her, then said “what the fuck are you talking about”. She STILL believed there was some tree out there growing spirals of fucking ham. She was genuinely upset lmao.

  20. Illustrious-Slice-91 Avatar

    My eczema is due to consumption of chocolate

  21. Sophie_Love_2001 Avatar

    Every time you hiccup, your heart grows. I was very concerned when I learned that having an enlarged heart was a serious health condition.
    I honestly believed that until I was around 12

  22. Fantastic-Hippo97 Avatar

    I believed that Santa Claus was real until I was about 15 😂

  23. complicatedsnail Avatar

    That wrestling was real

  24. WorldlyBuy1591 Avatar

    Taking painkillers for like 3 days straight is really bad for you

  25. Previous-Bobcat-6015 Avatar

    If you swallow your gum, it would take 7 years to digest.

  26. d-doodlediva Avatar

    Chocolate milk comes from brown cows.” 🐄

  27. ithinkglobally Avatar

    That Ben and Jerry’s ice cream has alcohol in it.

  28. M-Test24 Avatar

    When I was about 6, I wanted to have a friend over on a Sunday. My parents told me, “Sundays are for family only.”

    For YEARS I would stay home on Sundays and not do anything even if my sisters went out or had friends over. Years later, my parents asked me why I always stayed home on Sundays. I was like, “wut?”

    As an adult, I can see now that they just wanted to have an easy Sunday, said something to get me to just chill, and…totally forgot about it.

  29. ResponsibilityDear96 Avatar

    That if I didn’t put the cap back on the tooth paste, all the fluoride would evaporate.

  30. GunMetalBlonde Avatar

    You will catch a cold if you go outside with wet hair in cool/cold weather.

  31. BreezeeGrl Avatar

    My mom told us that a “friends” daughter ate watermelon seeds and turned into a watermelon!! We were terrified!!

  32. InfluenceOk5875 Avatar

    My mom gave me the talk way too young. When she did, she didn’t explain sex, she explained a BJ. Somewhere along the line I kinda figured out the difference on my own but as I got older I was like “Wtf??”

  33. doodle_does_ Avatar

    Blue cheese is gross. LIES. For literal decades I didn’t even try it. My brother and I both have been the victims of this lie 😂 we joke about it every time we are together and happen to be eating it

  34. Designer_Jackfruit82 Avatar

    That everything they did was for my own good.

  35. ResponsibilityDear96 Avatar

    Also, that soap will make your chicken poisonous.

    I’ve always liked to cook and when I was a kid I think I didn’t maybe rinse my hands good enough after washing them before handling chicken.

  36. Party-Inside-9529 Avatar

    rolling your eyes too many times makes them stuck that way

  37. Hellchild400 Avatar

    That when pets died they were all buried in a special pet cemetery that only the vets knew the location of.

  38. illegalsmilez Avatar

    My parents went to extraordinary lengths to convince me that Santa Claus was actually real. Not only did they tell me lie after lie, but they even rented a Santa Claus costume, set up a hidden camera, and made my uncle wear the costume and deliver presents in the middle of the night do we could have actual physical evidence. I legitimately believe that really fucked me up as a person. I basically don’t trust anybody

  39. TitleAvailable1719 Avatar

    Sometimes women just get pregnant all by themselves; a baby just starts growing even if they don’t have a “husband”

  40. wraith_majestic Avatar

    Keep doing that snd you’ll go blind.

  41. rooster6662 Avatar

    You’re going to go blind sitting that close to the tv.

  42. UltimateFartingChamp Avatar

    Are Santa and Easter bunny acceptable answers?

  43. LunaWhisper_3047 Avatar

    If you eat watermelon seeds, they’ll grow into a plant in your stomach!

  44. Box_of_fox_eggs Avatar

    Eating pickles before bed will give you nightmares.

  45. notagain78 Avatar

    That they loved me as much as they love my sister.

  46. TheYoungWan Avatar

    That my Dad wrote River of Dreams

    The Billy Joel song

  47. Humble-Damage-2123 Avatar

    That if I just got a degree I’d be set for life.

  48. HorrorGamer26 Avatar

    If you swallow a watermelon seed, a watermelon will grow in your stomach 😅

  49. ABlindMoose Avatar

    Eating snow will give you worms in your belly. Once I got a bit older I extrapolated that into thinking worms lay their eggs in snow.

  50. No_Nefariousness3874 Avatar

    That my eyes told on me if I lied, I had “lieing eyes”. So I spent til I was a teen not looking at people if I was lieing. I used it on my kids too. Lol She also taught me the kinds of things to guess at to ask to get to the truth.

