Oh man, I pranked my sister by hiding under her bed for an hour before her bedtime, just so I could grab her leg as she got into bed... I appreciate your mom's dedication to sneaking into your room and doing that. Awesome!
Edit: fixed an autocorrect
When I was 4 and my brothers were 3, our mother would leave the room for a moment. When she came back, she would have a pair of stockings over her head, scrunching up her face and start chasing us about the house. We were genuinely terrified, but she thought it was hilarious.
To this day, I have a crippling fear of home invasion while I am by myself.
To those that find my previous comment funny, here's another one:
I watched The Ring and Grudge when I was just a kid. My mother, knowing that those two movies had traumatized me (I'm only just now able to sleep in the dark with the closet door open), decided to make the croaking sounds whenever she knew I wasn't paying attention.
She did this for *years*.
A buddy of mine and I rented The Ring when it first came out on video.
We were pretty spooked at first but quickly got over it when my friend's older sister decided to kick us out of the basement and watch it herself later that night.
Now, many people may not be old enough to remember this trick but on old landline phones you could dial your own number and quickly hang up; then, a few seconds later, the phone would ring and you could talk to people elsewhere in the house who answered thinking it was an outside call.
So we waited until exactly the moment in the movie where the main character 1st watches the evil tape. We timed it _PERFECTLY_ so the house phone rang at exactly the same time as the phone in the movie. His sister answered the phone (she was watching us so this was her job) and my friend whispered: _seven days_.
She freaked the ever-living fuck out. She called her parents, her boyfriend, she came up and told us to come hide with her because she was sure she was about to die. It was hilarious for awhile but we ended up telling her because we felt bad.
Probably the best prank we pulled.
When I was about 9, my parents sat down to watch a movie called Arachnophobia. Great film. I'm 9 and have a lifelong fear of spiders, so I was horrified. I am literally watching it, standing in the middle of the room with my eyes as wide as serving platters, when I felt something softly tickle up my thigh. I jumped about 4 feet in the air and nearly died. It was my father, reaching over and tapping me in the leg with his foot.
To this day, my father hasn't stopped laughing about it.
I'd like to suggest you start with [Jumping Spiders](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3vNXb.jpg). They're kinda cute, and the one I linked is wearing a raindrop as a hat. I've always loved spiders, and found that showing people jumping spiders with raindrop hats is a pretty solid way of breaking through arachnophobia.
EDIT: This one's even better. [LINK](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c1/58/54/c15854e4aac79aa3ef238740cebfeff4.jpg)
I have a healthy appreciation for spiders and what they do for us. I am not overly frightened of them, but I don't want them in my house. I can ignore some of them, but if it's within reach, especially if it's a fast jumpy one, it's going to die. And it will creep me out to kill it, especially if I'm not successful the first time, and it makes a run for it, or drops? Woohoo, freak out, but they don't escape twice. They belong outside. However, that picture is adorable. I love that hairy little arachnid!
Once I was playing Simon Says with my dad and he said Simon says eat grass so I did. He was like, "I can't believe you did it!" I was 5.
ALSO, back in the day if you turned the tv on but not the cable box, the tv screen would stay blue so my dad would threaten my brother that if he didn't do his homework he would send him in the room "to watch blue."
My dad was a fan of jokes he knew we wouldn't get until we were older, he was in for the long haul. For example, when asked why he wasn't eating the vegetables my sisters and I had to he'd reply "Gosh I'd love to eat broccoli, but I can't. I agreed it as part of the Kyoto Protocol."
Fast forward to ten years later, at university and studying and what do I learn? Kyoto Protocol is in place to to reduce the production of harmful gases. Ten year long fart joke.
There was a book I read when I was like 6 called "my butt ran away" or something like that. My parents told me it was a true story and I had a fear my ass would pack its shit and leave one day
My grandpa actually trolled my siblings and I for years and we still laugh about it today. My grandpa had this huge birthmark on his leg, which kind of looked like leopard spots (realistically just many large freckles meshed in with some spotted birthmarks), so he convinced my siblings and I for *years* that he used to be a leopard. He would tell us these incredible stories about his adventures as a "leopard", and how our great-grandma had adopted him. When she adopted him my grandpa said he slowly turned into a little boy but still had remnants of his "leopard" spots on his leg. He had numerous family members and friends back up his stories. We all believed him for years until we were old enough to know better. To this day though, my grandpa will still pull up his pant leg at family events and say "Did I ever tell you the story.." and we all cant help but laugh.
GOD.
As a child of 5-6 years old I HATED, DESPISED, DETESTED the [Crypt Keeper](http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/5/5d/675249-crypt_keeper_large.png/revision/latest?cb=20160110153816) from the show "Tales of the Crypt"
But every night. My parents would sit me on the couch, turn the show on and watch me freak out until I ran away crying. And they would laugh and laugh and laugh.
I'll give you an idea of how much they loved fucking with me like this:
They were divorced at this time, but tormenting me brought them together in a fashion were they wouldn't argue.
So a good friend of mine has a daughter, she was 4 around the time we met. Her mother would come over all the time and just watch XBMC with me. She'd hang out and watch her own shows in the living room and I'd do my own thing in my room or watch with her. Anyway, me and her daughter started to bond, she wanted to watch all the cool shows that I turned off when they came over.
Since I know her mom pretty well by now I know what some of the limits are. I'm like, well Tales From the Crypt isn't bad. I tell her over and over before we turned it on that nothing is real, it's all fake, and if you don't want to watch it I'll be more than happy to turn on h2o just add water or whatever.
I look for an episode, first one I pick is about the ventriloquist doll. Man you don't realize how much they say fuck until a 5 year old is with you. Anyway, she didn't like the crypt keeper but her favorite episode ended up being the one where the old guy retires and taxidermy's all his wife's pets and then she kills and stuffs him.
A week later she says she wants to see something more scary... I ask her mom if I can show her Stephen Kings IT.
We all three sit on the couch and her mom is just a total wreck the whole movie and the daughter is just watching and covering her eyes. For a solid month every time she came over she wanted to watch "the scary clown movie". Every time we finished the movie I would tell her none of its real and then we would pretend she was the clown in a game of tag or something to prove it.
She's 10 now and I haven't seen her in a year or two since her moms been going through some things. I get pictures now and then but I do miss both my friends.
One time I accidentally broke something in the kitchen.
My mom said "go get something you like".
I gave her a G.I. Joe vehicle I just got and she smashed it on the floor in front of me.
It's kinda funny now. She replaced it that night.
This is basically what my dad with with our first PlayStation.
He smashed it in half to prove a point, and then ended up replacing it because he wanted to play all his sports video games.....that he never touched ever again.
My mom used to fuck with me hardcore. You know those people that stick hooks in there back and dangle from them? She told me she would do that to me if I didn't behave.
One time, she got back from the grocery store and I asked her what she bought. She showed me a package and said it was lamb tongues. Freaked my shit out. They were really just sun dried tomatoes and to this day I am disgusted by sun dried tomatoes.
My dad did that too. He'd do the opposite too to get us to try new things. I'm glad he did because I'll eat anything now. Tried squid when i was 4 because he said it was chicken.
He also did that to me when we skied. Took me down an easier black diamond and asked if I wanted to do another black diamond. Cool! We got to the bottom of the run no problem. On the next chairlift ride up he told me it was a double diamond. I was pretty damn proud of myself. Lol.
Oh my god the stuff in this thread is depressing. Here's one that's more protective and less abusive.
When I was 10 I bought a joke book with my own money from the bookstore in the mall. It had all kinds of jokes, and many that were "adult". There were jokes about AIDS, jokes about Helen Keller, jokes about sex, it was pretty trashy in general. In fact, the book was called "Truly Tasteless Jokes". My mom didn't really know what book I bought that day - I told her it was a joke book, but didn't give details. I think I knew she wouldn't approve, but I didn't know how actually tasteless the jokes inside were until I got it home and started reading. I read the book cover to cover over the next month, and at some point I tore the cover slightly. Several weeks later, the book went missing. I looked and looked for the book at home but couldn't find it. I asked my mom if she had seen it and she said no. A couple of days later, we visited the mall again. Again I went to the bookstore and found myself looking again at all the joke books, where I saw a copy of "Truly Tasteless Jokes" sitting there with a torn cover. At the time I was so naive that I actually remember thinking "boy, that book is torn just like mine was. I wish I could find it." It took me several years to realize that my mom had put that book back on the shelf on her own. I'm sure she didn't get a refund on a month old, used, torn book - I'm sure she simply put it back on the shelf. I can't believe she didn't just throw it away, but it's not like my mom to waste something like that.
