Worst lies you've heard.

Well there was a woman (what is her name now?) who described an end-of-life discussion with a doctor as a “death panel”.

Maybe I am just naive, but I can’t think of anyone I’ve actually known who was a major liar.

My roommate freshman year in college was full of stories. By the time he was eighteen this guy had, among other things:

  • flown air rescue helicopters
  • flown as a commercial airline pilot
  • worked as a scuba diver on oil rigs off the coast of Libya
  • with his older brother, took a freight train on a joyride across several states

I ran into him several years later and he told me he was in med school. Not sure if that was just another lie or not, but I can’t imagine having someone like that as my doctor!

I don’t know anyone who lies now, but back in college there were a few.

There was one guy who wrote some awesome music and had cut a record. He even had the record to prove it. He got a bunch of us together to form a band and make a new record. He wrote half of the songs, and two girls wrote the other half. We did at least two studio sessions, with him and the girls splitting the cost.

But the record that he showed us was a fake. He made the label himself and glued it over the real one. And his songs were completely plagiarized.

He was doing all of this to impress the girls so he could sleep with them.

“I’m pregnant, it’s yours, and I’m keeping it.”

Probably not the “worst,” but still a bit bizarre.

A woman who had been friendly to my wife and me came to a condo board meeting and lodged elaborate claims that my wife (who was on the board at the time) had been physically threatening her via e-mails. She was shaking with cathartic rage. The board members somewhat prudently asked her to supply copies of these e-mails.

She didn’t have any, couldn’t produce any, and appeared to be completely surprised that anyone would expect written evidence – of (presumably legally actionable) written threats. This woman seems intelligent, even sophisticated; a world traveler with degrees. But she just stood there without evidence (which would have been pitifully easy to provide if it indeed existed) and expected everyone to believe her wild claims.

A young lady I knew, who was, er, slightly deranged, to say the least, became roommates with female friend who was living rent-free in a house owned by a male ‘buddy’ (more of a sugar daddy, actually). The friend (the original tenant) left the country to stay with her parents overseas for a couple of months; during this time the sugar daddy passed away suddenly. The roommate, without telling her supposed best friend, then negotiated with the estate to buy the place, telling the other party that they had both been evicted and that she would have to find another place when she got back to the States.

I really have no idea how the roomie thought it would never come out that she was still living in the place, but she got away with it for a couple of months, at least, before a fairly unpleasant (but entirely justified, IMO) confrontation.

I’ll try to keep this vague to protect the innocent. :slight_smile:

Very good friend had a really well-hidden issue with alcohol. It got out of control, and she (or maybe he, I am trying to keep this anonymous) decided that instead of admitting to and dealing with the alcoholism, she would fake a notoriously lethal cancer.

This individual wove an* incredibly* elaborate web of lies to fool friends, family, who she or he worked for, got a whole lot of time off for going to “chemo” and recovering, staged suicide attempts, had a legion of people cooking special diets for them (food that was never eaten as it turns out), organising fundraisers and so on. I was suspicious a couple of times and asked if this person was drunk or drinking, but when met with denial and presented with some other evidence of illness, I chose to believe in the illness.

Anyway, said person ended up in the ER with ascites - acute liver disease due to alcoholism - and the lies all fell apart. All of us were, to put it mildly, pissed off beyond belief at the elaborate lies and lack of consideration that as friends and family, we would have been supportive and sympathetic to a woeful tale of addiction. He or she ended up in acute care, then in psych, for almost a month.

Then we - a loose group of family and friends - decided that this was a good person who was very sick, one way or another, and went the supportive route. I can’t speak for everyone but I no longer 100% believe this person. Although I do believe - or maybe I just really want to believe - that s/he has been clean and sober since April, liver enzymes look good, meeting almost every day, etc.

But there is a small, perhaps medium-sized- part of me that now keeps a distance.

Back when I was in college, my brother was friends with a guy who claimed to have been a member of the rock group, The Left Banke using the stage name of “Steve Martin”* He had contacts in the music industry and could get albums before they were released (He had a copy of Billy Joel’s Cold Spring Harbor before it showed up at our college radio station). He also wrote songs, which he sold to other artists, who took all the credit.

