Black Sheep: People Reveal Their Most Twisted Family Members

September 30, 2023 | J. Hunter

Black Sheep: People Reveal Their Most Twisted Family Members


Everyone’s got a family history. But there are branches of the family tree that are more notable others with members who’ve done some ridiculous and absolutely unbelievable things. Whether it’s taking something that wasn’t theirs when no one was looking or uncovering a double life, the details are as juicy as the fruit that fell from the tree. These Redditors have revealed their family members' less-savory moments—even if that family member was them!


1. Didn’t Mean To Alarm You

Before I was born, my parents were going through a lot of tough financial issues and even facing eviction if they weren’t able to come up with the money on time. My dad decided that the best way to solve their problem was a bank heist. So, he went to a small local bank wearing a ski mask and had his hand in his pocket.

He went up to one of the tellers and handed her a bag. He told her what he was doing, he was armed, and how much money he wanted. It was just enough to avoid eviction. The teller gave him the money, and he apologized before he left. He was never caught. My father told me that a year or two later, he went back to that same bank every day.

He waited to see the same teller who gave him the money. When she came in, he went up to her without a mask, handed her an envelope, and then immediately walked away. In the envelope was the exact amount he took and a note for the seller. It said that the money was a gift and an apology from my father for scaring her.

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2. Hot Wheels

One time, my dad and his friends were on a joy ride in a Camaro they “happened to find.” At the end of the night, the friend driving stupidly used the gas card they found in the glove box to fill the tank. When they realized that officers could catch them easily with that, they drove it to a lot and stripped its parts.

They took everything that they could then soaked a rag with gasoline. They hung it out of the gas tank to destroy the rest of the evidence. They lit it and then ran a safe distance away. The car exploded and rocked the entire town. No one ever found out who did it, and we were the first to hear about it 35 years later.

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3. Not All For Show

Back in the 90s, my uncle was a kingpin in Northern California. He lived in a compound out in gold country, which you could only access after passing through three guarded gates. As a kid, I questioned nothing; I just enjoyed going to fish in the stocked bass pond that had snapping turtles in it as another defense line.

My uncle would take me out shopping at the mall where he’d occasionally sniff from a film canister of white powder—and that’s not even the craziest part. Once, we were out for a ride in his Corvette going well over speed limit when highway patrol stopped us. My uncle talked his way out of the ticket and told him that he was just showing off for his nephew.

The officer believed him thinking it was hilarious and let us go. My uncle said that we were lucky since there was a lot of stuff in his trunk that he shouldn’t have had. If the officer had wanted to open it, we would have had to make a run for it. Authorities ended up swarming his compound and taking him into custody.

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4. Rough Ride

When my dad was young and dumb in the 70s, he used to regularly drink and drive with his friends. One night when they were out drinking, they heard about a huge party happening at a pub across town and decided to go. On the way, they passed a club that had a long line to get in, and Dad wanted to show off to the crowd.

So, he decided to pull a skid. Well, he miscalculated, hit a curb, and flipped the car. Before stopping, everyone watched it slide down the road on its roof. When my dad and his friends got out of the car, everyone in line was cheering for them. Then they just took the bus to get home and reported someone took the car.

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5. Petty Upgrade

One of my cousins would set up buys from the Facebook market page and then just take the items without paying the sellers. It got serious when he set up a buy for a computer and PlayStation. The seller was somebody who was just trying to make some money to care for his son. So, my cousin brought an accomplice with him.

He ended up pulling the trigger at the seller and left in the getaway car. Fortunately, he was caught and went to prison.

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6. Where’s Dinner?

My cousin was addicted to a myriad of substances and lost his mind one night. It was absolutely gruesome. He broke into his mom’s house and snuffed out her dog. When she came home, she caught him trying to eat the dog. He dropped it when he realized she was there and attacked her. Luckily, my aunt was able to get out of the house to get help.

