The old saying starts “Fool me once, shame on you”...but there are some tall tales so ridiculous, so outlandish, and so obviously untrue that we’d be embarrassed to fall for them even once. Some of these stories come from successful swindlers, others from those who were tragically tricked themselves, but they all have one thing in common: some seriously gullible people.
1. Going Ape
I once convinced my friends that my sister's boyfriend worked at the zoo and was bringing a baby gorilla home to foster for the night. They were all jealous and excited. I started playing random gorilla noises through my mic and whatnot. They were buying the act so far, so I took it even farther. I got my speaker and placed it across the room.
I searched and played an aggressive screeching sound and had my sister’s boyfriend scream like someone was badly hurting him. I started this in the middle of my sentence, and then ended it with my most convincing “Are you okay, Jason?! Hit it! Hit it!” Then I just sat quietly in the room for an hour and listened to everyone discuss my death at the hands of a wild ape.
2. Oh, Hunny
I’m half-Asian. I told a girl in college that I was a Hun. Like as in Attila. “No, really! We had to retreat after the barbarian invasions to a little valley in Romania. My parents came here in the 70s because our society discriminates against us.” I kept pushing it until she eventually believed me…and then I just kept it going and going.
She asked everything about our “ways.” I talked about how I had to go hunting on my eighth birthday and drink the blood, the ruinously expensive village reunions for every wedding, the sword I had to leave at home because the dorm wouldn't let me bring it. In retrospect, I think she was seriously into me because I was a barbarian.
3. Drinking The Kool-Aid
The second or third time I met her, I convinced the lady I am now dating that there really are blue raspberries. I told her that they grow in Cambodia, but you never see them because they spoil so fast that the farmers have to juice them right away, similar to guavas. I came up with this on the spot when she asked if I “knew any interesting facts.”
After a little bit, I confessed that there were no real blue raspberries, and she punched me in the stomach.
4. Sounds A Little Fishy
I also once convinced my girlfriend that “trespassing” is actually an old word for fishing and that if anyone ever catches you trespassing, you should act really confused and claim you didn't even bring your fishing poles. I got hit over that one, too. She no longer trusts my “really cool facts,” some of which are true. I suppose I should have seen that coming, though.
5. The Bird Is The Word
When my brother and I were seven and 12 years old, my dad drove to the store and left us in the car while he went to get groceries. We were both bored, playing I Spy in the parking lot and all, and my brother wanted to know what the hazard light on the dashboard meant. I told him that if he hit the hazard button, the Hazard Bird would come down from its roost, snatch him up and carry him away.
But I didn’t stop there. I also told him that he could never bring this up to our father, because he’d lost a grandfather to the Hazard Bird, and was very sensitive about it. My brother was very careful to never mention the Hazard Bird when our dad got back in the car. He even looked kind of haunted. Then, last year, he came to me and told me he'd figured it out.
He “knew” the whole Hazard Bird thing was a lie. He was sixteen.
6. Rain, Rain, Blow Away
Once I was on a Contiki tour going through Ireland, and there were some wind turbines on a hill in the distance. At one point, one of the girls in the group stopped the tour manager to ask him what the turbines were for. We have them all over the place where I'm from, but I guess she had never seen them where she lives.
He calmly explained to her that Ireland gets a lot of rain; sometimes too much. So when the region had enough rain for a while, they activated the wind turbines and blew the rain clouds away. Then when they were due for some rain after a dry, sunny period, they'd reverse the wind turbines and suck the clouds back down.
Everyone held their breath, trying not to laugh while this girl marveled at the genius of the Irish people. She's also the same girl who said, in Dublin, “Wow, this ATM gave me Euros and not American money! How does it know where I am?!”
7. Going Viral
This was in the 90s. My neighbor was about to finish the written part of his diploma, which was more than 80 pages. Unfortunately for him, he left his computer out for me to fiddle with. This was back in the days of Microsoft Word 95 or something, and viruses in Word document macros were the latest thing to worry about.
So, what a friend and I did was make a backup of his work and then replace all occurrences of the letter “e” with “Eifel.” When he returned, we said nothing. When he noticed, we acted interested, told him that it was probably this new virus called “Eifel 95” and asked if he had heard of it. He knew just enough to have heard that viruses could somehow infect documents.