He even recorded an album (I still have my copy of it somewhere) with some big-name artists credited, including Robert Fripp, Don Maclean, and Alvin Lee. He also claimed that he had joined the group Orpheus for an album or two. My brother, who works part-time as a musician these days, sung background on one of his recordings.

While at our school (he was a year older than me, but was a year behind because of touring), he arranged to get the rights to perform Jesus Christ Superstar, so our high school put on a production of it six months before it appeared on Broadway.

He used the name “Steve Drake” for his record producing, and, after I saw him last in Superstar, recorded a couple of albums as the Steve Drake Band (I don’t have those).

So I was surprised when, many years later, I learned he was lying about all of it. He had certainly done things – his record, JC Superstar – that seemed to show he had showbiz connections.

But he had not sold any songs to anyone, and it turns out that the songs on the albums were either cover versions of obscure songs, or karaoke versions, where he’d take a song, remove the vocals, and add his own. Occasionally, he’d find an obscure UK import album and use songs from that.

The entire story is here. I think they’re a bit harsh on Steve; he was a decent guy and never tried to rip anyone off, despite it all.

*This was long before the comedian was well known.

“I haven’t had sex!”

Said by my 14 year old sister, upon learning she was pregnant.

“I take you, Clothahump, to be my husband. To have and to hold, from this day forth, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer,** forsaking all others**.”

“These aren’t my pants!”

One of my friends told me about her friend who met some guy in Italy who claimed to be an assassin for the Italian CIA, so it’s not limited to home grown heroes.

Still, while you expect that someone who wants to get into a girl’s pants will trot out this, it’s unsettling to hear it from a really close friend.

I briefly went out with a girl in college who couldn’t say hello without lying. I can’t keep straight all the lies she said, ranging from stupid, easily disproved (these long nails are natural, not glued on), to outlandish (I’m a European princess, which is why I speak with this odd accent) to supposed to be sad (my father abandoned us as kids, Oh, that guy who just pulled up, that’s my father, “Hi Dad”).

Ah ha ha, that is an egregious one for sure. Been there twice!

Me too, albeit only once.

There really is no bigger lie, is there?

I’ve seen $1,000 bills before. One of my parents friends always had 3-4 of them in his wallet-for emergencies he said, (or impressing people, more likely.) I remember my dad mentioning how stupid it was. Either you lost a couple grand if you lost your wallet, or if it was an actual emergency, no one would believe they were real, or have adequate change.

Well, you know me

I have a friend who, while not necessarily tells lies, as everything he says (well, not everything, but you know what I mean) is true, he is just either very naive and tends to overestimate the importance of it, or knows full well and overestimates the importance of it.

He is a published author with several books to his name, but they’re very minor books. He has bragged that Buckingham Palace has a copy of his book, I was mildly intrigued, as I knew (see above) that he wasn’t out and out lying, but suspected there was more to the story. He brought for me the letter from Buckingham Palace - was basically a form letter thanking him for his book. He (or his publisher, but, as I said, his oevre is very minor books) might well have sent one to Buckingham Palace, and it might very well be there, but it’s not like Lizzie is taking it to bed for her regular night-time reading or anything. I’d half expect him to (if he hasn’t already, I’ve lost track of everything he’s said) say that his books are in the Library of Congress (considering that, as far as I know (but if there’s anyone who could correct me, it’s a Doper) every book published (at least in the US, but my friend is a Canadian, don’t know if it works with foreign books) is in the LoC.). On the subject of his books, whether it’s about Atlantis, or alternative medicine, or whatever, he always claims to have made a “world discovery” - that may indeed be true, but just because you’re the first one to look at the subject in that particular way isn’t quite a “world discovery” - well, I guess it is, but modesty usually permits people to phrase it differently.

He’s also a sports promoter, he’s bragged about a new form of baseball he invented that’s “getting a lot of attention” - again, this isn’t a lie, as he has describe dthe sport in detail, sounds like an interesting way to change baseball, and the small community paper even had a writeup about it on the front page (to small community papers, every day is a slow news day), but, agin, that’s about it. He has said that he has talked to the mayor about turning the city’s main throughfare into a running track - again, I don’t doubt that he has, but he seemed really excited about it, whereas the mayor probably threw it in the wastepaper basket as soon as he left his office.

A fascinating gentleman, and has many very interesting stories to tell from his long life and the things he’s done, the things he knows, and the people he has met, all make for very interesting stories which I like to hear, but his tone of voice when he tells them makes it seem way more important than it most likely really is.

