# What’s the worst (as in unbelievable) lie you’ve ever been told? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 24, 2023, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593 "2023-03-24T13:17:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2023, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/81 "2023-03-26T17:49:01Z")
That only makes me want to look it up, but I think the most recent president born in July was Bush younger. Before that, it was Ford. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Krupe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ebca7d/32.png) [@Leo\_Krupe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Krupe)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2023, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/82 "2023-03-26T19:06:48Z")
Another I remembered: I grew up across the street from a church, which had a steeple. I was around 10, and a neighbor kid told me that bats lived in the steeple (it wasn’t a belfry–no bells), but he told me the bats would get tangled in my hair _and lay eggs!_ ---
**Author:** ![Mama\_Zappa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@Mama\_Zappa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mama_Zappa)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2023, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/83 "2023-03-26T20:48:59Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > He’s notorious for calling in sick when I highly doubt he is. There was one time he called in sick, and his name was tagged in a Facebook photo on the same day. The photo showed him playing golf with a friend. My husband had a colleague like that. Sick all the time. Then one day she posted on Facebook about having gone on a really great run that day. When she had called in sick. Her boss saw that. She moved on shortly afterward. One of my apartment mates, my senior year in college, was developing into a pathological liar. She got to the point where she never told something QUITE truthfully if she could get away with making up / elaborating something, and it got worse from there on out. Haven’t heard anything from / about her in 40 years, so I don’t know how she turned out. ---
**Author:** ![Beckdawrek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beckdawrek/32/3647_2.png) [@Beckdawrek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beckdawrek)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2023, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/84 "2023-03-26T20:54:18Z")
My Mother told me when I was wee girl that if I kissed my elbow I’d turn into a boy. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2023, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/85 "2023-03-26T22:56:19Z")
Yea, the technician who reports to me seems to lie by default. If he told me 2 + 2 = 4, I punch it into my calculator out just to make sure. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2023, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/86 "2023-03-27T02:53:16Z")
Thanks for all the replies re: why. My aunt and uncle and their kids all enjoyed the kind of pranks that would embarrass each other, goodness knows why. My favourite story involves a pretty good lie: My adult cousin returned home from out of state. Unbeknownst to her, her parents selected the restaurant with the most over-the-top, kitchy, singing-and-clapping birthday option imaginable, and surreptitiously told the staff it was my cousin’s birthday. When she protested “but it’s not my birthday!” (it was about six months out), my middle-aged aunt drew herself up and, as if with great offence, said “Well! I should know the date. I’m her mother” to the waiter. ---
**Author:** ![Moonrise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/moonrise/32/14764_2.png) [@Moonrise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moonrise)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2023, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/87 "2023-03-27T08:05:58Z")
Joking aside, this sort of behaviour is absolutely destructive, especially in a relationship. My ex hid so much of her past, lied about so many things, and made so many promises she never intended to keep that I ended up doubting every single word she said unless I had some material evidence. It was so bad that, if I hadn’t seen her ID card countless times, I would even be unsure that her name and birthdate were real. ---
**Author:** ![epbrown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e47774/32.png) [@epbrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/epbrown)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2023, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/88 "2023-03-27T14:57:32Z")
The downside to being a good listener is people telling you the most outrageous tales. On the Broadway line in Chicago, a stranger told me how he’d become homeless because he went to work one day and when he came home strangers had broken into his apartment, changed the locks and claimed it was their unit and he didn’t live there. The police were summoned and wouldn’t you know it? He had _nothing_ that would indicate he lived there: no drivers license, no identification, no mail, none of the neighbors could vouch for him because he’d always kept to himself, and the building had just gotten a new super who didn’t know anyone. The leasing agent couldn’t find their copy of his lease, and his copy was inside with the interlopers. It was just an hour of meandering, blatantly obvious bs. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2023, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/89 "2023-03-27T17:26:57Z")