We went on to tell him that all there was to do was to delete the document and format the drive. Surely, he had some printout somewhere that he could type in again, right? After watching him collapse for five minutes or so, we decided to have mercy and tell him what we’d done. We restored his document and fetched some drinks.
8. Shaking Things Up
When I was about 5 or 6 years old, I was riding my bike in circles outside the house and being really noisy. My great aunt told me to stop because I was annoying her. I put the bike away, but a few moments later, I ran inside the house, still running around and screaming. All the while, she kept scolding me, but I wouldn’t settle down.
That’s when we both got the scare of a lifetime. There was a huge earthquake that knocked over bookshelves and everything. It even made a crack in our wall. It totally freaked me out. Right after the earthquake, she looked at me sternly and shouted, “See what you did!? See!? See!?” For ten years, I thought the earthquake (which had a magnitude somewhere between 6.7 and 7.0) was my fault, including the destruction of nearby houses.
9. Pulling Your Leg
I'm Scottish, and I have a number of overseas friends thanks to spending far too much time on the Internet. Back in 2010, I met an American girl and, of course, she had all sorts of questions about what life back in Scotland was like. They ranged from “Do you wear a kilt?” to some really ridiculous ones like “Do you have windows?”
Jokingly, I told her haggis was an animal. She believed it, which is kind of understandable, but I decided to take it further. I told her they had left legs shorter than their right so that they can stand up on the hills where they eat heather. She still believed it. I told her there was another variety with shorter right legs that went around hills the other way. She still believed it.
Then, I told her farmers had attempted to breed the two varieties to make a haggis with legs of equal length, but they were unsuccessful. The problem was, in order to mate with the female, the male had to turn around, which caused it to fall over. After that, I thought for sure she would catch on. She still believed it.
10. A Bridge Too Far
While I was visiting a friend in Cincinnati, she introduced me to another one of her friends, and they brought me to the Newport Southbank Bridge. Jokingly, I commented that I was excited to see it because “we don't have bridges in New Jersey,” where I'm from. For some reason, my friend's friend took me seriously, so I went with it.
I explained that New Jersey folks routinely cross rivers via little boats. If we're driving cars, we park them on either side and swap with someone headed in the opposite direction. Then we all meet up on the first of the following month to trade back for our original cars. While somewhat skeptical, he was more surprised than anything else.
A few hours later, he confronted me with a triumphant grin. “Ha!” he exclaimed. “I texted someone in New Jersey, and he says that you guys do have bridges! The story about the boats and the car-swapping was a lie! I knew it!” I was like, “Dude, I just got you to contact someone and ask whether that stuff was true. You think that you won?”
11. Wust Woking
I once convinced a girl that there was no W before 1950. I used various “examples,” like “Well, think about it. There is no W in ‘the United States of America’, and it hardly shows up anywhere in history.” She replied, “What about George Washington?” My explanation was that they used a “J” before 1950, as in “George Jashington,” kind of like how “J” sometimes makes a “Y” sound.
She went on believing this for months.
12. Slow On The Uptake
I convinced my friend that people liked the Pokémon Slowpoke so much that scientists actually genetically engineered the sloth to be its real-life counterpart. She also believes that walruses have hidden pockets inside the folds of their skin, which they use to hold food. She graduated at the top of her class at UC Berkeley.
13. Don’t Rocket ’Til You’ve Tried It
My dad bought a Prius when it first came out—the original model—and three of my friends had no clue what kind of car it was, so I came up with a plan. I told them that it had rockets instead of exhaust. Whenever my dad came to pick me up, they'd ask him to use the rockets. After they left, he always gave me a look like, “Son, you need to find some new friends.”
14. Feeling Crabby
I convinced my little sister that macaroni shells had hermit crabs living in them. She believed me for years. Even though she’s older and knows it's a lie, she still can't eat macaroni shells.
15. Unbeleafable
I convinced my younger brother that the Discovery Channel was going to put out a new reality show as a companion to the series Deadliest Catch. I told him it was called “The Deadliest Harvest,” and naturally, they would chronicle the dangers and horrors of harvesting iceberg lettuce…from the icebergs that they grow on.
16. Beyond The Pale
A couple of years ago in high school, there was a rather unpleasant girl in my German class. One day in class she was going loudly on and on about how much she loved tanning and how she couldn't see how anyone could stand being pale. She mentioned how she thought being pale was “like a disease”—and that’s when I took my chance.