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7. Bunny Bumping

Way back a few generations ago in the early 20th century, one guy in town constantly drank and harassed my great aunt unrelentingly. One of my great aunt’s male friends decided to put a stop to him. He put on an Easter Bunny costume and hid a bat in his giant fake carrot. Then he beat the guy. He ended up getting away with it, but it did help that most people never liked that guy in the first place.

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8. Daddy’s Girl

My grandfather’s father worked at the mines all day then came home to beat his children and his poor wife. He always drank and was mean and awful to his family. Mean as in, he set the house on fire with his wife and 13 children inside twice, mean! There was one day where my grandfather was at home with his siblings.

They were across the street picking berries when their father came out and used them as target practice. My grandpa, his brother, and oldest sister ran back to the house with the agreement that the first one there would have to finally end everything. His sister was first, aimed at their father, and pulled the trigger.

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9. Rolling Out Quite Nicely

One night, when my dad was younger, he was fixing up his car and needed some new tires. So, he went to a local tire warehouse with his friend and cut the alarm. Then he sneaked inside through a window on the roof and grabbed the tires one by one. Since the alarm was cut, he wheeled them out right into his friend’s car.

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10. Too Many Signs To Ignore

My dad is a fiend for taking street signs. Twice, this habit has manifested bizarrely. His family has lived in our small town since it’s been founded, and one was named after us. My dad insists that because the street has his name on it, it’s technically his. So, every year, he takes it off its post and brings it home.

Then one time, he somehow managed to get one of those giant highway signs into his shed overnight. ALONE. I was pretty impressed since the sign probably weighs about a ton. He’s also acquired other strange signs like a giant Ford factory one, several billboards, commemorative plaques, carousel horses—just a whole bizarre collection. Whenever he runs out of space, he just builds a new shed.

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11. Poor Scooping Conditions

Once, my friend, after a night of a lot of drinking, stumbled upon a bulldozer with the keys in the ignition. So, he thought it would be a great idea to start the engine but obviously didn’t know how to use it. All he ended up doing was make the shovel part go up and down before officers came to stop him. He hadn’t hurt anyone and was so wasted that they just let him go.

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12. Blown To Heifer Proportions

When my sister-in-law worked on a ski hill, one company was using those giant inflatables to promote their business. She was walking to her car after work and saw a deflated inflatable behind it. At that moment, she decided that she wanted that inflatable and was going to bring it home. So, she grabbed it, plopped it in the back, and went on her way.

A couple of weeks later when I was visiting, my sister-in-law was a wreck. The guilt of taking the inflatable was eating away at her. She was freaking about it so much that she told me to take it back with me just to get the evidence out of her house. And that is the story of how I came to own my two-story-high inflatable cow for my yard.

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13. It’s Plant and Simple

My dad literally went through customs holding a pot with a banana tree from his home village in Kerala in his arms. When the customs person asked him what he was thinking, he just replied in a matter-of-fact way that the banana tree was from his mother’s garden. The customs person must have thought he was crazy and just let him pass through.

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14. Back-To-Back Special

I worked at an old movie theatre that sat about 600. When people came to see Back to the Future, a co-worker and I wouldn’t tear their tickets but instead, re-sell them to the next group waiting to watch the movie. In about a month, we made about $15K between the two of us. Adjusted for inflation, that’s about $37K! We were the richest high school kids in our town.

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15. Out On A Limb

Officers arrived to stop my uncle and his other accomplices when they were robbing a bank. While they scrambled to get away, my uncle’s brilliant escape idea was to run up to the roof and then jump off. They didn’t catch him, so he didn’t do any time. He did, however, have to go to the hospital to treat his broken leg.

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16. Quit Horsing Around

One day, my parents’ horse got loose, and a car hit it. It didn’t make it, so we contacted some horse disposal people. Well, they quoted a reasonable price to do it that my parents didn’t want to pay. So, they told me, “get the horse on the flatbed and dump it somewhere. I just said, “Okay, sure. Got it.” I called my buddy.

I asked him, “Hey, you want to go dump a horse somewhere?” He said, “Yeah, cool. I have nachos.” And just like that, our adventure started. So, I picked him up. We drove the flatbed truck to where the horse was and tried lifting it. Except we had to lift it five feet to the edge. It was harder than we expected, and it wasn’t working out for us.

