It’s nice to be kept in the loop, but there are some things that are simply better left unknown. Unfortunately, we don’t really know what those things are until we find them out, and once we do find them out, there’s no turning back. Where are those Men in Black memory wipers when you need them? These Redditors were unlucky enough to have stumbled upon some information they would much rather not have known. They came together to share their stories with the world, from life-changing to simply terrifying.
1. He’s a Biter
When I was about 14, my mom took me to a tattoo shop to get her nipples pierced. While the procedure was happening, she turned to me and said something so disturbing that I’ve never forgotten it: "Your dad bites harder than that." I could have lived without that info.
2. Snooper’s Regret
Recently, my mom used my husband's phone to make a call—to the man she was having an affair with. The phone had auto record on. And that was how I found out she'd been in that relationship for 17 years, and tried to have kids with him as well. My dad found out about it years ago and almost ended the marriage as a result.
What he doesn’t know is that she continued the relationship up until last year, and only recently broke it off because the loser CHEATED on her with someone else. She's also a raging narcissist.
3. I’mma Head Out
When I got back from Iraq, my dad broke some bad news to me—he and my mom were getting a divorce. Shortly after, he told me the chilling reason why. They had financial troubles and my mom sent me care packages quite a lot. Apparently, that put them into bankruptcy, and if I hadn't joined it wouldn’t have happened. I never really wanted to join the military anyway, and it messed me up big time.
I just wanted to get out of that house because it was like I didn’t exist.
4. Anyone But You
Someone once told me how many people my ex-girlfriend had cheated on me with. When I found out she was cheating, I had assumed it was just one guy, an affair. Nope. Guys at her work, guys she met while out having drinks, guys we used to go to school with. Pretty much whoever gazed in her general direction and made a pass at her.
For some reason, knowing this made it so much worse to deal with at the time. It just felt like, "Wow, you literally want to be with any other guy but me."
5. Good at Two Things
I didn't meet my dad until I was 15. It was in secret since my mother wanted nothing to do with him. Within the first three sentences exchanged, he felt the need to tell me that I was conceived on a beach in July during the last time they did it. I was the product a going-away screw in a relationship doomed before my conception.
He followed it up with, "We were good at two things, me and your mom. Fighting and screwing. Unfortunately, we were fighting more than we were screwing, so it stopped being worth it." 10 years later and this is still what I think of when I think of my “family history.”
6. What Happens at the End
I wish I’d never learned what happens when someone passes on. Last March, my girlfriend's mom was suffering from cancer. So, I got on a plane and flew down to support her. The family got together and talked, and we removed her from extreme measures because she just wasn't there anymore. She hung on for something like 40 hours.
A lot of us just hung around the first day waiting. Then nothing happened. Everyone else was just stumbling around, so I took control and worked out a schedule where someone would be with her all the time until she passed. Four different six-hour shifts in pairs. I even volunteered to do the first one solo, so my girlfriend and everyone else could sleep. Huge mistake.
So, it's 2:00 a.m. in the hospital, I'm by myself, and she's dying. Like, right then. I call everyone and tell them, but ultimately, it just me and the nurse with her when she died. I would never wish for anyone to watch that. It was the single worst experience of my life, and I hope no one else ever has to watch someone go from active and lively to withered husk gasping for breath on autopilot to nothing.
It was truly terrible.
7. Becoming Santa
Finding out about Santa Claus. I am 56 years old now, but that was when I lost the innocence and wonder of childhood. However, on a bright note, I wound up being Santa Claus last year for a few hours for full-grown adults and never realized how everyone's face lights up with joy when they see him.
8. Four Terrifying Words
Crocodiles can climb trees.
9. Bathroom Troubles
I always blamed my best friend’s erratic behavior on mental health issues, until one day I found her passed out on my toilet and realized that her behavior always got erratic after bathroom visits. Unfortunately, she may have mental health issues, but addiction to certain substances was the reason for most of her behavior.
10. The Scandal
Years ago, I heard rumors that a relative through marriage had lost their license to practice medicine because of some accusations of misconduct. At the time, all I heard were whispers of something amiss but didn't know much about it. Decades later, a friend who became a doctor was able to look up the case since I had mentioned it offhand—I said I heard scant rumors.
