There’s only one thing worse than being caught red-handed: being caught red-handed by your mom. It can cause a lot of awkward feelings and avoided eye contact over the next few family dinners, especially if you got caught doing something less-than-wholesome. These Redditors were all caught red-handed by their moms. Their stories are just as hilarious as they are tragic. We’ve all been there, so let’s all laugh through the pain together. Here are 50 stories of people caught red-handed by their moms.
1. Lil Robin Hood
I was caught taking my parents’ money that they’d set aside for our family vacations. In a matter of months of taking $20 or $40 every few weeks my best friend and I, at the time, took over $1,000 before they found out. But it wasn’t totally evil. My friend had, shall we say, irresponsible parents and I even used some of the money to buy groceries for their house.
My friend’s mother didn’t question where we got the money from and in fact, picked us up from the store when we got too many groceries to carry home on our bikes. My parents were not happy.
2. DIY Scratching Post
I was in my room after I showered and took off my towel. Me standing there naked found that my nuts were a bit itchy. How might I fix this problem? I looked to the ground and found a Lego. I was doing what I intended to do when all of a sudden my mom bursts in and stands staring at me. She just said, "Okay" and walked out.
Wikimedia Commons, Arto Alanenpää
3. Junior Mythbuster
I went on a loop-de-loop roller coaster when I was maybe 12. Decided to test a theory during that loop. I hocked a giant loogie downwards from the top of the loop to see if it'd meet me at the bottom (it didn't). At the end of the ride, my mom started yelling at me because that loogie smacked her right in the face—she was right behind my seat. That's my favorite “how I got grounded” story.
4. The Secret Hole
Between the ages of 6 and 10, I constantly peed in the hole I kicked in the fence in the backyard. We lived in a really densely populated neighborhood, too. No matter how many times she would go crazy when she caught me, there I was a day later peeing in the backyard with my Asian neighbors banging on their windows. They really wanted to stop me. They couldn't stop me…nobody could.
5. Can’t Miss TV!
When I was about six, I was watching an episode of Pokémon. I had to pee but didn't want to miss anything, so I peed in a trash can. I thought that was super clever at the time but as soon as my mom got home she could smell it. 21 years later she still remembers it and brings it up whenever she sees fit. I’m full of regret.
6. Can’t Deal
I called my sister’s phone to see if she had any pot. My mom answered. Here’s the problem. She sounds exactly like my sister. So, I ended up asking my mom if she had any pot to sell me. My mom’s exact words were, "Why in God’s name are you smoking pot?" Followed by her yelling at my sister, "Why in God’s name are you selling pot?"
I hung up real quick and ignored calls from my sister’s phone until my sister left me a voicemail laughing saying it was safe to answer the phone.
7. The Brown Pickle
I have a seriously distinct memory of this, despite being so young, so bear with me. I’d say I was around maybe 3-4 years old. Someone left a poo in the toilet and I remember thinking it looked distinctly pickle-shaped, so in my young child's mind I thought, “Hey! A pickle!” And went to grab it out of the toilet. I realized it wasn’t a pickle when it squished between my fingers and my mom saw the excrement on my hands.
She never brought it up to me when I was older.
8. Professional BM
Oh my god. I was beginning to become interested in women and I wrote down a list of jobs that I wanted to have when I was older. I thought the perfect job would be a professional chest massager. That was the top of my list. My parents found it and just didn't say a word. I've not heard them say anything about it ever again.
9. What’s the Difference?
When I was seven years old, I saw thongs at Victoria’s Secret. I wanted one but my mom was like, “No, you can’t get one, they are for adults.” That same day I was in my room and got a pair of my underwear and cut them so they would look like a thong. I put them on and started modelling them in front of the mirror.
My mom opened the door and saw what I was doing. She just looked at me shook her head and walked out.
10. That Chalky Feeling
So, when I was really little, maybe around five, I used to take pieces of chalk and stick them in my butt crack. After a while, the chalk would start to sting, and for some reason, I liked it. One day, I lodged a good three pieces in between my cheeks and went about my daily activities. At some point while playing, I broke a vase.
