Everybody loves a good plot twist… well, as long as that plot twist happens on a screen. When a plot twist happens in real life, that’s a whole other story. It can cause massive rifts in families and living dynamics, and flip a person’s whole life on its head. One minute you think you know everything, then the next minute you suddenly know nothing. The Redditors below have gone through some of the most incredible plot twists of all time. From discovering long-lost family members to uprooting long-hidden secrets, you won’t believe some of these stories actually happened. M. Night Shyamalan, eat your heart out.
1. Surprise…
When I was about 13, my mother and I were watching TV. During an ad break she started getting teary. I asked her what was wrong, and she told me that she and my father had actually been divorced for eight years. Apparently, my father had somehow convinced her to pretend to still be married to him. Which was most of my life at that point".
Are you surprised?" Gee, mom, I wonder.
2. That’s My Sister
When I was 14 I found out that the person I thought was my sister for most of my life really wasn't my sister, but a girl my dad had brought into his home before I was born because she had lost her parents at the age of three. He even forged documents of her birth and told everyone she was his daughter, including my mom, myself, and many relatives.
It wasn’t until I turned 14 that the truth came out when she finally found her parents. It turns out her parents were ex-guerrilla leaders for a communist party. How’s that for an interesting extended family?
3. The Checkmark Boy
My grandfather was suffering from cancer. He was a big, tough man and gradually just wasted away. Sometime near the end, he asked my grandmother to bring him a piece of paper and a pen. He wrote down all the names of his 27 grandchildren. Next to my name was a check. Nobody else had anything next to their names.
My grandmother showed it to me after he passed. She had no idea what it meant. I still think about that every once in a while.
4. Made for TV
I dated a girl for almost seven years before we got married and the marriage lasted less than 90 days. It ended because I found out she was having an affair with her personal trainer. I had to move out of my home and move back in with my brother while we worked our settlement out. Then she got knocked up by the guy, who was also recently married. He didn't leave his old family for her.
My life was a soap opera for a while.
5. Just Miami Things
When I was a teenager, I found a scrapbook hidden under all the linens in the back of the bathroom closet. It was full of newspaper clippings from 1970s Miami…chronicling my mother's detainment by the FBI! My favorite was a photograph of an agent posing with an opened bag of money and my mother in handcuffs.
6. Gig Life Begins
It happened eight months ago. It looked like my band was breaking up because my guitarist and his girlfriend wanted to move to Nashville, I was starting a new career, and the bassist and drummer wanted to transfer schools. Out of nowhere, an Australian radio program emails us saying they heard our music and started playing us. After that, an Australian PR group contacts us asking to organize a tour of Australia, so now that's happening next year.
So yeah, looked like we were done, now we're going to the other side of the planet to perform!
zackhankins74
7. A Kentucky Classic
The largest one for me was finding out my parents were never married through the 15+ years they were together, all because my father was still married to his first wife, who miraculously, got pregnant and had a child while he was behind bars for a year for aiding and abetting a known felon. He's a (converted) Kentucky hillbilly that use to run moonshine back in the day.
He refused to turn in his cousin. Multiple things occurred to me that day I learned my dad is a felon. I learned that I was born before my parents were married. I learned I have a "not quite half-sister" somewhere. I learned my mother basically had a long affair with my father. Honestly, I hope that’s all I find out.
8. Resent Present
I was looking for my social security card in my parents' desk and I found their marriage certificate. It was dated one year later than I thought, six months before I was born. All of a sudden, the years of thinking my mother resented being stuck home with kids, the terrible resentful marriage they had, it all made sense. They’d only got married because she was pregnant.
9. Long Lost
Back when I was in college I got a girl pregnant. When my mother found out, her reaction was devastating. She broke down crying and divulged that I have a brother out there somewhere that I had never met before. She had given the boy up for adoption long before I came around. I still wonder to this day if I will run into him at some point.
10. Adopted! Not. Unless…
When I was 12 or 13, my parents took me out to eat at a restaurant. My dad gave me some change to go play a couple of arcade games there, and when I ran out of money, I sat back down. My parents had completely serious looks on their faces and my dad asked me, "How would you react if we told you that you were adopted?"
I freaked out a bit and then they moved on to a different topic, as if it was nothing at all. Just brushed past it. I wondered about it for YEARS until I realized that I act just like my dad and I look like both my mom and my dad. I think they were just messing with me…I think.