  51. WeirdRip2834 Avatar

    We have a last name – family name – that is the name of a small city. My father told me the town was named after our family.

  52. CrossStitchPirates Avatar

    Asked my dad what the car’s radio static noise was. He told me it was a cat doing a poo. I thought every radio station had a cat that would poop next to the microphone for years

  53. benjaminchang1 Avatar

    That you must dilute orange juice with water (not squash, orange juice like Tropicana).

    I was telling my flatmate this and he couldn’t stop laughing because I’d only worked it out about 5 years ago (I’m 22).

  54. Desertlobo Avatar

    I’ll help you pay for college.

  55. ATVLover Avatar

    When I was little, I LOVED trains. There was a store relatively close to us called Train World or Train Land (sadly I don’t remember) but they sold model trains and stuff like that. I always wanted to go. Every time we passed it, they told me that the store had gone out of business.

    Model trains are expensive and we didn’t have money like that.

    We’d pass the store periodically and I’d always ask why it was still there if they were closed and they’d always give me some passive or dismissive answer.

    Fast forward a few years… the store remodels and puts up a brand spankin’ new big ole sign.

    They were like “Yea, we lied, but we’re still not going…”

  56. moo00ose Avatar

    The skin on KFC chicken is poison
    Those bag of crisps have poison in them

  57. Unique-Engineering49 Avatar

    My family never had cable growing up so we had only a few TV channels. Whenever I’d ask to watch a fun kid’s show, my parents would say “oh, we don’t get that channel, it’s only on cable.” 

    My childhood best friend got so many more channels by comparison and I got to watch all the cool things at her house. I’m 31 and I just learned last year that her family never had cable either. Turns out none of the shows I asked to watch were only on cable. 

  58. mechtonia Avatar

    I asked why M*A*S*H didn’t have any new episodes but was all reruns. My parents told me that they ran out of ideas. I was terrified at the finiteness of human imagination for years.

  59. ohfuckohno Avatar

    Was actually my nan

    But she has a massive scar on her leg, proper deep and all

    When I was idk 5ish or something? I asked her what it was

    “It was from being bit by a crocodile”, and I shrugged it like “ah yeah makes sense fair”, I mean she had a lot of parrots, so obviously she was around exotic animals like that and moved on

    Keep in mind we are from the UK

    It took almost 20 years for me to think about it and go.. “wait a fucking second.”

  60. Acrobatic-Bread-5334 Avatar

    I was Catholic until I was like 35. Now I’m agnostic. Believed for far too long. 

  61. Penis_Bees Avatar

    My childhood dog went to live on a farm

  62. That-Resort2078 Avatar

    My father told me both his parents were dead. Only his mother was dead. His father had abandoned the family if 5 kids when my father was 12.

  63. Aungstman Avatar

    Pulp Fiction is a documentary about oranges.

  64. dcott29 Avatar

    Dad had to check if Santa was gone before we came out of our bedroom. If Santa was still there and you saw him he’d take the presents back. Dad wasn’t afraid to lose his presents so he took one for the team and checked. Mom and dad got to sleep in on Christmas morning.

  65. Lula_Love3 Avatar

    That there are sharks in the deep end of the pool. My mom told me that at like age 4/5. Rationally as I grew up I knew that there is no way that a shark would survive in a pool but once my head submerged under water a sort of panic would try to take over and try to convince me.

  66. Sunspots4ever Avatar

    That if I read in the car while on a trip or something, I was gonna get carsick. I’ve been reading since I was three, and now at 65, have never gotten carsick. I don’t know what she thought I was supposed to do otherwise.

  67. DM_Sin Avatar

    When I was very, very young, my aunt told me “Every time you learn something new, your brain gets a new fold. In heaven, they count the folds to tell how much life you lived.”

    I said “So the more I learn, the longer I’ll live?”

    She said “Well…Yeah, I think you will.” and that was the single lie that turned whatever burgeoning autistic cocktail of a mind I had toward the frantic and addictive consumption of knowledge. Thirty some odd years later and I remain all learning, very little actual doing.

    But I will get my goddamn immortality, Aunt Janie. Just you watch.

  68. hewett98 Avatar

    My dad told me that the reason he and one of his brothers didn’t have a middle names was because in order to put it in their birth certificates, names were charged by letter (vowels obviously cost more) and his parents couldn’t afford for all three children to have middle names…

  69. Inevitable_Duty_7923 Avatar

    I thought my dad wrote you can’t rollerskate in a buffalo herd until i heard it come on the radio on a roadtrip when i was in my 20’s.