The woman who was dying of alcoholism and claimed she was just bulimic and had the flu. Deadly flu, as it turned out.

The man who lied about his religion. No, he wasn’t really Jewish nor had he converted to Judaism. (really, WTF?)

Same man lied about being a doctor, while he was in the hospital.

Same man sympathized with a cancer sufferer, as a fellow sufferer. Except, he never had cancer.

Etc.

People are freakin’ nuts.

He sounds like he’s created an interesting world for himself to live in, and I don’t mean that necessarily in a bad way. If he’s not hurting anyone then I wouldn’t be the one to burst his bubble.

I don’t know, man. I’d almost rather have yours than the one I quoted in Post #24 (which really did happen).

I think the alcoholic one is the winner so far, but I’ll toss in my version of this because it was so incredulous at the time.

This is embarrassing for me to even talk about because it shows what a naive* rube I was. When I was 21 I moved from Indiana to San Francisco to go to art school and worked part time at FAO Schwarz where I met this “great” guy named Jeff, if that was even his real name.

He was super sweet (once we were walking down the street and passed a piano store, and we were looking in the window at a grand piano. He said “Beautiful.” and I said “It is.” and he said “I wasn’t talking about the piano.”) REALLY dreamy. (He looked like Jason Priestley.) We were dating hard core for a couple weeks and stuff was moving pretty fast. He told me all kinds of outlandish stories like, he had done some modeling for the Gap, but it was only for the Seattle stores, so that’s why I hadn’t seen it…his dad was in the mob, and so because we were dating nothing bad would ever happen to me…he was wearing a wedding band but his wife was “dead” and he still wore it in her memory…he lived in Oakland but the night we stayed out way past the time the commuter train quit running he said he went and hustled pool until he had enough money for a cab, etc. All this while he’s like "I have to stop at [some sleazy check cashing place] to cash his paycheck because he doesn’t have a bank account.

Anyways one night we’re making out on the beach and it’s hella cold and stuff and I think “ok, you’re losing your virginity to this guy” and say “let’s get a room.” (We both had roommates at the time…well he claimed to anyways.) So we swing by my place so I can pick up my nightgown and toothbrush (but seriously? You’ve never seen anyone shave their legs so fast, lol.)

So this and that happens and we go to Denny’s in the morning and only have enough money to split a Grand Slam. (Man! This keeps getting more and more pathetic!) He drops me off at my dorm in the morning and then FUCKING DISAPPEARS. Like he never called or came back to work or anything.

So for the next couple weeks I’m scanning the obituaries and freaking out and subsisting on a diet entirely composed of Lunch: Pint of Ben and Jerry’s (Coffey Heath Bar Crunch if memory serves) and for Dinner: An entire Whitman’s Sampler.

So after a month or so I’ve kind of picked up the pieces and am ready to fraternize again and one of my co-workers (whom I’m still really good friends with, like…wow! 20 years later?) had noticed one of our favorite techno bands (The Shamen) was playing at a local venue and suggested we go. I had offhandedly mentioned to another cute guy at work (Sean) that he should come with us. He politely declined.

So I’m back in the dorm getting ready to go “out” and the phone rings. The guy on the other end asks if it was me and I said “Yes” and he said “I bet you don’t know who this is.” And all bewildered I said “Sean?” That took him back a peg I think but he said “No, it’s Jeff.” And I said: “JEFF!!!” (one of my roommates at the time was in the bathroom brushing her teeth and flung the door open giving me a WTF!!! look) so I was like “Oh Hi…what with the who now?” He explains, (here come the lie,) as if this was completely normal, “I loved you so much I was scared so I had to leave.” RIGHT! You love someone so much you don’t want to see them anymore. I vaguely remember him asking if I wanted him to come back and saying “Well it’s not a matter of what I want, because you’re obviously going to do whatever you feel like.” He said “Well, I’m sorry you feel like that…”

And that’s when the operator cut in and said he’d have to deposit more money in the PAY PHONE to continue the call. He begged her for more time and I said “sorry, bye.”

My friend and I bypassed the Shamen concert and proceeded to get really, really drunk.

*Thank you Johnny Rotten/Lydon for teaching me to spell “naive” - “It’s Evian spelled backwards.” :wink: