What’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told?

Did it start out as a fib and snowball into something bigger?

That’s what most of these are about.

But these snowballing fibs from AskReddit got pretty darn big:

#1. Cupcakes

In the second grade a kid brought in cupcakes for his birthday.

For 30 kids he had 25 chocolate and 5 vanilla, in case someone didn’t like chocolate. I REALLY wanted a vanilla cupcake, so for some reason I raised my hand and let the class know that I was allergic to chocolate.

This was apparently a really big deal to the kids in the class, and by recess it had spread through the school. For the next few days I was repeatedly asked if I was really allergic to chocolate, and I kept the lie going.

I never relented.

I was the kid who was allergic to chocolate. Everyone knew that. Subsequent birthdays included chocolate-free desserts for me. The school nurse had me on an allergy list. A note was sent home for the next few years alerting parents of the issue.

I obviously never took mine home, and somehow this never got back to my parents.

I kept the lie going until I was 22.

At that point I’d pretty much lost contact with everyone I’d gone to school with.

#2. Color Blind

Ever since 7th grade, all of my closest friends have believed that I’m color blind.

None of them know to this day, which is surprising, since my story detailing how I suddenly became color blind was pretty much Daredevil’s origin story.

#3. “Smells like strawberries.”

A friend of mine pretended to be left-handed to switch his seat in class so he could sit next to this, ‘cute, thin, blonde girl that smells like strawberries,’ that was actually left-handed.

He learned to write left-handed and even switched hands for sports.

He did this from 9th grade until we graduated.

They are still going, and he is ambidextrous now.

#4. Color Blind II

I am red/green colorblind.

One Friday night, a bunch of co-workers and I went out to happy hour at a bar nearby. Everyone was pretty buzzed/drunk at the time, and I mentioned that I am colorblind.

Most people think there is only one kind of colorblindness, and when you mention that you are colorblind, they automatically assume that you only see in gray-scale.

This was the case this time around as well.

Being a little drunk at the time, I didn’t correct them because they were having such a happy time making jokes and stuff, that I didn’t want to burst their bubble and ruin the mood.

It’s been a few months now, and people here around work still believe that I am totally colorblind.

I’m in way too deep now, and I have to keep this charade going. There’s been times when I almost said something like ‘That blue taco truck is outside our office again,’ before catching myself.

#5. The Search

When I was about 8, my little brother saw a husky dog and was talking about it non-stop all through dinner time.

I was so mad that he saw this awesome dog that I piped up with, ‘I saw one too! A man stopped his car when I was walking home with Jordi and he had a husky in the back of his car and he asked if we wanted to pat it. We didn’t pet it, but we saw it, so I saw a cool dog too!’

My mom was immediately on the phone with Jordi’s mom, (who obviously knew nothing about this), but since there was an incidence of a guy a few towns over abducting a child, the parents went into momma-bear mode.

The cops came to my house and asked me for a description of the guy and the car, and I was so terrified they were going to take me to prison that I stuck with this story to the bitter end.

I described the car, the guy, and the dog in absolutely (entirely made up) vivid detail. The neighborhood had signs up on all the telephone poles, and the elementary school organized car pools and attendance lists, so no child was unaccounted for.

This went on for weeks.

The panic slowly petered out, but the story stuck, and every time my family would get together for years to come, the story about how glad my parents were that I had such a great memory for detail, and how it was so good that Jordi and I never got into a car with strangers.

I still haven’t come clean.

#6. Faking and Making

I lied and got a job by saying I had a Master’s degree.

After we changed which group we belonged to at work, my new manager brought me into his office and said that I was on the wrong pay grade.

He then proceeded to tell HR to give me more money. I got a 17% pay rise.

For the months between him speaking to me and getting my pay rise my heart sank every time he looked mad at his computer (which he regularly does).

I felt bad because he was a really good manager.

Just so you all know – I don’t work there anymore, haven’t for years.

I am now a house-husband.

#7. “Jacob”

I got married 4 years ago.

There’s this guy at work who’s one of THOSE people. The type that keep asking you when you are planning on having a baby once you’re married.

Since we didn’t really have much in common, and he heard I got married, that’s the only thing he could come up with to start a conversation. It was just water cooler banter.

I kept telling him, ‘When the time is right,’… but he still kept asking me every time I ran into him. ‘So, any kids on the way?’ ‘Hey, expecting any time soon?’ ‘Any plans on having a baby?’

I got sick of it.

One day I just told him, ‘Yes, she’s pregnant, we’re having a boy.’

I figured it would shut him up.

I was so wrong.

‘Jacob’ is 2 years-old-now, he started teething, he’s said his first word, he keeps us up at night and…he doesn’t fucking exist.

I’ve told my wife about this, and she’s thinks i’m an idiot. At this point, there’s no looking back.

#8. Hot Box

When I was in high school…I smoked a lot of weed.

I figured that since it was a plant, I might be able to save some money by growing it myself…

So, when I understood my parents left for a couple days, I skipped school with another delinquent friend of mine to build a grow box.

We go to Home Depot, get about half-way done…and my dad pulls into the driveway with our very large wooden box with aluminum foil on the sides in plain view.

