“There are some socks that shouldn't be washed by your mom.”— Becky Albertalli, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda.
We can whine about embarrassing parents about until the cows come home…but what of the embarrassing kids? What happens when the fruit, not the tree, is the source of a family’s shame? And what’s a childhood (or adolescence…) without a few malfunctions to be rubbed in one’s face during the next family dinner? Reddit asked the Internet to share the most embarrassing things that they’ve been caught doing by their parents. If we had to sum up the answers, well, let’s just say some of us should count ourselves lucky that we survived potty training at all… Cringe to these 42 mortifying stories about the more humiliating acts ever caught by parental eyes.
41. Coming Out the Closet…As a Gamer
Maybe it's not humiliating, but I always get reminded of this. Me and my brother were so obsessed with Mortal Kombat 2 when it was first released. We heard of two characters that you could unlock (Smoke and NoobSaibot) and we were trying to unlock them for days, until I managed to find a guide that tells you how to unlock them.
However, when I found the guide, my father was already at home and we weren't allowed to play on the TV when dad is home. Instead, my brother, who's good at tinkering, brought my grandfather's black and white TV that was probably made in the 60s and tried to get our Sega to work on it—after 30 mins of tinkering it worked.
And we hid the TV inside the closet and started trying to unlock them, three minutes in, my father walks into the room and catches us. We get scolded for it. I'm 26 and my brother is 29, and when we're visiting parents my father from time to time enters our room and checks the closet "in case we're hiding a TV there" as a joke.
40. Not Time for a Selfie
When I was about five or six I was at a friend’s house for the weekend and for some reason I got naked and jumped up and down on his parents’ bed. My friend takes this camera which he says has no film in it and takes loads of pictures with the flash pretending it's some weird kind of photo shoot. Seriously, OHGODWHY. Anyway as it turns out the camera DID have film in it and they didn't realize until the dad took it to get developed and got asked some very serious questions by the cops. Yeah. Didn't go to that friend’s house anymore after that.
39. Not to Dump All This on You
This was when I was around eight years old. I went to bed, and I'd always had the habit of going to the toilet in my sleep. Half sleepwalking to the toilet, taking a poop/piss, and moving back to bed with the very vaguest knowledge of what happened the next morning. One night, I did so as usual. I got up, went to the toilet, sat down and started my business.
For some reason, my mother came in after me, and started shaking me. I had no idea why, so I just kept going. I had to poop, ya know? She then started pushing me towards a seat and was encouraging me to dump on the seat. Confused, and half asleep, I did so. What the heck, it's her problem getting feces off the chair.
Turns out I never originally made it to the toilet, instead, I took a dump in the middle of the carpeted hallway. She was actually trying to guide me to the toilet. Not the most dignified moment of my life.
38. Anatomy Academy
I was watching Police Academy when I was about eight. There is a scene at a beach party where there are a few naked breasts on show. My mum walks in to catch me licking the TV screen where the bare breasts were.
37. Too Tied Up
Nothing too crazy, but I was playing around with a dog's choke chain and managed to get my wrists and ankles so wrapped up in it I couldn't get it untangled. I had to yell downstairs for my mom and she had to borrow our neighbors’ bolt cutters...
36. Flipping The Love Birds
I was at my grandmother's wedding when I was six years old. She was getting married for the second time and the church we were in was completely packed. Keep in mind this is a church in rural Alabama, which makes this that much funnier. I was sitting in the front row with my parents and sister, who was 16 at the time.
My sister turns to me and tells me that it is respectful to hold up both of your middle fingers when the bride and groom kiss. So being the loving grandson I am, I find this as a perfect and simple way to show my respect for the new marriage. So I wait, and right when she leans in to kiss the groom, I thrust my arms up in the air in a packed church, flipping off my grandmother and her new husband.
I hear several gasps and old women saying, "Oh my." I look around with this big freaking grin on my face as if I’m doing this great service to humanity. I look at my sister and she is hunched over, with a beet-red face, laughing uncontrollably. My mom finally notices what I'm doing, grabs my arms with the grip of a professional wrestler and pulls them down. She starts cursing at me and asking me what the hell I'm doing.
I tell her what my sister told me, and she gave my sister a death glare that would make most men poop their pants. After the ceremony, she pulled her aside and gave her a few choice words. She then told me what it really meant, and I felt horrible. I was so ashamed and embarrassed. I think about it now and can't help but laugh. My sister was a master troll.
35. What’s Fast Isn’t Always Right
It had recently snowed and my car was covered with ice. In the age of instant gratification that we live in, scraping with a cheap plastic scraper was taking WAY to long. My bright idea? Use a snow shovel for a wider area of attack. I broke my back glass and passenger side window. My stepdad laughed for ages.
34. Parting Gifts
When I was about 7-8 I was extremely afraid of public restrooms and really had to poop at the grocery store. I decided to sit down to relax my stomach until we got home but in doing so, I accidentally pooped. My sister walked into the aisle and asked what I was doing and I said "looking at stuff." On the ride home, my Dad asked if I farted so I said "Uhhh, yep" and everyone thought it was gross. By the time we got home everyone had figured it out and I was really embarrassed.
33. Anything for the Money
When I was around six or seven I thought any type of money was a lot. Of course, when you're a kid you think even one dollar is like you've won the lottery. Well, one day I was at the mall with my mom and aunt, and my aunt thought it might be funny to test this money theory she had. I went off with her to go shopping while my mom did her own shopping.
My evil aunt offered me a crisp one-dollar bill to take off my shirt and pants and run around the mall with a pair of underpants she had bought me on my head screaming "Don't judge me" as I ran. About ten minutes into this, I was captured by the mall cops and they called in my mom to their office. Somehow, she hadn't seen me running around but when she stepped through that door to find her 6/7-year-old son in his underpants with another pair on his head she was completely shocked.
32. Monkey See, Monkey Poo
Alright, I've told this one before but I'm going to have to do it again. When I was about four or five a few of my cousins were over visiting and we were swimming in the pool. I always really looked up to them because they're 8-12 years older than me and of course I wanted to emulate them. So, we're swimming in the pool when my cousin Jonathan decides to rip a massive fart underwater.
Obviously, being the kids we are, this is hilarious and Nathaniel (other cousin) and I try to out-fart Jonathan. Nathaniel farts a few times and we busted a gut laughing and now it's my turn to save face and become "one of the guys." I strain and strain and a few little toots blossom forth but nothing great. The guys are really egging me on now and I start to push harder than ever in an attempt to be cool.
"At last!" I thought, as my sphincter stretches apart for what I'm sure is about to be the most epic fart ever seen by my cousins. It was poop. In the pool. I just remember laughing so hard even though my swimming shorts were housing a log of brown polonium. My cousins were in absolute hysterics. I got out of the pool, still laughing, and proceeded to tell my mother what happened.
She grabbed the garden hose, turned it on full blast, and roared, "If you're gonna behave like an animal then you're gonna be cleaned like an animal!" I was then blasted with 55F water. I'm 22 now and I still haven't lived this down and I swear that this story is told at least once at every family get-together we've ever had since. It's not so embarrassing now because I was so young, but I still cannot believe that I did it.
31. Fly Ball
I was a very naive kid growing up. I liked video games and computers—but my family wanted me to try out sports every once in a while, just to see if it was something that would interest me. So my Dad and I went down to the local sign-ups for T-ball when I was five. Practices went okay...I wasn't good at it, but I tried. Of course, being the overweight gullible nerd on the team I was subject to a lot of ridicule.
It was our first game and all the parents were there, including my Dad. It was the fourth inning and I was playing center field. I had to piss REALLY bad, so I asked the guy playing right field where the bathroom was. Without skipping a beat, he said "Don't you know how they pee in the major leagues??? They drop their pants and spin around in a circle while they pee. "It helps the lawn grow out here!"
