29 Shocking And Hilarious Secrets People Have Literally Kept For Years, Sometimes Decades
Everybody loves a good secret, especially one that's been kept for a loooong time.
So when Reddit user u/Dramatic_Bat3265 asked people to share their ~dirty little secrets~ they've kept for years, I was alllll over it. Here are some of the best responses!
1."I (male, 25) had a threesome with two coworkers (male, 40, and female, 33). Now she's pregnant with her husband's baby (at least we think it's his)."
"I’ve never OFFICIALLY graduated from college. I was able to attend the graduation ceremony and got to walk onstage. Whole nine yards. But I was 10 credits shy of my degree. That was almost 11 years ago, and I’m currently working a pretty nice-paying job, so it worked out. But yeah…I can’t help but cringe a little bit when my parents gush about all three of their children (I’m the middle child) being college graduates."
2."Five-year-old me ruined my parents' marriage. I distinctly remember finding what I now know is a condom (unused) in our old station wagon. Me not knowing any better, I began playing with it. Got done, tossed it in the trash. Fast-forward a short time later. My father returns home and begins to drag the can to the road. As he closes the lid, he notices said condom, and you can guess where it goes from there. I didn’t learn that was the reason until I was about 14 or 15."
3."I slept with my mom’s friend. She was younger than my mom. She was 32 and I was 20 at the time. She stopped me one day as I was walking by her apartment and asked if I could take a look at her laptop because the 'Wi-Fi wasn’t working.' I said of course and started looking for the cause of it. While I was on her couch with the laptop, she came out of the kitchen with a bottle of tequila and two shot glasses. At that point, I knew the real reason I was there. Needless to say, there was nothing wrong with her Wi-Fi."
4."I was 10 and my parents had been working day and night to get their startup business off the ground. After several months of spending my afternoons alone, I decided to diversify my entertainment selection. I proceeded to ransack their entire office. I broke a window and two lamps, smashed the legs off a chair, and pulled every file from the cabinets and tossed them around the room like confetti. I then called my mother and told her I’d just gotten home and found the place burglarized."
"She told me to get out of the house and called 911 on her way home. The cops arrived with their sirens blaring at about the same time she rolled up. They stormed the house with guns drawn, screaming, 'Come out with your hands up!' When I saw them going all Delta Force through my front door, I knew that I had probably gone a little too far this time. Long story short, a detective came to take a report after the patrol cops had cleared the premises. As I was sitting on my living room sofa, surrounded by the tattered remains of my dirty work, the detective looked me dead in the eyes and said, 'There was no break-in, was there?' The man looked right into my soul and knew the truth. Thankfully, I was young enough to escape any criminal charges."
5."When I was 15 or 16, I was in an abusive relationship, and he would want to go out and I had to pay, but if I didn't have money, he would get mad. So I would take money out of my grandma's savings box every time he would make me go out."
"It made me so guilty, but she never said anything, so over the years and after a lot of therapy, now that I'm an adult and have a job and all, I put money from my salary in her box without her noticing. I think I've already paid back everything I took, but I don't want to stop. It hurts to think if she ever was affected by what I did...no matter the reason I did it."
6."I was supposed to map the coordinates of our class’s buried time capsule in 1979 and did not do it." (So basically, it could never be dug up.)
7."One time when I was like 5 to 9 years old, my dad was shopping around at a lumber store. I wandered around alone and couldn’t find a bathroom. I had to pee so bad. So I just found a secluded back corner behind some wood and pissed on the floor. Thirty years later, I still drive by that place every day and remember."
8."When I was about 8 or 9, I was sent to a summer camp for one month. Now, I don't know if I had arachnophobia before this experience, but I recall that the toilet stalls had dozens of daddy long leg spiders all over, and I was so scared, I just held it in for about four to five days. Well, one day I just couldn't hold it anymore and had to make a run for the toilets. I semi-ran or walked to the toilets, trying to hold it in, but I made it into the main area where the sinks were and just couldn't hold it anymore."
