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It’s become a running joke that my son’s class is the home of tall tales. It’s like the little kids are going for gold at the Winter Olympics of Wildest Life Stories.
Whether it’s the 6-year-old who claims to have served years in the army abroad, or the lucky fellow who just casually popped over to Disney for the afternoon, despite it being more than 7,800 miles away and typically requiring 22-27 hours of traveling time. No, he doesn’t have a private jet. Not yet, anyway.
But kids will be kids and fantasy or imagination is all part of growing up. It’s when adults come up with seemingly made-up life stories that more than a few eyebrows get raised. Maybe because we become more cynical as we age or maybe because certain things simply cannot be true.
Someone asked, “What’s a short story from your life that sounds fake but is 100% true?” and many of the answers might leave you feeling like you’ve been teleported to my son’s Grade 1 class, where anything goes. But these people swear they’re telling the truth so let's give them the benefit of the doubt. Bored Panda has put together a list of the best responses. We’ll leave you to decide what’s fact and what’s fiction.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
I stepped drunk into an Uber once. Driver and I got talking about crypto and he told me how he lost his life savings, $50,000 USDT, two years earlier by sending it to another exchange on the wrong network. I work in tech and I happen to understand blockchain technology quite well, so I immediately suspected that maybe it could be retrieved. I gave him my phone number as he dropped me off 5 mins after getting in.
He texted me a week later and I did some research. Knew a guy at the other exchange. Had my theory confirmed. 2 months and tons of back and forths later the funds landed back on his Binance account. He could barely believe it.
The odds of me helping someone out so randomly yet significantly still makes me smile to this day.
We’re not saying the stories on this list are lies. And we’re not saying they aren’t… Afterall, who are we to question what someone believes to be their true life story?
However, if you ever meet a person who clearly tells you a blatant lie about their wild and wonderful life, don’t be too quick to judge them. They might just be dealing with something known as confabulation.
Not to be confused with con-FIB-ulation, a word that we completely made up on the fly, confabulation is an actual disorder, often caused by an injury to the brain.
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#2
Lost 410 lbs in 4 yrs at 60 yrs old.
#3
Someone left their baby at my house and never came back for them. I eventually adopted them. They are closing in on thirty now and they're amazing. A whole lot of WTHs but no regrets.
Elladine DesIsles 41 minutes ago
Joey, singular "they" has been in valid English use since the late 14th century. This does not necessarily mean that the child uses they/them pronouns, though that would also be completely valid if true. Grow up and be pedantic and/or bigoted elsewhere.
“Confabulation is an intriguing disorder of memory and thought,” explains Dr Armin Schnider, a professor of neurorehabilitation at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. “Patients tell stories about their recent doings and plans for the future that are blatantly incompatible with reality.”
Schnider says that confabulation is not considered lying because it is not intentional and, in many cases, not even consciously perceived by the confabulator. The person has no intent to deceive and they have nothing to gain, and this is why confabulation is sometimes referred to as “honest lying” by experts.
#4
I told a mugger with a knife "no thanks I'm in a hurry" and got on my next train without even noticing the knife till I sat down.
Guy looked perplexed.
#5
5 of my family members slept with my ex-husband.
vice_queen:
I don't know why I need to know this and I apologise but - which family members?
Lucky_Ad_1318:
1 aunt and 4 cousins.
#6
Okay here I go. I met that woman named Lucy(named are changed for their privacy) that was from Poland. A couple of weeks after I saw Lucy in the same grocery store and said “Hii, Lucy!”. The woman looked at me with surprise. I repeated myself, “Hi Lucy, we met two weeks ago in this store, do you remember me?” The woman looked at me with a weird expression on her face and said “I’m not Lucy. I am Mary.” I apologized and we had a “small talk”. She was from Romania. A week later, I met Mary again and greeted her. It was not Mary this time, it was Lucy. I asked Lucy if she had any sisters because Mary looked like her twin. Lucy said no, but then surprised me with another answer. She said, “I had a sister, a twin sister. But we were separated during adoption and I have never seen her since.” I told her everything that happened with Mary and she decided to look for her. We exchanged numbers to keep each other updated. When Lucy met Mary they realized that they finally found each other after years of searching. The most unbelievable part of this story is that it happened in neither Romania nor Poland. It was another country. As for an adoption concerns that siblings cannot be separated I guess it wasn’t like that before or something could’ve went wrong, I’m not sure about the details. I am happy I played a part of a family reunion. I am surprised because such a coincidence is almost impossible. Nevertheless, it happened.