It turns out it wasn't just some rumor, it was a full out massive scandal of severe misconduct of patients, many of whom testified at trial about how he misused his position, including wanting naughty favors in exchange for medication. He vehemently denied the accusations, but his character witness was severely flawed and there were way too many accusations for it to have been a conspiracy.
The details were far beyond what I was expecting. It happened years ago, and he's been barred from practicing, but I still don't even know if I can hide my disgust next time I see him. I don't want to bring up skeletons in the closet to disrupt the familial peace, but I'm actually really angry that none of my family members were honest to me about the situation.
11. Ring Ring
I wish I’d never learned what tinnitus is. Now I can't stop hearing it.
12. The Mysteries of the Brain
The fact that a brain aneurysm can happen at any time to anyone. You can become severely hurt, become disabled or just kick the bucket out of nowhere. Has become one of my biggest fears.
13. The Downsides of Diagnosis
I always knew I had some form of mental illness but getting an actual diagnosis really messed things up for me. Now I live my life wondering what’s me and what is my mental illness. Whenever I do something that is “stereotypical” of my diagnosis, it causes more depression. I wish I had never been diagnosed.
14. Cut Off
The real reason why half of my dad's side of the family doesn't speak to us. My twin and I were always told it was that they just weren't that close and also had some mental health issues but we learned the truth after my dad passed on, because no one on his side of the family came to the funeral; they opted to have their own.
It turns out that my parents had trouble conceiving. This I knew. I also know me and my twin are IVF babies and that we were born very premature. I'm talking one-pound baby premature. Shortly after, my mom developed breast cancer. What I didn't know was that during this time my dad was also taking care of his sick mother (my paternal grandmother) as well as looking after his sick wife and two newborn preemies.
He ended up asking his brother to help look after their mother since he'd been the one doing it so he could care for his family more. Well, soon after my dad spent more time with us instead of his mom, she took a turn for the worse and passed. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, my father's brother blamed him for “abandoning” the family and blamed my twin and me for the death of our grandmother.
Because if we weren't born, my mother wouldn't have gotten estrogen-positive breast cancer and also, they were all very Catholic and IVF was a sin. I never met my grandmother. I'm named for her. But apparently an entire side of the family thinks it's mine and my sister's fault that she's dead.
15. Roaches for Everyone!
How many cockroaches there are in Australia. The one that climbed my foot as I sat in the evening gaming freaked me out.
16. Fake Grandpa
I found out last year that my grandfather wasn’t my biological grandfather—I’m 35. He fought in WWII and did all of these heroic and brave things. I always loved knowing that I shared my genetics with him—except now I know I don’t. Apparently, he met my grandmother and father after the war in Germany (my grandmother is Polish) and he brought them to America.
My dad was only three at the time. Everyone in my family apparently kept this from me because they knew how much I looked up to him. And sadly, both my grandparents are long gone so I can’t even ask them questions about what really happened. I kind of wish I didn’t know; ignorance is bliss sometimes.
17. Slasher Flick IRL
When I was around 10 years old, I was sitting on the couch and my older sister came towards me with a knife and put a hole in the cushion about a foot from my leg. She pulled the knife out and immediately told me not to tell dad. I was young and naive, and my sister had a kind of twisted sense of humor, so I really didn't know what to think.
It definitely did some damage now that I look back on it. Years later, my sister told me a disturbing secret that she’d been holding onto for years. She had planned to come at me with the knife but chickened out at the last moment. At this point, I had all but moved on from the incident, but this brought it all back and then some.
18. Culling the Herd
My friend breeds rabbits and when she really can’t find someone to buy her baby rabbits, she gives them to a man who eats them. Also, when one rabbit is “overly inbred” she ends them by smacking them hard onto the concrete floor and standing on them if they’re not dead yet. I wish she hadn’t told me.
19. It’s Not You, It’s Me
That I was the jerk in my relationships. Turns out I've become the person I was afraid of becoming my entire life, my dad. A jealous dude with anger management issues who never sees his own faults. To be fair though, I've come a long way since my best friend straight up told me what I've become and that if I stayed that way, she was going to stop being friends with me.
I guess I don't regret finding out because it helped me get my act together. However, the fact that you were the jerk and you were the reason some of your friends cut ties with you is a pretty hard pill to swallow. Especially knowing that you'll never get to make it up to some of them because it's been years, and why should they care at this point.
