34 Parents On The Internet Reveal The Things They’d Never Tell Their Children

1. Let’s start it off with a bang

That I exclusively plunged the depths of their mother’s anus until we got married.

2. Make some friends up too

I never had sex or did drugs in HS. Having my kids grow up thinking their old man is a square is just plain cruel.

3. Get your shit together

Wore a thumb ring and grew a soul patch. Whatever. It was the early 90’s. Not a good look for anyone.

4. What? Why?

I spent a week getting drunk every night and putting food in a friend’s neighbor’s mailbox.

It started as a joke. One day we accidentally burnt some pizza rolls, but we didn’t want to throw away food, so we decided “We’ll just give them to the neighbors… but they’re probably sleeping. Let’s just ‘mail’ them to them.” The next day we were remembering that night and decided to make sandwiches or something. Ended up making an extra sandwich and put it in their mailbox, as an apology for giving them burnt pizza rolls. Then the next night we decided a sandwich isn’t good enough. We made scrambled eggs, toast with jelly, and some bacon. We put that on a paper plate with a red solo cup full of orange juice in their mailbox because we thought they deserved a good breakfast.

Then we made an ice cream sundae for them the next night. I mean all out, we even went to the store for the cherries. We had chocolate syrup, whipped cream, sprinkles, all the good stuff. Even left them a spoon to eat it with.

Well… The next day I’m at work and I check my voicemail during my break. It was some police officer saying that he’s leaving me a voicemail because he needs to talk to me, now. So I call him back and he starts questioning me about the trauma and hardship I had been putting this family through. Apparently after the 3rd or 4th night they installed a camera pointing at their mailbox and caught us with the ice cream. So I told the officer I was sorry, but he didn’t sound mad. He just sounded… confused. He kept asking, “But… why? Why on earth would you do that? I mean, they didn’t make it sound like you vandalized anything or hurt anything. But… did you really make an ice cream sundae? What on earth for?”

I confessed to the whole thing. The breakfast, the sandwich, the ice cream. The officer wanted to know if I had harmful intentions, and when he realized that I was just acting out situational comedy on a whole new level that he’d never dreamed of he told me he would try and convince them to not press charges as long as I promised to give the Loch Ness monster about tree fiddy by the next morning. It was at this time that I realized the police officer was over 500 feet tall and wearing a kilt. I said “Goddamnit Loch Ness monster! I’m sick and tired if your folly!”

But anyway, I got away with it.

Still; would not confess to children because of sheer idiocy.

5. Yikes

I fucked my son’s best friend’s mother numerous times.

6. Smoking ganja

While I would have no issue telling my kid I smoked a lot of pot when I was in high school, I don’t think I’ll admit that I once spent a day lighting up in every bathroom in the school… SRO and principal were running through the halls trying to find who was doing it, never did get caught.

7. BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM

Made and threw several molotov cocktails… not at anything in particular, just liked to see fireballs.

8. TMI for kids

I tied a guy to a chair and pleasured him in various ways for an hour.

Yeah, I think that’d be TMI for my kids.

9. Cameron?

That I stole my dad’s car, drove it on a joyride through town with my best friends, then crashed it out of the garage trying to reverse the miles I had put on it.

10. Uhh

That I could suck my own dick until I hit a growth spurt during sophomore year. Everything else I’d gladly own up to, but I don’t want to scar my future children with a mental image of their father bent over in a computer chair going down (up? around?) on himself.

11. “So how’s your day been?”

Mutual jerked off in van with a couple of good friends.

12. Congrats!

Meth. I’m still ashamed to admit it to people and I’m going on 6 years clean from it.

13. Read last line

Sneaking out of the house regularly while my parents slept. Now that I’m a parent, I know why they slept so soundly: kids are exhausting.

14. Happened in Kansas

I’m not a parent yet, but I’m definitely not telling my kids about the time I shit on the McDonald’s playplace for ten bucks.

I thought I was funny at the time, and then I realized that someone was gonna have to clean it up. I still feel bad about it sometimes.

15. God, kids are mean

I had a threesome with 2 popular boys. They ended up telling the entire school that they, “Eiffel Tower’d” me. In class, the kids would play hangman on the board and spell out stuff like, “paris”, or “eiffel tower”. People would sing Frere Jacques to me in the hallway and clap their hands over their heads. When I got my diploma, a good 50 people from my graduating class stood up and clapped their hands over their heads, it was ridiculous.

16. Regular Billy Joel over here

Drinking, weed, sex, car stunts, homemade explosives. And fire.

17. The full story here

I met my daughter’s father online at 14, moved 1000 miles away from my parents and in with him in 11th grade. Got myself emancipated and finished high school. She will know NONE of this for a very long time.