Naturally, I went along with this and promptly pulled dropped my pants and let 'er rip. EVERYBODY is laughing...everybody except for my Dad, who promptly got out of the bleachers and left the game. He came back 45 minutes after the game was over to pick me up. I'm reminded about this at least two to three times a year.
30. No Family Tradition Like Sex Ed
So, the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me was when my dad gave me "the talk." Well, I came to the living room and there was my dad on the couch. On the TV there was a documentary about whales and how they mate. So he points to the TV and says "See that son, that's the whales pee-pee," and at that precise moment my grandma walks into the room, and starts explaining what sex is in an incredibly graphic way. So basically, I'm paralyzed by the sheer horror, my dad is laughing his ass off at the couch and there is a huge whale penis on the TV, and all the while my grandma is reciting the Kama Sutra.
29. Way to Dampen my Creativity
I was a pretty horny kid. And since I'm pretty old, there were no internets, so I used to write my own erotica in my pink and purple side lock diary. You know one of those that had the same key as every other one and hence every sixth-grade girl had the same tin key around her neck...Anyway, I would write my own dirty stories (gleaned from terms I heard on soap operas, episodes of Thirtysomething, and Harlequin books I peeked into in the bookstore) and pleasure myself on the regular. Sometimes I erased the stories afterward, in case Jesus saw, but not always.
One of the times I didn't, my older sister came across my diary and of course read it because she's a jerk. She then proceeded to take it (because she was "worried about my soul" I kid you not) to my very Hank Hill-esque father who, due to lack of easy-fast options, told me I wasn't allowed to write in my diary anymore. He later told my mother, who devised a punishment curriculum involving bible verses and yard work, which stretched my humiliation out over a week or so. My sister still owes me.
28. Light It Up
Getting caught by my dad with a cigarette the same year he lost his mother to lung cancer. Think I was 18. We were camping, and he was coming to the island's big fire where all the people out in the dock have beers for the night. He was bringing me one. He didn't say a word about it.
27. Background Noise
When I was 16-17 my first serious girlfriend and I used to have sex like rabbits, like for hours, in my bedroom across from my mom and sister. It was only like four feet from our door to theirs. Later they told me "Yeah duh, of course, we knew... we heard you banging X like every night for a year." I have no idea why they put up with it the whole time.
26. How About a Whole PACK of Condoms!
I brought a girl home when I was 16. She spent the night and the next day my dad walked in as we were sleeping, introduced himself, took me to the kitchen and handed me a box of Trojans. The economy family value-sized box. In front of my entire family. Upside down. open. And he had separated each of the 150 condoms from the roll. Cue me scooping armloads of condoms into this freaking box while everyone is watching.
25. Lost In Translation
When I was, maybe 14 years old, my family and I went on vacation to the Dominican Republic. First, let it be known that place is awesome. Such a good time. What I was unaware of though, was that it was also a huge European vacation destination. Well a day or two goes by and I'm pretty bored. All I've done is spend time with my family, and of course, normal 14-year-old me knows vacations aren't meant to be spent with the family!
Finally, I see a group of English children who look to be about my age playing soccer (football) on this field within the resort. Well, genius me decides these kids are not going to like me unless I'm English. So what do I do? I decide, by god, I'm going to become English and hang out with these guys. So I approach them and it actually goes a lot better than I thought.
I end up spending most of my time hanging out playing football with these chaps. It was awesome, I legit had these kids thinking I was English, they introduced me to their (topless) sisters and mums, and I genuinely liked these people. Unfortunately, I held a dark secret that finally surfaced on the second to last day.
Pretty normal day, we're all hanging out playing ping pong, everybody's shouting having a good time, I'm shouting, of course in my English accent, when all of a sudden my WHOLE American family shows up behind me asking what I was doing...in front of all my new friends.....and their topless mums and sisters. Ugh, I have never felt more shame EVER...