20. Partying with Teddy
I found out that Ted Bundy might have partied multiple times on my property. We found an old journal of a hippie girl that used to live in my house and she mentioned a "Teddy B" multiple times. I know that some of his victims were found in the vicinity of my area too—what if he did a crime on my property or found one of his victims at a party on my property? Ugh.
21. Just Quirky
I was diagnosed with anxiety, ADHD, and a tendency for manic episodes when I was like four or five, but my mom didn't believe in psychiatry or medicine, and my dad thought I was "quirky" and didn't want me to change, so they both agreed to not give me any medical attention. Now I'm 21, incredibly anxious, have had multiple eating disorders, and have mild depression.
Also, my childhood life at school and making friends was incredibly hard, and finding out now that most of my social trauma could've been avoided but wasn't makes me so angry.
22. No More Jokes
One of my teachers in high school had this strange habit of leaving the classroom every so often and return after a period, sometimes as long as 40 minutes. Older students and graduates knew about it, so he had been doing it for a few years at least. People joked about it all the time, on a couple of occasions one person or another would follow him around.
One person said he went to the cafe and got a slice of pizza, ate it and came back. One person said he went to one of the offices and came out after a bit. One person said he touched random doors while he walked around, doing nothing and eventually coming back. I joined in the jokes, it seemed harmless and as far as teachers went, he was knowledgeable and cared about his subject matter, which made him better than half our school at least.
However, one of my parents was also a teacher at the school and one day, when I randomly brought it up for some reason, my Dad told me why the history teacher had this bizarre habit. Several years before, both his parents had gotten very sick within months of each other. For most of that school year, he would regularly go down to the main office throughout the day to call the hospital or his parents’ house.
They would both pass away that year, but even years later, the habit remained. I told a couple of my good friends about it. We refrained from the jokes from then on, but I couldn't bring myself to tell more people. There was one time the teacher left but declared to the class he was going to fill his water bottle, obviously defensive—somehow, the jokes had got back to him.
I haven't thought about this in years. At the time, I was already shocked and ashamed when I found out, but now, some four or five years later and a year after my Dad passed away from heart problems, it’s that much more heartbreaking to me. Every day for two months, I drove my brothers and I to the palliative care hospital.
When it was finally over, I suddenly didn't know what to do with myself. It’s strange, thinking back and his behavior suddenly makes sense to me.
23. Brothers Never Known
I always knew that my parents had some kind of "family secret." Various mutterings amended streams of conscious, etc. in my childhood. From the sound of it, I was under the impression that I had an older sibling. I am the oldest sibling of four, so I was fixated on the few little details, but as I grew older, I assumed it was a very morbid kind of imaginary friend delusion I had.
When I was in high school, I was talking to my mother when she slipped, saying something about her early relationship with my dad. I pushed her on it and found out that she had stayed with my dad after they had a child at age 15. She went on to tell me that I’d had not one, but three older siblings, and that were lost in some kind of accident.
My mom broke down. I didn't push for details and never have. That day, I went from being the oldest of four to the middle of seven. Probably my frame of reference for the concept of "trauma." Every obsession, every worry, and character flaw of my teenage self at that time burned into my character like scars.
24. Tooth Screwdriver
How horrible the procedure for taking out your wisdom teeth is. I have to take them all out so two weeks ago I went to the dentist in Europe. Here they don’t use laughing gas but just local anesthesia. I thought that they would take a scalpel, cut away till my tooth came out, and then sew it up. Little did I know that they used almost a screwdriver to bend it out and afterward a plier to bend it out even further.
The dentist just leaned in my mouth with what seemed the strength of a million suns and cracked out my tooth while I was lying on the bench sweating profusely out of fear. I still have to take out two more on my left side...
25. Keeping Your Mouth Shut
My boyfriend's parents just lost their house. I told my mom what he had told me and she didn't think the story lined up, so she went all Sherlock Holmes and started looking up his parent's names in our county's public records. She got more than she bargained for because she found a locked file labeled "ADOPTION" with my boyfriend and one of his brother's names listed on it.
None of his other three siblings were on there—they are all way younger. He's never mentioned being adopted though, and is well past the age where you would tell a kid something like that—he's in his mid-20s. His family has already had a really bad few months and I don't want to cause any more drama by asking about it.