  70. Letters_to_Dionysus Avatar

    dad told me gelato was alcoholic because he didn’t want to share any

  71. Zazzafrazzy Avatar

    I told my three kids that they were all terribly allergic to cigarette smoke. My youngest would practically turn green when walking by a smoker on the street. They believed it until they were adults. Coincidentally, their own children have the same dreadful, life-threatening allergy, but now it includes vaping.

  72. CdnRK69 Avatar

    Don’t eat the chocolate chips in the bag for baking. They are poisonous unless you cook them.

  73. Jgryder Avatar

    That God existed and cared about everyone.

  74. MrsAlejandro12312 Avatar

    I believed that they loved me for me, not that they loved that I would be the one who would take care of them in their old age.

  75. cornflakescornflakes Avatar

    Kebab (shawarma) meat was an elephant leg.

  76. Kazzab133 Avatar

    I got told that liver was called French steak so that we would eat it

  77. kingbambi5000 Avatar

    that my eyes would turn orange when I lied

  78. RookieCards Avatar

    We wanted lava lamps when we were kids. My dad told us, probably off handedly, that they were expensive and we couldn’t have them.

    This somehow resonated with me and my sister. Lava lamps were the peak of decadent indulgence. Any kid who had a lava lamp was royalty. The lava lamp effect was lavish and classy.

    I was about 20 when I called her in disbelief from a Target and we figured it out together.

  79. tjorben123 Avatar

    that my bunny “mr hopps” run away with his family to live in rabbington where he was elected to be major.

    found out the neighbours dog ate both my rabbits in whole about 10 years later. but assumed that he died right after “he left”.

  80. WhisperOfTheStars Avatar

    Mom shared early on that humans can’t drink water while they are lying on their back and I honestly haven’t done so until I was 19…

  81. HermionesWetPanties Avatar

    I made it to college believing there were no cartoons on TV on Sunday afternoon. Turns out our dad just didn’t want us pestering him while he watched golf and ironed his work shirts. Then, when the evening rolled around, we’d watch The Simpsons while he made us snacks and whatnot. But I legitimately believed that there was a time when even Nickelodeon didn’t play cartoons during the hours between when church started and when The Simpsons finally came on Fox around 8 or whatever.

  82. rauho Avatar

    That having my name or any personal information anywhere on the internet, including online banking, would destroy my life.

    My mother is now a dedicated facebook-boomer, to the surprise of absolutely nobody

  83. flootytootybri Avatar

    My mom still tries to convince me I’ll get sick by sleeping with wet hair. I’m 21 and have fallen asleep with wet hair for years (I’m lazy and hate drying my hair but I shower at night)

  84. Prestigious_Bee_771 Avatar

    If I don’t tucked in my shirt some roach will crawl in my belly button and live inside me. Thought that was true until I was 16

  85. theyellowsaint Avatar

    They found me in the garbage cans behind the grocery store.

  86. slayez06 Avatar

    My dog was now living on a giant ranch living it’s best life.

  87. Necessary_Reach_2612 Avatar

    If you sit with your legs open, air will go up you and you will die. I used to tremble keeping my legs firmly shut all day.

  88. BumbleBeez-V3 Avatar

    That if you go out with wet hair and it’s not sunny and warm you’ll catch a cold, I genuinely believe this for about till I was 17 I think?;-;

  89. PathosRise Avatar

    That my mom was a virgin until marriage (lie).

    That the only purpose of my life was to get married and have kids (lie). My brothers were pushed to get good grades, and got rewards / punishment accordingly. I was in the top of my class, and it was “okay.’ My brother say I’m ‘spoiled’ because of it.

    That the only way to be happily married was to be a virgin when married (lie) and it was the only thing that tested a man’s value and love for you (lie).

    That a woman’s impulse to give into her base desires led her to a life she deserves (lie) especially when her husband didn’t value her (lie).

    Oh, and ask my mom if any of these purity talks happened? They didn’t. Still fucks me up.

  90. itmightbehere Avatar

    My dad told me once that when I was younger, I took a bow when it thundered. I didn’t realize until I was much older he was saying I was full of myself. Yes he insulted me constantly.

  91. Broad_War Avatar

    If you don’t hold your breath while passing a cemetery you’ll get possessed. turns out my dad just wanted a minute of quiet

  92. Flower-1979 Avatar

    If we pull our faces and the doorbell rings, then our faces will stay like that.

  93. ZeppsMom Avatar

    That Pope John Paul the Second was my grandfather’s brother. They look kind of similar so I believed it until I was about 13

  94. Crivens999 Avatar

    Putting your dead budgie in the oven for a minute is like those heart paddles on TV, and can save it’s life