Since my dad wasn't home, my mom decided to give me a little spanking. She pulled down my pants, bent me over her knee, gave me a tender wallop on the rear. I braced for the second impact, but it never came. I looked around to see my mom staring at the ground, where two of my butt chalks had landed. Eventually, I got up and ran to my room, as my mom continued to sit motionless for a number of minutes.
I never head anything about it after that, but I stopped the strange practice.
11. The Proof is in the Bologna
I was 17 and on house detainment, and hated not being able to go out and party with my friends. One depressing night, I had a friend sneak a fifth of gin to me in my bedroom, while my mom was in the living room watching TV. I mixed the gin with Kool-Aid, but halfway through, I didn't think I was drunk, so I made myself take eight straight chugs of the bottle which finished it off. Blacked out.
My mom woke me up in the morning. I found that I was sitting upright against the head of my bed, fully clothed minus jeans, with a half-eaten bologna sandwich in one hand. The bread had hardened overnight and it kind of stuck to my hand. The entire bed severely reeked of cucumber-melon lotion. I tried to play it off like, "Oh, hey, good morning!" No response.
12. The Worst Kind of Camp
Hmm, playing with Lego as a kid, my brother and I used to build vast armies of Lego warriors, fighting machines, fighters, tanks, etc. Everything was a battle, with lasers, explosives, etc. Well, one day, little young me decides that there has to be a better way. I think, why go to the trouble of having my troop fight the opposing force, why not just round them all up and dispose of them in some organized fashion?
So, I took one of those little Lego platforms and built a...facility on it. It had a wall around it, some area where newly arriving enemy squadron would be destroyed, and then their bodies hauled off to be vaporized with lasers. It even had a little booth where the tiny Lego guy operating the machinery could stand.
As I was building it, for some reason my older brother thought it was a bad idea. I proudly said I was going to show it to our mom, and he really thought that was a bad idea. I ran out the door anyway. I found her and proudly explained the workings of my new creation. She was... shall we say, less than pleased. Once she saw what it was, she immediately yelled at me, grounded me, and smashed the creation into 100 pieces.
13. No Paper Today
I ran away from home when I was 14-ish. But, I was a paperboy at the time and ditched my satchel full of newspapers in the woods. When I didn't come home, folks called the cops. A search turned up my bag in the woods, and it was assumed that I had been kidnapped. It was ugly, but I made it so much worse when I only went home a couple of days later.
It was a fiasco in the house. There was a weird combination of emotions at home for quite some time after that. Probably the worst thing I have done to anyone in my entire life. I didn’t realize it then, but I realize it now. Oh yeah… I now have kids, so I know EXACTLY how they felt about it. Karma really is circular.
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14. The Sick Sevens
The store called my mom once and said I'd been in there buying smut. I was about seven years old. A very awkward conversation ensued. This one time she walked in on me watching a movie. That's all right because it was The Matrix, but on the floor was a t-shirt covered in leftovers from another movie altogether.
She unfolded the sticky t-shirt, realized immediately, sighed, and walked off with it to throw it in the laundry basket. I awkwardly followed her, my brain long lost in some other dimension. She once asked me what the heck I was doing locked in my room for four hours straight, only to turn around and see a big pile of dirty mags, smut vids, and assorted other smut lying in a big pile under the last drawer of my desk, which I had forgotten to put back in place.
She walked out. Nothing serious, all in all.
15. Getting Closer to the Pokémon
I told my mom I was going into the woods to "build a fort." I went into the woods but brought my Game Boy, which I was grounded from, and a big supply of batteries. I played Pokémon out there for several hours next to a tree until my mom came out into the woods and found me. Needless to say, there was big trouble for me.