18. Guy Fieri does this and he has kids

Bleached the tips of my hair.

19. Rolling a joint

I would tell them everything (minus details), except that my mother was the one that taught me how to roll a joint… They are going to have to learn how to do that the hard way.

20. Boredom leads to trouble

I used to chug robitussin and trip balls with my friends. Probably did it around twenty times. It was a lot of fun, to be honest. My only excuse is that I went to boarding school in the middle of the wilderness, and there was fuck all to do.

21. How do you go through a “spell” of this

Went through a brief spell of huffing lighter gas from the can. A monumentally stupid thing to do. The mere thought of my own child doing this terrifies me.

22. I don’t know, but that’s pretty vanilla

Probably the drunk fest I had one night that ended up with me spray painting a pig blue.

23. Keep this a secret even till death

I bought a Zune…

24. Wat.

I got drunk and laid in the middle of the road humping a tree branch while my equally drunk friend rode a pink tricycle around me until the cops showed up. My dad knew the cop so they sent me home with as “lesson learned”. They took my friend in because he tried to hump the cop.

Later that night I called 911 just to tell them how much they could go fuck themselves for arresting my friend.

I got to see my friend again later that night.

25. A wizard-shaped bong?

I got busy in the bathroom at my high school prom and got busted for possession of my wizard-shaped bong.

26. Perfect

I was doing a skit in ninth grade about not doing drugs.

Classmate 1: “So guys, do you want some cocaine?”

Classmate 2: “No, I’ve got… football practice.”

Classmate 1: “Oh, c’mon. It’ll help take the edge off.”

Classmate 2: “No thanks, it’ll screw up my life.”

Classmate 1: “What about you, Kaluna? You want a taste?”

Me: “No thanks. I only do marijuana.”

Class starts cracking up. Couple of well-known stoners offer me high fives. The DARE officer and the teacher look at each other and back to me.

I had gotten stage fright and forgotten my lines.

27. Avoided a felony

That I was escorted off campus in handcuffs Junior year for possession of controlled substance and had to do a “re-hab/probation” for 2 years to avoid a felony at 17.

28. Threeway or the highway

Threesome.

We regret nothing and it was a hell of a good time, but there’s just no way to tell my kids about the time mommy had two dicks inside her.

29. Cringe so hard

I was a white knight on MySpace. I cringe everytime I think about the endless poetry I wrote to convince girls that they are truly beautiful inside, plus the textual rhapsodies on their comment walls of their most wonderful qualities when I heard they were having a bad day.

I’m puckered so tight thinking about it. Seriously. I could swallow coal and pop out a diamond right now.

Oh GOD I think I wore a fedora too.

I’m praying my kids never find out and goatees aren’t genetic.

30. Let’s not do this

Running from the cops after getting chased in a stolen car that we were stunting with no drivers licenses. Or the fact that I used to steal cars at all. Never got caught, so it’s not a very good lesson.

31. Wow, wow, wow

So, my dad was in a car accident, fucked him all up. He’s crippled to this day. Well, the asshole, who we’ll call “Dick” who hit him was drunk and had no insurance, so we’re paying medical bills out the ass. Dick got some jail time, but not enough, and he split town as soon as he got out. Well, me and my family, we’re in a tough spot, so my dad and I go looking for him. We find him in Kentucky living with his mom. We can legally extract money. Unfortunately, you just can’t get blood from a stone. He had no possessions we could seize. we go back home, dejected. But I get an Idea.

See, Dick didn’t just hit my dads car that night. He hit an old, classy mustang, and completely totaled it beyond repair. This classy mustang happened to belong to a certain legitimate business man known as “Skinny.”

So I figure, this Skinny character, I bet he wants some payback. That was a one of a kind car he wrecked. And I want some payback for the fucker that crippled my father. At this point, I didn’t know much about his reputation, but I knew he was a criminal boss, so I figured anyone who slighted him was on a shit list of some kind.

So one day, I go to Skinny’s place of business; the local race track. I ask for him, drop Dicks name. I pretend to be looking for him, and he says he doesn’t know, and that if he did know, he would very much like to have a conversation with him. So I tell him, its your lucky day Mr. Skinny. Give me a few grand and I’ll tell you his street address.

Came back to Track the next day. Mr. Skinny gave me three grand. Congratulates me on a job well done and Asks me If I could I help him look for someone else who skipped town.

See, Mr. Skinny was a loan shark. When people couldn’t pay him back they’d typically run off. It was my job to find them; nobody else in the organization had tech skills like mine, and I shit you not, nine times out of ten finding someone was as easy as consulting google.

