I strongly suspect that while we were in HS, my brother was the starter of the rumors that I was gay. That would be bad enough but seeing how we went to a Catholic HS made things even a little more uncomfortable.
remember taking a sociology class long, long, long ago and being told that “casual bastardtry” was believed to run in the range of 10% of all births. There was no source provided and I’ve often wondered what random DNA studies would show.
I suspect that I have an older half-sibling. I know lots of bad and shocking things about my father and I mean really bad. I know that he derailed a train when he was young, did most any drug he could get his hands on, had multiple affairs across three wives, and is an alcoholic to boot. That is just the beginning. When my parents were getting divorced when I was 14, my mother threw out the idea of “the secret” in anger. I asked her what it was and she said that was the one thing she could never tell me about my father. Fast forward to 3 years ago when I was 31. Out of the blue, I asked my mother again about “the secret” and she turned white as a ghost and wanted to know how I knew about its existence at all. I told her that it came from her. She told me to ask my father and she could never tell so I did the next time I saw him. He turned white as a ghost and denied there was any such thing. The existence of another child is the only thing I could think of because I already knew plenty of things that most people don’t know about their parents.
I’m pretty sure I was a “surprise”. No way do you have 3 kids in 4 years and then wait 6 years to have another one.
There’s plenty of worse things it could be, though I hope it is not.
I had no idea Ross Geller posted on this board.
Maybe they reallized that the first three just weren’t living up to expectations.
I think I was probably entirely unplanned. I’m certain my parents did and still do resent me. (We get along pretty well, but quite honestly, it would be impossible for anyone to not resent me as a child).
Nah, there are way worse things than that. In fact, from your story, I would presume it’s something different. You may have an older unknown sibling, but that’s a coincidence.
I think I would have done much better socially in high school if my parents didn’t keep on saying ‘you look fine,’ even though I actually looked like the love-child of Dexter from Dexter’s lab and a juvenile Grendel. I was stupid enough to believe it though, so oh well.
Yeah…murder comes to my mind first.
I was always convinced my dad had this huge collection of porn after I found one tape and being 13 I used to look for it when no one was home, but I never found anything.
Of course, my parents were masters at hiding Christmas presents (I never had any idea where those were either) and for all I know the motherlode of porn is still in that house.
as in my mind too…
I’ll tell you one thing I suspect, though it’s not entirely about my childhood, just took place (or didn’t, as you’ll see) during it.
I don’t think my parents ever had sex in my living memory.
There, I said it. Other people stress about walking in on their parents. I worried about the opposite. I never saw them holding hands, never a bit of affection. From the time I remember they always slept with the door open. I had very few sleepovers and was expected to be home most of the time, so they only had a few opportunities to be alone.
They were married only a year before they adopted me and I’m sure they had sex before the adoption.
I have a really bad “smell memory” from a children’s Christmas party when I was a kid (early 70s). It’s a man/pipe-type smell, which usually wouldn’t be so bad, but this particular memory is a really terrible one, and only every so often do I get the tiniest remembrance of this smell, and it makes me feel really bad inside. I think it was the man that was dressed as Santa, and it could always be that this was my first time seeing “Santa” and it scared me enough to associate his smell with something really terrible, or, it could be something worse that may have happened at that party, which I truly hope isn’t the case.
Ditto. Way too much fear for the big secret to be a simple out-of-wedlock child.
I was born late, when my youngest sibling was 10 and my oldest was 17, and this happened before I was born. One of my sisters told my ex-wife (when I was almost 30) that my brother didn’t respect my father after the husband of my mother’s cousin beat the crap out of him in front of the whole family and my Dad didn’t fight back, because my mother’s cousin wrongfully accused my Dad of sleeping with her. I had never heard anything about this story before. This leads me to a couple of speculations. One, my father had full dentures from as long as I could remember (his mid-40s), and he said it was because he never took care of his teeth, but my Dad had very good hygiene and didn’t seem like the type who would neglect dental care to the point that he lost all his teeth by the time he was 45, so I wonder if a lot of his teeth got knocked out in his beating. Secondly, I wonder if it’s true that he did in fact sleep with my Mom’s cousin, because he always seemed very flirtatious with other women when I was growing up and my Dad was a very handsome man.
For a variety of reason I am becoming more and more certain that I was sexually abused as a child. Most likely it was my uncle (my mom’s brother in law). He was creepy and I used to stay over my aunt’s house a lot and he scared my very much.
It makes me profoundly sad that this may be true, and yet it explains so much.
I am pretty sure it wasn’t murder. My parents married when they were 19 and stared consciously knowing my father when he was about 24. He was kidnapped when he was 17 in a bizarre mistaken identity plot. The would-be executioner hide in the back of my father’s car at a convenience store and held him hostage all night while the kidnapper tried to arrange the killing of my father along with a women (who he had never met) as part of an infidelity payback plan. He escaped in the early morning hours and the kidnapper went to prison for life without parole. My father’s best friend was killed in a car accident that same year and I know that my father had nothing to do with that. My father was also a teacher in a boy’s home for a while and you can’t get a teaching certificate in Louisiana with any felony or significant misdemeanor violations.
Three years ago, I was passed another family secret and therefore inducted into the Knights of the Templar of our family. Only one person of each generation is allowed to know this one. My great-grandfather pulled a Thomas Jefferson (or Strom Thurmond) and fathered a black child with the household help. That son went on to populate lots of other children in our tiny home town and I grew up with a number of my black cousins and never knew it. I have it on strict orders never to tell that to anyone, especially my brothers, until I am just about to die. I don’t think my brothers are good material for this board so I feel I can share it responsibly.
In summary, we have train derailing, kidnappings, drug use, alcoholism, affairs, shooting out a red light in anger yet there is one special thing that I am never allowed to know. Much of my family’s life reads like a 2nd rate soap opera script. I have no idea what the big secret could be.