1

"When I was really young. Me and my siblings would play in my grandparents yard. My grandfather would tell us to stay away from the skunk hole at the edge of the yard. We lived in south Texas so this wasn’t something out of the ordinary, and we just avoided it like any other animal home.

Years later it dawned on me. It was actually the septic tank access."

-PM_me_your_recipes-

2

"The reason my aunt punched her husband at the pool during a huge family vacation. It was because she found out that the long distance charges to the hotel room they shared had a ton of calls to a woman he was known to…think was swell."

BenovanStanchiano

3

"The weird smell that I referred to as a “stinky cheese smell” were probably a symptom of seizures.

I would happen maybe twice a year, it’s not really like cheese, it’s like a smell that isn’t a smell. Idk how to even describe it. It was so minor parents disregarded it. I can remember it starting in 2nd grade.

I suddenly started having it a lot more as an adult when I hit 28 and got diagnosed two years later after symptoms became way more extreme. Makes so much sense now!"

lavish-harmonica

4

"My mom used to call us in for dinner by yelling out the back door from the kitchen. I was in middle school before I realized the scream door was actually called a screen door."

Bustersb#tch

5

"I solved a family mystery for my mom.

I wasn’t allowed to play console video games during the week all the way until I was 18 but some nights I’d really be craving it so I would noiselessly creep through my house into my basement where I could play video games in peace.

But once every 30 times or so one of my parents would need something from the basement and I’d quickly turn off the tv monitor, hide in the guest room and pray they didn’t turn on a light or notice the Xbox was on. One night I ducked into the guest room and hid behind the bed.

To my horror my mom followed me into the room and turned on the lights. I was panicking so when she started digging through the closet with her back to me I made a run for it. I nearly brushed her shirt and if she’d seen me I’d probably have given her a heart attack. But I made it and kept going all the way to bed.

About 5 years went by and my mom said something like “you’re such a quiet walker” and I told her it was because of my basement trips thinking I had nothing to lose. My mom’s face went kinda solemn and when I explained she said “so there really was someone down there.”

And she explained that she remembered that exact night and the feeling that there was a ghost in the room. Over the next couple days she’d stare into space and just say “I can’t believe you were really there.” She seemed to get over it but she probably checks empty rooms closer now."

Salt_Paint8157

6

"I visited my dad when I was 6 or 7 years old at the place where he worked, or so I was told. I remember remarking at the time, and people laughed at me, because I said it looked just like a prison. The people laughing were the guards and I was indeed visiting my dad at Terminal Island federal correctional institution where he was a federal inmate."

Grokker999

7

"When i was 10 my godfather gave me 20 dollars as a christmas gift, at the end of the dinner the money had disappeared. For years my parents blamed me for being irresponsible with my money.

Years later we figured out, after she was caught stealing stuff from my aunt’s house, that my cousin’s fiancée at the time is a kleptomaniac. Turns out she was the one that stole the money."

CiscoDniz

8

"My dad used to say he could stop the rain for a moment by snapping his fingers. He’d do it in the car, when it was pouring. I was so mesmerized; told all my friends about it, well into late elementary school.

I’ve since realized he’d snap as we drove underneath an overpass."

tequilamockingbird16

9

"Jontra Volta was actually John Travolta which really made a lot more sense"

Osapir

10

"I have huge gaps in my memories as a child. Like, weirdly inexplicable ones that always felt weird. Not just basic forgetting stuff. I’ve had a few instances of this happening as an adult as well. Welp, turns out I have a dissociative disorder and that can cause amnesia."

crescentcactus

11

"I was watching Star Trek TNG with my dad when someone told Ryker to “wash his back”. When I asked my father why someone would say that to another person, he said “So you can smell someone coming up behind you”. It wasn’t until years later that I understood how easy it was to hear WATCH as WASH…and how committed my Dad was to willfully deceiving his children for personal satisfaction."

Bixlord

12

"Not mine, but my husband’s (I hope he doesn’t see this bc then my cover is blown). He said in middle school, there was a time that he’d get pulled out of class to shoot free throws in the gym. Only him. He didn’t think this was strange, but didn’t understand why he was the only one that got to do that.

Turns out, his parents told his teachers he couldn’t participate in Sex Ed. hahah"

hyzdie

13

"My Mother, who passed about in 2009, used to make a meat loaf every single year on groundhogs day. Every single year.

Every single year she would tell us it was ground hog and I always thought it just tasted like ground beef, but I was kid. Im 33 now. Last year….last year I said something to my brother about it and asked if he knew where mom got the ground hog. I wanted to do that for son.

My brother had no idea what I was talking about. I told him about it and he started laughing, my wife started laughing, my own son, who didn’t know why, started laughing.

Mom got me good, mystery solved. It was just regular meat loaf."

jthomas287

14

"Who ate all the cherries in the cherry cake. I was blamed for this for YEARS after someone picked out all of the cherries and ate them during a family Christmas party. 8 years later my little sister confessed to me that it had been her."

badboringusername

15

"When I was younger, like 4 or 5, my family had a pet turtle. One day the turtle went missing and my parents told me it climbed the wall in our backyard and went to the creek behind our house. I, being a naive toddler child, did not question this logic.

Fast forward to when I was 17 and driving with my mom in the car. We saw a tortoise crossing the street and I was suddenly thrown back to my memory of us having a pet turtle. I pulled over to save the tortoise and was all “OMG MOM TURTLES CAN’T CLIMB WALLS! WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR TURTLE?!”

Came to find out it had burrowed a hole in our lawn and my dad didn’t notice it until after he ran it over with a lawn mower obviously it was easier to pick up the pieces and tell your kid it climbed the wall than admit you murdered it with a lawn mower."

DemigodApollo

16

"I remember being about 8, and in the car with my dad. I was in the front seat and we were driving somewhere, and this song came on the radio. He cranked it and said something about it being the best guitar playing ever.

He really jammed out, which was really uncharacteristic because he was usually so stoic. It was the only time I heard the song, and he died before I could ever ask him what song it was. When I asked around, no one knew wtf I was talking about or what song I was thinking of.

So I had this melody in my head for years, but how do you look up a song that has no lyrics? So for years and years, this song stayed on the back burner in my brain. I was afraid to forget it. Somehow this story pops up when I’m like 26 or so, chatting with my husband and we searched YouTube for “best guitar songs”. After about 15 minutes, we find it. Cliffs of Dover was the song that I’d burned into my brain on repeat for 16 years. Now I jam out to it with my kids."

1thruZero

17

"Mystery of why my mom never ordered anything for herself and was never hungry whenever she took my sister and I to eat out.

25 years later, she told me she really was hungry and wanted to eat too but she only had enough money to feed the two of us. She didn’t want us to feel guilty. I love my mom so much."

thunder_spears