I turned right around, looked her straight in the face and whispered softly with tears in my eyes, “I lost my mother to pale...and my aunt has a few months to live.” Then I got up and walked out of the room with my head down, pretending to be upset. She believed every word and her so-called “friends” let her. It was glorious.
17. Ejection Letter
My dad was looking to get a new car, so we'd been taking them out for test drives to see how comfortable they were with the whole family inside. One day, we were trying out a BMW. I was sitting in the passenger seat, admiring all the buttons on the dashboard—I was a big fan of James Bond films, so it was all very exciting to me.
So I asked what the ESP button was. (It's Electronic Stability Program, similar to traction control). My dad said, in a completely deadpan voice, “It's for emergencies. It stands for Ejector Seat: Passenger.” Then he reached down towards the button. I freaked out and started screaming, “Mom! Mom! Don’t let him eject me! MOM!” My dad and older brother laughed all the way back to the showroom.
18. Double Trouble
My brother and I were born a year apart, but we were always in the same school year. This confused people because they assumed we were twins, and after a while, we were tired of correcting them. Now, we look nothing alike. But out of boredom, we devised an elaborate story, took some time to rehearse it perfectly…and were able to convince a handful of girls that we were identical twins.
We said that the reason my brother was shorter and looked nothing like me now was that he was in a car accident when he was young. The car accident stunted his growth and he needed plastic surgery, which made his face thinner and, well, ugly. We had one girl convinced for three years. She brought it up one day and every one of our friends looked at her like she was stupid.
19. Starstruck
I was working retail at the mall and this girl came in to look at some of our wares. While trying to sell her some stuff, I noticed she had a bracelet with the zodiac sign Scorpio on it. I happened to know we were under Scorpio at the time, so I stopped talking suddenly and said, “I'm sorry, but…you had a birthday recently or are having one soon, right?”
She looked surprised and said, “Yeah. How'd you know?” I hadn't planned this out, but I immediately said, “I'm psychic.” Her reaction was incredible. The girl got wide-eyed real quick and started backing away. If I wanted to lose the sale, I would have left it at that, but I quickly told her I was kidding and how I really knew.
Still, that look of shock never fully left her face. For all I know, she still tells the story of the psychic salesman.
20. A Clone Of My Own
For my tenth birthday, my dad took me on a three-day trip to Vancouver, leaving my mom and my seven-year-old sister at home. When we got back, my sister asked where we had gone, and I told her I had gone to meet my clone. I convinced her that at birth, a team of scientists made a clone for each person so that if they ever got sick, their clones could donate organs and limbs as replacements.
I told her I wasn't supposed to let her know because she was too young, and I had her convinced for days until she let slip to my dad that she wanted to see her clone, too. My parents weren't very impressed, but I've never let her forget it!
21. That’s A Wrap
When my brother was a little kid, my parents were having trouble getting him to give up his blankie. In secret, I told him that the reason he loved the blanket so much was because it was the same one we’d found him wrapped up in as a baby…in a dumpster behind K-Mart. I thought it was hilarious, but it turns out that the little guy believed me.
Years later, he blurted out at the dinner table, “Why did you never tell me you found me in a dumpster?” As you can imagine, my parents were as “What in the world?” as can be.
22. Hats Off
I work at Old Navy, and for our denim event, management required us to wear hats as part of our uniform. I look absolutely ridiculous in a hat; I'll say that right now. I tried doing my hair and make-up to make it work, but no dice. So instead, I convinced everyone that I had a terrible phobia of wearing hats, likening it to some people's fear of public speaking.
Everyone was very concerned and suddenly had a lot of questions. “Have you ever worn a hat?” “What would happen if I put a hat on your head?.” I made up very convincing, anti-hat answers, and got away with not wearing a hat during the event…at the small price of everyone I work with asking about it every time they saw me.
23. Let’s Bee Honest
I once convinced a housemate that, just like honey comes from bees, mustard comes from wasps. She hadn't figured it out by the time I moved out, and I'm not sure whether or not she has yet.