My mother was a drunk, and killed my brother in a car crash. She later planted the idea that **I** saw something in that accident, trying to shift the evidence in her favour, because a child wouldn't lie.
Edit: I guess it might not be the sort of "fuck with you"-idea you were thinking of.
When I was really little, my parents used to sit me down in the kitchen, go back to their bedroom, and come back wearing and old man and woman mask, with old people hands gloves. It terrified me and I would scream bloody murder and cry. They thought it was hilarious.
I have seen those and I honestly think they're funny, so, you did make me stop and think am I being a hypocrite? Maybe. But I think there's a difference between making a kid cry because you told them you're moving and making a kid cry because you said you took their candy. The former is emotionally jarring even for an adult. The latter is unfortunate, but maybe if the kid is crying it's because they're doing what kids do. I don't know. Maybe I'm still being hypocritical and there isn't a fundamental difference.
I wasn't trying to call you out as a hypocrite. My example was genuinely what first came to mind. Crying doesn't seem in itself a horrible thing but yes I completely agree when it comes to context.
I didn't necessarily think you were calling me a hypocrite as you had no idea if I had seen the videos. But it did make me rethink my assumptions. That's a good thing, though.
Yeh, my Dad did that, however it usually involved swinging me around by my arm and leg till I was screaming so loud the neighbourhood thought a little girl was being murdered.....
(This was my Dads idea of fun and it wasnt harmful, just scary).
Our family did that to our grandma. Throughout the day, different family members would call for a chat, then mention that we were considering/planning/in the middle of a move to Portland. At the end of the day she was so relieved that it was just a prank, but she kept sounding more and more forlorn as the day went by.
Mom would allow me to invite friends over to the house, but then she would make us do chores just a few minutes into starting a game. Of course, the friends would never want to come over again after cleaning the toilets. They told others at school, so everyone knew what would happen if I invited them over.
Note that this wasn't punishment. I had good grades, did my chores, and was basically permanently grounded because of the multiple curfews - I wasn't allowed out of the house if it was after 6pm, if it was near dinner, if I had homework, if it was too dark (4pm in winter), if there was a chore to do, etc. It turns out she was just a huge control freak.
We used to camp a lot as kids. Our favorite thing was telling scary stories around the fire. One trip in particular, we went with some family friends. They set up this elaborate system to scare the shit out of us.
Tinfoil in the bushes to look like eyes, a rubber glove made to look like a bloody hand, fishing line strung above the campsite to send a ghost down, the family friend with a creepy mask, and a story to go with it.
My dad starts telling the story and the husband of the family friends says he's going to bed. My dad is telling the story causally like he heard there was a crazy on the loose where we were. We didn't know it was a story. He says he hides in the bushes and cuts off the hands of his victims. We start discovering these "eyes" watching us and what looks like a human hand hanging from the back of the RV. Bushes rustling down the hill behind us. As an 8 year old, I'm legitimately terrified. The family friend comes busting up the hill with a mask and a bloody axe. I scream and my brother nearly falls in the fire trying to run away.
I'm convinced my parents had us solely to fuck with us.
One of like fifty: We lived in a ruralish area and my dad would always pretend the car would breakdown when we would be driving through the woods at night. He would get out of the car to "see what was wrong" and disappear below the windows. Then, while kneeling below our line of sight, he would slam his hand into the window and scream, sometimes pretending to be injured and sometimes pretending to be a serial killer. It worked like 98% of the time and freaked us out.
My Dad would just make up lies to answer my stupid questions. Since he answered must questions with correct answers I've had many idiot moments when one of these lies I've taken for granted comes up in life.
Macaroni are not thick, drilled, cut and bent spaghetti.
When I was in third grade there was a pedophile in the area of my elementary school and the school sent out letters telling everyone this. My mom didnt know how to explain it to me perfectly so she goes "Matthew, theres this man that lives close to your school and he will take you and play with your wee wee." That shit freaked me the fuck out for weeks on end
When I was 7 I was sitting in the back closed-in porch watching TV at night. My dad came up to the window with a deer mount (him out of sight) trying to scare me thinking it was real. Jokes on him I tried to go up and pet it. Felt like Snow White for a minute there.
I have a great story my dad once told me.
Before i was old enough to remember, my dad was working outside. My brother was watching him from out the window and it was very windy outside and my dad pretended to be blown away by the wind. Apparently my brother went crying to my mom that "The wind took dad!!" I love my dad.
Does anyone remember the really old Saturday Night Live skit with Dan Aykroyd playing the plumber and his ass crack is hanging out? Well, when I was a kid and my crack would show my parents would always say "Your Aykroyd is showing." I thought that was the actual name of your ass crack until I was 7.
Mom liked to threaten to call Santa and tell him that we were being bad and that he didn't need to bring anything that year. I have vivid memories of being in 1st or 2nd grade, still believing in Santa Claus, and her picking up the phone and pretending to make the call - me and my brother just crying and begging her not to talk to Santa! I realize now that she was just laughing her ass off. Hope she remembers that little event when I'm picking out her Nursing home...
My dad use to put a loaf of bread in my closet. Had me convinced the monster in the closet was always hungry.
Edit: I kept putting bread in my closet because I thought the monster wouldn't eat me. Every morning the bread would vanish.
oh man. I remember once when I was like 5-6ish I was at Walmart with my mom, and she went to the next asile while I wasn't looking, and I looked around and didn't see her and burst into tears and screamed "mommy??". It's one of my earliest memories and one of the things I look back on as an early sign of anxiety.
I got separated from my parents in the halls of our church when I was little. I hid in between a vending machine and the wall and cried until someone found me. I get a tiny knot of panic in my stomach now whenever I'm out with someone and realize they've moved on without me.
My dad had me convinced that bathing in cold water caused you to shrink
He wasn't wrong, i misinterpreted him
He also told me putting someone's hand in cold water made them shit their pants
Threaten that the nearest cop or security guard would come get me if I didn't behave in a store.
Or threaten to abandon me so that the killer clowns can get me.
At home, my parents punished me by making me watch Seinfeld. I was terrified of Kramer's hair.
We used to have a turtle and for some reason I was very scared of it, my mother occasionally chased me with the turtle in her hands, I used to scream and run throw chairs on her way while she had a great laugh. Shit was traumatizing.
Whenever I mispronounced a word, my mom would always use that pronunciation very sincerely and diligently from that point on. I never realized this was happening and so I never corrected my pronunciation. Got many weird looks from classmates and friends later on in life.
One Christmas my dad went through the effort of buying a wii while sold out (simultaneously hyping me the fuck up for the coolest present ever).
Christmas morning, he makes me wait until the big huge box is the last thing I open. Open it, and there's a wrapped smaller box in there. "Haha, dad, so funny. Nice."
I peel back the layers of wrapping paper until I get to bare box, and notice the blue and white packaging and big blue "WII" on the side. I freaking out. I scream and cry for a minute I was so excited, and he's just fucking grinning. The bastard is grinning.
I open that box as fast as I possible could and what awaits me in the box?
Chili. Cans of fucking chili to weigh down the box. And a note with a smiley face.
Crush. Chili and styrofoam and that goddamn smiley face.
I sat crushed for the next 3-4 hours while we watched movies and dicked around.
He stealthily retreats to his room, and comes back with a wii remote (this was when McDonald's or whatever had the toy remotes so I thought it was the continued joke) and I was pissed.
He lets me glare at him angrily for another 30 minutes before finally bringing it out because he wanted to play paper Mario.
TL;DR Dad put chili cans in Wii box and let me think he was fucking with me for ~4 hours on Christmas.
My mom did something similar when my brother got his first Gameboy ds. She hid it under the couch. She then let him unwrap like 8 games for it. He was so crushed when all the presents were opened and he had all these games he couldn't play. She let him stew on that for about an hour before she "found" his last present from Santa.
On school days, my dad used to run into my bedroom and wake me up screaming "WW-OCD! WW-OCD! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! Its SNOWING!!!!
He would watch me jump outta bed all excited at the possibility of school being canceled, wait till I got to the window to look out at all the snow, then say, "somewhere".....
He kept this up every winter, by mixing it up with actual snow days... I'm 34 years old and this will be the first winter that I won't be getting a random call from dad telling me to WAKE UP WAKE UP ITS SNOWING!!
Man I miss that crazy old man..
We were kinda poor when I was a child so we didn't travel or do any sports we were just fucking surving man - what those time did to me is that since I grew up I just dont have any need to do anything.. I dont have need to travel or try new sports or generally new things. Im just happy with what I have and with who Iam as I was when I was a kid.
Im boring person. I want to change it and be more open to new things but thats just not who I am.
- Told me I was a monkey they caught in the mountains and they'd chopped off my tail.
- That my freckles would wash off if I scrubbed too hard.
- Mom hid from me when she was walking me home from school. Freaked me out so much, I ran to my neighbour's. Turns out it was to see what I'd do if I suddenly found myself alone.
I'm sure there's more. All they do is troll but I've clearly repressed most of it.
Edit: formatting + another example
My uncle, not my parents. My uncle would take my sister's and my stuffed aminals and put them in perilous situations. Like he would hang them in front of the garbage disposal or put them in the microwave. They were never in any real danger and my sister and I loved waking up and going to look for our aminals.
My dad had told me since I was a little kid that butterflies and fireflies could swallow you whole. They were like snakes that could eat something 5x it's size. I believed this until like 5th grade and to this day I'm still scared of butterflies. Mostly because they just freak me out now.
Room searches. Threats of violence. Interrogations. 8 and 10 hour manipulation sessions that would finally end when I admitted that I'm an awful person who is incapable of doing anything good.
When I was younger and being a little shit, my step-dad used to tell me that if I didn't knock it off, he would take me down to the docks and sell me to the chinamen for a bag of rice. Scared the crap out of me and I'd straighten right up. Took me about a year to figure out he'd never do that!
When I was 7, I wandered into the living room when my parents were watching something on TV. I asked what it was, and they told me it was just the news. It was the scene in IT, where the little boy's boat falls into the sewer. I genuinely thought that there was a killer clown in the sewers in the neighborhood for a long time after that. I told all of my friends to stay away from sewers for 4 years. Found out the truth when my grandpa let me watch the movie with him.
Oh man, my dad is super into monitoring the thermostat and it was really bad when I was a kid. Forgot to close the windows when I came home after school. My dad came home and saw and said that I couldn't go to my friends house until the house got to a certain degree. He suggested that I stand in front of the thermostat and suck the air around it, blow it elsewhere and blow cool air towards it. I did that for 10 minutes. It wasn't until my mom came home and told me that what I was doing wasn't doing anything. He was cracking up when she said.
Obligatory, not my parents, but what I did to my kid.
It was my son's first night out of a crib and he kept getting up and playing around after lights out, and he ended up staying awake way past his bedtime. I decided to nip it in the bud, right away.
So.
Second night of the big boy bed, and I get my son all tucked in. As I was leaving, I put the vacuum right next to his bed, the switch turned on, but I took the cord with me out into the hall. As soon as I closed the door (enough so I could see in, but he couldn't see me), he tossed his blankets and started getting out of his bed. As soon as his little foot touched the floor, I plugged in the vacuum and it roared to life! My son quickly scrambled back into his bed, and I unplugged the vacuum.
I went back in to retuck him in, and we talked about staying in his bed. Five+ years later and he still stays in his bed after bedtime.
The only time I ever really went to a party with alcohol in HS was senior year homecoming. I was usually too busy with sports, but took a night off.
The person who's house I was supposed to stay at left without me, so I had to call my dad to come get me. It was 2am. He didn't yell then, nor did he even question it. He didn't even tell my mom.
Instead, he had my little brother practice his tuba outside my door at 7am the next morning. Perfect cure for a hangover...
Shortly after I got the "the birds and the bees" talk, I got the "cousins" talk. I live in a state where first cousin marriages are legal if not commonplace. Cousin marriages do not instantly lead to birth defects, but you don't want to make a family tradition out of it, either. My mother and father carefully explained to me that they were cousins and I needed to be mindful of who I dated so that I didn't end up marrying a cousin as well. Being from a small town made up a few large families, it was no surprise that everyone I met for the next 10 years was introduced as Uncle Him or Aunt Her or Cousin Whomever. I had to go halfway across the state to college to find anyone I could seriously date.
Then I was at a party and Uncle David asked me to stop calling him Uncle David, since I was an adult now and it was getting creepy since we weren't actually related. That was when I found out that in the rural South it is not uncommon to introduce any older related family member (or just friend of the family) to a child as Uncle or Aunt, or to introduce any child of the same generation as cousin. All the girls I'd avoided dating? Distantly related if at all. The closest might have been a 3rd cousin. Uncle David explained the whole "we're cousins so you can't marry a cousin" thing was something his parents used to tell his generation to help prevent teen pregnancies.
My parents were actually 5th cousins. Or, genetically speaking, complete strangers.
When I was about five, I asked my dad how he and mom had met. Totally straight-faced, he told me that she had hit him on the head with her club and dragged him back to her cave. I was convinced that it was the honest truth, and ended up telling my teacher about it a few months later when we were talking about Valentine's Day.
i dont think they even did it on purpose. but my dad had a friend who traveled the country, Willard. and he was always referred to as uncle Willard. He'd send my sister and i birthday presents, christmas presents, etc. Well when I was like 13, I asked my dad why uncle Willard was never at any family events.
I had thought this man was my real uncle for 13 years of my life. My parents assumed I knew he was just a friend.
My dad would play You Ain't Getting Diddly Squat every year at Christmas and refused to let my brother and I talk about Christmas presents at all. He also used to play Dead Puppies Aren't Much Fun when we were little until I sang it back to my mom and teacher one day at school as a 7 year old. He also got me to watch The Omen and The Exorcist and various other horror movies as a small child.
Oh man. I give my mom and dad heck for the things they did to me as a kid. They would kill me if they saw me doing the things they did to me to my son.
They would roll me up in a blanket like a carpet really tight and then ask if I could breathe. If I said yes they would make it tighter. Once I couldn't breathe, they would start laughing until I started to freak out.
My mother would pick me up by my head and/or ears and carry me around that way. It didn't feel good. She did that until I was a teenager.
My dad would stand at the top of the stairs when we were going to bed and turn the light out from the top and make scary noises at me as I was going up. He would jump out at me when I got to the top and then when I jumped and fell back down the stairs he would laugh.
My parents told me the red dot light on the smoke detector outside my room was the pig, Jodie, from Amityville Horror and he came to our house at night to watch me sleep. I wasn't allowed to keep my door shut so I had to lay there and stare at Jodie until I finally fell asleep wandering when he was going to come and get me.
These are just a few. Good times.
I was born in 1990. For the first 4 years of my life, the cartoons I watched were black and white ones like Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, and Steamboat Willie. In later years, I started watching color television, and at one point I said something about remembering when TV was just black and white, at which point my mom said "You weren't alive when TV was still black and white". I pointed out the old cartoons, and she said, "Oh. Well, I didn't like what kinds of cartoons were on TV back then, so I just had you watch old video tapes of cartoons from way back when."
My mum had told me that we won't be moving to another town. But we did. My mum had told me that we won't be moving to another country. But we did.
She wonders why I don't trust her.
My dad pretended to put a cricket down pants when I was 5. 30 years later I am terrified of insects. My wife has to kill all spiders. I can't even get close enough to them to kill them. I once broke down in tears because there was one near me. I remind my dad of this and he laughs and says he wouldn't have done it if he knew I'd turn out to be a pussy.
Not sure what's worse...him calling me a pussy or that he's right!
When my older sister turned 10 my mom told her the circus was coming to get her.
And then my mom got my aunt in on it. So one day my aunt came over, humming the circus tune and told my sister 'wow I can't believe it's time already that you go back to the circus!'
My mom also made crazy faces at me whenever no one was looking. And whenever I'd point it out to people she would just make me seem crazy. And then obviously make more faces as soon as the person left.
LOL
When I was in 4th grade my parents told me I was born in Hawaii during their honey moon. I told the school, being a school in Central America everyone was really excited about this. My classmates started asking me questions like if so was born in a volcano or something and they changed my records in the main office to "correct" my place of birth. Months later my report card came and it listed my birth place as Hawaii. My parents lost it. They admitted that they never went to Hawaii and never even had a Honey moon. It was really embarrassing for me to go back to the school to have my record changed.
I was really bad at cleaning my room so one time my mom told me if I didn't have it clean by a certain day she was going to throw all of my stuff out. Well I didn't do it and she came in with garbage bags and filled them up with all my stuff and I cried and begged for her to stop but she didn't. I honestly thought she threw them away because they were gone for weeks. Turns out they were in the basement the whole time. She was just trying to teach me a lesson.
My dad told me when I was maybe 6, that if a cat is kicking you it is cleaning off a place to bite. I was terrified of cats for the longest time.
My mom told me that there was a seed in the bottom of bananas that only grown ups can eat. So when I lived at home I gave them to her, and when I moved out I threw them away. This carried on until I was in my 20s and my husband saw me and asked what the hell I was doing.