Just seeing ALL those looks of confusion and disappointment (and of course pure laughter from my dad and sister). To this day I still haven't lived that incident down. Eight years and they still give me heck...Make sure your American family isn't standing behind you while you lie to a bunch of English people...about being English...
24. What a Sight
My Grandmother caught me standing on the sink bent over in front of the mirror looking over my shoulder all because I wanted to see what a fart looked like.
23. Ta Ta for Now
When I was about seven, I was in love with Tigger. Obviously, the best character in Winnie the Pooh, I felt compelled to be like him on every level. I would jump around the room yelling about all the wonderful things about Tigger. One day, my mother had some ladies over for some Bible study or something. She told me to stay in the room while they would chat, and that I shouldn't run around and be too distracting. Screw that noise, I was Tigger.
To up the ante, I went to the bathroom and wanted to find something to give me some stripes. I found a box of neon band-aids and got butt-ass naked and put that stuff all over my body. I ran out of the bathroom and decided to show off my stripes, so I jumped into the living room with 15 middle-aged women staring at me and my neon green, purple, and yellow stripes. To this day, they never let me live this down and have a photo of it that they show to all the dates I bring back to the house.
22. Dreaming of a White Christmas
I've said this before, but I'll say it again, when I was but a wee six years old at a Christmas party a man had dressed up as Santa. I wanted to tell him what I wanted for Christmas, so I patiently waited in line. I finally got to tell him; "Santa! I want cocaine!" I was just sitting on his lap while everyone looked at me and my parents slowly walked away laughing.
21. Open Door Policy
When I was about five or six, my mom used to make wedding/prom dresses for girls/women in our church, and one day one of these fine ladies was over trying on the finished product. It was bath time for my brother and I (shared bath to conserve water for six siblings). Our house back then had the stairs directly in front of the front door/foyer. The upstairs was open, so you could see our bedroom door, and the bathroom door at the top of the stairs.
So, not wanting the parents of this girl to notice me in my oversized t-shirt that I wore as PJs, I decided to run to the bathroom. I make my quick 15' dash to the bathroom, swing open the door, and there is this girl in her undies (early 90's era panties/bra). She screams, then I scream, then the parents burst into laughter. I slam the door closed and run back to my room and slam that door. The laughter continued for a while, and I stayed in the room until the girl and her parents left...
20. This Kid Loves Bubbles
Mine isn't bad in comparison to everybody else's stories, but when I was in first grade, I moved to a new town and when everybody from school was watching, I poured two liters of coke down my pants. And I was forever known as "the kid who poured coke down his pants."
19. My Body is a Canvas
I once, for no reason that I can remember, decided to draw and write all over my butt in felt-tip pens. I drew all sorts of stuff, I'm pretty sure there was a triceratops on there, love hearts, and "I <3 [my childhood crush]." I was about 6/7 at the time, and my mum walked in and saw me doing it, laughed her ass off, and marched me to the bathroom with a sponge.
18. The Party Don’t Start ‘Til I Walk In
Alright. Me being ten years old at my neighbors birthday party. Were all stupid little kids jacked up on Mountain Dew. 3 o'clock in the morning and were playing truth or dare. My friend dares me to take off all my clothes and run down the hall screaming "I'M A PARTY BOY." My neighbor has a huge hall. So me being a badass takes off the clothes and runs down the hall with underwear on my head screaming "I'M A PARTY BOY." As I'm turning around my neighbor’s mom opens the door, looks at me from head to toe, and whispers "Good night," turns and closes the door, and runs upstairs. I pissed myself.
17. So Close, I Can Taste Them
There was an episode of Rescue Rangers where Chip and Dale cross-dress to go undercover and my mom and grandma walked in on me kissing the TV. Don't ask why. I can't freaking remember.