16. Anything for Pizza
When I was about 12, my friend and I (both of us boys) had a routine of picking up guys on the internet. Basically, we'd go into a chat room claiming to be a cute, perky 19-year-old and find a local guy in our area. We'd send them a picture of "us" that we'd pull from HotOrNot and talk super seductively with them.
Eventually, we'd give him our number and we'd talk on the phone with him and suggest he come over, and we'd ask him to pick up a pizza or something. When he'd arrive, we'd have one of us standing on the balcony with water balloons (usually filled with something besides water) and the other one of us would answer the door.
The guy answering the door would pull it open, grab the pizza, and slam it shut. Meanwhile, while the guy stood there dumbfounded realizing he'd just gotten conned out of a pizza by some kid, he'd start getting pelted with all kinds of junk. In retrospect, this was pretty mean to them. This usually worked fine until one occasion when the guy apparently didn't appreciate getting mayonnaise dumped on his car and actually called my friend's parents the next day. Using the house phone may not have been the best idea, but we really didn't have any other options back then.
His reaction was legendary. I remember hearing my friend's dad on the phone screaming, "You came over to try to sleep with my pre-pubescent son!? What kind of sicko are you!?" Anyway, while he was ticked as anything at the creep, he did get furious at us too and told my parents. I wasn't allowed to hang out with that friend for like a year after that.
In retrospect, those guys must've been pretty freaking desperate to believe what we were saying. I mean, we were like 12.
17. Um… It’s a Prank?
When I was pretty young, I was really into art. So much so that I took art classes outside of school. I went to this one class with a woman who kept a giant library of reference materials (magazines, books, etc...) She allowed us to use them however we liked, including taking them home to do further work with.
One time I was browsing through the collection and found a Playgirl magazine. In my 16-year-old head, I thought it would be hilarious to take it home and then at a later date stick it unknowingly into a friend's dresser drawer or something, then pull it out in front of all our friends and say, "What the heck is this?!"
Well, it never got that far because my mom found it first. That was awkward.
18. The Dog Barber
I was probably five when this happened. I was wandering around my house looking for fun when I saw my dad shaving his beard with a razor. I got a crazy idea! When my dad was done with shaving, I grabbed the shaver off the counter and ran outside to my pet dog. I started shaving my dog, and when I was halfway through my mom spotted me through the kitchen window.
19. World’s Worst Balloon
I heard the funniest story from my friend's mom. Apparently, she always loved to get her mom's purse and empty the content and play with whatever was in there—her interest was mostly her mom's lipstick and makeup, like every other little girl. Once when they had just come back from a family trip, she opens the purse and finds a condom.
She has no idea what it is. She opens it and thinks its a balloon and starts blowing it. Mom comes to the room, condom in her mouth trying to blow it up, and she turns around and asks her mom, “Why is the balloon so oily?” Her mom snatches the condom off her hands and gets super angry. She gives her a timeout and forbids her from ever touching her purse again.
She said it was not until she was in her 20s that she remembered the memory and realized what that balloon was.
20. Your Collection Stinks
I was in high school going through an out-patient rehabilitation program that was court-ordered from a weed possession charge. On the last day of rehab, I knew that I was going to be tested. I also knew that I would fail miserably. Being the cunning 15-year old I was, I decided to put some clean pee in a Visine bottle and spray it into the cup at the urinal.
Where did I get the clean pee from? From my eight-year-old little brother, of course. I told him that it was for a science project and that he had to pee in this little eyedropper. Confused and somewhat traumatized, my brother complied. I forgot about it until months later. That’s when my brother, upset and crying, spilled the beans to my mom.
My mom, a typical ignorant Asian lady, failed to realize the connection and thought I was some freak collecting pee samples.
21. Potions Master
When I was about seven or eight I accidentally left the lid off of our dog food outside. It ended up raining that night. A couple of days later, it was infested with maggots. I didn't know how to get rid of bugs, so products I deemed as "harsh" or "dangerous" went into the dog food maggot soup. They had doubled by the next day.