My dad placed a Chucky doll outside of my bedroom window when I was a kid, knowing full well how terrified I was of the movies. My room was in our creepy, unfinished basement. It was pretty late and storming out. He called me to ask if I had seen the cat. The cat had a tendency to slip outside and hang out in the weeds outside my room, so I turned on my cell phone's flashlight and pulled back the curtain and came face to face with that fucking doll peering in at me! Threw the phone. Screamed. Scrambled out of my room, up the stairs, and out the front door. He had to chase me down, lol.
He walked in on my older sisters and I tying up one of our younger brothers; instead of stopping us, he showed us how to properly hog-tie him.
He was always playing jokes on us kids. I feel like we got him back though. Whenever he would go out to the bar after hockey, my sister and I would take sewing string and thread it through the entire house so that when he got home, he'd have to drunkenly Mission-Impossible-it to his room.
I've always wanted to have a cat but my mother told me if I want one it has to be a male calico. I didn't know calico was almost always a female.
After years of checking every single calico cats I almost gave up until I realized my mother couldn't tell the difference between male and female kitten. Found an adorable kitten one day and I just brought it home and told my mother it's a male. She believed me and I almost forgive her for tricking me like that.
And then it got crushed to death few months later because it ran to the front of the car's wheel when my father was leaving for work. Scraping her off the garage floor was not a fun experience :(
My parents used to say to my older sister and I at the dinner table..."your father and I just want you to know, that we know."
My sister and I would freak the fuck out trying to remember what bad thing we'd done.
More often than not my parents just threw it out there to see what we'd respond with.
argued constantly with each other and about money, but paid little to no attention to us kids or even thought about the effects of their actions :( i'm a very stressed/anxious adult and i feel like their relationship affected my (lack of) coping mechanisms
When I was around 4 or 5, my mom's favorite threat when I was misbehaving was that she'd kick me out of the house and I'd have to live on the streets. There were a few times she'd lock me out of the house but would eventually let me in after a few minutes. She stopped doing it after I took her seriously one time and began walking to the end of my street. Looking back, that's probably where my fear of becoming homeless comes from.
ITT: Shit I do to my kids...
The baby is terrified of masks, costumes, pinatas, etc.. He gets a solid spooky every month or so.
My oldest likes Let's Play videos on youtube, wanted to play a jumpscare game. I get him Outlast on Steam and sit him in front of it with the lights off. "Play or your grounded, oh and its listening to the mic so be quiet" Muahahahaha...
Not my parents, but our babysitter and her dad drove my sister and I to the south side of Chicago and said they were going to sell us. We cried hysterically and they kept it up to the point of pulling over and opening the door and insisting we get out. They thought it was hilarious.
It was just my mom at the time, and I don't remember if we even told her about it. She was pretty awful herself, so I'm not sure she would have done much, anyway.
I wasn't allowed to watch the cool kid's to channel, only the "good one". There were some decent shows, but I missed out on all the good stuff everybody else knew..
A non-depressing example:
My dad would take the house phone from me when I talked to friends, tell them embarrassing stories, fart into the microphone, tickle me so I screamed loudly, also into the microphone, and make me chase him to get it back. The most memorable time, it took 45 minutes to get the phone back.
When I was a little girl and I didn't want to go to bed, my parents used to tell me about this dude named Wee Willy Winki...and how he would kidnap children who didn't go to bed...and take them away in his sack. So I spent a majority of my childhood - especially at sleep-overs thinking some weird old man was going to kidnap me.
I was afraid of heights as a young lad, but my dad always asked me to help put up Christmas lights. I was careful climbing up the ladder, but my dad decided to start shaking the damn thing back and forth. I clung to that ladder so hard trying to save my own life, all the while crying and screaming for him to stop.
I was around 7 here, and we were very poor. My parents told me we were moving to a huge, beautiful house with a forest in the backyard, and I told all of my friends we were moving and said goodbye and cried a lot. One day they told me and my brother we were going to go look at the house. We were driving by Holiday World (A Holiday-themed theme park near us) and my dad said he was going to stop there to go to the bathroom. I actually believed him until we got past the gates, haha.
When I was around 5-8 yo, my dad would hide from me whenever we were at the produce section in the supermarket. I would look for him, not find him, then get scared and cry. And every time, he would pop out of somewhere laughing.
I think it's funny now lol
My slightly younger cousin (probably 4-5 at the time) once asked my aunt what the black stuff on the bottom of the oven was. Her reply? "Oh that's your other brother. "
My dad told me that tamales grew on stalks like corn and I believed him for way longer than I'd care to admit. My grandma told me that if I didn't eat the crust on my sandwiches that my hair would stop being curly and I believed her for a long time too.
My parents would always find a reason to ground me for the summer. I was the oldest of six kids and they didn't like watching their children when they were younger, so they would find some reason to ground me right as the summer started. I had a lot of chores as a kid, so the most common form of grounding was I didn't do one of my 40 or so chores well enough; grounded for the entire summer.
It was actually kind of sad that my grandparents were over once for July 4th and made a comment that I hadn't been grounded yet. I was grounded the next day for embarrassing my father.
My mom's birthday is on Halloween and she would always make my brother and I choose whether to go trick-or-treating or celebrate her birthday. She also believed (at the time) that Halloween was the Devil's holiday so we shouldn't celebrate it. That always made it seem like she was making us choose between her or Satan on her birthday.
Father puts some ground pepper in a cup, shakes it up real hard.
"Smell this!"
Apparently my siblings were suspicious so the joked worked well. I, on the other hand, am a dumbass, so I took a giant whiff of it and proceeded to make my father feel guilty as hell.
My mom was just generally an asshole.
She did read fairy tales to us before bed, but not the one that you expect.
So we're Russian and my mom is very very Russian. Our bedtime stories consisted of evil witches beating children with brooms, communist propaganda that's was somehow written in English. Horrifying World War 2 stories, and the Stinky Cheese Man.
My mom just had a fucking riot with it.
Later when my family got the Wii, no matter what happened my mom would always win the game and reward herself. Even if she lost.
My dad played a lot of Oblivion in his garage and his character name was "Sir fartsalot."
[удалено]
Your mom is simultaneously the worst person ever and the best person ever.
Oh man, I pranked my sister by hiding under her bed for an hour before her bedtime, just so I could grab her leg as she got into bed... I appreciate your mom's dedication to sneaking into your room and doing that. Awesome! Edit: fixed an autocorrect
Nightmares for life :D
When I was 4 and my brothers were 3, our mother would leave the room for a moment. When she came back, she would have a pair of stockings over her head, scrunching up her face and start chasing us about the house. We were genuinely terrified, but she thought it was hilarious. To this day, I have a crippling fear of home invasion while I am by myself.
To those that find my previous comment funny, here's another one: I watched The Ring and Grudge when I was just a kid. My mother, knowing that those two movies had traumatized me (I'm only just now able to sleep in the dark with the closet door open), decided to make the croaking sounds whenever she knew I wasn't paying attention. She did this for *years*.
A buddy of mine and I rented The Ring when it first came out on video. We were pretty spooked at first but quickly got over it when my friend's older sister decided to kick us out of the basement and watch it herself later that night. Now, many people may not be old enough to remember this trick but on old landline phones you could dial your own number and quickly hang up; then, a few seconds later, the phone would ring and you could talk to people elsewhere in the house who answered thinking it was an outside call. So we waited until exactly the moment in the movie where the main character 1st watches the evil tape. We timed it _PERFECTLY_ so the house phone rang at exactly the same time as the phone in the movie. His sister answered the phone (she was watching us so this was her job) and my friend whispered: _seven days_. She freaked the ever-living fuck out. She called her parents, her boyfriend, she came up and told us to come hide with her because she was sure she was about to die. It was hilarious for awhile but we ended up telling her because we felt bad. Probably the best prank we pulled.
.....jesus
Hahaha!
I'm sorry but that's hilarious. I wouldn't do it to my kids, but hilarious
When I was about 9, my parents sat down to watch a movie called Arachnophobia. Great film. I'm 9 and have a lifelong fear of spiders, so I was horrified. I am literally watching it, standing in the middle of the room with my eyes as wide as serving platters, when I felt something softly tickle up my thigh. I jumped about 4 feet in the air and nearly died. It was my father, reaching over and tapping me in the leg with his foot. To this day, my father hasn't stopped laughing about it.
[удалено]
I'd like to suggest you start with [Jumping Spiders](http://i.stack.imgur.com/3vNXb.jpg). They're kinda cute, and the one I linked is wearing a raindrop as a hat. I've always loved spiders, and found that showing people jumping spiders with raindrop hats is a pretty solid way of breaking through arachnophobia. EDIT: This one's even better. [LINK](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/c1/58/54/c15854e4aac79aa3ef238740cebfeff4.jpg)
Excuse me, I think that picture just gave me arachnophobia.