11. Sister-Mom
Mine was finding out the woman I called "mum" for the first 16 years of my life was actually my grandmother, and that my older sister was my birth mum. Apparently, she got pregnant when she was 13 so her mum decided to raise me. Now I've got no idea what to call either of them, calling my big sister "mum" just feels weird.
12. Gimme the Juice
I actually found out shortly after my grandmother passed that she and her husband adopted my mom. From where or why, we have no idea. Mom and I know that we have the same type of ethnic heritage as the people she thought were her parents, which probably indicates she was adopted from somewhere within the family or close friends.
Perhaps more interesting is the fact that on her deathbed, I was 100% convinced that my grandma was saying "I love you" and gathered the whole family to hear...It was one of the most touching moments I’d ever experienced. Only then we realized that she was desperately thirsty, and saying "I want juice". Yeah.
13. The Upside of Not Knowing
The day we found out that the doctors were going to stop being aggressive with my father's treatment was very difficult. My grandparents flew back from Florida to get his affairs in order. Apparently, my dad (a near-broke alcoholic) had not paid any of his life insurance premiums. My grandparents found out and paid all the late bills which allowed my siblings to collect on the multimillion-dollar policy.
To this day I am grateful because I didn't find out until a few days after about the whole situation. Now I have enough money to pay for college and buy my first home.
14. O-kay
My blood type is O+. I have known that my dad's is B- and had always just assumed that my mother had O. About six months ago, my wife had a major surgery and my mother asked me if I was going to be able to donate blood for my wife. I said yes since O is a universal donor. She looked at me rather confused and said, "No son, you can't be O, your Dad is B and I'm A".
I'm definitely O, though. My grandmother (mom's mother) called me later that day to convince me that my 40-year-old self was simply confused about my blood type. She then told me later to never mention it again. What does it mean?
15. Saving Who You Can
I just found out last week that all my life, my mother has been addicted to speed and has been hiding her addiction from my sister and I as best she can. On top of that, every single night, she takes sleeping pills. I also learned that her family is convincing her to lie to my father and continue her addiction, instead of getting help, purely to spite my father.
I'd always suspected my mother had a problem, but never brought it up. It was just too uncomfortable, the kind of thing that tears families apart once it comes to light. My younger sister is still in the dark, and I intend to keep it that way. For now, I'm just watching my mother slowly destroy herself, nothing I can do.
16. Color-Man
My dad is a real-life superhero. He has synesthesia—he sees numbers as colors and shapes because those sections of his brain are connected in ways normal people aren't—and he used that to catch a man who was skimming accounts when he worked at a bank. My dad worked at a bank and for fun he'd scroll down through the account balances and watch the patterns of color scroll past.
He did this just about every day, and over time he noticed more and more zeroes. They stood out because they're empty space to him and it looks "ugly" to his mind. He was noticing this in a couple thousand accounts too, just a few black spaces at the end of strings of color. He ended up taking it to the authorities because his boss wasn't listening to him—and there’s a twist.
It turns out his boss was the guy skimming the accounts, but the authorities never took the investigation seriously until my dad compiled the evidence on his own and took it to them. My dad's a cool guy.
17. I Pity the Fool
When I was a kid my parents took me to Universal Studios in LA. When we were there, we met Mr. T and I spent the next 20 years telling my friends that I had met Mr. T. Everything came crashing down when I had dinner one night with my parents and a girlfriend. The topic of meeting famous people came up, and I told my Mr. T story.
My parents chuckled and corrected me, "You mean you met a character impersonator playing Mr. T". Childhood. Ruined.
Rocky III (1982), United Artists
18. How I Met My Real Dad
When I was 18, my dad sat us kids down around the kitchen table for another one of his famous lectures. This time it was a lecture unlike any other. The man I thought was my paternal grandfather isn't. BOOM! The last name I have had my entire life was from my dad's stepdad. BOOM! My father has a half-brother we've never met. BOOM! My dad's real dad abandoned his family when my dad was 3. BOOM!
"So, there you go, kids. We're all meeting my real dad tomorrow at Furr's Cafeteria for dinner, and I want you all to look nice". WHAT!? It was insane.
