The Funniest, Weirdest Thing You Did as a Kid

Over the past week, an unnamed Gawker Media dad has been bringing his four-year-old into the office. While you might (somewhat rightfully) be thinking of us as a group of cold and unfeeling bloggers, this little girl has been warming our hearts and making us laugh continually with her adorable and zany antics. The whole thing got me thinking: What was the funniest or weirdest thing you did as a kid?

Within our office chat (and in Kinja), Kate Dries told a story about being a rude toddler who would snatch food out of fellow toddlers’ hands. (Note: Kate has not changed and is still terrible); Ellie Shechet talked about the time she innocently asked her mother what a prostitute was while being driven to her brother’s soccer practice; Kelly Faircloth, in a beautiful misunderstanding, accused her mom of loving “adult movies” during a school open house; Emma Carmichael shared this fantastically disturbing drawing from her then 6-year-old brother:

And me? Well, this is less funny and more horrifying, but as a 3-year-old Sound of Music fan, I once scandalized my mother by screaming “Heil Hitler!” at a crowded outdoor market. Cute, right?

But before we get into your stories, let’s celebrate last week’s winners. There were some amazing submissions to last week’s Pissing Contest, The Biggest Lie You’ve Ever Gotten Away With. Some were heartbreakingly sad, some funny, others downright impressive, but ultimately, there can only be a few winners. Here they are:

je suis cocopop, dastardly pregnanant lady:

I made my husband think our baby was going to be a girl, when I knew I was having a boy.

He didn’t want to know the gender of the baby. I did. We both got what we wanted. On the day of the ultra sound, he went outside while the technician told me we were having a boy. I didn’t tell him the gender.

He wanted to be surprised. I promised him, no matter what the gender, that when a baby came out of my vagina, that it would be a surprise.

Technically it wasn’t a lie. I fooled him. When we would go to Babies ‘r’ Us, I would look at dresses on the sly, and if he looked my way, I would pretend I wasn’t shopping for dresses. I made him sit down and discuss baby names for girls and argued with him about them for hours. When I purchased crib bedding, I chose blue, but it was blue with flowers.

Every day, in the shower, I sang “My Girl,” by The Temptations.

I made my husband go outside on Thanksgiving day while I told my entire family we were having a boy. My parents already had four grandsons, so they were surprised and maybe a little disappointed. They were worried they would blow my secret. None of them did.

I told twenty five people I was having a boy, and none of them slipped up and said the wrong thing.

The day our son was born, my husband was surprised.

I can’t believe he thought I was such a shitty liar. I’m really good at it when I want to be.

SetteOtto, a native Aussie who knows how to commit:

technically, this wasn’t a lie, more of a deception, but here goes. I was born in another country but went to university in Australia. Because I didn’t have permanent residency status, I was on a student visa, I was only allowed to work 20 hours a week. My classes started, and I was desperate to find a job. My savings were running out and I was just getting turned down for every job I applied for. What would happen was the people I was interviewing with would eventually go “I don’t know, we’re worried about problems with your visa and such, are you sure you’re allowed to work here?” I even applied for the first Borders bookstore to open in Australia, and I had worked at a bookstore while in high school, what the fuck? Anyway, I was at uni one day looking at job postings and saw this one for a courier company: evenings, part time, good pay. I called the number on the listing and it started ringing. A guy answers, and it just happened, this voice started coming out of my mouth speaking in an Australian accent. Could I come in to interview? Yes! Now, a bit of background: I’ve always been good at doing accents and impressions. Growing up, I was the skinny, small kid who didn’t have a lot of friends, but I could make people laugh with goofy voices and impressions. So the jocks figured it out eventually, it was more fun to hear me do the voice of, I don’t know, Eddie Murphy, than to beat me up. So I go to this interview, and I’m thinking “what the fuck am I going to do now? They’re going to ask if i’m Australian, and then what?” But they never did. It was just “when can you start?” So I had to speak in a fake Australian accent and learn their slang, which there is a LOT of, for nearly two years. Apparently I did ok. No one ever asked where I was from. I guess I had been living there long enough at that point to pick up the accent, pretty soon it just felt natural. I was making really good money for part time work. I was able to pay my rent, eat well, go to the pub a few nights a week, even go on holiday once or twice a year. By the way, minimum wage in the States is shit. Sorry, Australia, for the deception. I love that country.

The most adorable liar ever, ad infinitum:

When I was 14 or 15, I participated in a summer live-in college prep program at the local university. There were, IIRC, 125 other high-school kids, along with a dozen or so staff and instructors. At the beginning of the program, they distributed a whole lot of paperwork that most people never read, including a list of all students and staff and, for some unknown reason, their birthdays.

I don’t know where I got the idea, but for whatever reason, I memorized everyone’s birthday, and then spent the summer convincing everyone that I could read birthdays on people’s palms. I’d always make a big production of it—”So this line tells me…. May, right? And this line… the 14th? No, wait, the 15th!”—and I always said it didn’t work for everyone, so when someone whose birthday I didn’t know asked to see the trick, I could just look at their palm, shake my head regretfully, and say their lines weren’t clear enough.

I seriously had the whole program, staff and students alike, convinced. I never confessed, either—there are probably still people who believe that they once met someone who could read birthdays on people’s palms.

And finally, Ladyology, who is all of us:

That I was orgasming.

Congrats. You are all masters of deception.

Now onto the kid stuff!

Image via Shutterstock.