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Men Online Share 30 Things They Kept To Themselves So Their Parents Would Never Find Out
It is no secret that a lot of us have hidden things from our parents at one point or another. Whether it was that one time you snuck out to a party you weren’t allowed to attend, or opened that box of chocolates you weren’t supposed to touch, it is very much inevitable that parents won’t know everything about what their children do.
Someone online, in the r/AskMen subreddit, decided to ask men about the secrets they’ve hidden from their parents, and they delivered plenty. The question went viral, collecting 13.8k upvotes and prompting 5.4k comments. Scroll down for the whole list, consider upvoting the entries you found the most interesting and leave a comment!
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I got married and didn’t tell them until my wife began to show her pregnancy. We had been married for over a year at that point. They did not approve of our relationship because of outdated reasons. We have been married for 37 years now and have 4 kids and 7 grandkids
My teenage best friend Chester was forbidden to come to our house or call, because they heard he was a bad kid, welp, the friend they liked Raphael, was Chester all along... Used his middle name for around 6 years until mom found out.
When I was a junior in high school, my mom and I got into a low speed accident with minor damage to both vehicles. Later that month I was so exhausted from school that I decided to ditch. I drove on the backroads for 10 minutes send parked, and then slept.
My mom found out and was furious at me. I lied and said that it was because I wasn't feeling good and I had headaches and some bs like that. She took me to the doctor and they found that my C3 vertebrae was fractured on top of having a tumor growing on it. I ended up having a gnarly 10 hour spinal surgery that honestly completely changed the course of my life.
And we only found out about it because I couldn't think of any other b******t excuse to use
My mom is not so good with finances and the internet. I have been paying a significant portion of her bills for the past decade and she has no idea.
My mom raised me in a pretty aggressive christian household. When we finally got tv, I discovered HBO had like a 5 minute preview of movies/shows whatever. Then I saw the late night s**t. Well our tv was locked down with a passcode. I had to be like 11 or 12 but I put a vhs in then hit record. I then told my mom that I wanted to watch a animal documentary but it was locked tv14 for the animal violence. Well, she had me turn around while she scrolled the password in. After she left for work, I rewinded the vhs and got the password. Sorry Mom!
While my parents were at work, my older brother started cooking french fries in a cast iron skillet and cranked the heat until the oil was boiling. He left the stove unattended for a few minutes and came back to a raging fire. He took the pan, spilled hot grease on the cheap kitchen tile, opened the sliding back door and tossed it into the yard before hosing it down. The microwave that sat above the stove was completely ruined and two or three floor tiles were badly burned. So my brother goes to Lowes and finds the exact microwave model, overcharging his card to pay for it. Comes home, tosses the old one, installs the new one. We replaced the tiles with a box cutter and super glue and exchanged the burned tiles in the middle of the kitchen with tiles from the back of the pantry. They never suspected a thing
I snuck out my window at night to raise hell in the neighborhood when I was a teenager. They brought it up in casual conversation about 20 years later..... yeah. Parents know.
I found out at my mother's funeral that she knew more about things I had done than I ever knew from the minister. My best friend's father.
I got a tattoo on my shoulder blade. Kept it hidden for years after a shower etc. Found out years down the line my brother told them a week after I had the tattoo!
There's a little entryway off on the side of my mother's house and into the basement. I realized how easy it was to sneak in and out of that thing when I was sixteen, and asked if I could move my room to the basement to "feel like I had my own space."
Actually, I snuck people in and out of it constantly. My girlfriend at the time stayed over two or three times a week, and I would sneak friends in constantly to drink and party with me. Either that or I'd sneak out on weekends and go party and hang out with people. My mother is a very very conservative Christian, and if she ever found out, she would lose her mind and probably disown me. I think about this sometimes.
When I was 14 I stole my dad’s MGB roadster and drove it for about an hour. When I got it home I washed it to cool it down so he wouldn’t notice it was warm, he appreciated the wash so much he took me for my 2nd serving of ice cream that day.
I got my drivers license a few days after I turned 16 one summer. I told my mom and dad that a friend and I wanted to drive a 100 miles away to go help my friends grandpa with chores around his house because he was getting to old to do them on his own. My mom and dad thought that was a great idea and even offered their brand new car for us to use the week we would be gone.
Thing is, we didn’t go to my friends grandfathers house, we drove almost a 1000 miles (each way) to Las Vegas. After we had driven a few hundred miles we disconnected the speedometer (gear driven) so they wouldn’t know the real miles we racked up on their new car. Had the time of our life. We slept in the car and cleaned up at truck stops along the way. This was back in the mid 70’s and the strip wasn’t even part of Las Vegas yet. We managed to slip into a casino and put a few nickels in a slot machine right inside the door, but never got caught. It was a road trip that I’ll never forget. Parents never were the wiser.
My parents were way too smart for me to get away with something like this, or anything really. My mom seemed to know EVERYTHING I did/wanted to do/tried to do, etc lol Your parents have to either be extremely naive or they just know and let you do it anyway, for yall to "get away" with all this stuff lol
My mom used to take the power cord to my Xbox when I was grounded. My buddy’s Xbox stopped working so he gave me his power cord and I would hop on when they weren’t home or late at night.
My stepdad would take my controllers away when I was grounded. I had backup controllers and a Gameboy he seemed to not know about. He still brags to people that taking games away caused me to do better in school when in reality it just taught be skills about being sneaky
I personally don't want to get married or have kids. I just don't want to deal with the stress around raising another life in this world and failing at being the best father that I can be. I would rather be happy alone.
I knew about her cancer for 6 months before she told me.
I still talk to the girl they forbade me from speaking to when I was 14
That it took me 7 years to get my B.S in CS. Because I failed a lot due to anxiety and depression. I'm a first Gen american so they dont know how college works and I just lied to them by saying that taking 2 or 3 classes a semester is better than being full time.
The really great report card I brought home once was actually a fabrication I made on the home computer while they were sleeping. Mom was so proud, I never told her.
I skipped school once in high school. Forged my dad's signature on a note. I'm 37 and still think my mom might kill me if she found out.
I used to forge my mum's signature all the time, got caught once. When I was a teen (13ish) my mum wanted a loan without my dad knowing so got me to forge his signature on the loan forms.
That they are terrible at hiding things or making passwords. Anytime I was in trouble and used a password to lock the tv or computer they always used a significant date so it was just process of elimination.
I also found almost all of the Christmas presents every year because they would just put them in the garage under a giant blanket. Like all of a sudden in mid-December a mountain of stuff covered by a blanket would appear in the garage, don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure that one out.
I know where the Christmas presents are kept, but I like the surprise on Christmas day
Yeah my parents keep them in their closet but I never peek because I love surprises and the one time I did peek it ruined my Christmas.
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I found my presents one year and it was such a let down on Christmas day that I never went hunting for them again.
My sister and would look for them every year, never found them. Found out that the presents were hidden in the trunk of my father's car. I never would have thought to look there.
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There is currently a Batman gift bag sitting innocently in my closet. My birthday is in a week. I have to wait for mom to get here to open it. It's taunting me.
I keep all the presents in a crawl space in our basement. I've always told my kids there are big, nasty spiders in there, so they won't go near it. They're almost 14 & 16 and still terrified of that space 😆
I opened my presents early once. It was a real let down at Christmas. Lesson learned.
Would you prefer no presents that day & simply a surprise before or after with family?
As a mom, we know the presents aren't well hidden. We put them there so you won't accidentally find them. We assume/hope you won't be too selfish to ruin our pleasure at seeing your face when you open them up the first time on Christmas morning.
Learned really good one year after peeking at presents that they aren’t always for you. Never peeked at them again the surprise is so much better
I got good at secretly unwrapping and re-wrapping gifts when I was younger. Joke was on me because I always picked the boring clothes boxes. And I was good at finding hidden gifts. Mom eventually just put a padlock on her closet. Snooping immediately quelled, lol.
LOL we always tried to find the presents. One year mom put them in the trunk of the C Gas class roadster they were using for drag racing. Didn't find them there.
My mom had a trick that I didn't know about till I was nearly an adult. I was always curious about where she kept gifts and was a nosey child. She let me watch her put a shopping bag into the attic and told me she'd know if I had been up there, since that opening was tricky, I didn't doubt her. The actual hiding place was right below it on the top shelf in the linen closet behind cleverly placed stacked old towels. She only showed me to get me to stop snooping.
Having said that, I learned the hard way as a kid about my stocking stuffers. Don't send the kid into the pantry on Christmas eve for snacks and pop if the wrapped gifts are sitting on the floor in labeled bags. Kind of takes the magic away.
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I’m terrible at having surprises for any gift giving occasion so By the time I was 13 I had to know what I was getting or if they wanted a smaller surprise I had to make a list of the things I wanted and then they got me things from the list. I admit that I am a terrible person, but if the gift was not from the list and something that I didn’t like I could never hide my true feelings as they were plastered all over my face before I had the chance to hide it. Those gifts were either returned to the giver to replace or if they didn’t want to do that the thing sat in a corner in my room untouched for months until I thought enough time had passed and I got rid of it. The givers were mostly family so they would come over and visit and see the thing sitting there and ask if I had ever used it which got pretty awkward for me as well
I honestly never cared much. Absentee father takes a toll. For me, I pretty much stopped caring about things when I was 10ish. Being that I'm 28 now, I'm either a damned good actor or, more likely, everyone just believes my facade is genuine cause thats how I've "always been". Truth be told though, I just don't care. Woo, a new game. Woo, a marriage. Woo, who f*****g cares.
I never graduated college. Im the youngest so they were pretty "over" going to graduation ceremonies. I said I got my degree in the mail. I still got a decent job, they never asked for my degree but I said I had one on my resume.
Been 8yrs since I "graduated"
Im the one that made all the leprechaun movies disappear throughout my childhood. I took them to granny’s house & made sure they’d never see the light of day again.
I used to drive the family car when they were away at work. Like everytime. Just drive around the neighbourhood. I was 15.
I used to take my dads motorbike , push it up the road and coast it down.
That I watched Ben 10. Growing up, I said that Ben 10 was stupid and then I watched an episode and loved it. But not wanting to be a hypocrite, I would put a sign on my door and say don’t come into until 10:30 which was what time Ben 10 ended on Saturday mornings.
I am the same with My Little Pony. Sometimes stuff like this is still enjoyable even as a teenager
I once took my dads motorbike on a 4 hour round trip because I woke up late for a scuba diving trip when I was 18.
I was being picked up by the instructor and just overslept by about 45 min and didn't hear them at the door. My parents were away so I put on all my dads bike gear (we are pretty similar in size) and drove about two hours up the motorway and spent the day diving before driving home. Filled up the tank on the way home to cover my tracks!
I didn't have a license or insurance (although I could drive a bike).
I don't think he would even care now (I'm 33) but I've just never had the right moment to tell him.
At a family dinner get together when you bring up all the things you did as a kid. [just to start trouble] lol
In high school, the melted floor mats in my mom's new car were because I sprayed febreeze on dog c**p that a friend's shoe brought in and it "reacted like that".
In truth, it was a firecracker that someone tried to chuck out the window and it bounced off the glass and landed inside the car. They forgot the child safety windows didn't go all the way down.
This is the first time I have heard of child safety windows. Now the reason old winder windows in the back seats of cars don't wind all the way makes sense.
Those 20 beers that were stashed under my bed..I was NOT holding them for a friend
Back in high-school, we went on a family vacation to Hayward Wisconsin. Me, my brother, and my cousin had these under water fire crackers we'd been lighting and throwing in the lake. Well, I convinced my cousin to light one and throw it in the toilet of the cabin we rented. Sure enough, it cracked the bowl and all the water spilled out. When it came time to fess up, none of us had any idea what happened and my uncle had to go buy a new toilet to install. I think we told them the truth about a decade later.
Bro. Don’t throw those into lakes, they’re like toxic and kill the fish and s**t.
That I was a bouncer for a night club for about a year and that I took a personal loan for my classes.
When I moved across the country 2 years ago my car broke down in the middle of Texas. I ditched it there and took a rental the rest of the way and bought a used car on Facebook 2 weeks later. They still think I’m driving the same car I had when I left.
Weird thing to lie about if your car just broke down! I think there’s some missing details here
mine is how i can never tell them how awful they've always made me feel about myself. my mental health has never been great but will take to my grave how much worse they made it. they meant well and we get along. just had this way of making me feel brushed off and useless. edit: i'm doing better mental health wise
The only time I did this was for a friend in the late 90's. This was way before scanners, printers or photo software were common. Basically he was in college with me (UK) but he didn't want to be there, just did it to keep his parents happy I felt. He had zero intention of going on to University. Unfortunately his final A-Level grades were lacking to say the least. Back then the grade results were just given to us on a printed piece of A4 paper. He called me up and (as I was quite adept at the stuff) asked me to forge him a results sheet with different grades. I remember using a scalpel, glue stick, Tipp-ex and a local shop's photocopier to make a new grade sheet for him he could present to his parents, lol. Lost touch with him after college but I always wonder how that went (it did look official mind you).
My brother and I broke the dining room window playing catch. We pooled our allowance and I called a window repairman to come the next day before my father got home from work. We ate dinner that night with the curtains closed, very unusual. I was so scared but we pulled it off!
Funnily enough that probably would have been the punishment, paying the repairs. But you skipped the yelling
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My brothers and I were raised strictly Catholic. Prayers before and after every meal, every Sunday (or Saturday) and of course every Christian holiday we had to go to church. When I was about 14/15, we were allowed to choose which church we went to. There was a small church in our neighborhood and a larger one downtown. We decided to go to the church downtown... "using the excuse" that the pastor's sermons were so boring and that we also wanted to visit our grandmother, who lived downtown, on the way back to church. In truth we went straight to our grandma who wasn't really religious and covered up our swindle. I doubt our parents ever found out.
Awe that's actually really wholesome and cute
Load More Replies... One secret my brother has kept from my dad and will forever I think. One night when my brother and I shared a house together I woke up at like 2am to him groaning and calling out from his bedroom. I got up and found he had vomited everywhere and he was conscious but not lucid. I call an ambulance and they ask whether he had been drinking. I said I didn't know, as I went to bed about 9pm but he wouldn't have more than a few ciders as far as I knew. They took him off to hospital and I call my mum and dad (they were divorced) but neither picked up. The next day my brother was sent home and I found out he had been intoxicated, he had been drinking shots. Mum knows this, but since my dad is a tea-totaller he didn't want to tell him. Since my bother is coeliac he gave some excuse about nit knowing what it was but he probably ate some gluten by accident. Dad believed this, but every so often he has asked if they ever found out if gluten was the culprit.
The worst I did as a teen was secretly watched R rated VHS movies and snuck one or 2 cans o' cold ones. The funny thing is after watching those movies was part of my process on learning that I was asexual. I have zero libido/urges since day one of puberty. I enjoyed the story lines and art of the animated stuff instead. Ex. Heavy Metal. I did date in HS, but the most we did was kiss.
My nine year old daughter made a facebook accound at her friend's house and called herself Abigail Monterio. She's in her 20s and I call her that once in a while.
I used to ditch school a lot because of bullying. I pretended to leave for school and just walk through the city or somewhere else where no one I knew would see me and would come back just around the time school Was out. Also forged my father's signature on sick notes so I had an excuse why I wasn't in school. He never found out.
I have a second secret. When I was five years old my grandmother had me going through a huge mail sorter and throwing out old,outdated mail.I was in another room and about halfway through the sorting I came upon paperwork from an attorney and found out I was adopted.(I had actually felt like I was as long as I could remember). I found out my oldest sister is my birth mother,my sister and brother are my aunt and uncle and my parents were my grandparents. I honestly felt relieved because I knew what I felt was true. My entire family sucked and didn't give a damn about me and my "mother and uncle" were extremely abusive but my dad was everything to me and he was actually the one who adopted me. He had no clue about the abuse when he was at work offshore. But when he died I was 13 and he never knew that I knew about being adopted.I am 51 and until I was in high school my grandmother didn't know I knew.She never knew how I found out,she assumed my biological.mother told me recently.
In high school my grandmother hated my boyfriend because his mom didn't want to be friends with her. So I was consistently punished from seeing him or talking to him on the phone whenever she felt like it. So I figured out that a cute house phone that I got from a friend was an actual working phone. So whenever I was going out to the barn or go check fences on the property (we owned a large horse farm) I would sneak directly under our house(it was on stilts) and open the big phone box that held the wiring for the house phone and tap into the line and talk to him. If she picked up the house phone she was still able to make a call and not know I too was using the same line. I saw a guy that was working on a phone box years earlier and saw he was using a phone from it so by trial and error I figured it out. I'm 51 and she died never knowing what I did for the four years of high school when she punished me on a whim.
When I was six I was climbing the tree in my Aunt’s back garden. Of course we, my cousins and I, had been told multiple times not to. I fell out one day and fractured my wrist. To avoid getting into trouble, I told everyone I tripped over a large rock xD
When I was in elementary school, my mom made so little money that we qualified for free school lunches, but I told my dad (they were divorced) that I needed money for school lunches. I got like $40 /month from him and used it to buy video games. Started living with him in high school. He'd take my PlayStation away if my grades were bad, so I just started going to bed right after dinner so I could wake up at 4am and play the same games on an emulator on his PC before school. He stayed up until past midnight every night so he was never awake before I left in the morning.
mine is how i can never tell them how awful they've always made me feel about myself. my mental health has never been great but will take to my grave how much worse they made it. they meant well and we get along. just had this way of making me feel brushed off and useless. edit: i'm doing better mental health wise
The only time I did this was for a friend in the late 90's. This was way before scanners, printers or photo software were common. Basically he was in college with me (UK) but he didn't want to be there, just did it to keep his parents happy I felt. He had zero intention of going on to University. Unfortunately his final A-Level grades were lacking to say the least. Back then the grade results were just given to us on a printed piece of A4 paper. He called me up and (as I was quite adept at the stuff) asked me to forge him a results sheet with different grades. I remember using a scalpel, glue stick, Tipp-ex and a local shop's photocopier to make a new grade sheet for him he could present to his parents, lol. Lost touch with him after college but I always wonder how that went (it did look official mind you).