So, I figured I'll burn them out. Poured some fuel for our weed whacker in and lit it up. The first initial flame was pretty impressive in size. But it scared me, so I grabbed our hose and sprayed it down. Within a week it was bubbling on its own. Hanging outside plants close to it started to die. I eventually tried to move it. But it was about to get so much worse.
My mom came out saw me trying to move it and smelled the terrible concoction. She decided to call the fire department. I don’t know if they misunderstood or thought it was currently on fire, but they sent two fire trucks, four patrol cars, and guys in full bodysuits. They shut down our whole block for hours.
First, they thought we were trying to build a meth lab. Then an explosive or something. I broke down and confessed everything to one of the officers. Thinking for sure I was going to the big house, I apologized to my mom, hugged my dog, and gave her my favorite toy. Instead, I got a firm talking to by several adults and I guess they had to take my toxic poison mixture in the middle of nowhere and bury it.
I was in trouble for so long. But, it became a funny story to tell!
22. Scatter!
My mom worked late nights closing at a seafood restaurant and my dad worked long days as a sheet metal mechanic. For a few days a week, it was dad’s duty to feed my brother and me dinner and put us to bed. I was about six and he was about three. One night, dad was exhausted and fell asleep on the couch before dinner.
He was a deep sleeper. My brother and I raided the kitchen and basically destroyed about a week’s worth of groceries. Flour and broken eggs all over the floor, bread with peanut butter stuffed in the toaster, melted popsicles and milk everywhere. We scattered food and liquids all over. Everything was smeared in some kind of goo. We heard mom get home and scattered.
I think we pretended to be asleep in bed. My dad got screamed at then we got punished next
23. Just a Little Anarchy
I was about 11 and my best friend was about 12. He had downloaded The Anarchist Cookbook, as you do, and we decided to make some napalm is his father’s wooden shed. We told his mom we were going outside to "mess around"—what we used to call playing. We went into his dad’s shed and proceeded to mix Styrofoam with petrol.
There was a hole in the container we were mixing it in so the petrol began to spill all over the workbench, which was about six feet long. I turned to my friend impatiently holding a lighter and said, "Hey Eoin, do you think this is flammable?" after which I proceeded to light the petrol, which was now dosed all over the workbench.
Of course, the whole bench went up with flames, six feet wide and six feet tall. Eoin then tried to put it out with a rag by batting the flames, but the rag got even more covered in petrol which thus caught fire, too. I was barely able to breathe I was laughing so hard. He ran outside and turned on the tap which was connected to the hose.
But the tap was only trickling water, so he told me to turn it up while he ran back inside to put the fire out. I turned it the wrong way by accident, after which he screamed, "The other way!". I did, and we finally managed to put the fire out. The workbench was completely black and his dad somehow never noticed.
24. The Faulty Belt Strikes Again
So, I was around 14 years old. I had just discovered dirty content on the internet and was home alone. Thing is, the only computer we had in the house was in the living room, and the living room was right in your face as soon as you would enter the house from the main entrance. It was a challenge I was willing to take up.
So, I was doing my stuff when I heard the key enter in the lock outside the door. I did not have time to pull my pants all the way back up. My whole family entered the room to see me staring at nothing else other than the Windows home screen. In a complete panic, I stood up and my pants almost fell right off.
I grabbed them right in time for my mom to ask me, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" In a panic, I just brushed it off and said, "THESE PANTS ARE WAY TOO BIG I THINK I NEED NEW BELTS!" A few days later I was shopping with my mom for new belts. I kept telling myself they bought my story, but now that I'm older...I just know they knew and it haunts me to this day.
25. What Was It That Curiosity Did to the Cat Again?
My mom once caught me trying to "open" an aerosol can. I had a can of that spray-on hair color from Halloween and I wanted to know what was inside. What was making it rattle and what did the inside of the can look like? First, I was trying to crush it with a vice grip. Then I moved on to smashing it with a hammer. She opened my door to see what the noise was.
Obviously, she flipped out. It wasn't the only time trying to take things apart almost ended my life.
