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secrets parents keep from children
We've all had embarrassing or cringe-worthy moments in our lives that we hope and pray any witnesses have long forgotten by now.
But there are other things that we not only hope are forgotten but which we hope are never known by another person at all. Except for maybe on Reddit.
Redditor Glitched_cookie asked:
"What's a secret you're taking to the grave, but are willing to share?"
Priceless Relief
"My wife and I were in our early days of dating when she bought baseball tickets for us and some friends. The problem though was the tickets ended up being for that afternoon and not the following day."
"She was super upset and was afraid she lost that money. I had her put them on the resale site."
"They didn't sell for a few hours so I went and bought them. I'd do it 100 times over seeing her face of relief. I relisted them for a lower price and made a little of the money back."
"I think she would literally murder me if she found out."
- kipmix
True Love
"My sweet and gentle wife called me upset because she was unsure if she hit a squirrel with her car on her way to work. She said it ran out in front of her but she didn’t see him lying in the road afterward."
"The road she was on was close to our house, so I went and found the poor little guy, scooped him up with a shovel, and buried him on the side of the road, so that on her way home, she would see that there wasn’t a dead squirrel and assume she hadn’t hit him."
"That’s exactly what happened, she was relieved, and I’ll never tell her the truth."
- JazzyAndy
Financial Relief
"My younger brother and his wife were struggling financially after having a kid. They were both in school full-time and both worked to try and make ends meet, but one particular month, things were looking really rough because he got injured and couldn't work."
"I was working overtime at a really well-paying job at the time. So one night, after getting paid, I went to their place and put an envelope with my entire pay into their mail slot in the door. It was accompanied with a letter I typed, pretending to be an old lady in the apartment building who had seen them with their newborn and wanted to help the new parents out."
"The relief they got from it was repayment enough for me. I don't want him to ever find out it was me."
"And now that he's graduated, he's the one working at an insanely well-paying job and I'm currently disabled, unable to work. Funny how life works out that way."
- GriskardKayke
All the More Valuable
"I was 13 when I did this. My big brother is a diehard Ronaldo fan. Around the time of his birthday, I happened to be in Dallas and Ronaldo also happened to have a game in the city."
"I quickly asked my uncle to take me to the local sports store so I could use my savings to buy a Ronaldo jersey and waited for hours outside Ronaldo’s hotel for him to sign it, but he never came out and my flight back home was soon."
"So… on my flight back home I end up signing the jersey myself, after studying Ronaldo’s signature. I also found a couple of believable photos on Google of Ronaldo walking and made it seem like I took those pics myself, right before he 'signed' it."
"When my big brother opened the present, he fell to his knees in shock and happiness and 15 years later, he still cherishes it and talks about it weekly how it’s the best gift of his life. Can’t take that joy away from him."
"To the grave."
- ieatlotsalettuce
Oh Nooo
"Twenty-plus years ago, I met a guy at a club, hooked up with him a couple of times, super casual. He never gave me ANY reason to suspect he wasn't single."
"Then he died, which I found out from the bartender. It was a car crash."
"I found his obituary... and learned that he had a loving wife and two young kids."
"To. The. Grave."
- Preposterous_Punk
Can't Face the Truth
"I have a pretty mild one I'm willing to share. I have a friend who's been single for a very long time. Whenever we talk about girls he pretty much always talks about one girlfriend he had during high school. He keeps talking about that relationship and expanding on the lore and the intricacies of how they had so much passion but life pulled them apart."
"What he doesn't know is that I know for a fact that the girl he's referring to did not have a relationship with him. I know at least 3 different people who hooked up with her during the timeline of his alleged relationship and that she later had a relationship with another guy for some years before she moved away."
"It's not a case of my friend having been cheated on or lied to, he was basically her orbiter at the time and got two or three pity hookups but he's twisting reality to make their friendship appear as a relationship. I don't have the heart to tell him that I know he's lying, so I just nod in agreement."
- PckMan
Absolutely Heartwrenching
"I had a terrible mother and father, and I promised myself to never walk out on my kid. When my first kid was two years old, my wife cheated and it crushed me. She was the major breadwinner at the time and I had to move out of our upper-middle-class house into an apartment in the s**tty part of town."
"She 'realized her mistake' and came begging for me to take her back after about nine months. I love my kids so much and wanted to spend every day with them, so I 'forgave' her and we have been together since."
"She doesn’t know for the last 16 years, I haven’t loved her. I pretend to be happy to ensure someone else doesn’t raise my children."