"Quickly, with one hand, I pulled down my pants from behind and dropped the biggest dump on the tile floor, all while still in motion toward the toilet. Thank god no one was in there to see this. When I stepped out, a large group had formed outside, and inside, one of the staff was covering his face with one hand and holding a hose in the other. No one suspected me."
9."In senior year of high school, I put a milk carton in the ceiling of a portable building right before spring break. When we came back from spring break, the classroom smelled like a rotting corpse. Some other kid who was a known prankster somehow got blamed and was suspended."
10."I worked at Wendy's during my teenage years. I also had a teenager's metabolism, so I would frequently treat myself to numerous giant Frostys during evening shift. Closing one night, and to avoid a 2 a.m. ride home with my sketchy manager, I decided to walk the 3 miles home through suburbia. Around the halfway point of my early-morning walk, the gallons of delicious milky beverage in my gut transformed themselves into gallons of fetid milky waste wanting very much to leave my body."
"Without a bathroom nearby, I darted down an alley and hopped a fence into a backyard...where I unleashed evil. I noticed that this yard had all the necessary accoutrement to indicate a dog or two lived there. My hope is that the owners didn't take their dogs to the vet with the assumption that Fido's anus exorcised Mephistopheles."
11."When I was a kid, I farted into a little box over and over for a full year. It was a tin some Christmas cookies came in with a picture of Santa on it. Every single time I had to fart, I lifted the lid, 'put it in the box,' and quickly closed it. Before long, the box was successfully weaponized and ready for deployment. When my brother was mean to me, I’d steal his Oakleys (expensive horrible '90s sunglasses) and put them in the box to, um, marinate overnight. Then I’d quietly return them."
"My brother continually complained to my mom about how they smelled and that they’d sold him 'a bad pair' and he wanted new ones. She was like, hell no, dude. So he just kept wearing them till they broke. So basically I farted into my brother’s eyes for a year. Never told anyone."
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12."I lost the school spelling bee on purpose. The girl I was against put a lot of time and effort into it, whereas I basically just showed up. Plus, she was more on the nerdy side, not a lot going on outside of school…and I felt she needed a victory."
"She missed a word; I purposely missed it to keep her in. This happened a few times. Later, I missed one on purpose to give her the victory. She went on to the state competition. The teacher giving the words threw me a look of disgust, as she knew what I did. Oh well…"
13."I have a kitten I'm feeding without my wife's knowledge. She hates cats, and I found one on the street. Every night before I go home, I stop by the store and get cat food. She always asks me why I come home late every other night. I say I'm working or out with the guys, but really, I sit and talk to this stray cat about my problems and how my day was."
14."When I was in high school, I failed second semester of biology. So here comes the next year, and I have to retake it. Again, I pass first semester but fail second semester, which means retaking the entire class. Well, I transferred schools after that. When I was getting all my transfer information looked over in the office at the new school, the woman noticed I had two passed first semesters but never passed a full class. I said, 'Passing two semesters is KINDA like the full class,' she winked, and that was that. No more bio. So I guess it’s OUR dirty little secret."
15."I had a counselor who straight-up turned some of my D's to B's when I changed schools before my senior year. I had a super-rough home life, and I told her about it when she asked why my test scores were very high and my grades were low. Thanks to her bumping up my GPA, I was able to get into college."
"I know it’s probably not 'right' and she risked her job, but that woman legit probably saved my life. I saw her about a year ago out in public and gave her the biggest hug."
16."When I was a kid (17), I worked at a Greyhound station. I accidentally sent a woman to Salmo, British Columbia, instead of Salmon Arm because I thought it just ran out of print space on the ticket/screen. I had never heard of Salmo back then. That woman had to spend an entire night in hell's half acres and lost an entire day of travel. My boss chalked it up to a 'glitch' in their antiquated machine. Really, it was me."
"I also would occasionally steal a bag of chips from that store when I got bored or hungry. God, I was such an asshole."