24. Prank You, Prank You Very Much
I was a little kid when Elvis Presley died. I don't know if I heard it on the news or if I heard my parents talking about it, but somewhere, I heard that it happened on the toilet. I just couldn't fathom how someone’s life would end on the toilet. Did he slip on some splashed toilet water and smash his head? I couldn't wrap my head around it.
So, I did what any naive kid would do, and asked my older brother. He informed me that there had been a woman in the bathroom before Elvis who sprayed a lot of hairspray in there. So, when Elvis went to use the bathroom, he sat down on the toilet, flicked his lighter, and blew through the wall. I somehow understood at this point in my life that hairspray was flammable, so in my five-year-old mind, the scenario sounded plausible.
I think it was a couple of years before I learned the truth.
25. What A Hack!
In 1993, in junior high, a classmate of mine was giving me flak at lunch about skipping a party. He called me out as a nerd—which, to be fair, he is correct about, but that's not why I skipped the party. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Do you have anything in the fridge at home that might go bad?” He said that he did.
I replied, “Then give it a rest already, or I'll turn your freezer off.” Obviously, he asked, “How?” I said, “Anything connected to a power outlet, I can hack. How'd you like to lose your Mario game tonight?” The table was quiet for a bit...followed by a “We cool, bro” from my harasser. I never had to deal with teasing after that!
26. Livin’ On The Hedge
I lived in Qingdao in China for a few years. It is a lovely hilly city, with beautiful gardens and tree-lined streets. There were these immaculate hedges in most public spaces—some of them running for kilometers. I convinced my two sons that there were these creatures called Hedgemons living in the network of hedges that ran all over the city.
One day, a very poor-looking man popped his head out of a hedge. He was obviously homeless and looked like he'd been wearing the same set of clothes for about three years. After looking around for a second, this man quickly ducked out of sight again, back into the hedge. This startled my sons, to say the least, at which point I quickly shouted, “There's one of the Hedgemons...run for your lives!”
We stopped running after a while and my oldest son asked why the Hedgemon had looked like a man. I replied that they take human form when people are around to keep from being captured by the authorities. My sons totally believed in Hedgemons the whole time we lived in China. They were always careful not to get too close to hedges when we were out and about.
A final note: My kids were never really scared of Hedgemon, so I didn't feel bad about duping them. Being into Pokemon and Digimon, they actually hoped to catch a glimpse of one in its true form...but alas, they never did.
27. That’s Whack, Bro
There was this one particularly gullible girl I worked with. I had a pretty drastic new hairstyle, and she was polite and asked if I got a haircut. I responded, “No, I got in a fight with a guy who had a weed whacker.” Her response was “Oh my God, are you alright?!”
28. No Scrubs
This girl and I worked in a cafe together, and it was pretty quiet. At one point, she asked if there was anything she could do. I pointed at a toothbrush that happened to be atop the coffee machine and said that it was there for cleaning each coffee bean, thinking that she wouldn't take me seriously. I was so, so wrong. I came back half an hour later to find her scrubbing the beans, with over half of them already done.
I didn't have the heart to tell her that it was a joke, so I told her to go on her break and that she'd done a great job.
29. Sugar And Spice
One summer day, I went to visit my Mexican aunt, who always gives me food to bring home to my family. On this day, she gave me some homemade salsa along with some sugar cookies. When I brought them home, my mom asked, “What’s that you’ve got there?” I told her—for no reason—“they’re these Mexican sugar cookies that you're supposed to eat with this salsa. Weird, right? It's some Mexican specialty.”
“Oh, goodie!” she replied. “Sounds exciting.” She proceeded to grab a spoon, a cookie, and the salsa. She poured a dab onto the cookie, and was about to eat it. At this point, I made the swift and decisive call not to tell her I was kidding. She chewed and swallowed the whole thing, bless her soul. Needless to say, it did not taste good, but she chalked it up to being an acquired taste.
To this day, she doesn't know that my aunt meant for us to enjoy the cookies and salsa deliciously apart from one another.
30. Canoe Believe It?
A few years back, my dad and I went on a trip with the Boy Scouts to go canoeing in Montana. A couple of days into the trip, on a Tuesday, our Scoutmaster told us that if we were done and off the river by 11 A.M., he would buy us all lunch. This one kid started getting really confident and talking about how easy that would be.
