When I was about 18 I heard that apparently I had gone away for a few days and when I got home I walked in on my then-boyfriend and his best friend (another guy) in bed together.
I was told who apparently said it, but I’ve never seen her to ask wtf.
I once managed a rooming house full of crack addicts. When one of them came across my desk to me, I rolled back and brought my knee up, hitting him square on the nose.
A guy in the rooming house was attacked by a chainsaw when I was there, but I had nothing to do with it.
The two rumors got mixed up, and people were congratulating me on my use of a chainsaw on the crackhead. But I never had any trouble with any of the roomers after that rumor got around.
I worked with a woman who would announce to the whole office her new diet about once a month. Cabbage soup, Weight Watchers, grapefruit diet, low fat, low carb, etc. This lasted for about three days with the constant yak yak yak about it. When I got serious about losing some weight, I didn’t say a word. I just started doing it. I didn’t eat with my coworkers so no one noticed my change in diet. They did, however, notice that I was losing weight and NOT talking about it. So Ms. Sis Vicious starts spreading the rumor that I was either doing drugs or had AIDs. It was three months before anyone confronted me with it.
I heard I was a Pedo.
I heard I was gay.
I heard I was a murderer.
I heard I had bad character.
I heard I was an alcoholic.
I heard I used drugs.
I heard I cheated at school.
I heard I was racist.
I heard I was sexist.
I heard I was afraid of women.
I heard fill in the blank x 10o0 lies about my paents.
I heard I couldn’t drive.
I heard I couldn’t defend myself.
I heard I was ‘a really bad shot’.
I heard I had some weird obsession about ‘McDonalds’.
Oddly enough, I heard ALL of this shit from people who “heard” it from a
short, ugly, red-haired goat-boy with filed-sharp teeth like a possums who happened to like the same girl I liked.
The Happy Ending? “She did better than him.”
“…Oh, I saw that ending coming a mile away. Next time, I pick the movie…”
At a class reunion, the husband of one of my classmates accidentally spilled a drink on me. He immediately apologized.
Repeatedly. The drunker he got, the more he kept apologizing. He said he was afraid that I would beat him up. The apologies got to be far more annoying than the spilled drink had ever been.
On the other hand, I was a 98-pound nerd in high school. The notion that I was capable of beating him up was the most flattering thing anybody said to me at the entire reunion.
Well I did once have sex with three different women at or immediately after a party according to rumors I later heard. It wasn’t a group thing. Since I was over 100 miles away at the time of the party it was even more impressive.
Back in college I worked at a McDonalds for a few months. Somehow, shortly after I left, a rumor started going around that I had stormed out one night saying “I McQuit!”
How you doin’? 
Someone had to ask!
Back when I tended bar - during college, and after my husband and I divorced - I was often very amused at the rumors about my sex life. And during a later job, a week of quiet vacation became a story about how I had disappeared and was in danger. It was pretty odd when I came to work the following Monday - apparently, one of the girls at the front desk had gone so far as to try to file a missing persons report at the local PD! (Which was doubly funny, because I was, at the time, dating a detective from that department. Neither he nor I learned about the missing person report until Monday, though, because we’d gone on a weekend getaway for the weekend.)
In my 20s, a girl I worked with asked me out. We went out a couple of times, nothing serious. About a month later, a bunch of guy co-workers were running down the list of female co-workers I’d slept with, which was all of them (I hadn’t even slept the one girl I dated). That was because they seemed to like me more than the other guys, which might have had something to do with me not acting like a hormonal frat boy.
Flip side of this, many years ago, apparently a significant part of the group of people I and my friend X used to hang around with assumed we were a gay couple.
When I found out, I wasn’t offended at the suggestion that I was gay; just at the suggestion that I’d have bad enough taste to date X.
Let’s see. . .
That I was bisexual. This was back in college.
That I was sleeping with my (female – I’m male) boss, at the I job I had before my current job. This was widely believed. I have no idea why.
That I was sleeping with any number of women at the place. I wasn’t sleeping with any of them.
That I was arrested for burglary the year after I graduated from high school. I wasn’t. I did know the guys who were.
A lot of weird rumors that I can barely remember in college. To be fair, I was kind of an oddball. Not an unpopular oddball – I was surprised to find out after college that I was kind of socially in demand – but an oddball nonetheless.
At my first couple of jobs after college, that I was gay. I believe that this was because (a) I worked at fashion magazine publishers and hung out with mostly gay guys from work (and this was back when the gay world was pretty socially separate from the straight world) and (b) because I would talk about my love of opera.
That I was a member of an outlaw motorcycle club. I did ride a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, back before they became fashion accessories and everyone got one, and I did have a fair number of tattoos, back before they became fashion accessories and everyone got one. I was a member of a motorcycle club, but it was very far from an outlaw club and I never talked about it at work.
I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
[spoiler]I actually beat him with a bike chain.
It was actually a motorcycle chain. 520.[/spoiler]
I may have entertained delightfully evil thoughts during my divorce, but I did not go after my husband (or any sight-impaired rodents) with a carving knife.
I am the most reserved, boring person you will ever know.
Which is why one wise guy friend started a rumor once that I’d gotten drunk and been arrested for streaking! And people actually believed it (it’s always the quiet ones you have to watch for!).
Some people said they really enjoyed watching my show on TV
I am, and have frequently been through my adult life, mistaken for a variety of performers. In my 30s and a few pounds ago, I was shyly asked if I was Frank Zappa about once a month. Now my aging rockstar looks get me asked if I’m the drummer/bassist/keyboards for _______ (insert some middling-famous band of 20 years ago).
I even got a little of it at the high-level reception I attended a few weeks ago… even among real aging rockers, I was assumed by some to be one of them. I’m not. But the rumor was clearly going around the room, and it was both embarrassing and flattering.
After high school someone asked me about my psychic abilities, that they’d heard about.
Now, I used to be a heavy bullshitter, and people tended to believe me because I never looked like the type to lie, but I don’t remember ever pretending to be psychic. My BS was so powerful, it grew without even being tended!
Decades ago, my handsome younger brother was often stopped on the street by little kids who thought he was actor Greg Evigan. Their moms knew, of course, that he wasn’t, but my brother would happily pose for pictures or sign autographs as “BJ McKay and his best friend Bear.”
I remember that whenever I hear of a real celebrity who blows off fans. My brother was willing to spend a few seconds making kids happy, and it would be no harder for a real actor to do the same.
Many years ago, a colleague started a rumor that I had hired a hooker on a business trip, and put it on my company credit card. I denied it, saying she wouldn’t stand on her head so I could swipe the card.
Regards,
Shodan
I heard some kids in my neighborhood thought there was a ghost in my house. I went ahead and made a chicken wire ghost like this one and hung it from a tree in my front yard. I don’t think any of them saw it, however.