B612markt
19. Ghosting Uncle John
My grandpa was having trouble hearing and it took us a while to convince him to get a hearing aid. In the meantime, he got a phone call saying his uncle John had passed. He asked about a funeral and was told there wasn't one. That was two, maybe three years ago. I really only saw John when he came up for Christmas, but he was quite the character and my whole family has missed him.
A couple of weeks ago, my grandpa’s cousin came to visit. Grampa was talking about how he missed John since he passed. His cousin said, "What are you talking about? I just saw him two weeks ago!" Turns out my grandpa misheard the phone call. We figure someone else passed, but we still don't know who. John's probably been wondering why no one invites him for Christmas anymore, or visits, or calls.
20. The Post-Wedding-Wedding
My parents separated a while ago and I had never actually seen their wedding photos. I finally found one and saw my mom in her wedding dress, but she was holding my older sister, who looked about three, making me about one, or at least born for that matter. But that’s not the plot twist. I thought there was a family secret until my mom told me she married my dad before a judge, and this picture was from the actual ceremony, which took place years later.
21. Can’t Stay Off Facebook
My dad was an addict since I was born. I had a pretty rough childhood, constantly moving houses as my parents tried to get clean. Eventually, my mom got clean and sober—it was her 14-year anniversary last weekend—but my dad didn't. Because https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NlpRQZCQBKdDBMCMkBy4cBm8o3mq67-AEx3nSpAonJA/edit#gid=0of this he wasn't a constant figure in my life, always coming and going.
This last year we finally got really close and he felt like a dad to me. We hung out all the time, I talked to him about my dreams and aspirations, etc. I was so happy—I finally had a dad. He went missing the day after my graduation ceremony for high school. No one heard from him in four weeks, he quit his job, left his home and everything.
Then one night I get a phone call that he had passed. My heart was shattered. They flew his body out to Seattle so I never got closure. It's been five months since he passed on. I started seeing activity on his Facebook profile and it would tick me off and make me confused like someone was screwing with me.
I asked my mom about it, who asked my grandma (my dad's mom) about it—and the chilling truth came out. My dad faked his passing because he didn't think he could ever get clean and didn't wanna keep hurting me, but now he's clean again and decided he changed his mind. I found this out two weeks ago. I have no idea what to do, so I just haven't done or said anything about it.
22. Passing Advice
When my grandfather was on his deathbed, he was very much aware of what he was saying/doing. He talked to each of the family members that were there privately. When I went in to see him, we talked for what seemed to be hours, joking as if it was another one of our "every-second-weekend" camping trips.
It was very strange to know he would just be a lifeless shell of what he used to be. He put his hand on the back of my neck and told me I was about to go through the toughest four years of my life and to not act on my depressive actions. I left to room confused and broken. He passed within half an hour. The next four years (and counting) have been awful.
My immediate family found out my father had been cheating on my mother. That just screwed with our emotions and thoughts over the course of a year and a bit. I failed to get my high school diploma, so I started to work full time to pay for our home and expenses. Not as big of a plot twist as some of these stories, but he kept me from ending not only my own life, but my father’s life, too.
23. Mom’d Up
My twin sister and I were born through in vitro fertilization. Our mom wanted nothing more than to have kids, and her circumstances led her to use a sperm donor. When we were three years old, our mom was diagnosed with cancer. When we were six, she passed on. My sister and I were taken in by our aunt, our mom's younger sister.
She already had two sons and a husband. It was a crazy and emotional time for all of us, but we have become an amazing family unit, and I consider my mom, dad, and brothers as much my immediate family as my sister. You might think this was the major plot twist in my life, but it gets even crazier, believe it or not.
About four years ago, I learned that not only did my original mother have sperm donated to her, but she also had eggs donated to her…by her little sister. I lost my biological mom only to be rescued by my genetic mom. All those years I had laughed at the people who said I looked like my brothers and my mom, but the joke was on me.
When I think about the sacrifices my two moms have made for me and my sister, it blows my mind.
24. Thick Blood
Earlier this last year I was hit up by a guy on Facebook claiming to be my half-brother. Fast forward a bit, and it turns out to be true. I don't know the details of the hows and whys, as every story has multiple sides, but my twin brother and I have been raised our whole lives, 23 years, by a wonderful man whom is the biological father of our older brother.