That is, until my dad informed him that it was actually Wednesday, because we'd crossed the International Date Line on the way to the river. The reaction was perfect. This kid was about 15, and pretty intelligent, but he completely believed my dad’s lie and immediately started freaking out about the fact that we had sixty miles to canoe in two days.
I was almost in tears trying to hold in my laughter, and the look on this kid's face when my dad finally told him the truth was priceless.
31. Wildly Inaccurate
I'm from Maine, but I go to college in Worcester, Massachusetts. I don't live in the middle of nowhere; my hometown is actually a reasonably sized city. One day, when I was having lunch with a couple of my friends, someone asked what everyone would do if they were ever stuck on an island in the middle of a frozen lake.
I sarcastically replied that I knew how to make ice skates, so I would just skate to shore. However, to my surprise, most of my friends believed the joke and asked how I knew how to make ice skates. Without missing a beat, I responded that to graduate from high school in Maine, you have to pass a wilderness survival class.
They bought that too, so I decided to keep it going. For the better part of an hour, my friends all believed that I knew how to craft a bow and arrow, ice skates, usable shelters and various other wilderness essentials, simply because I was from Maine and those are obviously the things you have to know when you live in Maine.
32. Well-Red
My mom is an art graduate. A couple of years ago, she decided to do her master’s degree in education. So I convinced my friend that she was doing her master’s in the color red, because that's what artists do: they pick a color and major in it. He believed that until a couple of months ago when he was bragging to his girlfriend about my mom’s degree.
33. No Farm Done
When I'd just started learning to talk, my dad thought it would be funny to teach me that animals made the wrong noises: that sheep went “moo,” cats barked, cows neighed and so on. One day out with our family friends, I started mooing at a lamb in a petting zoo, thinking I was talking to it. They all laughed their heads off. About 18 years later, they still won't let me live it down.
34. …And Then It Hit Me
A couple of years ago, I had a roommate who went out of town for a couple of days a few times a month. We had a friend who had recently gotten a new girlfriend. She came over with him a couple of times a week, and after about a month and a half, she noticed my roommate's frequent absences. I proceeded to convince her that my roommate was a hitman.
I said he paid rent by going to do “jobs” in Chicago and Indianapolis, and that I lived in the apartment for free solely to provide an alibi for him while he was away. I eventually got my friend (her boyfriend) in on it, and she believed it until we told her the truth a month later. I figure she probably feared for her safety if she asked my roommate, but I still can't believe she believed us.
35. Spinning A Yarn
Back in high school, a bunch of my friends were on a long bus trip. These two girls were taking turns listening to CDs on a Discman. At one point, one of them said “Oh, the batteries are out! What are we going to do for the rest of the trip?” I said, “All the batteries do is make the CD spin. If you spin it yourself, you can still listen to music.”
She said, “That's neat! Thanks!” She popped open the CD player and spun the CD with her finger for a minute. Finally, she said, “I don't hear anything.” I insisted she just wasn't spinning fast enough. So the two girls took turns trying to play the CD, spinning it faster and faster, until their arms got tired and they gave up. As far as I know, they never realized I was screwing with them.
36. History Bluff
Back in 11th grade Modern History, there were a few “airheads” who, due to my proficiency in the subject, often came to me for help. The time for our first exam of the year came along and it was on the Cold War. We were outside the classroom getting ready to go in when one of the “airhead” girls joined us, mildly confident in her ability to pass.
A little too smug in my abilities, I decided to play a game with her. I asked, “Hey, are you ready for the test?” She replied, “Yeah I think so, I studied all night.” I chuckled and nodded. “Oh, good. I get all of this stuff anyway. Well, you know, most of it…I spent all last night revisiting Communist Hawaii just in case.” She instantly went pale and panicked. “Communist Hawaii?! What's that?”
Now, being very happy that she had bought my obvious lie, I tested my luck further. “What, you don't know about Communist Hawaii? That's so important!” We were about to head in, so she started pleading. “Please, you gotta explain it to me before the exam!” “Sure,” I replied calmly. “It's just when the Soviets invaded Hawaii in 1953. You know, part of the mass Soviet expansion through the Pacific?”
Now she was freaking out. At that moment, we entered and took our seats. I sat there calmly as the teacher handed out the papers upside-down and watched her fidget in her seat, biding my time. Then, seconds before the teacher told us to start, I leaned across to her and said, “Oh yeah, just kidding about Hawaii.” And then the test began. She. Was. Furious.