He has the same last name as his "dad.” He was in the military and claims his "dad" is on his original birth certificate so, I'm really confused. I don't think his parents were married yet when he and his brother were born because his dad was still in the military and away from home a lot. The papers weren't even filed until he was almost 10 years old.
But a biological father wouldn't have to adopt his own kids, even if they weren't married yet, right? I regret knowing because now I'm insanely curious and I can't say anything because this has that feel of “your darkest family secret” to it and I don't want to start anything.
26. Forcing a Smile
That people like me better when I'm happy. I've developed a happy-act persona to improve my life, and my life HAS improved, but I'm a walking, talking act almost 24/7. And whenever I get TOO close to anyone and very negative, very not-fun real me reveals himself, people run the other direction.
27. Early Engagement
Way back when my husband and I were dating, I snuck a peek at his order history near my birthday and ruined my present. It was a beautiful engagement ring, exactly what I was hoping for. I was working multiple jobs, going to school full-time, and a general PMS monster during that time. I looked because my birthday present was “late,” and I assumed that he forgot.
Nope. I never told him I knew that I knew he was planning on proposing and I don’t ever plan to. Lack of sleep, stress and hormones may have made me quite the jerk around that time, but he saw me through that and I’m eternally grateful.
28. Poverty Sucks
When I was very young (under 10), my grandmother would take us to buy toys. We'd pick them out and she'd pay for them as well as coats and clothes. I’d never get these items because we'd walk out of the store and put them in a donation bin. I grew up thinking this was normal. She lost her battle with breast cancer when I was eight and I didn't understand why we stopped donating that way.
Soon after, we were at a grocery store two days before Thanksgiving, buying food to make for 10 or 15 people. We had two carts full of food. Down the aisle, my siblings and I saw a kid our age in shorts and a t-shirt. She seemed happy but it was very cold that day. Her parents were grabbing bologna from the cooler and had a loaf of bread in their carrying basket.
We all sort of processed it and moved on. Out in the parking lot, we noticed the family again. The girl still in shorts and a t-shirt. Their car would start. My dad helped jump their car. When they left, we all sort of sat in the car, silent. My sister asked my parents what me and my siblings were all thinking. They explained for the first time what was going on.
The discussion progressed into explaining why we were buying toys and clothes with our grandma. I can safely say that learning about poverty changed our lives forever. I can't explain how much our world turned upside down that day. My sister was outraged. I was just incredibly sad. Only kids can have that kind of earnest reaction, I think.
We got back to our town and started a food drive and collected a large amount of food to send to churches in the area of my grandparents' home. We collected presents for kids after that for Christmas. Did a book drive in the spring. The next Thanksgiving, we did another food drive that really blew up and the local news did a story on our project. Kids doing what we did tends to get people's attention.
Fast forward a few years. We've been doing the same drives every year and after being asked what our organization was called about a thousand times, we made a name. Things got more real. Oprah had us on her show. The POTUS gave my sister a service award—she's the oldest and most well-spoken, so she's always been the leader.
As we aged, we applied for grants and award money. A canned food drive is helpful but it was obvious that we weren't solving the problem in the slightest. We started to understand that cycle of poverty. We moved towards promoting education, creating scholarships, educational summer camps, and in-class science experiments that the school district couldn't afford.
Fast forward to young adulthood. We regularly spend time getting to know the people we help. People in the area we target have been lied to about help for generations. As an example, companies would come in and create jobs, screw people over, unions come in, and the company leaves. This has happened four times in my lifetime.
If you don't get to know these people and show your intent, they reject you and your help. They also have a lot of pride and unless you're on their side of the fight, you're just treating them like a charity case. This has us in what is generously called the homes of people in extreme poverty. I've seen things that people probably didn't know happened in this country.
Reusing diapers. Kids not knowing what a toothbrush is. Kids being as excited as I was for my Nintendo but they're getting soap and shampoo. Kids eating Doritos and Mountain Dew every meal, if they're lucky because that's what their parents could afford. Kids getting to school via a 1.5-hour bus ride. Young people digging coal out of a hill near their house and throwing it in their trunk so that they can burn it in their trailer for warmth—a 14-year-old was doing that to keep his nine-year-old sister warm. People living in caves. I won't even get into what substance use has done to the area.