We did mess up the horse a bit while we tried our best though. So, we went to plan B. We went back and built a huge ramp out of plywood and 4x4s. It took us most of the day. After a heated argument about bevelling, we just dropped it. Neither of us even knew how to do it, so we opted not to. Back to the horse, we wrapped the line around the head.

We hadn’t meant to decapitate Mr. Gooseberry, but it happened. And it wasn’t pretty. Not like a lifeless horse’s body would be, but that was particularly not very pretty. So, we went back to our first idea. We decided to tie the front hooves together with rope…except we had cut the rope at some point. Neither of us remembers who or when or why.

Regardless, we had to go home. Finally, we returned to the horse again. Our engineering marvel worked. First, we worried that we were going to pull the legs out of their sockets, but without any blood pumping, the body was pretty stiff. After lashing the horse with tiedown straps, a discussion about why we hadn’t used those in the first place started that led to an argument over whether it would’ve worked or not.

What ensued was a long awkward hostile silence on our drive around the middle of nowhere, South Dakota looking for a place to dump poor Mr. Gooseberry. There were probably various places where we could have stopped. But we were both strangely very paranoid as if every person standing in their field was going to report us immediately.

We also thought every car we saw was an unmarked official vehicle to us. Eventually, we found a field in the Black Hills National Park that looked like it’d work. There were lots of trees, which we thought the horse would have liked. A parking lot was close by for a snowmobile trail, and Goose always hated snowmobiles.

We loved the idea of his skeletal carcass scaring unsuspecting skidoo riders coming off the trail. So, after backing the truck into the ferns by the trail, we pulled the horse off and left it there. On our way back, my friend asked, “Does your horse have a tattoo?” I was like, “It's a horse, not a chief petty officer in the merchant marine.”

“Why would it have tattoos?” I asked. According to him, some horses have tattoos to determine whether they were horse-napped or not. Later we learned that this was only done with thoroughbreds, which our horse was definitely not. But we didn’t know that then, so we were back at the horse one more time. “I think they put it on the lip inside.”

Have you ever pulled back the lip of a horse carcass to look for tattoos? Worst never-have-I-ever ever. There were no tattoos. But then my buddy said, "it's probably one of those tattoos that only lights up under UV." By then, there was tiny bit of paranoia still lingering in my head. “What if there's a UV-light lip tattoo on your horse? They're going to get you for sure!"

So, there I was, in the early South Dakota summer evening, cutting the lips off a day-old horse carcass with a dull pocketknife. I just threw it into the woods since according to my friend, “Nobody's looking for horse lips there.” And that's how, “dumping an animal carcass on federal property" is the craziest thing I or anybody in my family have ever done.

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17. How Much Is That Doggy In The Window

Back when pet stores still existed, my sister walked into one to look at the puppies and kittens. She saw a puppy, and they instantly made a connection. She knew she just had to bring her home. So, she picked up the puppy, stuffed her in her jacket, and then walked out. And that’s was the time my sister came home and brought us our new dog.

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18. Play Money

The neighborhood boys and I always loved going to the local bowling alley to play pinball and all of the other video games down there. Except we all had one big problem; we didn’t have the cash to spend frivolously on our afterschool hobby. So, we put our heads together to figure out a way to fix our little financial issue.

Our first system was quite rudimentary. We taped a piece of thread to a quarter that we could pull up and down a couple of times before it broke. This worked well enough, but we wanted and needed more. So, we got a little more sophisticated in our manufacturing. We didn’t know how yet, but we needed to make our own coins.

We knew we needed to somehow fool the coin mechanism to accept our fake quarters. First, we had to find a material to make them. Lead was our choice because someone’s dad had a burner, which we could use to melt it. And, proof that we actually learned something in science class, lead is not magnetic like real quarters.

So, we tested our method. We used the burner to melt the lead and then poured it into a plastic mold we made. It worked! But we faced another problem. We needed more lead. One boy remembered that tire weights were made of lead. So, armed with a screwdriver and pliers, we all scoured parking lots wandering around between cars to take them off wheels.