26. It’s Math
I was 14 at the time, and my friend and I were on the house phone talking to this 27-year-old guy. He was a friend of one of our boy classmates at the time. She and I were definitely a little bit giddy because we'd never talked to a guy that old. All of a sudden, my mother gets on the line and realizes what's going on. She asks us why we would be talking to a guy that old. All we could say is that we thought if we added our ages together (14+14), we were technically 28.
27. Why Is It Always Dare?
One day I was at home, thinking I had the house to myself for the weekend. I decided it would be really cool to poop with the door open. I could mess with the neighbors, and I could have so many people over and party all Saturday night and all that good stuff. Well, Saturday night rolls around, about 60 people are in my house.
The ratio was, of course, around two girls to every guy. I take all credit for this. Well, truth or dare came up and because I was the host I had to go first. Well, the girl who first dared me decided it would be funny for me to be sitting naked. Thankfully I was actually skinny back then and have always been lucky enough to have an above-average piece.
So I did it. I stayed naked until my next turn. Then the freaking jerk guy who got to choose my dare said I had to poop in a bag and light it on fire on someone's doorstep. Well, the girls decided that I had to do it while naked. So, I chugged my beer, took two more good shots, and went to go find a paper bag.
I came bag with the bag of poop, after showering really quickly. They picked a house out for me, and I walked up bare freaking naked. Lit the bag, and turned to run. Then all of a sudden a pair of headlights were shining on me. It was my parents, who had come back early because my neighbors called them and told them about the party.
On top of that, I lit the bag on the porch of the house my little sister was staying at…
28. Cake Time
Taking money. It wasn't much but my "friends" convinced me that nobody would notice because it was such a small amount, so my idiot 9-year-old self agreed. My mom found out and it was the only time, in my over 20 years of life, that my mom actually scolded me, and by that, I mean she was really angry and most of all disappointed.
I don't lie to my parents, that was the only time I tried to hide. In hindsight, I would probably have told them out of guilt in a few days. Oh wait, I forgot to tell you why my "friends" convinced me to "take" some money. It was because it was one of the girls’ birthdays and she wanted us to buy her a cake.
29. Rocketing Into Trouble
I set off a D-engine model rocket in my room. It hit the ceiling in 0.2 seconds, skidded along the wall leaving a scorch mark, fell in the corner and exploded, igniting a pile of books. After 10 seconds of silence, after I beat out the flames, all the fire alarms in the house went off simultaneously. My mother didn't so much "catch me" as "hear it all from a very great distance away."
30. Rebel Without a Cause
Mom caught me about to drink my pee when I was like four. I don’t know why the heck I wanted to drink it. I peed into my "bathroom cup" that I used to rinse my mouth when brushing my teeth. She also caught me drinking water from the bathroom faucet when something was wrong with our city tap water. There were all these news stations talking about it and warning people not to drink it for a while and I watched them and it made me really want to do it.
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31. Backyard Campers
So, in our neighbor's yard, there was a tree that was right next to the house that also had low hanging branches. We were trying to light a "campfire" under those branches and the fire started to go too high. My mother got the fire out before any serious damage was done, but still.
32. No Clip Zone
When I was a child, starting around six, I would volunteer usher at a classic older theater for concerts, plays, comedy, magic, movies, etc. It was something we all did as a family. Really fun; the patrons got a kick out of the kid in the dress clothes; and I got to see David Copperfield, Zappa, Cats, all kinds of great stuff.
I also got a sense of independence by getting to be off on my own and having some responsibilities. I can't explain this, but early on in doing this, I became obsessed with clipping the bowtie from my usher outfit on things. Books, LPs, the cat; nothing was sacred. It wasn't too long until the bowtie went on my ding-dong.
The pain was excruciating, and what was worse was that I couldn't manage to get that alligator toothed jerk open again. I don't know if it was from the clumsiness of childish hands or being paralyzed by pain, but my only recourse was to call for my mother for assistance. We've obviously never spoken of this since, but my debt to her for 20 hours of labor pales in comparison to this.