16. Oh Chute
When I was very young, maybe five or six, I decided that it would be a great idea and super fun to slide down the laundry chute from the third floor of my house to the second. I thought this would be very easy and super fun because it exits into a big bin full of clothing in the laundry room. What I didn't realize was that there was a bend in chute itself.
All was going well and the first time through there were no problems, so I thought to myself, "Hey let’s do that again!" so I start sliding down the second time and end up getting stuck in the bend in the chute. I'll be honest, it freaked me the heck out cause at that age being stuck for a couple of minutes felt like an hour.
I started yelling and crying and my brother, who had been playing computer games, came over and looked down the chute and saw me stuck there and, let me say, he freaking lost it. I got myself unstuck and went crying to my parents, who consoled me of course, but I am sure they laughed about it after I left. Or maybe I got grounded for it cause it was so freaking stupid. Anyways there you have it.
15. What Are You Looking At?
I thought my family was out of the house during middle/high school. While I was taking a hot tub I decided to do some buck naked headstands under the water, at the same time my mom and sister looked out in the yard...
14. A Bird’s Eye View of the Action
When I was 41, I went to visit my parents and had to take a dump. For some reason, when I sat on the familiar, family throne, I had the urge to jack it like a teenager. I heard a sound above and just briefly caught a glimpse of my 70+ dad's face disappearing from the skylight he was re-sealing.
13. Look to the Skies
When I was in second grade, my brother bought me a set of glow in the dark stars, a glow in the dark moon, and glowing paint to paint stars on my ceiling for Christmas. A few months later, my room redecoration was complete, ad he came home from college to visit. My parents, his fiancée, he and I all went up to my room to show it off. He laid down on my bed, and everyone else stood by the door.
We closed the door and I jumped up on the bed to turn my overhead light off. I turned the light off and yelled: "Look, Sean, it’s the Moon!" He replied with, "Oh yes, it is...". He then proceeded to pants me, pull my shirt over my head so my arms were stuck, and chuck me off the bed. So I'm laying there, crying and confused, looking absolutely ridiculous. Everyone is obviously doubled over laughing and I ran into the closet crying. My mom tried to get to the closet for about five minutes but couldn’t move; she was laughing so hard. I hear about that one every time I see him.
12. The Defense Didn’t Hold Up
Occasionally I would cut school in high school. Typically, I would wait until my mom left for work and then go back home before heading out again. This one day I saw her leave, so I went home. About ten minutes later the door opens so I book it into my closet. She comes upstairs and opens my bedroom door and proceeds to open the closet...of course, she sees me and yells “What are you doing home?"...I counter with "Well what are YOU doing looking in MY closet??" She took me to school :(
11. Work What Your Dad’s Girlfriend Has Got
Oh boy. I was watching the Victoria Secret Fashion show. I was around eight so I was not interested in girls. But they were wearing underwear that looked comfortable. I knew I could find a pair in my dad's drawer. Now I didn't have a mom, so this was from his girlfriend we didn't know about. So me and my brother put a pair on, took everything else off, and started doing flips off the bunk bed. My grandma hears all the commotion and walks into my dad's room only to see me and my brother flipping off a bunk bed wearing nothing but girls' underwear.
10. Man’s Worst Role Model
When I was like seven years old my entire family was having a barbecue at my house. There were probably like 15 people in total at my house. While enjoying weenies and burgers I noticed my dog dropping a dook in the backyard. For some odd reason, this sparked some kind of mindless epiphany in my head, and I found it would be an excellent idea to follow in his footsteps.
So while everyone was sitting at the table eating, I walked up to the nearest patch of grass and blooped a fat duke in front of everyone right on the grass. EVERYBODY laughed right in my face. It was easily the most embarrassing thing to happen to me. On the bright side though, it was hilarious watching my mom pick up my poop, since she was on the verge of vomiting everywhere.
9. Which is Worse?
Last week, I was in my room watching My Little Pony for about two hours when my parents ran in thinking that I was having a dirty movie marathon. When they saw my screen, they just started laughing and told all their friends.