That stuff is happening just a two-hour drive from two major cities in the US. When the country talks about poverty, it's like they forgot these people. It's like they don't exist. That messed me up. I now have a guilt complex. This phone I'm typing on—I probably should have gotten a cheap one and helped someone with the extra money.
That awesome present my wife got me for Christmas? I'm lucky to have a stable family and enough money to afford such a gift. I'm not trying to paint myself as some sort of saint. I think a vast majority of people would have the same complex if they grew up the way I did. Even the praise I receive makes me feel guilty because I feel like I'm just a product of my upbringing.
I don't ever get to let myself feel good because I feel like feeling good is just me being selfish. If you're familiar with ethics, it's hard to argue against the argument of psychological egoism—that everything I do is inherently selfish, even when it's for other people. It sometimes cripples me, and I've fought severe depression for years because of it.
I have a kid now and it's widely accepted that my kid and my sibling’s kids will eventually be doing volunteer work for our organization when they’re old enough. That they should see what we've seen. But honestly, I can't decide if they should or not. A healthy dose of reality is great, but sometimes I wonder if I got too much of a dose of it.
We were taught that giving and helping is just a thing you do. Like eating or working. I don't regret what we've done or seen at all. I just wish I could live without the guilt of feeling like I'm a bad person if I want for things beyond what someone born into the cycle of poverty has the means to get or have.
29. Born Where You’re Born
The quality of life in India is horrible when compared to the majority of the other countries. It makes survival harder in this country knowing that I could’ve lived a better life had I not been born here.
30. The Birthday Blues
That one of my best friends is having a birthday party this weekend and I'm not invited. It's a large milestone birthday and her husband planned this huge event with lots of people. She told me he would send me the info and he never did. He has all of my contact info as we have messaged and emailed in the past. She even verified my info for him.
I am disappointed, but I get it. We live very different lives but that has never been an issue before. I've already made other plans for the day so even if I get a pity invite, I won't go.
31. Probably Better to Know
My dad refused to be at my 15th birthday because my black boyfriend was there. My family is white and my dad is xenophobic—something I wasn't aware till I was older. For years I thought he was giving the house to me and my friends. I came to find out that he didn't want to share his home with a black man. I was appalled because my boyfriend was a sweet guy with the same interests and would never hurt a fly.
Because he was black, none of that mattered. Put a big wedge between me and my dad.
32. Get That Orchestra Out of Here!
"The Long and Winding Road" by the Beatles was always my favorite song. I just loved the instrumentals and thought the Beatles were just so awesome and versatile for producing a heavily orchestrated song and wondered how a person could write such an amazing song. Then I found out that all that orchestra was not supposed to be in the song.
It was in fact, added without Paul's consent. Paul HATED how the song turned out. And to make matters even worse, this contributed to the break-up of the Beatles. And as if none of THIS was bad enough, the person who added the orchestra, Phil Spector, was a complete psycho who ended an actress’s life because she rejected a one-night stand with him.
I wish I'd never found any of this stuff out.
33. Heisting for the Family
When I was around 17 my Nona told me how my father stole $30 000. To explain: My oldest brother has had severe ADHD all his life—he's 24 now. When he was younger, my mother applied for this insurance thing from the government. My brother was too young at the time to know that he was about to get so much money, and it was all put into a special savings account for him for when he was older.
Well, when they got the money, my father took it out of his savings, bought a truck, and then used the rest to pay the bills. My mother was obviously really upset at him, but he said that he would put the money back when he had it. Fast forward to today, my brother lives in the basement. He works at a fast-food restaurant and has to pay rent.
When I found out I told my brother right away because he's always wanted to go to college like me and my other brother, but my father would always say, "We don't have the money." I feel so bad, and he has such potential at being a voice actor. My brother forgave my father because he knew that he had to pay the bills—but for a long time he was pretty sad that he could have gone to college.
34. The 2012 Jitters
When I was in elementary school my dad told me that the world was supposedly going to end in 2012 and this messed me up as a kid. It gave me so much anxiety thinking about the world ending, I ended up going to school and told some of the other kids and most of that anxiety didn’t leave me until after 2012.