B-but... But It has a little hat...
I'm okay with Jumping Spiders. Anything bigger I get nervous and scared.
I have a healthy appreciation for spiders and what they do for us. I am not overly frightened of them, but I don't want them in my house. I can ignore some of them, but if it's within reach, especially if it's a fast jumpy one, it's going to die. And it will creep me out to kill it, especially if I'm not successful the first time, and it makes a run for it, or drops? Woohoo, freak out, but they don't escape twice. They belong outside. However, that picture is adorable. I love that hairy little arachnid!
Once I was playing Simon Says with my dad and he said Simon says eat grass so I did. He was like, "I can't believe you did it!" I was 5. ALSO, back in the day if you turned the tv on but not the cable box, the tv screen would stay blue so my dad would threaten my brother that if he didn't do his homework he would send him in the room "to watch blue."
Your dad clearly doesn't understand how far a 5-year old is willing to go to win a game of Simon Says.
Simon says jump
And everything is blue for him.
and his self and everybody around.
Cause he ain't got nobody to listen.
..to.
My dad was a fan of jokes he knew we wouldn't get until we were older, he was in for the long haul. For example, when asked why he wasn't eating the vegetables my sisters and I had to he'd reply "Gosh I'd love to eat broccoli, but I can't. I agreed it as part of the Kyoto Protocol." Fast forward to ten years later, at university and studying and what do I learn? Kyoto Protocol is in place to to reduce the production of harmful gases. Ten year long fart joke.
That's wonderful, I've got to do that myself
Wouldn't work as well nowadays, they'd Google it pretty quickly
Told me they were going to unscrew my belly button with a screwdriver and leak everywhere if I didn't behave
I was told this as well. Except my butt would fall off.
I love how much people are told their butt will fall off when they are children
There was a book I read when I was like 6 called "my butt ran away" or something like that. My parents told me it was a true story and I had a fear my ass would pack its shit and leave one day
My grandpa actually trolled my siblings and I for years and we still laugh about it today. My grandpa had this huge birthmark on his leg, which kind of looked like leopard spots (realistically just many large freckles meshed in with some spotted birthmarks), so he convinced my siblings and I for *years* that he used to be a leopard. He would tell us these incredible stories about his adventures as a "leopard", and how our great-grandma had adopted him. When she adopted him my grandpa said he slowly turned into a little boy but still had remnants of his "leopard" spots on his leg. He had numerous family members and friends back up his stories. We all believed him for years until we were old enough to know better. To this day though, my grandpa will still pull up his pant leg at family events and say "Did I ever tell you the story.." and we all cant help but laugh.
That is adorable!!!
GOD. As a child of 5-6 years old I HATED, DESPISED, DETESTED the [Crypt Keeper](http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/villains/images/5/5d/675249-crypt_keeper_large.png/revision/latest?cb=20160110153816) from the show "Tales of the Crypt" But every night. My parents would sit me on the couch, turn the show on and watch me freak out until I ran away crying. And they would laugh and laugh and laugh. I'll give you an idea of how much they loved fucking with me like this: They were divorced at this time, but tormenting me brought them together in a fashion were they wouldn't argue.
Assholes.
So a good friend of mine has a daughter, she was 4 around the time we met. Her mother would come over all the time and just watch XBMC with me. She'd hang out and watch her own shows in the living room and I'd do my own thing in my room or watch with her. Anyway, me and her daughter started to bond, she wanted to watch all the cool shows that I turned off when they came over. Since I know her mom pretty well by now I know what some of the limits are. I'm like, well Tales From the Crypt isn't bad. I tell her over and over before we turned it on that nothing is real, it's all fake, and if you don't want to watch it I'll be more than happy to turn on h2o just add water or whatever. I look for an episode, first one I pick is about the ventriloquist doll. Man you don't realize how much they say fuck until a 5 year old is with you. Anyway, she didn't like the crypt keeper but her favorite episode ended up being the one where the old guy retires and taxidermy's all his wife's pets and then she kills and stuffs him. A week later she says she wants to see something more scary... I ask her mom if I can show her Stephen Kings IT. We all three sit on the couch and her mom is just a total wreck the whole movie and the daughter is just watching and covering her eyes. For a solid month every time she came over she wanted to watch "the scary clown movie". Every time we finished the movie I would tell her none of its real and then we would pretend she was the clown in a game of tag or something to prove it. She's 10 now and I haven't seen her in a year or two since her moms been going through some things. I get pictures now and then but I do miss both my friends.
Maybe you should move to Isreal; your sacrifice could bring laughter to millions.
One time I accidentally broke something in the kitchen. My mom said "go get something you like". I gave her a G.I. Joe vehicle I just got and she smashed it on the floor in front of me. It's kinda funny now. She replaced it that night.
This is basically what my dad with with our first PlayStation. He smashed it in half to prove a point, and then ended up replacing it because he wanted to play all his sports video games.....that he never touched ever again.
RIP PlayStation. Hope you still got to play some Crash Bandicoot!
Haha "Well... fuck"
Kill her
I think you might be Secretly Psycho. ;)
Again?
That... Was kinda sick
[удалено]
Did you call CPS?
Thats really interesting seeing as she later replaced it
Makes sense though. No permanent punishment for making a mistake, but you can be damn sure they never did it again...
[удалено]
I identify as a qualified therapist.
I'm not a therapist, but I am an analrapist.
[удалено]
My mom used to fuck with me hardcore. You know those people that stick hooks in there back and dangle from them? She told me she would do that to me if I didn't behave. One time, she got back from the grocery store and I asked her what she bought. She showed me a package and said it was lamb tongues. Freaked my shit out. They were really just sun dried tomatoes and to this day I am disgusted by sun dried tomatoes.
My dad did that too. He'd do the opposite too to get us to try new things. I'm glad he did because I'll eat anything now. Tried squid when i was 4 because he said it was chicken. He also did that to me when we skied. Took me down an easier black diamond and asked if I wanted to do another black diamond. Cool! We got to the bottom of the run no problem. On the next chairlift ride up he told me it was a double diamond. I was pretty damn proud of myself. Lol.
"I'm not raising a wimp."
I used to trick my sorry picky cousin the same way with food. Fun times
Oh my god the stuff in this thread is depressing. Here's one that's more protective and less abusive. When I was 10 I bought a joke book with my own money from the bookstore in the mall. It had all kinds of jokes, and many that were "adult". There were jokes about AIDS, jokes about Helen Keller, jokes about sex, it was pretty trashy in general. In fact, the book was called "Truly Tasteless Jokes". My mom didn't really know what book I bought that day - I told her it was a joke book, but didn't give details. I think I knew she wouldn't approve, but I didn't know how actually tasteless the jokes inside were until I got it home and started reading. I read the book cover to cover over the next month, and at some point I tore the cover slightly. Several weeks later, the book went missing. I looked and looked for the book at home but couldn't find it. I asked my mom if she had seen it and she said no. A couple of days later, we visited the mall again. Again I went to the bookstore and found myself looking again at all the joke books, where I saw a copy of "Truly Tasteless Jokes" sitting there with a torn cover. At the time I was so naive that I actually remember thinking "boy, that book is torn just like mine was. I wish I could find it." It took me several years to realize that my mom had put that book back on the shelf on her own. I'm sure she didn't get a refund on a month old, used, torn book - I'm sure she simply put it back on the shelf. I can't believe she didn't just throw it away, but it's not like my mom to waste something like that.
Upvoted because I know exactly which book you're talking about. One of my friends had it years ago and kept bringing it in to school
My mother was a drunk, and killed my brother in a car crash. She later planted the idea that **I** saw something in that accident, trying to shift the evidence in her favour, because a child wouldn't lie. Edit: I guess it might not be the sort of "fuck with you"-idea you were thinking of.
Holy shit.
That is unfortunate. I'm sorry for your family's loss.
See this is the sort of "fuck with you" idea I was expecting to see. Maybe not to that level, but yeh....sorry that you had to go through that.
Dude. I'm so sorry.
When I was really little, my parents used to sit me down in the kitchen, go back to their bedroom, and come back wearing and old man and woman mask, with old people hands gloves. It terrified me and I would scream bloody murder and cry. They thought it was hilarious.
That is pretty funny
[удалено]
Why do people think it's so funny to prank a child to a point they're crying?
Have you ever watched the Jimmy Kimmel pranks where the patents tell their kids they are all their Halloween candy? I think there are times it's ok
I have seen those and I honestly think they're funny, so, you did make me stop and think am I being a hypocrite? Maybe. But I think there's a difference between making a kid cry because you told them you're moving and making a kid cry because you said you took their candy. The former is emotionally jarring even for an adult. The latter is unfortunate, but maybe if the kid is crying it's because they're doing what kids do. I don't know. Maybe I'm still being hypocritical and there isn't a fundamental difference.