And just like that, our production line was up and running. We melted the lead, poured it into the mold, and set it aside to cool before moving on to the next “quarter.” The finishing process was crude but effective. We’d snip any excess then file the edges to make it as round as possible. To finish, we shined our coins with steel wool and a polishing cloth.

Finally, it was time for a trial run. We went to the bowling alley and put our quarters into the pinball machine. It lit up! Our handmade coins really worked, and we could play any time that we wanted. Now that we knew it worked, we increased production and soon had a stash of quarters. Every day after school, you could find us all happily by the pinball machine.

But what must go up must come down. Getting caught using fakes never crossed any of our minds because of how much fun we were having. One normal day at the bowling alley, two men approached us. They began asking us questions and accusing us of rigging the machine. One of us yelled, “run!” We bolted as fast as we could.

We headed to the cul-de-sac where we all lived but split up briefly to lose the men chasing us. Unfortunately, the boy they followed ran straight into his house. And that was the end of our free pinballing days. Then a few days later in class, I was called into the office. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There, the principal, my father, and a member of the United States Secret Service greeted me.

Nervously, I sat down next to my dad. The agent turned to me, and I half expected a stern lecture, but he actually told me that he was very impressed with the quality of our coins. They had recovered over $75 in our quarters, which meant that we made and used over 300 of them! He did get serious because, officially, faking US currency is a serious offense.

But they said they understood that we were just a bunch of bored teenagers who wanted to play video games. We needed to pay restitution for the money, and the charge was placed on our juvenile records. They told us that all we had to do was keep our noses clean, and the charge would be expunged when we turned 18.

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19. Stay Home

My grandfather was a Vietnam veteran and married my grandma after meeting her in Germany. He adopted her oldest son, and together they had three daughters. Unfortunately, he treated them all absolutely terribly. When they were toddlers, he would wake them up for “physical training” and throw knives at them to, “check their reflexes.”

My aunt moved out of the house as soon as she graduated high school. Her dad lost his mind and kept trying to convince her to come back. He finally convinced her to come home to “talk” about it. She went over and sat on the couch to talk to him. She told him that she was never coming back. That was when my grandfather shot her three times—but the story doesn’t end there.

She survived. But when she got away, my grandfather walked back to his bedroom and took his own life.

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20. Always Gotta Have A Spare

Although not officially an illicit action, my grandfather had two separate families in two different cities. Both of his “firstborn” sons were named after him, and they too passed the name down to their sons, including myself. So, I share my name with my father, grandfather, half-uncle, and at least one of my cousins.

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21. Problem With Ink-justice

When my father-in-law found out his girlfriend was cheating on him, he confronted the guy. He started a brawl by punching first. The guy didn’t make it in the end, and my father-in-law was sentenced to prison for life. But there was a typo in his paperwork that let him go free after barely serving any of his life term.

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22. I Told You So

My aunt had this boyfriend, Mike. He was the life of every party, and everyone loved him. Mike was always holding my aunt from behind and kissing her and showing almost too much PDA; but they were happy. Well, there was a devastating dark side to their relationship. The truth came out that Mike was physically and mentally abusing my aunt and that neck kissing wasn’t PDA.

It was really Mike whispering in her ear and berating her for making a fool of herself dancing. My grandfather found out how he was treating my aunt and went over to see Mike. When he opened the door, my grandfather said, “If I hear that you hurt my daughter one more time, I’ll make sure that you'll never do it again.”

A few weeks later, my aunt showed up with a black eye and a sling. The following weekend, Mike’s body was found on the roof of his apartment building. Everyone knows who did it. As a successful lawyer, my grandfather surely had connections to get help if he was ever suspected. All he said about him was, “What a shame.”

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23. Playing Dirty

One of my great aunts married a cruel man who was a veteran. The marriage was wrought with visits to the emergency room from all the times he would hurt her. When he drank, he would force her to play Russian Roulette. One night, he lost the game. She was never suspected or charged with it.