That was what paid the most and what I did most often. Sometimes I’d do “local” jobs; where I’d remind people that they owed money. People tend to be fairly reasonable when there’s the threat of violence bearing down on them, so 99% of the time, they paid, or gave me something of value. No joke, one time I was given an honest to god .50 caliber sniper rifle as payment (the guy owned a gun shop. this was early in my career, none of the other guys wanted to take the job, and I was eager to show off just how big my testicles were, so I took it. Luckily, the man was quite reasonable). Another time I was given prescription pills, a plasma screen TV, and a car. So it wasn’t really stealing, since they gave it to me (or in the case of the car, they just gave it to Mr. Skinny directly, since they had to sign it over and stuff).

I only stole shit a few times when I couldn’t convince them to pay. I didn’t like doing it because it was illegal. I mean, if a cop caught me looking for Average Joe who-owes-Skinny-Money, or convincing him to give me something of value, who cares? I’m not actually doing anything illegal. But if a cop catches me breaking into a house? I’m going to jail. And I’ll probably be tried as an adult, so I spend Senior year in Juvy and then spend my twenties getting raped in a 10×10 cell. I wasn’t paid enough for that.

I only broke into two houses in my entire career. The first one went smoothly; I broke in, found a safe, hauled that heavy piece of shit out, got paid, and I didn’t leave enough evidence behind for the police to catch me, not that they looked very hard to begin with. The second didn’t go over so well.

Skinney’s nephew, let’s call him Toby, had just gotten out of prison for B&E. So, obviously, Skinny tells me to go with him and make sure he doesn’t get into trouble while we sack this house. I know the area, its in a farming community right outside of town, so the beauty is that we can park about a mile away and hike to the house, and nobody will ever see us. Of course, since its a good idea, Toby doesn’t want to fucking do it, so we pull up into this guys fucking driveway as soon as he leaves. I happen to know the guy we’re robbing, he played cards at the bar my mom worked at, though I’m pretty sure we never spoke. I suspect he’s crazy enough to booby trap his front door.

And i’m right! I open the door just a little and I see a cord. A cord attached to a shotgun. If I open the door, I will be missing a head. So, i figure, we’ll check the back door. We do, I don’t see a cord, but I still have a bad feeling. I say “Toby, let’s see if we can get into one of the second story windows.” he tells me to open the door and stop being a pussy. This is the bosses kid, more or less, and I don’t want to piss him off. So I do as he says, I open the door. Hey! I’m not dead! he must not of booby trapped the-

click

I look down and I see a fucking pressure plate.

I am standing on a fucking landmine.

Toby looses his shit and drives off, leaving me there. I stand there for twenty minutes, thinking this is how it ends. i’m going to lose my fucking life, or my legs, and possibly my genitals, for a job that barely pays minimum wage.

I didn’t, though, because the guy came back and found me. We thought he was leaving the state, but he just went to the store to get something before he left.

I managed to convince him to disarm the trap by explaining that If I die, he’ll be facing manslaughter charges (booby traps are very, very illegal) and a bunch of other stuff in his house was incriminating too (I only found out later that he was a fucking meth dealer). He let me go with a warning that included being beaten with a baseball bat, but he didn’t break anything because he was sixty-five and got winded after a few swings.

I left the criminal business a couple weeks after that, when I started Senior year (I used that as an excuse, but Mr. Skinny saw right through. He let me go without a fight because I was a good employee and because he felt he owed me considering Toby left me to die). A couple years later, Skinny’s entire organization got hit by the county police for dealing in Heroin and Meth, so, probably a good idea on my part.

Oh, and guess why we call Skinny “Mr. Skinny”? It wasn’t because he was thin, and it wasn’t an ironic name because he was fat. There was a rumor, which turned out to be true, that he killed a guy and then skinned him.

I knew this when I worked for him. I don’t want to tell this story to my future kids because I’m ashamed of my criminal career. I don’t want them to know because I was a fucking moron and I’d rather not clue them in on that If I can help it.

32. It is weird

I used to hang out in the band room every day for lunch. I quit band my freshman year because well, it honestly just wasn’t for me, but the band director liked me so she still let me hang out in there, and the air conditioning in there was way better than it was in the cafeteria so whatever. I was still there up ’til my senior year, then they changed the scheduling system at our school to have this weird block schedule for two days of the week. Meaning, there was class going on on Thursdays in the band room. Myself and a select few friends were allowed to hang out in one of the unused practice rooms though.

Anyway, I started helping out one of the teacher’s assistants because she was pregnant and band involved lifting things sometimes. Just because I was a decent kid and nobody else volunteered, I guess either because everyone that was there for class had their instruments to fuck around with or they didn’t care.