35. Broken System
People having to travel to foreign countries to receive palliative care because American health insurance won’t cover the treatments and is too expensive out of pocket. Happened to someone I knew and I’ve never been so disgusted in my life.
36. More Like Badwill, Am I Right?
Goodwill has an online auction store, just like a terrible eBay. I used to think I could maybe get certain things at Goodwill if I just tried hard enough, only to find out the stuff I am actually after goes to their stupid online store for WAY more than thrift store prices. I also wish I hadn't found out about book resellers due to the same reason.
I have to be there every single day as the book cart comes out or else some piece of dirt with a barcode scanner on their phone will stand in your way to scan every book so they can resell it themselves and leave only things with zero value on the shelves.
37. Too Cute to be Mad At
My dog, who is a lab and shepherd mix, loves to carry things. One time, I had his leash and said to him "it's mine!" then held it up towards my chest. He immediately jumped on me and I gave him the leash to carry a few feet to home. I honestly wish I hadn't known or taught him that because whenever I take him for a walk to the local Tim's, he'll always jump me when we leave because he wants to carry the bag with my sandwich in it or the box of Timbits or anything he can fit in his mouth easily.
It's always cute, but the real issue is he doesn't carry it all the way home often and there have been multiple occasions where he drops it and it either lands somewhere unpleasant like in mud or a puddle or he drops it then steps on it. There was one time where he was carrying my Timbits and something was in his ear. Naturally, he shook his head but, in the process, opened the box and Timbits shot everywhere. Then he just walked it off as if nothing happened.
Dogs are the best.
38. Mo Money, Mo Jealousy
How much my friend/co-worker makes. Basically, she's in a skilled position and I'm not, so I'm not surprised that she makes significantly more than me, but I was under the impression it was 50-100% more than me. Today, someone dropped about how much her position makes, I thought it was a joke and asked her.
She said that was about correct, which comes out to about triple what I make. I'm not mad at her, just bitter about what my worth is to the company. I know that's capitalism for you, but it's still a hard pill to swallow.
39. Never Swimming Again
Naegleria fowleri, or the brain-eating amoeba. Used to really just be a problem down south but now people are dying of it as far north as Minnesota in the summer months. No way to prevent it other than trying not to get water up your nose while swimming in a lake. Once you get it, you come down with a headache and are dead within two weeks.
The fatality rate is 95% and it is almost impossible to diagnose in time. It has made me basically shy away completely from swimming in lakes now. I still snorkel or scuba in lakes because the mask protects any water from getting in my nose.
40. What Does It All Mean, Man?
I’m gonna get pretty nihilistic here, so yeah. If you don't want to know things that can pretty easily cause existential crises in people, don't read this. Free will and the concept of you/me, is probably completely illusionary and not at all real. At the atomic and subatomic level, our brains are completely ordinary. There is nothing particularly special about the physics of the universe in our brains.
They are just hunks of universe stuff, like everything else. All the fields, particles, atoms, and molecules behave exactly as they should, which is to say, completely predictably. Your synapses and nerves do as they are told by outside stimuli, not what you tell them. We are just another part of the big explosion of stuff that is the universe.
Just more matter and energy interacting in predicable ways. Slightly more complex structures of matter and energy than most anything else we've seen, sure, but nothing fundamentally different. Yeah, I wish I never learned that. Ignorance definitely can be bliss.
41. The Harsh Truth
My mother was in a fatal car accident when I was three. I found out from a newspaper article years later that it was her fault. She wasn’t paying attention and crossed the yellow line and ended both her life and that of the person in the other car.
42. Good Lord, Mom
I wish I’d never found out about my mom's love for adult romance novels. We share the same Amazon account, so I can see what she's reading in Kindle. She always says her favorite genre is "Biblical fiction," but she'll never say what book she's reading—she just avoids the question. When we were kids, she always read in her room or the book had a fabric cover on it, she always kept it secret.
But on her Kindle, it’s only romance books. Almost every single book has a shirtless guy on the front. Think that’s not so bad? Well, check out these titles: "Taming the Virgin," "Riding Her," "The Fedsex Man." The most recent one I've seen has been "Wrapped in my Wife." And here I was saying my mom was such a spiritual person that read her bible every day—but no!
All that she has read for the past 45 years is books about shirtless men and threesomes.
Sources: Reddit, ,
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