There was never any hint or doubt that our dad wasn't our biological father, and we were raised with the utmost love and care by him, even though he and my mother were divorced or separated throughout the entirety of our lives. My father even had a fiancé leave him at one point because she was, apparently, unhappy that he was paying family support for kids that weren't technically of his biology.
He really sacrificed a lot for us, and I couldn't have had a better dad. Hasn't really changed much in my life, honestly, and I never had any real crisis of conscience or identity about it, because hey, that sounds about right given my family history. Nonetheless, I’d say that counts as a nice little twist, eh?
25. Background Extra Gets a Promotion
Six years ago I was dating a girl that lived in a dorm. I got to know all the girls in the hall pretty well because I was there all the time. The original girl and I had a terribly nasty split and I stopped seeing any of those girls, because obviously I wasn't around at that school anymore. Fast forward to a few months ago.
One of my best friends brings this girl around, and she says she is bringing one of her friends to town for the weekend. Lo and behold, the friend is a girl from that dorm floor. We hit it off and reconnected and she is now my girlfriend. It is just crazy to think that I knew her then and now she means so much to me.
26. Black Crack Magic
My parents split when I was three, and I moved in full time with my dad when I was five, still visiting my mom on the weekends. I come home from school one day, I'd say I was about seven, and my dad tells me my mom's house caught on fire. The official report was that a lit smoke had fallen between the armrest and couch cushion.
When I was 14, I got out of my second group home and my mom had just gotten out of a three-year stint in prison for grand theft auto—among other things, trying to keep this short and sweet. I took my dog and went to her tiny apartment to stay the night. She tells me the house fire was caused by a candle being turned over from a table that was behind the couch.
It was a candle she had lit in an attempt to use black magic to bring her friend back to life. I lost so many freaking toys so she could ask her passed friend what her old crack dealer’s phone number was.
27. There All Along
I've always loved choreography. I was never much of a dancer myself, but I loved ballet and musical theatre growing up. It branched into other avenues, too, like martial arts and animation, which lead to me becoming a comic artist. I never had anyone in my family to really relate these passions to, though, which was a bit sad.
Until, in his last moments, my grandfather started telling me stories I never heard before about being both a boxer and a dancer. May not sound like a big plot twist, but believe me when I say it felt like it at the time. We became really good friends all of the sudden, in his very last days on Earth. I was so glad to make that connection with him before he left.
28. Twinning
So, my friend was adopted when she was pretty young, doesn't know any of her biological family. Friend is a typical high school girl, likes to go to the mall and whatnot. Every time she's there she gets guys hitting on her saying they know her from somewhere or something like that. She doesn't think much of it, she's a cute girl so it happens often enough everywhere.
As time passes, she notices a bunch more people saying they know her at the mall and some call her by a different name. She eventually gets talking to one person and they swear they know someone who looks exactly like her. She ends up meeting this person and she really does look just like her. Turns out she had a twin that was also adopted, and they were separated at birth.
29. A Grim Mistake
My wife has a large family. Lots of aunts, uncles, great-aunts, great-uncles, etc. Family reunion attendance numbers in the hundreds. So, there was one of my wife's great-aunts: Aunt Veda, born Sierra Nevada. She wasn't well known to the family, but a few decades after she passed my wife's cousin is doing some family history, and the story comes out.
Turns out, Veda was, in her early life, a mortician's assistant. Then, she was hired by the state in the late 1800s/early 1900s as a hangman's assistant. And then she got promoted. Apparently, she didn't do a lot of work: Hanging, as a form of capital punishment, was being phased out by the early 1900s. She still had her title and salary, though.
After she passed in Minneapolis, she was buried there. Eventually, the family wanted her grave moved down to the family gravesite in Iowa. When they finally unearthed the coffin, the lid fell open, and they discovered possibly the most disturbing thing about Aunt Veda's strange life: Scratch marks on the inside of the lid.
After reading this in my cousin's notes, my wife turned three shades of pale, calmed down a bit, and then said: "Well, that’s karma for you, huh?"
30. Hiding Heroes
My grandfather's sister had a heart attack, and I was telling my mother that we all should do a check, this kind of things run in families. At that point, my mother told me that my real grandfather wasn't the one we thought. Her biological father was a Jewish man who was sent to a concentration during the fascist period in Italy and my grandmother, pregnant at the time, never saw him again.