We explain it’s a science project ‘to maximize the amount of light’ or something…and he proceeds to help us finish it.

Fast-forward 2 days, and my mom comes home…and my dad proceeds to tell her about the science project.

Fast forward 1-week later…and my mom has bragged to pretty much everyone she knows about how her genius son took the day off from school to work on a science project.

Fast forward to now – and she still tells the story every so often.

#9. Ian isn’t dead.

After 5th grade, my friend Ian (who was in 4th grade) moved away to a different city.

The next year when school started again, the kids in his grade realized that he wasn’t around. One day I ran into someone in his grade, and they asked what happened to Ian.

For some reason, my automatic response was just, ‘He died in a horrible car crash.’

The kid was in awe. I assumed he was just mad that I gave him a douchey answer, so I didn’t think anything of it when he just walked away.

Nothing really came of the situation immediately, but a couple years later I had someone else in that grade ask me about my friend. I told them that I just talked to him the other night and he was doing great.

The guy just stood there dumbfounded. ‘I’m talking about Ian. The one that died in a car accident,’ he said, as if I was a monster for forgetting about my best friend.

I had no idea what he was talking about. He explained that I told someone that, and now everyone in his grade thinks he’s dead. Suddenly, I realized what happened and explained that I was lying.

He realized that even if he told everyone that Ian is alive, no one would believe him, so we kept it a secret. Flash-forward to late High School when Ian came to visit.

He wasn’t the kind of person who aged unrecognizably.

We were at the park or something like that, and we ran into someone he knew back in the day. After talking to the guy for awhile, he told my friend he looked really familiar.

Ian introduced himself and explained that he went to grade school with him. You could see the gears turning in the guys head, when suddenly, it clicked.

Instead of the excitement that Ian was expecting, he was met with the blankest of stares. At that point I had to explain to both of them what happened. Both agreed that the situation was amazing, and the guy invited us to a party that night.

The party was about the same: Conversation, confrontation about his familiarity, hilarious reaction.

Laughter, anger, and a few tears were pretty common among the few people there that knew him.

Now, in our 20s, we’re roommates.

We live in a city near our old town so he occasionally gets these reactions from people he knew back when he was 10.

#10. “Choir”

My parents wanted me to be in ‘an activity’ in high school.

I pretended to be in choir from 9th grade – 12th grade.

I even had a choir robe (given to me) that I would dress up in, and actually leave the house whenever there was a choir performance – just finding someplace to hide, usually in an alleyway near my school.

One day, my mom came to see the choir perform.

After the show, she said she didn’t see me up there singing, but I swore I was up there, she probably just didn’t look hard enough. I also told her my name wasn’t in the program because of a misprint.

I still can’t believe she bought that. I did end up getting busted though, just before I graduated, during a parent-teacher conference.

My parents were not happy.

They were so angry, that they said they wouldn’t even punish me – as this behavior went beyond punishment – and I’d just have to live my life knowing how much I’d let them down.

It worked, because, obviously, I’ve never forgotten it.

#11. This relationship is probably doomed.

When I met my girlfriend I told her I smoked, because I thought it’d make me look cooler, and that I would stop if she didn’t like it.

Three-and-a-half years later, and she still thinks I quit for her.

I feel so bad whenever the topic comes up, and she tells me how proud she is of me, but it’s gone on for so long I just gotta smile and say, ‘It was nothing.’

#12. The Exorcism

This was a few years ago when I was working on newly-built LNG (Gas) Carriers.

During the morning 12-4 bridge-watch, I somehow ended up chatting about ghosts and things with the watch-keeper.

In the course of this conversation, he mentioned that some of the guys on-board had noticed some strange happenings, suggesting the vessel was haunted in some way.

I don’t know why I did this, but I decided there was a chance for some lolz, so totally deadpan, I told him that during the construction of the accommodation, a section collapsed, killing 3 Korean shipyard workers, and that this happened around C-Deck which is of course the deck all the crew stays on.

Welp, the fuse was lit…

The watch-keeper passed on this information to the rest of the crew. Within the week, ghost-sightings were happening daily, and most of the crew had opted to buddy up and sleep in each others’ cabins to avoid being alone at night.

One particular cabin had been earmarked as the most haunted, so the crew stopped staying in the adjacent cabins.

I was starting to get concerned by this situation. Fuck, even I was getting scared of the bloody ghosts, and I was the one that made them up. Things rapidly got out of hand.

I couldn’t backtrack from the lie or the crew would kill me, yet some crew members had started grumbling about wanting to sign off to avoid the ghosts which would have serious ramifications for their careers.

I was stuck in a tough spot.

Luckily the Chief Cook fancied himself a pastor.

He carried out a full exorcism of the vessel, and overnight the problem vanished. This was a week before we were due in Port.

Massive buggering relief.

I’ve since left that particular company, but it is my understanding that some choice pages from the Bible have been stashed in the deck-head plating of one particular cabin to continuously ward off the restless spirits of the those non-existent dead Koreans.

TL;DR: Lied about a ship being haunted and things escalated. Luckily Jesus saved me when a Chief Cook moonlighted as a pastor and carried out an exorcism of the ship.