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24. You Goat-a Be Kidding Me

My aunt was going to pick up some goat meat she purchased from a farm. When she got there, the farmer told her that he hadn’t actually prepared the goat and it was still alive. She saw the goat was painted with Vikings colors with Brett Favre’s jersey number. The farmer explained that he didn’t want to do it because “his kids were around.”

Well, my uncle’s pretty outdoorsy and hunted. So, he offered to butcher the goat for her if she brought it to his house. So, she put the goat in her trunk and headed over. On the way there, she had car trouble and had to pull into a garage nearby to get it fixed. When the mechanic opened the trunk, he discovered the Vikings goat. Confused and concerned, he ended up calling the authorities.

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25. This Wasn’t In My Training

An uncle of mine once forged a contract and demolished a local train station. He then collected all of the scraps and sold them off. The British Rail found out when the actual contractors arrived to the station and found it already cleared. They brought him to court for technically taking the profits away from The Rail. Except my uncle made less than what it cost to do the actual job, so the court found him not guilty.

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26. This Land Is My Land

My family found out one day that a cousin erased every name off a property deed except for his father’s. The actual paperwork was water damaged making it impossible to read or tell what had been there. I’ve heard that the cousin paid off some local politicians and other important people to make the new deed legitimate.

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27. Look At What I Shouldn’t Be Doing!

One night my friend and I were riding an electric scooter when we ended up in front of a tall, barbed wire fence. I thought I could climb it easily. As I got higher, it hit me that it’s a US service base. I just let go of the fence, fell to the ground, and ran out of there.

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28. I Believe I Can Fly

In the 80s, a relative of mine went to the World Trade Center. He wore rubber gloves to climb the electric fence, took his parachute out of the shopping bag that he brought, and then jumped off the top. His wife was even ready somewhere to take the photos of him. At the bottom, he ran into his getaway car that his friend drove.

But two days later, he was caught. He didn’t have to serve time, but he did have to apologize to the city and pay a small fine.

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29. Making Good Money

In college, my roommates and I got this new top of the line printer. We were fooling around with it and discovered that it could print a fairly convincing $20 bill. Being broke college students, we printed a bunch of them, roughed them up a little, and used them at different fast-food restaurants. I didn’t realize how dumb it was to do that until years later.

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30. Fun In Combat

In the 70s, my mother-in-law was a part of the ROTC. They were on a field trip to a service base and saw this big armored vehicle unattended. So, she and her friends jumped onto it and went on a joyride! They made it down to the highway before running out of gas and getting caught. According to my grandmother-in-law, she was watching the whole thing happen on the news before getting the call that one of the joyriders was her daughter.

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31. Wishing You Well

One of my grandparents a few generations ago lived during an occupation in her village. There was a guard assigned to her village who constantly harassed her. So, one day, she lured him into her home, attacked him, and threw his body down a well. The family knew about it and never drank from that well again.

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32. Slurring Outta Here

My grandfather drank a lot but never to a point where he couldn’t make good decisions. He lived in Russia when government members would come around to interrogate any potential defectors. They would always overlook my grandfather assuming he was too busy drinking to be suspicious. In reality, he was only pretending so they’d think just that. It gave him time to gather the resources to escape with my dad.

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33. Chugga, Chugga, Boo, Boo

When it came to obeying train warnings, my grandfather never did. Instead, he’d try to beat the train rather than waiting safely like a normal person. The first time a train hit him, he was driving his brand-new convertible that he’d just barely started payments for on his way to prom with my grandma. Luckily, they were both okay.

His second attempt at beating the train was less his fault, but he was still as dumb. He was driving a semi that broke down at a train crossing. Most people would give up the rig and load to jump out before a train came. But, nope, my grandfather kept trying to start the tractor-trailer. A train hit the semi, which was a total loss, and he messed up his back.

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34. Lively Night Out

Growing up, I’ve heard stories of how some great-uncles backed their dad’s work truck through the funeral home wall and drove off with their father’s body. They thought their dad would have loved their stunt being a burglar himself. They went into the woods, had a few drinks with it, and even played a round of poker!