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8. A Blessing from Above
When I was probably seven years old me and my brother would be hanging out upstairs in our room. But there was only one bathroom in the house and it was downstairs and allll the way on the other side of the house. Our solution: pee in bottles and throw them out the window. Little did we know we threw them out the window to the backyard where my entire extended family was...
7. Caught in a Compromising Position
My Dad walked in on me squatting over the business end of a hairdryer. I'd not long got out the shower and wanted to blast my gooch with warms. So there I was, naked, with my back to my bedroom door, hovering over the hairdryer. I didn't hear Dad walk in due to the hairdryer. He just yelled "BUSTED!" and walked out.
6. First Time is the Worst Time
Well...
In high school, I was on the verge of losing my virginity to my girlfriend of two years who also happened to be my neighbor. The scene was set perfectly, both my parents were gone (dad was out of town and mom was working until nine) and I had just asked her to prom that day... So things are getting hot and heavy, and all the sudden I hear a noise downstairs, but assume it's one of my cats wreaking havoc as usual.
Things continue and about a minute later my (extremely conservative) mom walks in, and as the door opens she lets out a faint scream and runs downstairs. BUSTED. Now while this moment was awful enough, after going downstairs to face my mother who had immediately called my (also very conservative) dad, she goes on a rant about how irresponsible I am and how protection doesn't always work, and I'm proof of that.
So that's the story of how my relationship was ruined (just got really awkward after that) and I found out I was an accident. Maybe the act itself isn't anywhere near as embarrassing as some of the ones on here, but I swear the situation made it mortifying.
5. Cheesy Tunes
About a year ago, my parents caught me singing to my microwave while I was waiting for it to warm up a piece of pizza. This all happened at 4 in the morning, when I thought my parents were staying at a friend's. Oh, I almost forgot that I was naked.
4. Good Art Comes From Inside
When I was six years old my mother used to babysit my neighbor Annie. Annie was a very artistic girl; she loved to color and draw everything she saw. One day, I was playing Star Fox 64 on my Nintendo 64 and Annie was watching. Of course, being too absorbed in the game, I never turned around to see her greatest work of art.
My mom walks in the room to check on us and lets out a scream...Annie had made a drawing of a triangular looking ship with a circle around it. It was Star Fox doing a barrel roll...except she didn't make it with paint. She made it with poop.
3. It Takes One to Tango
As a teenager, after watching a cop show about a kidnapping, I got really curious about what it would be like to be tied up. With some flexibility and creativity, I managed to get myself gagged and pretty securely bound to a kitchen chair. I could still get loose but not without some wiggling. My mom came home early, and I couldn't get loose in time. She FREAKED, thinking I had been robbed. Then, when she untied me, I explained, she thought I was a freak. Haha.
2. Martha Stewart Wouldn’t Approve
When I was about eight or nine I was going to the bathroom and noticed an open box of nice cotton things on a string wrapped in plastic. "Amazing!" I thought and continued to unwrap every single one of them. I then hung them up around the bathroom in various places (door handle, taps, anywhere they would hang) I even hung them over my ears, tucking the string behind my ear so the nice cotton things sat in front of my ears, like fluffy sideburns.
Anywhoo, so I had been having an excellent time for about half an hour at a guess, and my mum knocked on the door to see why I had been in there so long. I happily opened the door, ready to show my mum my beautiful creation of hanging nice cotton-things. She found it funny, although wasn't as appreciative as I had hoped she would be.
1. Spit It Out
I had just come back from playing soccer (I was 12 years old) and was severely thirsty. I saw a glass of what I thought was sweet tea on the kitchen counter and immediately tried to gulp it down. It turned out to be my father's glass of dip spit. For those that do not know, that is the spit that people who chew tobacco make as a byproduct of the process. I threw up all over the kitchen counter and floor and they found me there a few minutes later dry heaving in the fetal position. I've never been able to even smell Copenhagen without gagging to this day and I am 26.
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