This is also the reason why my grandmother hid many Jewish families in Venice under the roof of the house where they lived in Campo Sant'Angelo during WWII, despite the danger of being detained and removed from the country.
31. Hitting Reset
Six months ago, I quit my high paying advertising job with no plan for what was next. After a month of partying non-stop, I had an epiphany at 4:30 in the morning that it was my destiny to become a music therapist. Now, I volunteer at two music therapy centers working with kids with autism and Down syndrome, and hopefully I will be going to grad school in the fall.
I've never been happier in my life. I'm not sure I would have made it another year otherwise.
32. No Such Thing as Men’s Work
I lost my dream job at a music school and ended up working on a construction site to make ends meet. Fell in love with driving the machines and made it my career. Most people discouraged me, saying it was "men's work," but I ignored them and persevered. It's simple enough, but it really changed my life for the better and I feel a sense of purpose that I didn't know I was missing.
I had dropped out of uni/college and thought I was out of options...turns out I found it where I least expected it.
33. One Large Kid
I was lied to about my age. I was two years older than I was told. Apparently, I had some sort of medical condition post-birth and was hospitalized on and off. By the time I was normal and sent to school, I was older than my classmates. So my parents thought it would be awkward for me to blend in with kids younger than me. So, they lied about it for a long time. A really long time. Was a real strange moment for me.
34. Family Tangles
Looking in my dad's lockbox for my birth certificate, I found a copy of my mom's. With a different last name. I asked my uncle about it because he was over, and he just said, "Ask your mom". When asked, she got furious and said it was none of my business. Well, it turns out her real mother was the woman who I’d thought was my aunt the whole time.
She had an affair with a married man and got pregnant. Her family helped her raise my mom. It gets better: Four years later, he came back to town. Then, the same thing happened. When my Mom was six or seven, my "aunt" met another man, married him, and moved away. Gave my mom the choice to move with her, or stay in the only home she knew.
She stayed and was raised by my great-grandmother, who I thought was my grandma. Big open family secret.
35. Frat Rat
I was visiting a college while in high school with a family friend who already went there, he was the only person I knew. In the time I almost got in a fight with his roommate who was hitting on my girlfriend. Fast forward a year later, and my previously mentioned friend from my home town (originally my brother’s friend) is telling me to rush his fraternity since he is a year older than me and I am a new freshman.
He told me I wouldn’t have to look anywhere else. In my college, if you do not join a fraternity you do not have a social life. Towards the end of the week I smelled something fishy and people in that fraternity were starting to be hostile to me. Before the last day, I went elsewhere and instantly joined the one I am in today.
I didn’t know where I had gone wrong, so I assumed the guy who I almost got in a fight with (who was also in the same fraternity) denied me, and I didn’t think much of it until a few weeks later. A guy in the same fraternity, who I got to know a little, got really tipsy and told me that my friend was the one talking smack about me and he was trying to screw me over and ruin my chances of having a social life my freshman year.
He was making me rush his fraternity only, not giving me a chance to join another one, and then was going to deny me. He had been my brother’s best friend for about 10 years. My mom and his mom were best friends. My family paid for a lot of her debt when she went through a divorce and her business failed miserably.
Then we gave her a car when she totaled hers and had no other means. He had come on every one of our family trips since I was 10. He was the one that convinced me to come to that college. It was a literal mind twist when that guy told me what really happened. I told my (ex) friend that I knew, and he hasn’t been able to look me in the face for four years. It hurt.
36. Independence to the End
A few years ago my great aunt passed after falling down the stairs and being found the next day. She survived but caught hypothermia and expired that day in the hospital. A few years later, I was told that literally the day before that all happened, my dad and uncle had a discussion with her about potentially going to live in a home—she was in her 90s.
She was a fiercely independent old bird who'd lived alone for maybe 30 years, but was fragile and frail. She'd always been right against living in a home, though. So, whilst there's no hard evidence, there is no doubt in any of our minds that my sweet old great aunt ended her own life rather than live in a home.
37. Gaming Pays
I was (and am) a huge nerd throughout high school. I was such a nerd that I would spend most nights listening to TSN, the Team Sportscast Network, an online radio station that did live coverage of eSports events. One of the shows I loved on TSN was Epileptic Gaming, a gaming review and culture show hosted by DJWheat—a now famous StarCraft II commentator and Twitch.tv personality.