37. Parroting Lies
I convinced about six or seven people that we had an “exotic animal club” in my high school that met every second Tuesday of the month. The premise of the club was that they volunteered at a local shop that sold exotic birds. I later stopped by the designated room to see about five people sitting there waiting for the leader and the rest of the club to arrive.
38. Weight A Minute…
I frequently tell people that I weigh 165 pounds. I am very skinny, weighing in at a “whopping” 103 pounds at 5’6” tall or so. People always say “no way!” and I tell them to go ahead and pick me up. Since most of these people are not exactly weight lifters, 103 pounds of weight is usually enough to convince them I’m telling the truth.
39. Peri-Peri Important Person
I convinced a friend that Nando's was some sort of extension of the Portuguese monarchy, and that I was their king. Nando’s required every location to have a small shrine out in the back to celebrate the Portuguese royal family, and I was able to get free food there as a result. I'm not Portuguese…but the rest may or may not be true.
40. Buckle Up
I knew a girl once who was having some trouble starting her car. I asked her if she regularly puts “seatbelt fluid” in the car, because cars have a safety feature where they won't start if there isn't enough seatbelt fluid. She went home and told her dad, and they both went straight to the store in search of seatbelt fluid.
41. Got Your Goat
I’m from Denmark, and my cousin, who grew up here, moved to Japan for two years. When he got back to Denmark, his friend pulled me to the side and let me in on a gag he was running. He was going to convince my cousin that, while he was away, the entirety of Denmark had caught the trend of having farm animals at home because my uncle had a chicken in his backyard.
Sure enough, when we got to our uncle's house and he saw the chicken, he took the bait. We convinced him that pigs and cows had become pretty common. When he left a girl’s place after a party, he said to her, “Oh, and I never got to see your goat! Hopefully next time.” Needless to say, she was confused. His friend had mentioned as an example that she had a goat, and my cousin remembered.
He believed it for two weeks until the girl had to explain to him that “No, people don't have goats.”
42. I Can’t Believe Eiffel For That
I convinced my brother for a while that somebody had once stolen the Eiffel Tower. The story was that they'd pulled up in the middle of the night with four trucks and parked each one next to a leg of the tower. They then cut through the legs, and shifted the tower onto the trucks—I have no idea how that would have been achieved—before driving off in formation.
He was pretty young at the time, probably 12 or so. But I think he should have seen through that one.
43. Under Pressure
When I was 14, I told one of my classmates that airplanes in flight looked small because of the air pressure they experienced. The whole thing started when we were sitting on the top row of the gym's bleachers. We were only about eight or nine feet up, but the height was still apparently impressive enough to prompt my friend Nick to consider a career in extreme sports.
“Hey, do you think I could jump down from here?” he asked. I turned to him, looking shocked. “From up here? No way! That's, like, half a mile down!” “What?” he glanced over the edge again. “No, it isn't!” “No, really, it is!” I insisted. “I know it looks close, but that's only because we're inside. There's no air pressure.” Nick gave me a quizzical look. “Air pressure? What do you mean?”
“Well,” I began, “when you're outside, there's air everywhere, right? All of that air presses against things, making them look small. Have you ever looked at an airplane and thought it looked really tiny?” “Oh...oh yeah!” Nick said. “That’s because there’s a lot of air pressure up there. Most of those planes are only about fifty feet in the air, which is why you’re not allowed to throw rocks at them. You might hit one and cause a wreck!”
My companion nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah! I heard about that happening!” “Anyway,” I said, “since we're inside, there's no air pressure. Since there’s no air pressure, everything looks like it's a lot closer, because it's not getting shrunk down. If you jumped off the bleachers, you'd probably die.” Nick didn't say anything else…but he slowly scooted away from the edge.
44. I Kneed Answers
When I was 6 or so, I came to my dad saying that I could feel my knee bones grinding against each other, and they seemed to “squeak” from my point of view. What he told me made my jaw drop. He said to me with a straight face that it was because I was born without kneecaps, and the doctors had to give me metal replacement knees.
I thought this was the coolest thing ever, and ran off to tell everyone. Fast-forward 10 years. I was sitting at home, explaining my bionic knees to a friend, when my dad walked into the room. He asked me what kind of nonsense I was telling my friend, and when I reminded him of the whole metal knee thing, he lost his mind laughing.