My story isn’t a lie told to me, but the truth. My MIL tells me a funny story about participating in the [Woodward Dream Cruise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodward_Dream_Cruise) in her old hometown of Detroit. She and her sisters (who were in their 40s-50s) got dad’s prized car out of the garage, went a whoopin and a hollerin down Woodward, and oops, the brakes caught on fire! Ha Ha what a funny event! Come some time later and the whole Detroit crew are visiting us in NJ, the aunts and Grandma, and somehow the Dream Cruise comes up again in conversation. So I ask if that was the thing they told me about where the car caught on fire. … Well, let’s just say that Grandma didn’t appreciate finding out about the fire from her grandson in law. These three grown ass women caught their (either infirm or deceased) dad’s car on fire and then just parked the thing back in the garage like nothing happened because they knew nobody else was going to drive it for ages. ---
**Author:** ![Kron](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kron/32/12444_2.png) [@Kron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kron)\ **Post date:** [March 27, 2023, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/90 "2023-03-27T17:51:21Z")
Regarding lying to your kids: I did it a LOT with my kids. While I know the second-most “fun” thing to do on the internet is criticize people’s parenting, I don’t think it was harmful at all; because I also introduced them to looking for the truth. I didn’t EVER want my kids to just accept what any authority figure told them without critical thought or approaching it with a healthy dollop of skepticism, whether it was Santa, the Easter Bunny, George Washington and the cherry tree, or possibly more serious things, like health-related woo (soy milk turns men into girls!) or any scams set up to separate them from their money. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Krupe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ebca7d/32.png) [@Leo\_Krupe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Krupe)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2023, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/91 "2023-03-28T17:41:37Z")
I was about four years old, and was eating M&Ms. My sister told me the letter on the candy was an E, which stood for “energy”. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2023, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/92 "2023-03-28T18:31:48Z")
When I was four, my grandfather told me that the print of [Rembrandt’s _The Man in the Golden Helmet_](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rembrandt_van_Rijn_-_Man_with_a_Golden_Helmet_-_O_2246_-_Slovak_National_Gallery.jpg) he had hanging in his apartment, was actually a portrait of him. In my defense, the painting is of an old white man with a mustache; and Papa was an old white man with a mustache; so it certainly seemed plausible to me. ---
**Author:** ![adhemar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3da27b/32.png) [@adhemar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhemar)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2023, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/93 "2023-03-28T19:02:23Z")
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable rights, that among these are **life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness**. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2023, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/94 "2023-03-28T19:07:23Z")
The government cares about you. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2023, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/95 "2023-03-28T19:30:20Z")
Everything private enterprise does works better than anything the government does. Anything the government does is best done on the most local level. (Unless, of course, the local level wants to allow immigration, abortion, smoking dope . . . ) ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2023, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/96 "2023-03-28T22:17:06Z")
> [@Kron](#): > > Regarding lying to your kids: > > I did it a LOT with my kids. While I know the second-most “fun” thing to do on the internet is criticize people’s parenting, I don’t think it was harmful at all; because I also introduced them to looking for the truth. If you’re going to lie to your kids, make it good. [![Imgur](https://i.imgur.com/4rPGp.jpeg "My all time favorite Calvin and Hobbes - Color photos of a black and white...") ](https://imgur.com/4rPGp) ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2023, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/97 "2023-03-30T01:16:50Z")
I enjoy long meandering stories from random people out to make an easy buck. I once was in a Wal-Mart parking lot getting back into my car when an SUV type vehicle pulled alongside me with three women in their late 20s/early 30s and told me that they were all students of a major local college located an hour away, and they were out partying way out here and they all lost their purses at some point and had no money and were low on gas, so they needed $10 to buy some gas to go back to their dorm. When I said no sorry they immediately drove their SUV over to the next person getting out of their vehicle and seemed to tell the exact same story. Why 3 people who desperately needed gas would waste gas idling around a Wal-Mart parking lot instead of all walking around asking separately on foot, I have no idea. ---