As we mentioned earlier, confabulation usually happens after a brain injury. This might be from trauma, a stroke, or a tumor. Interestingly, many confabulations often contain shreds of truth. The person may include details they got from a conversation, a photograph, or a television show. It may even be drawn from past events in the person’s life - something they experienced before the brain injury.
“Most confabulations become obvious in a discussion about recent doings or plans for the day,” Dr. Schnider says. “They reflect a confusion of current reality. Subjects perceive themselves in another time, place, and situation—often related to their near or distant past—and act according to this feeling.”
#7
I had a warrant out for my arrest, but it was really for someone with the same first name as me but the last name (pronounced the same) was spelled differently. Cops came to my job to arrest me, but I was in class. I had to find an attorney and they told the judge they had the wrong person. It was...a lot.
#8
I was washing dishes at my grandmas house during a thunderstorm. They have a giant window about 8 feet to the right of the sink.
While I was washing the dishes lightning came through the window (didn’t break the window) and hit the sink right as I took my hands out of it.
I flipped and got my grandma. She calmed me down and said to finish the dishes cus lightning never strikes twice. As she said that lighting came right through the window again and hit the same sink. (Maybe 10 min after the first strike).
We both left the room immediately and got grandpa to shut the sink off.
Plentyofoomph 3 hours ago
The idea that lightning never strikes twice is so utterly ridiculous if you even have the most basic concept of how it works. Also: lightning rods.
#9
I was walking my parents driveway when I saw an owlet on the ground. Before I could move away from it I felt a sharp pain on the back of my head. Mama owl had dove at me and nipped me or clocked me with a talon. Thankfully didn't break skin but had a bump. No one ever believes me.
Experts warn that confabulation isn’t easy to spot because the person speaks with such sincerity and conviction. Interestingly, earlier this year, Adam James, a geriatric specialist suggested that U.S. president Donald Trump may be exhibiting traits associated with frontotemporal dementia, and in particular, confabulation.
“According to the specialist, this behaviour could explain instances where Trump has made detailed but factually incorrect statements during speeches and interviews,” the International Business Times reported.
#10
When I was a kid, a “cop” stopped me for riding my bike without a bell and gave me a handwritten ticket.
I went home terrified. My dad looked at it and started laughing, it was just some random guy.
The “ticket” literally said: “BUY A BELL.”
I bought one anyway.
#12
Slipped on a banana peel and concussed myself on my now fiancés shin. Hard explaining that to the Doctor.
James reportedly pointed to a 2026 interview example where Trump allegedly made multiple inaccurate claims in a single response. The expert suggested that this could reflect more than simple exaggeration or political rhetoric.
He listed a number of other “tells,” including unusual posture, repetitive speech patterns and fluctuating clarity during Trump's public appearances. But since James hasn’t directly examined Trump, who is in his seventies, the expert's claims or suggestions cannot be taken as fact.
Confabulation or con-fib-ulation? We'll leave you to ponder that in your own time...
#13
My blood type changed after my stem cell transplant.
Beak Hookage 2 hours ago
Friend of mine had a marrow transplant. Possibly relevant that she's a woman and the donor was a man but either way she went from mosquito magnet to never getting bitten again.
#14
I was at the edge of the Green Swamp in Florida and was about to try hiking in it. I was sitting on my car’s bumper putting on my tall, thick, leather, “snake boots”. And old guy in a rattletrap pickup rolled up and through his half-toothless mouth he asked me what I was doing. I told him my plans. He pointed to my boots and said that I didn’t want to wear those, but to wear sneakers instead. I argued about protection from snakes.
He said, “A snake will hit ya’ right above that boot.”
“I’m wearing long pants.”
“Don’t matter. They know where the top of the boot is. You’re better off getting hit lower ‘cause you can slow the poison with a tourniquet. Look here.”
He opened the door on his truck and above his worn out Ked low-tops were snakebite scars. “I’ve lived our here my whole live. I know what I’m talking about.”
I ignored him. Laughed him off as a dumb old codger.
Not long after, Scientific American published an article about how many species of snake are heat-seeking. They will hit the warmest spot they can reach. I got lucky. I saw alligators, wild boars, and some snakes in trees, but never up close as far as I know.
#15
My wife and I have tried to go tent camping eleven times. The first ten times we were driven out by torrential rains that got us soaked. The eleventh time we were driven out by a forest fire. I don’t think there will be a twelfth.
#16
In the 5 sections of my graduate school entrance exam, I got a 95, a 97, and three 99s.
I'm not that smart, didn't excel much in school, but I have a knack for multiple-choice questions and test-taking strategy.