The brothers enjoyed the irony of drinking for the last time with their dad who never drank. They returned the body in the early hours of the morning but were eventually caught. At the funeral, they showed up in handcuffs but told everyone who asked that it was worth it.

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35. First Time Coder

My father committed one of the first computer breaches in the 90s. After getting fired from his job, he made a code that corrupted all of the company’s files. So, one day, the FBI suddenly invaded our home and took him away. They sent him to federal prison for four years. It was quite an interesting case since there had never been one like it before.

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36. How’d You Like That?

When I was younger, I had a babysitter, Chris. He was the uncle of my two best friends who were sisters Abby and Becca. He treated me horribly. He liked to berate and humiliate me in front of them. He made them listen to me cry and scream. It was traumatizing, and I never told anyone about all the awful things he said.

I recently found out that even though I never mentioned it to my mom, my best friends did tell her. She was furious. Soon after she found out, she came up with a devious plan. There was a party at my friends’ house. My mom saw Chris in the backyard and started chatting. They got to joking, light roughhousing, and messing around. It was all pleasant.

Then my mom grabbed some lighter fluid and sprayed some on him laughing. Chris laughed with her. Then she lit a match. Still smiling, Chris said, “ha! You wouldn’t do it, would you?” Without saying a word, she lit Chris on fire. He wasn’t on fire for long, so he was fine. But she told him, “That’s what it’s like when you’re scared for your life,” and left. He flew back to Florida the next day.

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37. Only One Option

My great aunt disappeared off the face of the earth after her daughter’s wedding, and nobody had any clue what happened. Foul play was never suspected, but we didn’t know much else or had any leads. Then, we found out the absolutely bizarre reason behind her disappearance. She had apparently skipped jury duty to go to the wedding.

And, instead of doing something that actually made sense, she straight up just ran away and lived in hiding in a backwoods town in Washington. She didn’t send letters or anything. She just believed that living in hiding for 30 years was the most effective way to avoid jury duty so she could attend a family wedding. She passed on last year, we only found out afterward.

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38. Professional Skipper

We moved to a tiny, extremely religious, tight-knit community when my mom remarried. I was in sixth grade, and my life changed a lot. I absolutely hated my new school and everyone in it. Usually, in the mornings, my parents woke up at 6, woke me up at 6:30, then were out the door by 6:45. My bus came half an hour later.

I figured out very quickly that I didn’t have to catch my bus, and my parents would be none the wiser since they had highly demanding jobs. And they didn’t get back for three hours after I usually came back from school. The first day I skipped school was easy. By the second week, I realized that I had to take my exams.

The school would notice me showing up only for exams and would want to know why. So, I devised a plan. I called the school pretending to be my mother explaining that my poor daughter had mono and would be in and out of school. My “mother” also asked to change her contact number to the home phone. That way, I could intercept any calls.

Thus, began the six weeks when I only went to school on exam days. We got our report cards in the mail. And unbeknownst to me, my teacher wrote a note that said she was proud of how well I was doing with schoolwork despite being sick and out of class so often. Then I was in third period when I got called to the office.

I went and found my principal, vice-principal, two very, very angry parents, and a truancy officer waiting for me! I learned that I had to go to court for missing so many days of school and needed to do community service as my punishment. And I had an in-school suspension for the rest of the year. It’s still on my record!

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39. Just My Two Cents

I have this uncle who I hate because he’s a jerk and thinks he’s so cool and edgy. In his 20s, he started a fight in his regular pub after they tried to charge him an extra ten cents for his usual and another 10 cents for the lime. He stomped out the bartender and broke an officer's nose. It eventually took eight of them to bring him down.

He went to prison for a few years and boasts about coming out with more felon experience than when he went in. He was also proud of making metal hooks for other inmates that they’d used to scale the fences to escape. I can’t stand him. He’s so full of it.

