Ever since our last collection of anonymous confessions, I became even more curious about what secrets San Franciscans were still hiding. I asked people to fill out an anonymous form with instructions to come clean about lies they remember telling kids or being told as kids. Here are the results.
When I was 11 and he was 8, I had my little brother convinced that the TV's remote control doubled as a cordless phone, but only I knew how to use it. So I'd "call" his friends, and tell them terrible things about him (he wets the bed, he eats his own poop, etc), and he would get so mad and try to take the phone away from me. When he finally got his little hands on it, held it up to his ear, and discovered there was "no one there," I convinced him that they had hung up. And it worked, every single time. I was so horrible.
I told my son "Toys ’R’ Us" is the name of another country.
When I was on the playground of a Catholic school, my first grade teacher told me the singing I was hearing were from voices in heaven. Later I found out it was the choir rehearsing.
When I was seven, my mother had me convinced that Vanna White was a robot, telling me that if I sat close enough to the TV, I might be able to see the power-cord trailing out from under her dress. On more than one occasion, I swore I saw it.
When I was little, my father once told me that the skull in our fish tank belonged to my sister, who had misbehaved as I was misbehaving. I behaved. For a while.
When I was a kid, my dad told me that the little crumbles at the bottom of a box of cereal were called "shrapnel." I was in college before I realized that that is not the term most people use.
I told my kid that the ice cream truck plays music when it’s out
of ice cream.
TV was my life as a kid, so whenever my parents and grandparents wanted to punish me, they would take away my TV time away. My parents went with the honor system (and I was a good kid about it) but my grandfather told me that there was an old man who lived in the TV who would know if I watched TV without permission and would come out and punish me. Suffice it to say, watching The Ring elicited some major childhood flashbacks.
When I was 10 years old, my parents separated and both told me that it was because they were growing apart and needed some space. They also told me that it was only temporary and that neither of them was going to date other people. About three days after this, I was walking across my school playground and one of the older, MUCH cooler kids walked up to me. I thought for sure I was going to get bullied. After staring intently at me for a second, he broke into laughter and said something to the effect of, "Just joshing with you! It's great having someone who's like a little brother around! Your dad is so cool. Maybe you can come over this weekend with him." Unbeknownst to me, my father had been seeing his mother for a few months and my mother was also aware of this. Apparently no one thought that this kid would approach me at school just days after explaining that their separation had nothing to do with other people.
I told my five-year-old cousin that his hands would fall off if he didn't stop shoving his little sister.
My mother told me that if I cracked my knuckles, bone marrow would go into my veins and I would die a slow and painful death. I never cracked my knuckles again.
Whenever I would get scared of potential monsters under my bed, my mom would spray my room with air freshener and say it was "monster repellent." It worked.
I was told as a child that the reason I had a butt crack was that I was born in an earthquake.
As a kid, my family went camping all the time. Where there's camping, there's campfires and s'mores! I would try to move when the smoke from the fire would start blowing into my face (the worst seat at the campfire!) but was told that "smoke follows beauty" by my mother. I remember sitting there and taking smoke in the face while thinking it's because I'm just so pretty … when really, nobody else wanted to sit in the crappy smokey seat by the fire so they tricked me into it. Funny thing is, I thought everyone knew that saying and I often mentioned it camping as an adult, yet NOBODY else was told this lie.
My mom tricked my brother, sister, and I into thinking frozen peas were dessert! She called them 'Peasicles' and we each could have a handful after dinner if we ate all of our vegetables.
I told a boy in my class I knew how to say "fuck you" in french. I told him it was "Foo-Quah"... so I repeatedly told him, "Foo-Quah! Foo-Quahhh!!!" He went and told the principal that I was telling all the kids to fuck off and I was considered for expulsion.
My mom told me my knock -off laser tag gun was compatible with the real laser tag guns. IT WASN'T! I ran around "playing" with all my friends. The shame.
When I asked my mom why everyone said, "Don't drink and drive," (it sounded harmless to me!) she told me that what they meant was that you shouldn't drink from a cup without a straw ... tipping the cup up to take a sip would block your view of the road and would be dangerous! Riiight. She has no recollection of telling me this.
My mom told me she had to write a check
to Santa for the presents.
When I was a really little kid, some older kid told me that "fucking" (which I took to be a bad word) was when two grown ups peed in the same toilet. I believed it.
My parents would tell me I was adopted and that my name was really Kate.
My parents told me that condoms were some sort of gum for grown ups.
Up until I was about 12 years old, I thought it was completely okay (and normal) for dads to drink beer in the car. Maybe it was, because my clever father called them "daddy sodas." But to be fair, it was only on the way to A's games or my grandma's house.
"Stand five feet away. Do not light near face. Light outdoors." My dad convinced me that he could read Chinese (he's Irish Catholic from NYC) by pretending to read the warning labels on fireworks. I told everyone at school and wanted to bring him in for show-n-tell.
When I was three or four years old, I/my parents lost my teddy bear, which was pretty much my constant companion back then. I was devastated. Apparently my parents looked for it for hours and then wound up searching the stores for a replacement. They found a replacement teddy bear, but it was substantially larger than the original. So they told me that my bear had been away at the hospital, and the doctors had given my teddy bear medicine that made him grow. My wide-eyed response was: "Can we give him more medicine to make him even bigger?" I believed this particular lie for years after I stopped believing in Santa.
My mom told me a virgin was someone who'd never been kissed before. I really wondered why everyone made such a big deal about virginity until I finally caught on.
My friend Allen was small growing up and would come home in tears from being teased at school. His mom explained to him that celebrities are short and that he was short because he was meant to be on TV.
This story is part of our week-long anonymous package. To learn about all the juicy secrets being revealed this week, go here.