#17
Took a bush plane to a remote island in Alaska with one of the highest concentration of brown bears, 1800, 1 per square mile. Saw 11 in 4 hours. It was an amazing experience.
#18
I stayed one college long night awake reading a book that completely trapped me and thrilled me about a post-apocalyptic world where the yellowstone volcano had exploded and completely covered the earth with ash, no sunlight, winter coming thing.
It's 9AM, I have not slept because I literally spent all night reading that, it's a saturday, I go to a shop nearby to buy some stuff, I look at the sky.... completely grey and ashy for some reason. Breathing is weird.
I get to the shop,which has a tv, on the news: apparently a volcano had exploded that day in the south of argentina and the ashes just reached this morning our city.
I am completely stumped.
I had never, in my life, experienced that and when I do ..... I had just finished reading THAT?
I have no clue what to think about this coincidence, seriously. The world is the matrix, I don't know.
Edit: I went looking for the title, it's "life as we knew it" by susan pfeffer, it's been 15 years since I read it. It was actually something (to not spoil anyone) that caused the global chaos and made all the volcanoes explode. Yellowstone I assume I remember because the protagonist is a US girl.
#19
I inhaled a bug into my lungs while I was howling at the moon, then developed a mysterious anaphylactic allergy from it and now have to carry an epi pen around.
Beak Hookage 2 hours ago
A werewolf with allergies - now there's a combination I didn't expect to ever see.
#20
I was attacked by an actual monkey in a movie theater.
#21
I raised a baby squirrel I found on a run to maturity until he found a girlfriend and left.
#22
When I was a depressed teen I was walking around at Walmart late one night. In the checkout I was making small talk with the woman in front of me. She noticed my semicolon tattoo and showed me her own. She told me she also struggled with mental health and that it gets better. I thanked her and asked her her name, turned out it was the same as mine. I saw it as a sign that I should stick around.
#23
I had a fish fall from the sky and land on my car. I was driving next to a reservoir, and a hawk dropped it mid flight. I watched it dive into the water and come up with the fish and the fish was able to squirm out of the hawk’s grasp, and landed on the hood of my car.
#24
Drove into a light pole, cut it clean off the base, took out power to an entire neighbor, didn't have a scratch on me.
#25
I am adopted in the USA. My bio family on my birth mom’s side immigrated to America 4/5 generations ago from the Netherlands, have kept contact with family who are still in the Netherlands and maintained a pretty good family history. Some of them even still speak Dutch. I grew up knowing absolutely none of this with no active connection to them until much later in life. I married a Dutch citizen from the same town my biological family has roots in. My biological distant family still lives there and his family also still lives in the area. We didn’t realize this until he and I were already in a long term relationship. We traced our family histories as much as possible and are pretty positive we’re not related but we honestly had a bit of a scare at first!
#26
I had a bf in college. We broke up and he went to NY for med school. Then I met someone else (Scott) who had recently moved to my town from NY and we started dating.
At around the same time, my ex met a girl in NY (Emily) and they started dating.
Turns out my current boyfriend (Scott) and Emily were bf/gf for 2-3 years and had broken up when Scott relocated to CA.
Scott and I are married. My ex and Emily last I heard broke up.
I thought it was pretty wild.
#27
I have a rare medical condition called Kallmann syndrome, that affects puberty. I also have no sense of smell.
I was called a "late bloomer" by every doctor I saw until I was 23 years old.
At 23, I started work in a London hospital, I am a biomedical scientist. One lunchtime I went to find one of the endocrinolgists who worked at the hospital in his office. After a quick description of being a "late bloomer" he asked if I had a sense of smell. No doctor had ever asked me that before.
He just happened to a specialist in the condition, one of very few in the country. He had even done his MD thesis at Cambridge on Kallmann syndrome.
This led to an almost instant diagnosis, hormone replacement treatment and a totally different life knowing I was not the only person who had not gone through puberty correctly.
#28
My birth was a surprise- I was a cryptic pregnancy. The wildest part? I have a twin.
#29
Both of my grandfathers [passed away] naturally on the same day. That was a rough week.
#30
I got strep throat so many times that it gave me OCD. It’s called PANDAs. Look it up- it sounds fake but it happened to me.
#31
I played pro baseball for 17 games. Got hurt, blew my money, now a retired/disabled paramedic.
#32
I was walking down the street with my then girlfriend in New Orleans in February. This is only important because it was cold enough to need a sweatshirt/sweater at night. This guy on his bike passed us and yelled “I like your sweater.” So I thanked him because it really did feel like he was talking to me. Instead of just continuing to ride his bike, he stopped to tell me that he wasn’t talking to me and he specifically didn’t like my sweater.