Eventually when TSN failed, Epileptic Gaming wound up on The Global Gaming league, an eSports network that did live TV shows on the internet. I was watching Epileptic Gaming during my freshman year of school and they made an announcement: they needed writers to help man their gaming blog. Being an English major and a huge nerd I jumped at the chance.
At that blog, my editor was M. I don't want to use his real name. I worked with M throughout college writing gaming news and reviews for free games and random gaming swag. Once I graduated, M reached out to me saying that he was leaving the GGL to go work at a gaming network on YouTube. A few months later he gets me a job there where I get to work from home in Ohio.
I make decent money, and have my foot in the door at a huge entertainment network. Fast forward three years and I'm now living in LA working in that YouTube network's office, making great money, loving my job, and still working under M. It's crazy to think that my entire career came about because I watched some small TV show on the web.
38. It’ll All Be Okay
My ex-girlfriend cheated on me after a year together with a man double her age. We had just signed a lease for a new apartment that was supposed to last a year. I was in a terrible rut emotionally and financially as I was supposed to pay for the apartment where I didn’t live. But it didn’t end there.
My car got totaled so I had to get a new one. I was working from home and seeing almost no one didn’t help how bad I felt. Fast forward four months, I meet a great girl that makes me happy. We have been dating for almost a month now and all is going great, my ex is about to re-sign the lease so my name will be out of it, and I am finally able to afford that car I got and have some money on the side.
I am happy and life is great! It all gets better.
39. Faking It
I'd been wanting to walk out of my job at a high-end restaurant for quite some time but just didn't have the balls to follow through with it—real mature, yes, I know. One day I said screw it, gathered my stuff, tipped out, and just walked out the door. I picked up a six-pack and headed straight for the beach, where I knew my friends would be.
When I got there, I got to talking with this guy I'd never met before. He told me that he'd bought the tourist bar right down the beach and nonchalantly said he was hiring bartenders. I didn't know how to mix drinks, but I lied and said I did anyway. He hired me and I did the whole "fake it til you make it" thing.
A week into my new job, I met the man of my dreams. We're happily married almost a decade later.
40. Pulling a Ross
My now-ex-wife convinced me to get her pregnant. I didn’t want kids, but as it turns out, she had PCOS and couldn't have them. She then talked me into going through IUI, and I spent about ten thousand dollars getting her medically pregnant using my own stuff. A year after our son was born, she declared herself a lesbian and we split up, and she started taking a progressively decreasing interest in his health, well-being, and very existence.
When he was 18 months old, I threw her out and took sole custody of him. I never wanted a kid, now my son is my life.
41. A Cause for Delay
When I was seven, my parents were trying for a second child. My mom was driving into work at a hospital in the Bronx, fretting over the fact that she'd have to get back on birth control since she couldn't be pregnant during her fellowship. As she parked in the garage, she realized her period was late. Went into work, took a pregnancy test. Positive.
Then the Twin Towers fell down, and the hospital went under lockdown. I didn't find out I was gonna have a brother until the next day.
42. Who Knows, Who Cares
When I was 16, my mom told me about the time my primary school sent me to a psychiatrist. I think that at the time I thought it was a dyslexia thing. Anyway, turns out this guy told my mom he thought I had a mild case of Asperger’s, but she decided against the whole testing and labeling process. She already knew I was bloody weird—there are stories from my early childhood that make me cringe and marvel at myself in equal measures.
16 is just about when most of my year group started growing up and accepting me for who I was and going, "Oh you," and the weird things I'd come out with/take offense to. So, the junk I'd gone through all my school life was coming to an end...and now I might have a reason for it. I may or may not have Asperger’s. I still wonder from time to time.
But in the end, it doesn't really matter, I am who I am and people can either take me as I come or leave me be.
43. Mazel Tov!
I recently found out that I'm Jewish. My great-grandmother lived in Hungary in the years leading up to WWII. Turns out that she and her family changed their identities when emigrating to Hungary from France and hid their Jewish heritage due to growing antisemitism. This was my mom's grandmother, and my grandmother's mom, so it's all through females on my mom's side of the family.
Anyway, my grandmother dropped this on us as a matter-of-fact comment about how crazy it is that she's so Catholic when she's really a Jew. When asked what she was talking about, she told us about how her mother's family changed identities, etc. Some of us have suspected that we may have some Jewish ancestry somewhere, if only because it wasn't uncommon to hide Jewish ancestry in Hungary, but we've never had it confirmed.