He asked why on earth I would believe something so ridiculous. Well, at the age of 6, you'll believe just about anything your dad says. If he’d told me for the first time at 16, I'd have called him on it, but by the time I got to that age, that lie had already become ingrained into my life. It was part of me. Here we are 12 years later, and he still brings that up at every chance he gets.
45. Why, Dough?
I was 17 and had just started working at Domino’s pizza. My assistant manager gave me a list of other stores in our area and told me to call each one and ask for a “dough repair kit” because we didn’t have one. I called the first store on the list and asked for a dough repair kit. The guy on the other line laughed and said I was being messed with. Not my proudest moment.
46. Cold-Blooded
I managed to convince this girl I was originally from Greenland. I’m actually from Haiti. I went on and on for about twenty minutes talking about how rough the winters were, and how my family finally decided to leave…due to my grandfather's tragic end. The story was that my grandfather was a hunter, so he went out fairly often, and as any good Greenlander knows, we've got quite the problem with wolverines in Greenland.
One snowy January night, my grandfather was out when he heard a pack of wolverines. Being the outdoorsman that he was, he didn't panic, and calmly edged back toward our home. As he turned to go, the largest wolverine he'd ever seen stalked out toward him. After struggling with this beast for a while, he lost his left hand to the animal's teeth.
He managed to make it home alright, but the animal had the taste of man, and he was hungry for some more. A year later, Grandpa went out hunting, and he met the giant of a wolverine again. In the ensuing scuffle, he lost his gun, and suffered many wounds before dealing a fatal attack to his foe. The rest of the pack ran off in fear once my Grandpa managed to reclaim his gun after the fight.
Sadly, he passed out from blood loss after his victory and froze out there, and the pack later ate him like a grandpa-sicle. She actually believed me, too. She was one of the nicest people I know, so I felt bad and couldn't keep it up for long, but for about a week she believed I was Greenlandic and had lost my grandfather in such a terrible and impressive way.
47. Constructing The Narrative
The piping in my school is really old, so it bangs whenever somebody flushes a toilet in one of the bathrooms. The first time my friend heard it, she asked me what it was. I convinced her for an entire week that, while building the new wing of the school, they had shut one of the construction workers into the walls, and that he had been living in them for the last eight years.
38. Billy Goat’s Bluff
My German teacher was German, so if you corrected her English as a native speaker, she'd just believe you and change it accordingly. I realized I could use this to my advantage. One day when we were learning advanced animal names in German, someone asked her if there was an equivalent for the male names of certain animals we have in English, like “tomcat,” “billy goat,” and so on.
It turned out she'd never heard of any of those before, so I “taught” her a whole list of fictional English male animal names like Boris Badger, Henry Hedgehog, Roger Turkey and Oliver Otter. Kudos to the class, who backed up my deadpan delivery and laughed about it afterward. I thought nothing of it, but she took the list home & learned every single one.
She pulled me out of class two years later, completely out of the blue, and gave me an absolute chewing out. It turned out she had tried teaching the list to her class of 11-year-olds, who of course laughed her out of the class.
49. Going Bananas: Not Even Once
During a high school auditorium lecture on the dangers of substance use, the lecturers on stage asked the audience if anybody had any questions. I raised my hand, and when they called on me, I asked them with my best poker face: “Why do you get high when you eat three bananas and then drink a can of Sprite really fast?”
The lecturer had obviously never heard of that before, and I started hearing all around me, “Does that work?” The answer to that is: you won't get high, but you will vomit. Needless to say, people came up to me all day to tell me that a bunch of people were throwing up all over the place. To this day, it still makes me laugh.
50. Out Of Left Field
I once convinced a friend that Astroturf grows. I told him that each blade had a small motor underneath it that would very slowly push the piece of grass out of the ground, and that after a few months, someone had to go around and push them all back in. He didn't believe me at first, so I stopped trying to convince him.
About a year later, he tried to convince me of the same thing. At first, I thought he was joking, but he was completely serious. Not only did I convince him that Astroturf grows, he had completely forgotten that he argued that it did not, and now believed it completely. Of course, the same guy also believed that milk was cow pee, so it wasn't too far of a stretch.
Sources: Reddit,
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