People discuss things in private about another person – whether it is purely gossip, or how they really feel about them.
These conversations about a friend or family member usually take place behind their backs, so as not to upset anyone.
But some conversations about them take place with the person in the vicinity when they are asleep.
What follows is a good reminder that we should be careful of the things we say about people when we assume they are in deep sleep.
Curious to hear about strangers online, Redditor KingHanma asked:
"What's the Worst thing you've overheard while pretending to be asleep?"
Parents disclosed life-changing news in private. Or so they thought.
Matrimonial Miss
"I was 12 and my dad (Single Dad) telling his so called 'Friend' (Female) who was at the time living with us, 'Should we tell him that we are married?'"
"So this was my father's second wife and they really were married. I confronted my dad the next day and he had hid the fact from me for a month. I was super disturbed about what was happening around me. It did not work out between them and they ended up getting a divorce. So yayyyy."
"I was 15. I was at my sister's house babysitting my nephew and was asleep on the couch when she and her husband got home at about 2 am. The phone rang. It woke me but I lay there pretending to be asleep as I listened to her answer it. I heard her say, 'What!? Oh my god! Oh my god!'"
"She hung up and said to her husband, 'That was my dad. Diablo [my horse] got out of the pasture and went into the road. He got hit by a car and killed. How am I going to tell him?"
"I said, 'I already know.'"
"That was 45 years ago. It still hurts."
Alarms are better to wake up to than the following:
Hypocritical Parents
"My anti-drug parents drunk as sh*t and on a drug binge. Got up to pee at like 6am when the noise finally stopped and there had to be $200 worth of drugs on my kitchen table."
"We lived in a small, one-story house. There's no way anyone could've slept through their BS."
"And my mom still cries when I talk about weed."
The Confirmation
"He's not asleep."
– AyamXII
"My mom once woke me up to tell me to go to sleep."
"I was asleep. She said my name and shook me, which woke me up, and then she told me to go to sleep."
How She Really Feels
"My step mom talking sh*t about me to my dad when I was a kid."
Best Excuses For Late Assignments That Were Actually True | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
The Warning
"Roommate talking to another roommate about how he deserves to have sex with this girl that he's close friends with and how mad he was that she kept not sleeping with him so he planned on inviting her over soon and getting her wasted and taking advantage of her. I found the girl online and warned her."
Rude Awakening
"When I was a kid, a friend and I were both gymnasts, but at different studios."
"She invited me over for an Open Gym Sleepover, which is like when 30 kids all sleep over at the gym with very little supervision, running and jumping on equipment like trampolines, vaults, ropes, balance beams, and parallel bars. God bless the 90's, we had a blast."
"Now the guy who ran this gym, I had a weird feeling about. My parents once had me try out for a team at his gym, and he inspected my body with his hands. It was in full sight of everyone, including my mother, but it was just weird. My mother later told me she was too stunned to object in the moment. He kept touching my butt and telling me to tighten my 'butt' (glutes), which I didn't understand. He kept doing it repeatedly."
"Anyway, at the sleepover, I lay down next to my friend but stayed awake. I saw Coach Hands stepping quietly between the sleeping girls, taking flash photographs. When he came over to do it to me&my friend, I made eye contact with him during the flash. He quickly went away and stopped taking pictures."
"The next morning, he pulled me into his office with a female coach (his wife?) and explained to me that the photos were for promotional purposes. He even had a little poster board made up. I didn't really beleive him, but at that age (10) I didn't really understand how dangerous he could have been. I never talked to an adult about it, just my friends, and we were all🤷♀️🤷♀️🤷♀️"
I was never in a situation where I overheard someone talking smack about me, but I did have the misfortune of "sleeping" in a hotel suite with friends who hooked up in the bed next to me.
A group of about 20 of my college friends pooled money together to ring in the new year in a posh hotel. Of course, there was alcohol. Plenty of it.
I passed out early as I'm a lightweight, but then I woke up to moaning sounds next to me. I was paralyzed – torn between drawing attention to myself by high-tailing it out of the room or pretending to be asleep and enduring the sloppy sounds.
I decided to ring in the new year by choosing the latter, and I still regret my horrible decision. Happy new year to me.