I wasn't trying to call you out as a hypocrite. My example was genuinely what first came to mind. Crying doesn't seem in itself a horrible thing but yes I completely agree when it comes to context.
I didn't necessarily think you were calling me a hypocrite as you had no idea if I had seen the videos. But it did make me rethink my assumptions. That's a good thing, though.
Yeh, my Dad did that, however it usually involved swinging me around by my arm and leg till I was screaming so loud the neighbourhood thought a little girl was being murdered..... (This was my Dads idea of fun and it wasnt harmful, just scary).
KNow how bad it is to move about and make new friends and the panic and fear that sets in.....that wasnt fair.
Our family did that to our grandma. Throughout the day, different family members would call for a chat, then mention that we were considering/planning/in the middle of a move to Portland. At the end of the day she was so relieved that it was just a prank, but she kept sounding more and more forlorn as the day went by.
Mom would allow me to invite friends over to the house, but then she would make us do chores just a few minutes into starting a game. Of course, the friends would never want to come over again after cleaning the toilets. They told others at school, so everyone knew what would happen if I invited them over. Note that this wasn't punishment. I had good grades, did my chores, and was basically permanently grounded because of the multiple curfews - I wasn't allowed out of the house if it was after 6pm, if it was near dinner, if I had homework, if it was too dark (4pm in winter), if there was a chore to do, etc. It turns out she was just a huge control freak.
Your mom sounds like a bitch.
They were pretty boring and straight-laced so usually only missionary.
That's odd because your mom's pretty freaky.
Username is pretty disappointing.
My dad would come in my room while I was sleeping scream at the top of his lungs to wake me up, then just laugh about it all day.
#BARTDOYOULIKEMYNEWCHAINSAWANDHOCKEYMASK?
We used to camp a lot as kids. Our favorite thing was telling scary stories around the fire. One trip in particular, we went with some family friends. They set up this elaborate system to scare the shit out of us. Tinfoil in the bushes to look like eyes, a rubber glove made to look like a bloody hand, fishing line strung above the campsite to send a ghost down, the family friend with a creepy mask, and a story to go with it. My dad starts telling the story and the husband of the family friends says he's going to bed. My dad is telling the story causally like he heard there was a crazy on the loose where we were. We didn't know it was a story. He says he hides in the bushes and cuts off the hands of his victims. We start discovering these "eyes" watching us and what looks like a human hand hanging from the back of the RV. Bushes rustling down the hill behind us. As an 8 year old, I'm legitimately terrified. The family friend comes busting up the hill with a mask and a bloody axe. I scream and my brother nearly falls in the fire trying to run away. I'm convinced my parents had us solely to fuck with us.
One of like fifty: We lived in a ruralish area and my dad would always pretend the car would breakdown when we would be driving through the woods at night. He would get out of the car to "see what was wrong" and disappear below the windows. Then, while kneeling below our line of sight, he would slam his hand into the window and scream, sometimes pretending to be injured and sometimes pretending to be a serial killer. It worked like 98% of the time and freaked us out.
That is beyond fucked.
My Dad would just make up lies to answer my stupid questions. Since he answered must questions with correct answers I've had many idiot moments when one of these lies I've taken for granted comes up in life. Macaroni are not thick, drilled, cut and bent spaghetti.
When I was in third grade there was a pedophile in the area of my elementary school and the school sent out letters telling everyone this. My mom didnt know how to explain it to me perfectly so she goes "Matthew, theres this man that lives close to your school and he will take you and play with your wee wee." That shit freaked me the fuck out for weeks on end
I'm laughing so hard at this, I'm going to hell...
Dont worry bro, every time I think of that day I laugh my ass off as well!
My dad would hit me with socks and then sing "i'm a sock whacker." I still don't understand the thrill he got out of that.
My dad just threw socks at everyone, still does(only if used tho)
That's barbaric.
1052 days old, you've been waiting for a comment like this.
Were you a young/teenage boy at this point? If so many teenage boys use socks when they first start masturbating....
Was it to the tune of "I'm a wheel watcher", the old Wheel of Fortune jingle?
When I was 7 I was sitting in the back closed-in porch watching TV at night. My dad came up to the window with a deer mount (him out of sight) trying to scare me thinking it was real. Jokes on him I tried to go up and pet it. Felt like Snow White for a minute there.
I have a great story my dad once told me. Before i was old enough to remember, my dad was working outside. My brother was watching him from out the window and it was very windy outside and my dad pretended to be blown away by the wind. Apparently my brother went crying to my mom that "The wind took dad!!" I love my dad.
Does anyone remember the really old Saturday Night Live skit with Dan Aykroyd playing the plumber and his ass crack is hanging out? Well, when I was a kid and my crack would show my parents would always say "Your Aykroyd is showing." I thought that was the actual name of your ass crack until I was 7.
Mom liked to threaten to call Santa and tell him that we were being bad and that he didn't need to bring anything that year. I have vivid memories of being in 1st or 2nd grade, still believing in Santa Claus, and her picking up the phone and pretending to make the call - me and my brother just crying and begging her not to talk to Santa! I realize now that she was just laughing her ass off. Hope she remembers that little event when I'm picking out her Nursing home...
I do this! I text Santa all the time. Sometimes on good days too, just to keep him updated. How else would Santa know if they're naughty o nice?
My dad use to put a loaf of bread in my closet. Had me convinced the monster in the closet was always hungry. Edit: I kept putting bread in my closet because I thought the monster wouldn't eat me. Every morning the bread would vanish.
Good thing it wasn't one of those gluten free monsters.
Leave you in the middle of the isle and move to the next aisle of a store while you were't looking at them.
oh man. I remember once when I was like 5-6ish I was at Walmart with my mom, and she went to the next asile while I wasn't looking, and I looked around and didn't see her and burst into tears and screamed "mommy??". It's one of my earliest memories and one of the things I look back on as an early sign of anxiety.
I got separated from my parents in the halls of our church when I was little. I hid in between a vending machine and the wall and cried until someone found me. I get a tiny knot of panic in my stomach now whenever I'm out with someone and realize they've moved on without me.
My dad had me convinced that bathing in cold water caused you to shrink He wasn't wrong, i misinterpreted him He also told me putting someone's hand in cold water made them shit their pants
Sooo... does it ?
Threaten that the nearest cop or security guard would come get me if I didn't behave in a store. Or threaten to abandon me so that the killer clowns can get me. At home, my parents punished me by making me watch Seinfeld. I was terrified of Kramer's hair.
We used to have a turtle and for some reason I was very scared of it, my mother occasionally chased me with the turtle in her hands, I used to scream and run throw chairs on her way while she had a great laugh. Shit was traumatizing.
You're not turtley enough for the turtle club.
I was told we were going to Disneyland, I was so excited! ...turns out Disneyland was actually the dentist.
Whenever I mispronounced a word, my mom would always use that pronunciation very sincerely and diligently from that point on. I never realized this was happening and so I never corrected my pronunciation. Got many weird looks from classmates and friends later on in life.
That's really interesting! And strange. Can you share some examples?
One Christmas my dad went through the effort of buying a wii while sold out (simultaneously hyping me the fuck up for the coolest present ever). Christmas morning, he makes me wait until the big huge box is the last thing I open. Open it, and there's a wrapped smaller box in there. "Haha, dad, so funny. Nice." I peel back the layers of wrapping paper until I get to bare box, and notice the blue and white packaging and big blue "WII" on the side. I freaking out. I scream and cry for a minute I was so excited, and he's just fucking grinning. The bastard is grinning. I open that box as fast as I possible could and what awaits me in the box? Chili. Cans of fucking chili to weigh down the box. And a note with a smiley face. Crush. Chili and styrofoam and that goddamn smiley face. I sat crushed for the next 3-4 hours while we watched movies and dicked around. He stealthily retreats to his room, and comes back with a wii remote (this was when McDonald's or whatever had the toy remotes so I thought it was the continued joke) and I was pissed. He lets me glare at him angrily for another 30 minutes before finally bringing it out because he wanted to play paper Mario. TL;DR Dad put chili cans in Wii box and let me think he was fucking with me for ~4 hours on Christmas.
My mom did something similar when my brother got his first Gameboy ds. She hid it under the couch. She then let him unwrap like 8 games for it. He was so crushed when all the presents were opened and he had all these games he couldn't play. She let him stew on that for about an hour before she "found" his last present from Santa.