My brother and I broke the dining room window playing catch. We pooled our allowance and I called a window repairman to come the next day before my father got home from work. We ate dinner that night with the curtains closed, very unusual. I was so scared but we pulled it off!
Funnily enough that probably would have been the punishment, paying the repairs. But you skipped the yelling
Load More Replies... My brothers and I were raised strictly Catholic. Prayers before and after every meal, every Sunday (or Saturday) and of course every Christian holiday we had to go to church. When I was about 14/15, we were allowed to choose which church we went to. There was a small church in our neighborhood and a larger one downtown. We decided to go to the church downtown... "using the excuse" that the pastor's sermons were so boring and that we also wanted to visit our grandmother, who lived downtown, on the way back to church. In truth we went straight to our grandma who wasn't really religious and covered up our swindle. I doubt our parents ever found out.
Awe that's actually really wholesome and cute
Load More Replies... One secret my brother has kept from my dad and will forever I think. One night when my brother and I shared a house together I woke up at like 2am to him groaning and calling out from his bedroom. I got up and found he had vomited everywhere and he was conscious but not lucid. I call an ambulance and they ask whether he had been drinking. I said I didn't know, as I went to bed about 9pm but he wouldn't have more than a few ciders as far as I knew. They took him off to hospital and I call my mum and dad (they were divorced) but neither picked up. The next day my brother was sent home and I found out he had been intoxicated, he had been drinking shots. Mum knows this, but since my dad is a tea-totaller he didn't want to tell him. Since my bother is coeliac he gave some excuse about nit knowing what it was but he probably ate some gluten by accident. Dad believed this, but every so often he has asked if they ever found out if gluten was the culprit.
The worst I did as a teen was secretly watched R rated VHS movies and snuck one or 2 cans o' cold ones. The funny thing is after watching those movies was part of my process on learning that I was asexual. I have zero libido/urges since day one of puberty. I enjoyed the story lines and art of the animated stuff instead. Ex. Heavy Metal. I did date in HS, but the most we did was kiss.
My nine year old daughter made a facebook accound at her friend's house and called herself Abigail Monterio. She's in her 20s and I call her that once in a while.
I used to ditch school a lot because of bullying. I pretended to leave for school and just walk through the city or somewhere else where no one I knew would see me and would come back just around the time school Was out. Also forged my father's signature on sick notes so I had an excuse why I wasn't in school. He never found out.
I have a second secret. When I was five years old my grandmother had me going through a huge mail sorter and throwing out old,outdated mail.I was in another room and about halfway through the sorting I came upon paperwork from an attorney and found out I was adopted.(I had actually felt like I was as long as I could remember). I found out my oldest sister is my birth mother,my sister and brother are my aunt and uncle and my parents were my grandparents. I honestly felt relieved because I knew what I felt was true. My entire family sucked and didn't give a damn about me and my "mother and uncle" were extremely abusive but my dad was everything to me and he was actually the one who adopted me. He had no clue about the abuse when he was at work offshore. But when he died I was 13 and he never knew that I knew about being adopted.I am 51 and until I was in high school my grandmother didn't know I knew.She never knew how I found out,she assumed my biological.mother told me recently.
In high school my grandmother hated my boyfriend because his mom didn't want to be friends with her. So I was consistently punished from seeing him or talking to him on the phone whenever she felt like it. So I figured out that a cute house phone that I got from a friend was an actual working phone. So whenever I was going out to the barn or go check fences on the property (we owned a large horse farm) I would sneak directly under our house(it was on stilts) and open the big phone box that held the wiring for the house phone and tap into the line and talk to him. If she picked up the house phone she was still able to make a call and not know I too was using the same line. I saw a guy that was working on a phone box years earlier and saw he was using a phone from it so by trial and error I figured it out. I'm 51 and she died never knowing what I did for the four years of high school when she punished me on a whim.
When I was six I was climbing the tree in my Aunt’s back garden. Of course we, my cousins and I, had been told multiple times not to. I fell out one day and fractured my wrist. To avoid getting into trouble, I told everyone I tripped over a large rock xD
When I was in elementary school, my mom made so little money that we qualified for free school lunches, but I told my dad (they were divorced) that I needed money for school lunches. I got like $40 /month from him and used it to buy video games. Started living with him in high school. He'd take my PlayStation away if my grades were bad, so I just started going to bed right after dinner so I could wake up at 4am and play the same games on an emulator on his PC before school. He stayed up until past midnight every night so he was never awake before I left in the morning.