- Character_Car_1113
Gone Too Soon
"I never cried at any funeral of my family member, but I cried for two hours straight, bawling my eyes out because my beloved guinea pig died in my arms, and I wasn't able to save her. Rest in peace, Swanky."
- sappy_xu
"I can deal with funerals. I used to speak in front of a whole church when a person passed on."
"When my daughter found her chinchilla had died in its cage, I was completely broken. I couldn't talk to anyone for the rest of the day. He was mine, too. He would perch on my shoulder and wrap his tail around my neck while I cleaned the house and cooked dinner."
"RIP, Chincy!"
- rektMyself
The Bringer of Chaos
"During my days at Brigham Young University in Idaho, I would go out after dark in my homemade ghillie suit to scare the students there. They walk by and I'd surprise them with an unexpected movement or word."
"I got chased by the cops once, but I was fast enough to turn the corner of the building lay down in the garden, and they kept running."
"Now that I live in Provo, Utah, I do the same thing every Halloween at the university here."
- Ydok_The_Strategist
The World May Never Know
"I have never told anyone the number of sexual partners I have had."
"My wife tried to guess, and the number she guessed was 10 percent of my real number. I let her think she was right, and she got upset because she said she was intentionally overestimating."
- Kriskao
So Sad
"Last fall, my boyfriend and I were driving down a windy mountain road en route to a camping site- he was focusing on the turns because we had had a couple of close calls with other cars rip-roaring around bends and nearly hitting us head-on."
"At one point, I saw a box turtle on the road, but I just saw it too late and didn't have time to warn him."
"We have always been the type of people to get out of the car and move turtles out of danger/off the roads when we go camping in the backcountry in fall and spring, and I knew he would be upset to know he had unintentionally squished one."
"So I've kept it a secret, and I doubt I'll ever tell him about it. RIP, Mr. Turtle."
- thepowerskatbe
Low to No Contact
"I never told the truth to people I don't want in my life. Because it doesn't matter to me, I don't want to hurt them by telling them the obvious. I know the reaction I would get would be violent or vengeful."
"So I just never speak to them again. I feel no duty to tell them because it would feel like revenge on them. Even though it's true. So I just never tell the truth. Be aware that no one can handle the truth. And I'm fine with it. I'm a liar."
- OkWeight6243
Dreams Fading Away
"I’ve been thinking of giving up on my dream in life."
"I want to write and illustrate stories. I came up with at least seven long-running ideas in my head and they all have 10 main characters with story arcs, character arcs, villains, and whole universes that I have spent the past like 20 years of my life playing over and over in my head."
"Stories where a demon rips a dragon's brain out, stories where gods collide, how a universe is created, a story where a superhero is sent into a video game world."
"But the more and more I go on and live life, the more I realize I don’t have the time. How am I going to work, cook, clean, and pay bills and then see I only have two hours left before I need to sleep for work the next day? And a decent-looking page takes five hours to draw."
"All those dreams I had of making these cool stories will… probably fade away. My characters will probably never see the light of day and it makes me sad because it could be so awesome…"
- AnOrdinaryMaid
Be the Change
"I know this sounds super corny (hence why I don’t tell anyone this) but all I want to do is change the world. That’s genuinely all I care about."
"I spend all my free time thinking of new ways I can influence the world around me. I cry myself to sleep almost every night because of the state of the world, and I can’t keep pretending it doesn’t bother me."
"I love everything about being alive. I love the human race, I love the fact that I’m able to feel. I love the ground that I walk on. Seeing what we’re doing to each other makes me feel like everything I love is dying."
"I want to be the change that I wish to see."
- Agile-Mistake1094
So Wholesome
"I have shared it before but I have a Mum of a friend who took me in when I was homeless just after high school."
"She made me a Lemon Meringue Pie that first night, and I was so hungry, I nearly ate the whole thing by myself. I hadn't had a home-cooked meal for a long time."
"She was so excited that I loved it because her boys 'turned their noses up at it.'"
"The catch is... I can't stand lemons, or meringue."
"Now, she's been making me a Lemon Meringue Pie every year since, because 'it's my favorite.' Over 20 years (and counting) of Lemon Meringue Pies that I will happily choke down until the day she dies... and then, I will miss those pies more than anything else in the world."
- KnifeFightAcademy
There are embarrassing events that we wish everyone would forget about, and then there are secrets that are so important, we wouldn't want anyone to ever uncover them. And well, it's pretty clear why a lot of these are secrets.
But there are others that from the outside, like wanting to be an artist or to change the world, are beautiful endeavors. Maybe if more people knew that these Redditors wanted to pursue those things, they'd have all the support they needed to make it happen!