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40. All Fun And Games

As a 10-year-old, I made it on a kid’s game show that was canceled days before it was supposed to air. Apparently, the game was rigged, and someone spilled the beans. So, technically, I violated section 508 of the Communications Act of 1934, “received underhanded assistance in a purportedly bona fide contest of intellectual knowledge or intellectual skill.’”

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41. Just Pull Over

I’d just turned 16 and gotten my license. Driving in my mom’s 1985 Dodge Omni with a buddy one day, I blew through a stop sign. That’s when an unmarked car turned on its lights to signal me to pull over. According to my logic, I had a head start and could take him. So, I put the pedal to the metal and started going 50.

I was speeding through back streets and neighborhoods with the officer right behind us. In my mirror, I could see him on his radio calling us in. I panicked and just kept going. My buddy in the front seat was screaming at me, “Dude, stop trying to outrun him! Just pull over! Dude! Pull over!” but I remained determined.

Finally, I realized how stupid I was being, and I pulled over. Then my friend shouted, “Not in front of my house!” Bewildered, I hadn’t meant to stop there. His mom was looking up from doing the dishes out the kitchen window. The unmarked car screeched to a halt behind me. The officer stomped his way over to my window.

He shouted, “Boy, what in the world were you thinking?!” I stared up and said, “I’m sorry.” He yanked my freshly printed driver’s license out of my trembling hands and stomped back to his car. We sat in terror while we waited. Then, we heard the officer walking back. He asked me, “Boy, how lucky are you feeling today?”

I said, “I would say not very lucky right now, sir.” He asked me if I was being smart, and I just shrugged my shoulders. Then he showed me his ticket pad with only a few left. He went, “well, let me tell you how lucky you are. You see this? These are my blank tickets. And I'm almost out. And my shift’s almost over. You just ended my shift with this nonsense!”

He kept going, “I don’t have enough tickets for all of your infractions and have to call for backup just to get more. Do I need to do that? Call for backup? Because that means I have to go back to the station to write up a report! Are you going to make me write you up instead of going home for dinner? Is that how you want my day to end?”

All I did was stammer out another apology. He went, “Are you ever going to drive like that here ever again?” I shook my head. “You realize you can't outrun officers in your mom’s old car, right?” I nodded. “I bet your mom doesn't want me towing her car, does she?” I shook my head again. I still can’t believe what happened next. He said, “Now, get out of here!”

That was when my friend asked, “Sir, can I just go now?” The officer told him, “Son, that’d be the smartest thing you can do.” So, my friend opened the door, got out, and walked across the street into his house. I heard the officer stomping back to my window. “You actually stopped right in front of your buddy’s house?!”

Crime in the familyUnsplash

42. Wrong Place, Right Time

After a night of a lot of drinking, my brother stupidly drove home absolutely wasted. The next morning, he woke up early to the sound of a baby crying. He opened his eyes and looked around the room realizing that he didn’t recognize anything. He jumped up and walked outside to his car that was half in the driveway and half on the street still running.

He got in and drove away as quickly as he could. It turned out that he’d ended up at some random house about five minutes away from our actual house. He never knew whose house it was and never got caught. He learned to slow down his drinking after that night.

Crime in the familyUnsplash

43. Quick Thinking

Once when I was a 16-year-old "genius," my friends and I were speeding down a highway just outside city limits where the speed drops from 55 to 25. Going 70, I passed an officer. We watched him slam on his breaks, so I went even faster. I pulled into the first parking lot that I saw, and we ducked down under the seats.

Not 20 seconds later, two cars with their sirens and lights came whizzing past us up the road. I reversed and took the back roads home. We got back to my house without a problem.

Crime in the familyPexels

44. Sticky Fingers

Growing up, we would come home from a shopping trip and realize that my sister had taken something that we hadn’t paid for. As she got older, her habit got even worse. She takes things from stores without paying all the time. It’s basically out of her control. My niece just turned one, and her mother never paid for any bit of formula she used. It’s insane that she’s never been caught.