17."I’d only just begun paying off a vehicle loan in mid-1999. My January payment was returned with a note from the bank saying it was paid off. Not even close. Thanks, Y2K."
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18."I got an $8,000 scholarship, due to a clerical error, for having above a 3.7 GPA all semester. My GPA was actually 3.07."
19."My first year of high school, I ditched class so much that I flunked the year. I moved to a different town over the summer, and somehow they lost my 'permanent record' in the mail. (Early '90s, so they had computers, but they weren't integrated between school districts, so it was just a fat folder of paperwork.) Anyway, when the new school realized this, they called me in and asked what classes and grades I had, so I straight-up lied my way out of having to retake freshman year."
20."I never wrote my seventh-grade science paper on dysentery, and when my teacher asked me if I turned it in, I said yes. She looked through all of the papers and stacks of paperwork on her very crowded desk, and she said she 'knew [she] saw it there somewhere.' I got a B for a paper I never wrote. Sorry, Ms. Weber."
21."I cheated on my CV to add some skills and certificates I don’t have to match a Google position…but after five years, I mastered all of them and became a team manager."
22."A coworker retired, and I inherited one of his reports, which is one of my employer's key performance metrics. Every two weeks, it would take him an entire eight-hour day to complete. The first week, I was able to automate most of it down to one hour. Over the next nearly 10 years, I've improved it to the point that it runs in less than a minute, then 14 minutes to quality-check it. I then spend the next eight hours surfing Reddit, watching movies, doing whatever I want in my office from home. All this time, I've told my boss it takes me eight hours to perform."
23."I started lying about my experience with construction-site work experience four years ago. Today I am a site superintendent who googles answers to questions raised by other trades. To buy time I say, 'That’s a great question; let me get back to you on that.' I make $90,000 a year doing this."
24."When I was 3 or 4 years old, my mom and I were at a Piggly Wiggly market. She wouldn't buy me the 5-cent piece of gum out of the bins of candy. I was mad. I stole the 5-cent piece of gum. The store went out of business within a month. As an adult, I understand my theft didn't put the store out of business. Nonetheless, I've lived with that guilt for more than 30 years."
25."During my childhood (fifth or sixth grade), while eating my breakfast before leaving for school, I would keep some chewed food inside my mouth, and when I walked to the school bus stand, I would drink a sip of water. Then, when I sat in the bus, I would vomit it out so that I could be sent back home for feeling unwell. I used to repeat this within a couple of months, especially when I didn’t feel like going to school at all so I could watch a cricket match."
26."One time when I was around 10 to 12, I told a group of friends that I brushed my teeth with hot water instead of cold water (our cultural norm), just to seem quirky or cool, and man, did it get the reaction I was hoping for. However, it was all a lie. I did brush with cold water. And this lie was too heavy for my preteen soul, so every day since then, I have brushed my teeth with hot water, despite being 15 years older. I feel trapped in my hot-teeth-scrubbing sentence, yet it feels right as a punishment for lying."
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27."When I was about 8, I was in a supermarket with my mom and she had to use the bathroom. I was sat on the bench outside waiting, and there was one of those 'Press to break glass' fire alarms on the wall. I wanted to know how hard you had to press it…not very hard, as it turns out. The whole store had to leave their shopping and go outside — well, over 100 people. Not sure what happened after that because we just went home. It’s been 20 years, and I’ve still never told anyone."
28."When I was a kid, my mom took away my favorite computer-game CD for a few weeks as punishment for something I did. (Bad grade, I think?) I found where she hid it, photocopied the CD label, cut out the print, glued it to a blank disk, and put that in place of the real CD. Surprisingly, she never noticed! I played it when no one else was home. It's been 18 years, and I still haven't told her."
29.And finally: "Third grade, 1953. Somebody passed out a box of lollipops to the class. There was an extra. I took it. I can no longer live with this shame."
This reply to the above is so good, I just had to include it:
What secret do YOU want to get off your chest? Let us know in the comments or submit an anonymous form.
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