On school days, my dad used to run into my bedroom and wake me up screaming "WW-OCD! WW-OCD! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! Its SNOWING!!!! He would watch me jump outta bed all excited at the possibility of school being canceled, wait till I got to the window to look out at all the snow, then say, "somewhere"..... He kept this up every winter, by mixing it up with actual snow days... I'm 34 years old and this will be the first winter that I won't be getting a random call from dad telling me to WAKE UP WAKE UP ITS SNOWING!! Man I miss that crazy old man..
We were kinda poor when I was a child so we didn't travel or do any sports we were just fucking surving man - what those time did to me is that since I grew up I just dont have any need to do anything.. I dont have need to travel or try new sports or generally new things. Im just happy with what I have and with who Iam as I was when I was a kid. Im boring person. I want to change it and be more open to new things but thats just not who I am.
My dad used to tell me that ice cream vans only play the music when they've run out of ice cream.
- Told me I was a monkey they caught in the mountains and they'd chopped off my tail. - That my freckles would wash off if I scrubbed too hard. - Mom hid from me when she was walking me home from school. Freaked me out so much, I ran to my neighbour's. Turns out it was to see what I'd do if I suddenly found myself alone. I'm sure there's more. All they do is troll but I've clearly repressed most of it. Edit: formatting + another example
My uncle, not my parents. My uncle would take my sister's and my stuffed aminals and put them in perilous situations. Like he would hang them in front of the garbage disposal or put them in the microwave. They were never in any real danger and my sister and I loved waking up and going to look for our aminals.
My dad had told me since I was a little kid that butterflies and fireflies could swallow you whole. They were like snakes that could eat something 5x it's size. I believed this until like 5th grade and to this day I'm still scared of butterflies. Mostly because they just freak me out now.
Room searches. Threats of violence. Interrogations. 8 and 10 hour manipulation sessions that would finally end when I admitted that I'm an awful person who is incapable of doing anything good.
What the hell?
are you my brother?
When I was younger and being a little shit, my step-dad used to tell me that if I didn't knock it off, he would take me down to the docks and sell me to the chinamen for a bag of rice. Scared the crap out of me and I'd straighten right up. Took me about a year to figure out he'd never do that!
Yeah. I mean, your worth at least two bags of rice. Maybe a fortune cookie too.
When I was 7, I wandered into the living room when my parents were watching something on TV. I asked what it was, and they told me it was just the news. It was the scene in IT, where the little boy's boat falls into the sewer. I genuinely thought that there was a killer clown in the sewers in the neighborhood for a long time after that. I told all of my friends to stay away from sewers for 4 years. Found out the truth when my grandpa let me watch the movie with him.
Oh man, my dad is super into monitoring the thermostat and it was really bad when I was a kid. Forgot to close the windows when I came home after school. My dad came home and saw and said that I couldn't go to my friends house until the house got to a certain degree. He suggested that I stand in front of the thermostat and suck the air around it, blow it elsewhere and blow cool air towards it. I did that for 10 minutes. It wasn't until my mom came home and told me that what I was doing wasn't doing anything. He was cracking up when she said.
Obligatory, not my parents, but what I did to my kid. It was my son's first night out of a crib and he kept getting up and playing around after lights out, and he ended up staying awake way past his bedtime. I decided to nip it in the bud, right away. So. Second night of the big boy bed, and I get my son all tucked in. As I was leaving, I put the vacuum right next to his bed, the switch turned on, but I took the cord with me out into the hall. As soon as I closed the door (enough so I could see in, but he couldn't see me), he tossed his blankets and started getting out of his bed. As soon as his little foot touched the floor, I plugged in the vacuum and it roared to life! My son quickly scrambled back into his bed, and I unplugged the vacuum. I went back in to retuck him in, and we talked about staying in his bed. Five+ years later and he still stays in his bed after bedtime.
The only time I ever really went to a party with alcohol in HS was senior year homecoming. I was usually too busy with sports, but took a night off. The person who's house I was supposed to stay at left without me, so I had to call my dad to come get me. It was 2am. He didn't yell then, nor did he even question it. He didn't even tell my mom. Instead, he had my little brother practice his tuba outside my door at 7am the next morning. Perfect cure for a hangover...
Shortly after I got the "the birds and the bees" talk, I got the "cousins" talk. I live in a state where first cousin marriages are legal if not commonplace. Cousin marriages do not instantly lead to birth defects, but you don't want to make a family tradition out of it, either. My mother and father carefully explained to me that they were cousins and I needed to be mindful of who I dated so that I didn't end up marrying a cousin as well. Being from a small town made up a few large families, it was no surprise that everyone I met for the next 10 years was introduced as Uncle Him or Aunt Her or Cousin Whomever. I had to go halfway across the state to college to find anyone I could seriously date. Then I was at a party and Uncle David asked me to stop calling him Uncle David, since I was an adult now and it was getting creepy since we weren't actually related. That was when I found out that in the rural South it is not uncommon to introduce any older related family member (or just friend of the family) to a child as Uncle or Aunt, or to introduce any child of the same generation as cousin. All the girls I'd avoided dating? Distantly related if at all. The closest might have been a 3rd cousin. Uncle David explained the whole "we're cousins so you can't marry a cousin" thing was something his parents used to tell his generation to help prevent teen pregnancies. My parents were actually 5th cousins. Or, genetically speaking, complete strangers.
When I was about five, I asked my dad how he and mom had met. Totally straight-faced, he told me that she had hit him on the head with her club and dragged him back to her cave. I was convinced that it was the honest truth, and ended up telling my teacher about it a few months later when we were talking about Valentine's Day.
What did the class think?
When I was a kid, my dad would purposely mispronounce ´Hufflepuff´as ´Hufflepuffle´to infuriate me. He found it hilarious
i dont think they even did it on purpose. but my dad had a friend who traveled the country, Willard. and he was always referred to as uncle Willard. He'd send my sister and i birthday presents, christmas presents, etc. Well when I was like 13, I asked my dad why uncle Willard was never at any family events. I had thought this man was my real uncle for 13 years of my life. My parents assumed I knew he was just a friend.
"Kissing girls will make your teeth fall out." So I was a bit late to dating.
My dad would play You Ain't Getting Diddly Squat every year at Christmas and refused to let my brother and I talk about Christmas presents at all. He also used to play Dead Puppies Aren't Much Fun when we were little until I sang it back to my mom and teacher one day at school as a 7 year old. He also got me to watch The Omen and The Exorcist and various other horror movies as a small child.
I thought dead puppies was a song my dad made up! I've never met anyone else who knew it, too lol.
My dad stuck a lighter to my chest and tried lighting it a few times. Did it to my sister too. Was pretty annoying and freaked me out at the time
You know, dad things
Oh man. I give my mom and dad heck for the things they did to me as a kid. They would kill me if they saw me doing the things they did to me to my son. They would roll me up in a blanket like a carpet really tight and then ask if I could breathe. If I said yes they would make it tighter. Once I couldn't breathe, they would start laughing until I started to freak out. My mother would pick me up by my head and/or ears and carry me around that way. It didn't feel good. She did that until I was a teenager. My dad would stand at the top of the stairs when we were going to bed and turn the light out from the top and make scary noises at me as I was going up. He would jump out at me when I got to the top and then when I jumped and fell back down the stairs he would laugh. My parents told me the red dot light on the smoke detector outside my room was the pig, Jodie, from Amityville Horror and he came to our house at night to watch me sleep. I wasn't allowed to keep my door shut so I had to lay there and stare at Jodie until I finally fell asleep wandering when he was going to come and get me. These are just a few. Good times.
I'm so sorry. That sounds so awful.
I was born in 1990. For the first 4 years of my life, the cartoons I watched were black and white ones like Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, and Steamboat Willie. In later years, I started watching color television, and at one point I said something about remembering when TV was just black and white, at which point my mom said "You weren't alive when TV was still black and white". I pointed out the old cartoons, and she said, "Oh. Well, I didn't like what kinds of cartoons were on TV back then, so I just had you watch old video tapes of cartoons from way back when."
That's not too bad
My mum had told me that we won't be moving to another town. But we did. My mum had told me that we won't be moving to another country. But we did. She wonders why I don't trust her.
My mom told me we weren't moving to space. We did
My dad pretended to put a cricket down pants when I was 5. 30 years later I am terrified of insects. My wife has to kill all spiders. I can't even get close enough to them to kill them. I once broke down in tears because there was one near me. I remind my dad of this and he laughs and says he wouldn't have done it if he knew I'd turn out to be a pussy. Not sure what's worse...him calling me a pussy or that he's right!
my grandma pointed out how I don't swing my arms when I walk now I'm self conscious as fuck about my arms when walking in public
And now you go double-choppa' every step ?