**Author:** ![CairoCarol](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cairocarol/32/3825_2.png) [@CairoCarol](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CairoCarol)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2023, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/98 "2023-03-30T02:13:53Z")
My parents once told me a whopper that was memorable not because it was so outrageously unbelievable, but because they kept adding details that made it more believable. As a small child I got lots of leukonychia - those little white spots on your nails that are usually the result of a minor trauma. One day parents noticed me looking at my hands and asked what was up, and I explained that I was wondering where the white spots came from. My dad, who was quite a jokester, quickly said, “oh, that comes from telling lies.” My mom chimed in with, “yes, it’s a bit like a lie detector. The stress of telling a lie causes a momentary jump in body temperature, and this causes a reaction at the base of your nail. It doesn’t show right away, but it gradually grows out. So, let’s see … those three white spots on your fingernails - those are from lies you must have told a few days ago.” I am a born skeptic. In fact, I figured out just about as soon as I could talk that Santa wasn’t real. I pretended to believe for a few years because I thought my PARENTS believed in Santa Claus and I didn’t want to spoil it for them. (Hey, I said I was skeptical as a kid, not logical.) So, I figured my parents were bullshitting me, probably also because I couldn’t recall telling enough lies that would account for all the white spots. Still, it was a kind of cool idea, so I was wavering as to whether lying was the true cause of white fingernail spots. Spotting my uncertainty, my mother said, “yes, you know - that’s why women paint their nails! It’s so that other people can’t see if they are chronic liars or not.” And my father added, “Yes, in fact, that is where the tradition of an engagement ring comes from. A man would ask a woman to marry him, and inspect her nails to see if she was honest. The engagement ring was kind of a symbol that she passed inspection.” I know how awful this sounds, but keep in mind this was probably around 1962 or 63, so no one was particularly sensitive to the rampant sexism in all of that. It was actually pretty awesome spontaneous story-spinning. I wasn’t fully certain, but the added details, especially the nail polish, had me partly believing them. Because they were only joking, they eventually admitted that their explanation for leukonychia was a fib made up on the spot. We all laughed about it for years afterward. To this day I applaud their ingenuity in coming up with details like the engagement ring and nail polish. Regarding lying to your kids: I am not so harsh in judgment as some people upthread who seem to think it’s a horrible crime. But I myself NEVER lied to my son, because it’s just not who I am - I am very uncomfortable with lying and only do it if it is absolutely essential to avoid creating an unnecessary problem or hurt feelings. I had to lie to my son once. He sustained a terrible split lip and I rushed him to the emergency clinic in Indonesia. He was so frightened that it took about five staff to hold him down long enough to put a local numbing anesthetic on his mouth. He was so young that he hadn’t learned English yet, and asked in Indonesian if the doctors were going to give him a shot/stitches, something he was absurdly terrified by. The doctors quickly told me, in English, “tell him no, it’s not a shot, what he is going to feel is just gauze as we clean the wound.” So, I did what the doctors suggested and told him, in Indonesian, that “ndak ada suntik” (there is no needle). He was sufficiently numbed and they hid from him what they were doing, so he believed me. I told him the truth later, as soon as I could, and apologized and explained that I did it to cooperate with the doctors and make their work easier. He was still pissed, though, and it wasn’t until he was nearly an adult that he agreed that lying to him at that point was the correct approach. ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2023, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/99 "2023-03-30T13:50:23Z")
Probably the times students have denied doing something while continuing to do it while denying it. ---
**Author:** ![CaptMurdock](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/captmurdock/32/11736_2.png) [@CaptMurdock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaptMurdock)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2023, 3:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593/100 "2023-04-02T03:25:40Z")
When I was a kid, my mother (a nurse) told me not to swallow gum, because it would end up in my appendix and just sit there for years. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-s-the-worst-as-in-unbelievable-lie-you-ve-ever-been-told/981593.md?page=6)