Uh, long story short we actually started acting friendly and her house was within walking distance and I had sex with a pregnant teacher’s assistant.

And then for the rest of the school year after the kid was born.

Anyway that would be kind of a stupid story to tell if my nephew wasn’t friends with her son, so now my son winds up occasionally visiting his cousin and hanging out with a kid whose mother I had sex with–

It’s weird.

33. Sandwich drive-by

We did a lot of goofy shit but one I’ll never tell my kids about or forget was the night of the Sandwich Drive-bys.

My boyfriend (now husband) and I were stoned and went through Hardees to get milkshakes. They had 2 for $2 roast beefs and hot ham n cheeses. We attempted to order 4 of the roast beefs and 2 of the ham n cheeses, but through some mysterious miscommunication, we ended up with six sets of sandwiches instead of just six, for a total of 12. We were going to take them home for later, but as we drove through town, we spotted a lone pedestrian across the street. It was about 1AM; Hardees’ drive thru was the only damn place open in our town that late.

I started giggling and said “Wouldn’t it be hilarious if you were just walkin’ along, maaaan, middle of the night, and out of nowhere a fuckin’ roast beef comes flying at your head?” My boyfriend started giggling too, and after a block or so we turned around. We decided if the guy was still on the street, it was fated that we should lob a sandwich at him.

He was, so I opened the window and unwrapped Missile #1. We drove by and I pitched it at him. It was a success. He jumped like “OMGWTF, then we saw him looking down in bewilderment in the rearview, like “Is that a goddamn sandwich?”

Then we had to turn around anyway to head home, so guess what we decided to do…this time I missed because I was pitching over the car but it was close enough to make him dodge a bit and realize yes, whoever the fuck it was had come back for another attempt.

By then we were in full-fledged stoner hysteria, laughing so hard we could barely breathe, and decided what would be even funnier would be if someone threw even MORE sandwiches at the SAME GUY. By this time we were laughing so hard neither of us could see straight. We drove a bit longer to make him think he was in the clear, then went back, and he was still walking. So this time we slowed down and I got the sandwiches ready, and the dude saw my arm come out and started running and covering his head as I slung two more sandwiches at his retreating form.

I’ll never tell my kid about this because it’s a horrible thing to do and we could’ve gotten shot if we’d messed with the wrong person (couldn’t really have hurt the guy, because the sandwiches are pretty soft, we didn’t include drinks or anything) but shows how grown up I am that as I typed this I laughed my ass off all over again.

34. But really, this is what’s probably best

Nothing. I would gladly talk about my experiences as a teen with my son when he gets to be that age. Drugs, sex, crime, all of it. Honesty goes both ways. How on earth can you expect your children to trust you enough to tell you about what they’re experiencing if you won’t even tell them anything about your own past? A dialogue goes both ways. I don’t have to be my son’s best friend, but I certainly don’t need to be a stranger whom he knows nothing about.

The worst thing about being a teenager was feeling like nobody ever really cared about what you go through, or that because they’ve already lived through it, they won’t relate to you. They tell you “oh you’ll grow out of it” or they just nod their heads knowingly and smirk to themselves. It was infuriating. My parents never talked to me about their youth, so to me, they were always just the enforcers who just laid out rules without explaining why. I was to follow them without question. “Oh really? Well fuck that. If you won’t tell me why, I have no reason to follow your shitty rules.

They don’t make sense to me and as far as I’m concerned they’re arbitrary rules that I don’t care for so I won’t follow them.” This is what that lack of dialogue creates. You can say “don’t do drugs” “why not?” “JUST DON’T OR YOU’LL BE PUNISHED!” Where’s the give and take? There isn’t any. A dialogue needs to be created. “Don’t do drugs” “Why not?” “Well, in all honesty I had some pretty crappy experiences with them as a kid. Saw a lot of suffering and messed up stuff. I don’t want you to experience that kind of thing.” “Oh, what happened?” “Well, story about what happened” “Oh wow…Jeez that really doesn’t sound fun.” “It wasn’t.” You see? When people UNDERSTAND they’re much more likely to follow the guidelines you set for them. Your children learn about you, and they connect with you. Think about the people you keep closest to you, the ones you truly cherish, and you realize those people are the ones who are the most honest with you. I want my children to cherish me. I want them to know me, and I want to know them. I will cherish my son until they put me in the ground, that’s just what being a parent is to me, but teens, especially when they start pulling away, don’t always feel that way about us and the onus is on us as parents to foster that relationship.

I hated my parents throughout my teens, and into my early twenties. I avoided as much interaction with them as possible. I still harbor some ill feelings towards my father. I refuse to be hated by my children.

Like this? Read more honest insight in our bestselling ebook The Truth About Everything here.