#33
NYE 1999>2000, went to my ex-wife’s friend’s place for a small 8-10 person NYE party she was staying at in the Hollywood hills. Turns out she was babysitting Brad Pitts dogs. They had been friends for 20+ years, was all rather surreal. One of the guests there was Terry Farrell - most people wouldn’t know her, but as a Star Trek nerd I had a major “WTH !!” moment!
Strange night, in every way. However, LA clearly was not the place to be on that night .. the rest of the world seemed to have a better time on that 99/2000 turnover.
#34
Santa socked me in the face and broke my nose
Dad used to hold Christmas parties for his crew. Another dad, John, would dress up for us kids. John and I would rough house, he’d throw pot shots that never connected (if they did they were very light). While dressed up, John and I started rough housing, I moved in a way he wasn’t expecting and he just suckered my nose and immediately started gushing blood. He has a daughter a little younger than me and felt absolutely awful. Both my parents watched the whole thing happen so they also knew it was an accident. Needless to say, I stopped believing in Santa around that time.
#36
LA nightclub for a media launch party. Me, naturalized American chatting to a younger colleague from UK office and discover we are from same small UK town. Joined a few minutes later by Australian colleague, tell him what we just realized and turns out he’s from the same small town too but family emigrated to Australia. An American, a Brit and an Aussie born in the same tiny English town discover this while sitting at a bar in LA. Wild, huh?
#37
My brother and sisters are my Godparents.
I was born with a rib attached wrong, and it collapsed my lung. It was shaky on whether or not I’d make it. The day I was supposed to be baptized, but it snowed so my Aunt and Uncle couldn’t make it. The priest drove to our home to do the service and my sibs were “proxy” Godparents.
#38
I taught the Rockwell rocket scientists how to use their first computerized spreadsheets-Apple VisiCalc. Truth of the matter is that l was just learning the program myself so l just stayed a chapter ahead.
#39
I was sitting in my room when I was about 18 and I got this overwhelming feeling of dread. I went and told my mom that I had a feeling something was wrong. She seemed skeptical but listened.
20 minutes later she received a call that my younger sister had been drinking and driving. She rolled my dad’s truck three times. She was injured but surprisingly not too bad. Never had another feeling like it since and me and my sister weren’t particularly close. So weird.
#40
When I turned 8 my dad said I was old enough for my own, full adult sized, tacklebox. He took me to Gander Mountain and told me I could get $100 worth of stuff (including tax) to put in the tacklebox. He didn't expect me to be exact, so he just said to put items in my cart while he looked at fishing rods in that same area.
I spent the time adding things to my cart, and eventually reaching a point with my mental math where I knew I had to put some stuff back and start weighing what things I wanted more than others. He came and found me and looked at my cart and said he thought we'd end up having to put quite a few things back.
When we got to the checkout he told the guy that once we hit $100 to stop, and we'd put anything left in the cart back on the shelves, and he told me to put what I wanted most up onto the checkout, first.
The guy rang up the last item and it came out to $100.01.
#41
When I was a teen, my mom, niece, and I were visiting my grandmother. We were staying in a camper in her backyard. One night, it started storming really badly. Thunder lightening possible tornado. Instead of letting us stay in the house for the night, my grandmother sent us out to the camper.
I'm carrying an umbrella to cover my infant niece and mom. Lightening struck, and I'm not sure exactly what happened next. My mom said I screamed the umbrella went flying and I fell to the ground. My mom put my niece in the camper, and when she got back to me, I was sitting up. I'm so happy I wasn't carrying my niece. My grandmother heard me scream but didn't even open the door to check on us.
#42
While slowing driving down a dirt mountain road at night, my husband and I both clearly saw a skunk and a black cat casually strolling across the road side-by-side as if they were straight out of a Pepe Le Pew cartoon.
#43
At age 12 I helped intubate my father with a piece of gasoline syphon hose during anaphylaxis caused by an ant sting. I sawed about a foot off the hose on my parent's bed with a kitchen knife, and he rawdogged it down his throat to keep his airway open. It was out of our farm truck for use with Jerry cans, stank of gas.
One of our neighbors was a local physician, turned up drunk 30 minutes later with no instruments in his bag except a stethoscope, he was rummaging through our kitchen drawers looking for another knife to do a tracheostomy just as the paramedics arrived (we lived in a rural area).
Paramedics left the syphon hose in place because it was working.