Crime in the familyShutterstock

45. Friendly Gang

As a child, I spent most of my time with my grandmother. After a long day of playing soccer, some of us went over to my house where my grandma cooked us a big dinner. Even when I moved away for university, some of the guys who came to dinner still came over to help my grandma. They’d help her do chores around the home.

They did her groceries, watered the garden, and anything else she needed—but they had a dark secret. One day, my grandmother called and told me that officers took most of them in for trafficking. One of them was even the big boss of the area. But all my grandmother cared about was how she was going to do her grocery shopping without their help.

Crime in the familyUnsplash

46. Had A Good Thing

When I was a new buyer, my first dealer was pretty cool with me because I never asked him any questions. One day, his car broke down. He asked around to see if anyone was able to drive him. I told him that I would. And that’s all it took to become my dealer’s driver. I would pick him up and drive around almost all day.

It was a pretty chill deal; he gave me my stuff for free and paid me $250 a day! I still worked my part-time delivery job, so I was pretty good with our situation. Then he got his car fixed and didn’t need me to drive him anymore. It all worked out for me because his ex ended up snitching on him, and there was a bust a few weeks later.

Crime in the familyUnsplash

47. From The Gecko

I lived with four old schoolmates in a rented house back in the 90s. We lived next to a bus station, so a lot of our friends would call in on their way into or out of town for some drinks and a spliff. That meant that our house was always full of people getting high on the weekends and friends just crashing everywhere.

My girlfriend and I woke up to officers coming into my bedroom one morning. They told everyone to gather downstairs. Before I went, I hid my stash because I assumed that was why there were here. So, we were all sitting in the front room hungover and confused. Then an officer said, “So, who knows about the credit card?”

None of us expected that and looked at the officers with blank faces. That was until one of my housemates stood up and said, “No one knows anything. It’s me,” then left with the officers. We found out later that my housemate took a bank card that came for a previous tenant in the mail and got its pin number soon after.

He blew through a lot of money. But what did he buy with all of that money? He bought a gecko and got it a huge fancy glass tank. He was struggling to pay rent just like the rest of us, but here was this huge green lizard just sunning itself in the front room. All of us just stared at the gecko while he was taken away.

Crime in the familyShutterstock

48. Warm Wishes

My mother was conniving, greedy, manipulative, and eviscerated my self-esteem since birth. She’s never given me the truth about anything, and I feel no shame in saying that I do not care for her. Especially since last year, she burned down my childhood home where she, my dad, my niece, my sister, and my sister’s partner live.

Effectively, she destroyed everything we had and made in that home—including my dad’s dog and my sister’s cat. She did it because she thought my dad was cheating on her despite having no evidence. Then after the fire, in what I can only guess was an act of desperation, she took out all of the funds from my bank account since she was the secondary.

I was in the process of changing banks, but it hadn’t been finalized yet. I now tell people to take their parent’s names off their bank accounts as soon as they’re of age. My mother is now serving time in county prison for the arson because she got a plea deal for a reduced sentence. She played the poor old lady act to the judge who took undeserved pity on her.

Crime in the familyShutterstock

49. Burning Rage

When my uncle came back from Vietnam, he found out that his wife had been cheating on him with his best friend—and his reaction was truly disturbing. Incensed, he went over to his best friend’s house. He locked him and his wife into a closet then barricaded the door. After, he poured fuel all over the house and set it on fire.

Armed, my uncle held the firefighters off until he was sure they couldn’t be saved. Then, he took his own life.

Crime in the familyPexels

50. Making An Illing

My uncle was working in China with his partner who often gave him things to eat. And in the US, she had a friend at the bank forge the form to get her power of attorney over him. After that, she took out thousands of dollars in loans in his name buying expensive things and paying off her own debt. Meanwhile, my uncle started to notice that he was getting sick.

That’s when he made a disturbing realization. He ended up figuring out that she’d actually been feeding him poison while at the same time bankrupting him. He got back to the US and tried to get her charged for forgery and embezzlement. But she didn’t do much time, if any at all. My uncle is now still in a lot of debt because of her and has to live in the Philippines.

Crime in the familyPexels

Sources: Reddit,


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