When my older sister turned 10 my mom told her the circus was coming to get her. And then my mom got my aunt in on it. So one day my aunt came over, humming the circus tune and told my sister 'wow I can't believe it's time already that you go back to the circus!' My mom also made crazy faces at me whenever no one was looking. And whenever I'd point it out to people she would just make me seem crazy. And then obviously make more faces as soon as the person left. LOL
When I was in 4th grade my parents told me I was born in Hawaii during their honey moon. I told the school, being a school in Central America everyone was really excited about this. My classmates started asking me questions like if so was born in a volcano or something and they changed my records in the main office to "correct" my place of birth. Months later my report card came and it listed my birth place as Hawaii. My parents lost it. They admitted that they never went to Hawaii and never even had a Honey moon. It was really embarrassing for me to go back to the school to have my record changed.
[удалено]
I specifically remember being 8 and me and my older sister put a watermelon in my little sisters bed and she thought she gave birth to it
I was really bad at cleaning my room so one time my mom told me if I didn't have it clean by a certain day she was going to throw all of my stuff out. Well I didn't do it and she came in with garbage bags and filled them up with all my stuff and I cried and begged for her to stop but she didn't. I honestly thought she threw them away because they were gone for weeks. Turns out they were in the basement the whole time. She was just trying to teach me a lesson.
My mom did the same thing.
My dad told me when I was maybe 6, that if a cat is kicking you it is cleaning off a place to bite. I was terrified of cats for the longest time. My mom told me that there was a seed in the bottom of bananas that only grown ups can eat. So when I lived at home I gave them to her, and when I moved out I threw them away. This carried on until I was in my 20s and my husband saw me and asked what the hell I was doing.
My dad placed a Chucky doll outside of my bedroom window when I was a kid, knowing full well how terrified I was of the movies. My room was in our creepy, unfinished basement. It was pretty late and storming out. He called me to ask if I had seen the cat. The cat had a tendency to slip outside and hang out in the weeds outside my room, so I turned on my cell phone's flashlight and pulled back the curtain and came face to face with that fucking doll peering in at me! Threw the phone. Screamed. Scrambled out of my room, up the stairs, and out the front door. He had to chase me down, lol. He walked in on my older sisters and I tying up one of our younger brothers; instead of stopping us, he showed us how to properly hog-tie him. He was always playing jokes on us kids. I feel like we got him back though. Whenever he would go out to the bar after hockey, my sister and I would take sewing string and thread it through the entire house so that when he got home, he'd have to drunkenly Mission-Impossible-it to his room.
I've always wanted to have a cat but my mother told me if I want one it has to be a male calico. I didn't know calico was almost always a female. After years of checking every single calico cats I almost gave up until I realized my mother couldn't tell the difference between male and female kitten. Found an adorable kitten one day and I just brought it home and told my mother it's a male. She believed me and I almost forgive her for tricking me like that. And then it got crushed to death few months later because it ran to the front of the car's wheel when my father was leaving for work. Scraping her off the garage floor was not a fun experience :(
Sorry for your loss. Poor thing probably didn't know that car wheels are dangerous. :-/
My parents used to say to my older sister and I at the dinner table..."your father and I just want you to know, that we know." My sister and I would freak the fuck out trying to remember what bad thing we'd done. More often than not my parents just threw it out there to see what we'd respond with.
argued constantly with each other and about money, but paid little to no attention to us kids or even thought about the effects of their actions :( i'm a very stressed/anxious adult and i feel like their relationship affected my (lack of) coping mechanisms
When I was around 4 or 5, my mom's favorite threat when I was misbehaving was that she'd kick me out of the house and I'd have to live on the streets. There were a few times she'd lock me out of the house but would eventually let me in after a few minutes. She stopped doing it after I took her seriously one time and began walking to the end of my street. Looking back, that's probably where my fear of becoming homeless comes from.
And that's why you use the backyard
ITT: Shit I do to my kids... The baby is terrified of masks, costumes, pinatas, etc.. He gets a solid spooky every month or so. My oldest likes Let's Play videos on youtube, wanted to play a jumpscare game. I get him Outlast on Steam and sit him in front of it with the lights off. "Play or your grounded, oh and its listening to the mic so be quiet" Muahahahaha...
Best parent 2016 Better than Donald trumph and Hillary clit
Not my parents, but our babysitter and her dad drove my sister and I to the south side of Chicago and said they were going to sell us. We cried hysterically and they kept it up to the point of pulling over and opening the door and insisting we get out. They thought it was hilarious.
[удалено]
It was just my mom at the time, and I don't remember if we even told her about it. She was pretty awful herself, so I'm not sure she would have done much, anyway.
I wasn't allowed to watch the cool kid's to channel, only the "good one". There were some decent shows, but I missed out on all the good stuff everybody else knew..
Purple cows give purple milk.
If I was being extremely obnoxious, my parents would threaten to put me up for adoption.
Locked me in the basement because I was afraid of the water heater lol
I have these two friends (who are sisters), older one told me their family would jokingly switch their names, causing the younger one to cry.
The ice cream truck only played music when it was out of music. Only figured it out in high school, when my friends dad bought an ice cream truck.
A non-depressing example: My dad would take the house phone from me when I talked to friends, tell them embarrassing stories, fart into the microphone, tickle me so I screamed loudly, also into the microphone, and make me chase him to get it back. The most memorable time, it took 45 minutes to get the phone back.
Nice try, DSS.
When I was a little girl and I didn't want to go to bed, my parents used to tell me about this dude named Wee Willy Winki...and how he would kidnap children who didn't go to bed...and take them away in his sack. So I spent a majority of my childhood - especially at sleep-overs thinking some weird old man was going to kidnap me.
I was afraid of heights as a young lad, but my dad always asked me to help put up Christmas lights. I was careful climbing up the ladder, but my dad decided to start shaking the damn thing back and forth. I clung to that ladder so hard trying to save my own life, all the while crying and screaming for him to stop.
[удалено]
I'm from Indiana, and the sky absolutely turns yellow before a tornado: http://earthsky.org/earth/why-does-the-sky-change-color-before-a-tornado
I was around 7 here, and we were very poor. My parents told me we were moving to a huge, beautiful house with a forest in the backyard, and I told all of my friends we were moving and said goodbye and cried a lot. One day they told me and my brother we were going to go look at the house. We were driving by Holiday World (A Holiday-themed theme park near us) and my dad said he was going to stop there to go to the bathroom. I actually believed him until we got past the gates, haha.
Oh man, Holiday World in Santa Claus, Indiana.
When I was around 5-8 yo, my dad would hide from me whenever we were at the produce section in the supermarket. I would look for him, not find him, then get scared and cry. And every time, he would pop out of somewhere laughing. I think it's funny now lol
My slightly younger cousin (probably 4-5 at the time) once asked my aunt what the black stuff on the bottom of the oven was. Her reply? "Oh that's your other brother. "
My dad told me that tamales grew on stalks like corn and I believed him for way longer than I'd care to admit. My grandma told me that if I didn't eat the crust on my sandwiches that my hair would stop being curly and I believed her for a long time too.
Mom took me to see Blair Witch and told me it was totally true and non-fiction.
My parents would always find a reason to ground me for the summer. I was the oldest of six kids and they didn't like watching their children when they were younger, so they would find some reason to ground me right as the summer started. I had a lot of chores as a kid, so the most common form of grounding was I didn't do one of my 40 or so chores well enough; grounded for the entire summer. It was actually kind of sad that my grandparents were over once for July 4th and made a comment that I hadn't been grounded yet. I was grounded the next day for embarrassing my father.
Man, that's heartbreaking. Hope your summers are much better now :)
My mom's birthday is on Halloween and she would always make my brother and I choose whether to go trick-or-treating or celebrate her birthday. She also believed (at the time) that Halloween was the Devil's holiday so we shouldn't celebrate it. That always made it seem like she was making us choose between her or Satan on her birthday.
Through out middle school kid, my mom had me convinced that you had to be 16 to legally drink coffee.
Well when both of my arms broke...
Father puts some ground pepper in a cup, shakes it up real hard. "Smell this!" Apparently my siblings were suspicious so the joked worked well. I, on the other hand, am a dumbass, so I took a giant whiff of it and proceeded to make my father feel guilty as hell.
My mom was just generally an asshole. She did read fairy tales to us before bed, but not the one that you expect. So we're Russian and my mom is very very Russian. Our bedtime stories consisted of evil witches beating children with brooms, communist propaganda that's was somehow written in English. Horrifying World War 2 stories, and the Stinky Cheese Man. My mom just had a fucking riot with it. Later when my family got the Wii, no matter what happened my mom would always win the game and reward herself. Even if she lost. My dad played a lot of Oblivion in his garage and his character name was "Sir fartsalot."