#44
My english teacher in high-school tried to fail me because my grades were "too good" according to her, they were convinced I was cheating because I'd score high on all my quizzes/tests/exams and was always done within 5-15 minutes of getting them.
Completely unrelated but she looked like Edna Mode.
#47
Friends of ours were having a 25th anniversary party. The invitation came in the mail. The dinner was going to be at a restaurant in Paris. The invitation also included 2 round trip tickets - to Paris. It was quite a weekend.
#48
Like 2 weeks ago Walking out of my BFs shower [bare] as his mother came back home earlier than expected. I froze in place and she said "wow I see why he loves you so much" before throwing me a towel.
#49
I live in a huge metro area. I was in a horrible car accident near where I work about 35 miles away from my home. Was in ICU but eventually was moved into a room with the sister of the dispatcher on my accident. About 18 months later my next door neighbor was having his house painted by the guy who was the car in front of me when I was hit(struck up a conversation with my husband who has a race car and discussed how life was too short not to do what you dream about and he had to leave when he realized that the accident he had witnessed was mine because he had always felt guilty about not stopping to help). I went back to work and about two years later unknowingly hired the boyfriend of the daughter of the man who climbed into my upside down SUV and cradled my head until the emergency services arrived. He asked me about a year after his hiring if I had been in a big accident and told me about this. It sounds unreal but it is 100% true. This is in Metro Detroit with 4.5 million people in the area.
#50
I once convinced my entire middle school that I was the voice actor for a minor character in *SpongeBob*, and the lie held up for three years until the actual actor visited our town for a convention.
#51
I met my second husband online playing video games in 2009. I was in Mobile, Alabama and he was in the Bronx. He proposed with a text message, shipped me a ring via FedEx, I drove to New York and we got married 5 days after we met in person. He realized he was gay in 2020. I drove him to his first date and they’re still together 5+ years later. We’re divorced now but still best friends.
#52
I went to DiCaprio’s house to pick up one of his friends and Toby Maguire was housesitting. Leo was busy filming J Edgar in Dc.
Wasn’t until years later that I got to work with DiCaprio on Wolf of Wall Street.
#53
I organized a virtual shrek beat saber tournament and some promotional voice actress for the Emmy's found out about it and was the announcer for my tournament.
#54
When I was 18 my dad burnt my mom’s boyfriend’s house down. It was declared arson but my dad was never arrested. Boyfriend moved in with my mom and me which was a disaster and backfired on my dad’s plan.
#55
Met the Queen of England and a US president as a child by not listening to my parents.
#56
I started investing in Bitcoin in 2017, later grew my capital through social media and AI projects, and now invest in physical gold while living in London. All of this in under 10 years, starting from a low-income neighborhood in Mexico—proof that the journey can be chaotic, but it pays off.
#57
In a manic episode, I took a swan dive off my 3rd floor balcony onto a grassy area with a lot of rocks. I got up moments later before being taken to the hospital.
I got a small gash below my left elbow. That was my only injury.
#61
I saw a kid fall out of the window of a Denver bus while on the interstate. (He ended up being okay.).
#62
Co-worker was let go. She sued. I was subpoenaed to appear in court. She represented herself. She asked me to read all the lyrics of Gin and Juice during a deposition that was being videotaped. I read the whole thing without laughing or rapping.
#63
I rode in the Goodyear blimp and my grandmother got hit in the leg by a golf ball struck by the sitting President of the United States.
Both in the same week.
#64
I was once asked this question by a college kid doing an assignment. He approached me in the produce section at Walmart. I told him that I flew to Mars by helicopter and a guy named Marvin checked me in. He left it at that and said thank you. No follow up questions. Mars is the name of a Shell platform in the Gulf of Mexico that I flew to by helicopter for a job I was working. The guy named Marvin was the head of safety for the platform. Part of his job was to account for everyone on the rig.
#65
When I was at college, my house was throwing a Prince vs Michael Jackson party. Everybody picked a side and dressed up. We had neighbor houses crash and friends come, so it was quite a bash. But at one point, some carnival folk showed up. No idea how they knew about it. There was a guy in a top hat and stilts and really long pants walking around drinking whisky from the bottle. And there was this other guy who lit these ball-and-chain things on fire and started doing tricks with them in the courtyard. They and some others asked for donations afterward. “The greatest nation is a donation! The greatest city is generosity!”.
#66
My sisters MIL was babysat and family friends with Lee Harvey Oswald. He worked in the family restaurant.
#67
I had to help set up a surprise party for my twin sister and then leave because my mom didn’t want me there.
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