33. Angry Birds, Angrier Mom
My mom caught me with eggs. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Angry Birds. So, one day, I brought...What do ya know? A half a dozen eggs to my room. I cracked them in a bowl and played Angry Birds with them. Later, my parents found out. My dog ate the eggs that were all over my room. The worst thing was that we just got a new carpet at the time, so my dog not only ate about half a dozen eggs but ruined the new carpet, too.
34. Pulling a Bart
I was eight and mad at my mom on our family picture day. We had to dress nice but the only clean pair of dress pants I owned had a hole in the knee. Since I am the youngest, I was positioned on my knees in front of everyone for the picture and decided to flip off the camera while pointing out the hole in my pants.
My parents didn’t even notice at all until my mom had them printed and sent to the family for a Christmas card later that year. Soon after, my grandma called asking why I hated the hole in my pants so much. My mom kept it front and center on their mantle until the day she passed on two years ago. Rest in peace, mom.
35. I Need a Priest
I slept in a bunk bed as a kid, and I also slept with a lot of stuffed animals. One time, I put all my stuffed animals’ heads through the bars on the bunk bed, because they were "swinging from vines in a jungle." When my mom walked in and saw my stuffed animals hanging by their necks from my bunk bed, she thought I was some psycho child who was hanging them.
36. A Lesson in Drinking and Driving
A couple of years ago, I made the very regrettable decision to drink and drive. And not just buzzed, but super-smashed. I made it off the highways onto our back road just fine but apparently lost it on the way up the most treacherous dirt road hill there ever was. I ran my car off the side and high centered on the ditch.
I must have passed out. I wake up with the car still running and look at the clock. It is now 4:00 AM, three hours later than I think it should be, my car is a mix of noxious fumes, and I can't get the freaking thing to move an inch. "Okay, I can just walk up the hill to Grandma's house!" I think. It is only 100 yards or so up.
I turned off the engine and then stepped out of the vehicle. Oops, my pants were soaking wet! Oh, no... I peed myself. Swear it's the first and only time I have done that since exiting adolescence. Still, drunk me decided to take off all my clothes and walk the remainder of the way totally naked.
Get to the house and decide to worry about the car in the morning. I figured my grandpa or mom would drive by and get it for me. I was too drunk to even put on more clothes. I crawled onto the top of my bed and passed the frig right on out with all my lady bits on full display. I woke up to my mother bursting into my house yelling, "The cops have been looking for a drunk driver in our wo- Wha, why are you nekkid?!"
"Ummm... it was really hot in here... Did you happen to see my car in the ditch on the way up here?" I asked. "Nope, but your grandpa heard on the scanner a white car was towed this morning. The cops were looking for the driver of that car..." Oh. My family would end me if they knew that I was driving drunk, and they would have every right to. So, I lied.
"I wasn't drinking and driving! I was trying to write a text and dropped my phone, then hit the ditch when I reached for it. I just didn't want to bother you guys so early in the morning. I certainly was not drunk!" My grandpa, being the hero he is, knew the guy that towed the car. $40 bucks, no problem at all.
We go to pick it up, and my grandpa backs it out for me. Makes sure to mention that it sure does smell funky when he gives me the keys. That's when I realize my pee clothes are still in the car. And that Papa just sat in my pee. The car limped home and then never started again. I had seized the motor when I passed out and left it running.
37. The Mouse Boy Strikes
When I was five or six mom said I couldn't have any more cheese so I sneakily took the whole brick without them seeing. I went into the bathroom and my mom walked in on me just biting big chunks out of it like some sort of mouse boy. My brothers don't let me live that down, and they bring it up as often as they possibly can.
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38. A Shiny New Coat
When I was little, about three years old, there were a bunch of neighborhood kids and moms sitting around our yard hanging out. It was summer and we were playing with water, in our bathing suits, etc. Apparently, we were using paintbrushes to paint the sidewalk with water (such things kids did to amuse themselves before the internet).