44. The Brother-Cousin
Me and my brother grew up with little extended family. Our father strayed us away from his family due to them being ''crazy". The only family we knew of from his side was an uncle. His and my dad’s moms were sisters, so they were technically cousins, but we called him uncle anyways. During my father’s last days, our uncle reveals to us a secret.
They're brothers. What?!? Turns out, the person who we thought was our grandpa had a job that required him to be on the road a lot. One time, while he was away, my uncle’s dad paid my grandmother a visit. So, they’re both simultaneously brother and cousins.
45. The Good Uncle
One day my ma gets a phone call from a man saying he is her half-brother, 10 years her senior. The story checks out. Their mom was in an abusive relationship in her late teens, became pregnant, and was forced to place the baby up for adoption in the 1950s. Fast forward a year after we find out, and we get really close to this new uncle. Then, I get myself pregnant at 15.
It was really scary and awful. I decided to place the baby for adoption, knowing I had no business raising a child at 15 years old, and told my family. New uncle comes forward, he and his wife have already adopted a little baby girl and would like to adopt another, tell me they'd be honored to adopt my child. And they did!
It is amazing, she has known about the adoption her whole life and we're friends now. She's 14 years old now.
46. Did You Try Plugging It In?
Working guard duty late one night in the army. Sergeant Major storms out furious because his computer isn't cooperating and he's mad that he's still at work. I volunteer to take a look at his system. After a bit of investigation, I discover that his network cable had become dislodged. I plug it in, hoping for a quick fix. Little did I know that it would change my life.
This single event directly led to me being branded the battalion "computer genius" and because of that, I was assigned to an elite and small unit that specialized in computer forensics. Years later I am out of the army and making a six-figure salary. All because I plugged in a network cable while on fireguard.
That was also the year I survived a horrifying deployment to Iraq and the year I met my wife of eight years. Dang...that was a lucky year for me.
47. The Worst Twist
My plot twist is this: I was in an abusive relationship in which I was thrown into a 2x4 support beam. As a precaution, I was taken to the hospital for a CT scan to make sure I had no internal trauma. While waiting in my hospital room, the doctor finally came in and told me I didn't have any injuries from the concussion, but I did have a brain tumor. That was pretty freaking unexpected.
48. Swapping Friends
While at a party about five years ago I met a girl who I really clicked with as a friend. I started talking about my boyfriend but didn’t use that phrase, I only mentioned his name. What she told me next made my blood run cold. She proceeded to tell me she knew him and had recently been on a date with him, and how it was the most romantic date she'd ever been on.
My boyfriend. Of a year. Life just got real. Yes, we broke up shortly afterward. That girl ended up being one of my best friends. We are friends to this day.
49. Everything Is a Lie
When I was 15, my siblings and I were put into foster care. We had no idea why until the social worker told us the reasons. One, our parents were using illegal substances. Two, our after school "jobs" were helping them pay for it. They said our money was being saved. Three, my dad wasn't my real dad and three out of five of my siblings were half-siblings.
Four, my real dad kidnapped had my brother and I when we were babies. We were returned to my mom when he confessed to ending a woman’s life and then went to the slammer. He had since been released and we visited him to discover that he had started another family. Safe to say, my mind was effectively blown. A lot to learn in one day.
50. Night and Day
I thought my dad was a complete freaking jerk. Turns out, that was just the result of being a serious addict from the time I was born until my late teens/early 20s. He's actually a pretty nice guy! When I was about 12, about a year or so after my mom finally kicked him out, I was at my grandmother's house working on putting together a bicycle that my father and I had painted and slowly reassembled over the course of three or four years.
I was baffled by something that happened and told my mom about it as soon as I got home. I told her dad had a hard time getting the chain on the bike and didn't flip out. He didn't swear or throw anything or yell and storm off. He just kept working on the bike until he got everything to fit. I had never seen this sort of response from him.
I was sincerely amazed. My mother said, "That's because he's sober". She immediately put her hand over her mouth, knowing she had said too much. Mom didn't like bad-mouthing my father in front of her kids, of course she didn’t. I knew my dad did bad things. I never knew that was the reason he was such a jerk, though.
Sources: Reddit,