Anyway, my mom is chatting with our neighbors and all of a sudden there's a uniformed officer coming up the driveway who asks for the mother of the little girl in the blue bathing suit, or whatever identifying clothing I was wearing. He pulls her aside and says, "I just want to let you know that your daughter is, well, painting herself with a paintbrush over there."
Yeah, I was squatting around behind my parents' truck "painting" my crotch with a dirty old paintbrush. The officer was worried I "might get an infection down there" if I kept at it. Luckily, I'm not old enough to remember this, but it was a favorite story of my mom to tell when I was growing up. Of course, it was, right?
39. Lil Dracula
I took some mail which had a credit card number in it. Used that number to get online back in the dial-up days, and then proceeded to…buy a coffin. Needless to say, the casket company called the house confirming delivery. I got pulled out of school. I thought someone had passed. Nope, just got yelled out by mom for being a thief and a criminal. I still don’t know why I didn’t ship it to the neighbors' house!
40. Blame it On the A-A-A-A-A-Algorithm
This wasn't something my mom caught ME doing, but it was still a moment where I couldn't totally look her in the eye. My little brother is 14 years old. A few months ago, his iPod's screen broke, so while he waited for a refurbished replacement to come in, my mom let him borrow hers. A few weeks later, I was talking to her while I was at home and she asked me, "By the way, do you know why this dirty website would pop up in the google search bar on my iPod? I was typing something in and it came up as one of the suggested searches."
Me, not quite putting two and two together yet, said: "It's probably one of the most common searches under the letter P, mom." Her: "But the word I was typing started with an R." At this point, I realized that my brother had been watching smut on my mother's iPod. I was pretty sure my mom suspected it, but she wasn't totally sure.
This is a woman to whom technology is so foreign that she cried the last time I tried to teach her how iTunes works. Although he was really dumb for not clearing the history, I wasn't about to throw him under the bus, so I pulled a, "Gee, mom, I dunno," and whisked away to bed. Haven't told him she knows, though. I don't really feel like being the sister that has to teach him how to safely watch smut in our parent's house.
41. Orange Surprise
I made an orange “drink” when I was four years old. This “drink” consisted of every orange substance I could find in the house: orange juice, orange dish soap, orange floor polish, and orange candy sticks (the ones like paper straws filled with candy powder). I offered it to my dad. As the cup was handed off I looked up at him (he is over 6’ and was a giant to me) and giggled excitedly.
In one motion he lifted the cup to his lips, tossed it back, and drank. One...big...gulp. My giggling turned to sheer horror as I watched my dad cough and then COUGH, so I ran off, probably to find my mom. I don’t remember what happened after that, but it was really, really bad. His throat was so burned he couldn’t talk for two weeks and had to go to the ER.
Years later somehow the story came up and we discussed it for the first time ever. My mom said, “Why the heck would you drink something from a four-year-old child?” That stunned me, I had felt guilty and confused for 15-plus years. Huge relief knowing I wasn’t an evil child, but that it was all my dad’s fault instead.
42. Child Styled
Mum loves to read and one day fell into a dreamy snooze on the couch. I found the shiny red fabric scissors, the ones that are extra sharp. Being a six-year-old little butt, I tiptoed over to mother dearest and asked... "Mum, would you like a haircut?" Being half-asleep mother muttered something that I construed as "Yes." Then choppity-chop-chop I went, cutting off half her hair to a not-so-flattering sideways pixie cut.
Over 20 years later, she still hasn't forgiven me for that. Oh, what things I got up to in my youth!
43. Sorry, God
When I was about 10, it was Christmas and during mass, with my cousin egging me on, I faked putting my dollar bill in the collection plate and instead took some money out of it. It was just a few bucks but my mom saw what I had done. Oh my! I had never seen my mom so angry at me, I thought she was going to blow up.
I'm sure I stopped being her "little boy" right then and there. She made me go talk to the priest who was celebrating mass afterward, explain to him what I'd done, and give him the money. Then I had to go to confession and beg for forgiveness. Not the most fun Christmas of my youth for sure. At least I learned a lesson, I guess.
44. Living by Example
I was out at my super boring aunt's house and was playing outside with the dogs. It was getting dark and I had to poop but didn't want to go inside because the adults might make me stay inside then... So I pooped behind a tree. I would have gotten away with it, but my cousin who also did the same thing wound up confessing and ratted us both out.
My mom laughs about it to this day.
45. Leaf Him, He’ll Be Fine
My parents caught my sister and me covering our crying little brother in leaves after I ran him over with my bicycle by accident. We thought the leaves would soak up the blood. He ended up needing stitches in his face. My brother was a VERY clumsy and unlucky kid, but he's a relatively well-adjusted adult now.
46. Fire Bad
I was about nine years old and had just discovered the wonders of fire. So, of course, I thought it was a great idea to burn just about everything but had to do it in small amounts so I didn't burn the house down. Did I mention, I would do this INSIDE the house? I didn't want my neighbors telling on me!
Well one day, while burning a stack of toothpicks, I received a lesson in physics: glass breaks when it's too hot. I lied to my mom and told her I broke her favorite glass ashtray that she's had for 20 some years by running into the coffee table with the vacuum and it falling to the floor. When I told her the truth about 15 years later—I was 24 when I told her—she promptly tried to ground me.
47. Virtually Rich
I was dirt poor growing up, so asking or even/thinking/about asking for money for something that I wanted was incredibly scary and stressful to me, but I was desperate and determined to get exclusive content from a game that I used to love at the time, so the fear of being told that I couldn't drove me into theft.
I only got about $20 worth until my mother finally caught on, but the kicker was that I accidentally over-drafted her account about $300—it was multiple $3.99 purchases that lead up to $20 in total—so that's how I REALLY knew I was in a mess. I'm an adult now, and thankfully I can afford all the dumb stuff I could ever want on my own. Trust me when I say that the experience definitely changed me as a person.
I've paid back what I had taken from her and we still laugh about it to this day. Sorry, Mom.
48. Lesson: Learned
I grew up in a small town, the kind where everyone knows each other’s face but not so small that everyone knows names. Think like 20,000 people. There was this really fat girl who was in the same class as me, third grade, who was getting picked on. This was the age of "cooties." Anyway, I lead the class in ridiculing her for "cooties" to the point people wouldn't even eat lunch with her.
It got so bad that she was contemplating ending her own life. Not what I wanted. My mom found out that I was the one behind it. Now, my parents are Muslim and always taught me right from wrong, so to say they were disappointed is sugar-coating it. My mom totally whooped my butt right in front of the whole class. I got what I deserved, to be honest.
Since then I have never, ever made fun of someone just for jokes and giggles. Because of that day, I grew up actually defending people like that girl, who one day grew up to be a top nurse. Funny story, went to the ER for cholera after I came back from Pakistan, and guess who looked over me…It was that very same girl I had teased so long ago.
49. It’s a Dominance Thing, I Swear!
So I was in my room bending over to put dirty clothes into the laundry basket when my dog jumps onto my back and starts humping me. I get furious and decide, "Screw this, I'm gonna show him who's the leader of this pack!" So I whip him around and pretend to hump him from behind to freak him out and establish dominance.
Well, about three seconds into this my mom walks into my room asking for my dirty laundry. Of course, what perfect timing. The look on her face was something like horror mixed with sadness as she slowly backed away out of the room. Explaining my dominance theory did not help even a little bit. I’ll never live that one down.
50. Mom’s Wand
My mom caught me playing Dungeons and Dragons this one time. Granted, it was more the fashion in which I was playing the game that made it the worst situation ever. I was a ten-year-old wood elf archmage, wielding the wand that I found tucked under mommy's bed. I think you can guess what that wand actually was.
Sources: Reddit, , ,
