Dads are really just big kids at heart, which inevitably leads to some "shhh, don't tell your mom" moments shared with their kids. From breaking the rules to having some close calls and everything inbetween, kids reflect back on the very best experiences they've had with their dads that mom will never know about.
The Weekly Splurge.
“My dad used to drive me to my flute lessons across town every Wednesday evening. On our way back home every week, we’d stop at Baskin Robbins and he’d let me get a double scoop in a waffle cone and we’d sit inside, take our time, and talk. It was a really special thing since both my parents worked two jobs and had to chauffeur around two high school aged kids to various functions/activities. Getting to spend one on one time with either of my parents was a rare and fortunate thing. The thing was, they both worked two jobs because we weren’t that well off, so weekly stops at Baskin Robbins was a splurge thing and I wasn’t to tell my mom or my brother about it. Schedules flipped around about a year later and my mom was the one to take me to flute lessons and she’d always get good junk food from the gas station (easy cheese and wheat thins or potato wedges) and we’d eat in the car and talk. Neither parent knew the other spoiled me on Wednesdays” (Source).
The Big Bang.
“We got some fireworks from my uncle. Dad and my brothers and I all started setting them off in the backyard with my dad handling the big ones. One of them went rogue and shot off into the neighbors backyard and set a trashcan on fire. Rather than put it out or go tell the neighbor, my dad looked at the three of us and then ran into the house. We followed. 5 min later there was a knock on the door and it was our neighbor. My brothers and I stayed hidden and listened as our dad proceeded to act as if this was all news to him and pin the entire thing on my brothers and I and promise to ‘handle the situation.’ After the neighbor left he begged us not to tell mom and promised to make it worth our while” (Source).
Secret Fun.
“My dad was teaching me how to skate in our apartment’s parking lot and me, being the overly confident 9 year old, thought it would be great to skate down the lot’s steepest hill. Dad encouraged, child approved. So I took the hill and I ate s–t. Hard. Landed straight on my elbows and knees. Now, my dad didn’t believe in elbow and knee pads (and nor do I to this day because I’m stupid) but let me tell you, I was scuffed up pretty bad. Now here’s context… For years, after watching her daughter and husband get hurt by dumb s–t, my mom hated any sign of what we called ‘fun.’ After rough checking for broken bones, I got out of my state of shock and started to weep softly at my bloody arms and legs. My dad thought I was okay to walk so we slowly walk up stairs to our apartment and my dad sits me on the steps. In slight horror and mass confusion I watched this man take the blood off my elbows and knees and wipe it on my face (Think Sylvester Stallone football player MVP style). Only thing it took to shut me up and never tell my mom was that: ‘I was a warrior. And warriors don’t tell mom.’ So I never told mom” (Source).
Best Week Ever.
“When I was young my mom sometimes visited her mother for a week or so by herself. When she left, my father took us ‘impulse shopping’ at the grocery store and we would live for the week on whatever my dad, my brother and I picked out. I remember subsisting on liverwurst and gummy bears” (Source).
Thinking Ahead.
“When I got out of the Navy, my dad, a retired cop, got me a job as a witness escort. Basically a security guard taking low-risk and low-reliability witnesses back and forth to court. On my third assignment as we entered the lobby of the witness’s apartment building, a guy steps up and shoots me with a 25 caliber handgun. He hit me in the bulletproof vest right under the left nipple. It felt like getting hit with a baseball bat. Fast forward several hours and my dad is picking me up at the hospital. My sport coat and shirt were taken as evidence so all I have to wear is my pants and an ice-pack held in place with an ace-wrap. He walks in and hands me a paper bag. Inside the bag was an identical shirt, coat and tie to what I left the house in that morning. When he handed it to me he said: ‘Don’t tell your mother!’ He bought me the outfits for the job and kept a set for just this reason. We protect mom. What she don’t know can’t hurt us” (Source).
Puff, Puff, Pass.
“Before my dad passed away we ran a family business together selling flooring. He had been sick with Lymphoma for about 7 years (he passed after 10) and was in a lot of chronic pain. He was the toughest guy I ever met, and never missed a day of work aside from his bone marrow transplant up until 2 days before he died. One random day I came in from one of the job sites. I was with a friend who my dad hired to give him some income. We saw my dad sitting on the pavement leaning on the store with his head down. I panicked thinking something was wrong. I come up and say ‘everything okay?’ He looks up and just has the most blood shot eyes ever. He goes ‘F–king Keith gave me grass for the pain! I haven’t smoked in 30 years!’ I said ‘Are you okay?’ He says ‘I’m not in pain for the first time in months, but I’m too scared to go back in there in case there’s customers!’ We got him water and he sat reclined in his van in the air conditioning listening to Black Sabbath until lunch, then he ordered a pizza and ate more than I can remember him ever eating post sickness. On the way home after we dropped off my friend he says ‘If you think Lymphoma is bad, you should see what happens if your mother finds out about me smoking grass.’ I took the hint and never told her. He’s been gone 9 years, and a month ago at my wedding my mom, myself, and my groomsmen are swapping stories about my dad. My friend who was there that day says ‘You remember when we went to your store and your dad was stoned as s–t and all he wanted was Black Sabbath and air conditioning?’ The shock on my moms face was picturesque. She couldn’t believe it. After getting us to give her every detail of that day she looks up at the ceiling, shakes her fist and says ‘You are in so much trouble when I get up there!’ (Source).
Father Of The Year.
“I was really into Enid Blyton books when I was 8 but new books were a luxury that my family couldn’t really afford. On paydays, my dad would bring me to the bookstore to grab a few new books and we’ll sneak them home without telling mum. Looking back, my dad probably had to scrimp on some meals then but it did encourage my lifelong love for reading” (Source).
A Few Things Mom Shouldn’t Know…
“We had some s–tty trucks when I was little. I was in the passenger seat without a seat belt while he was driving maybe 15mph (not on the road), when we went over a bump. My door opened and I fell out. He caught my leg just in time before I slid completely out of the truck. Number two would be a few months ago when he got his first smartphone, aka, his first unsupervised access to the internet. He asked me to check something out, I instinctively went to close all running applications when I was done, and he had about 30 tabs of porn open” (Source).
Just Stop It.
“Dad just bought mom a new car. It was a used car and my mom loved it. First day we have the car legal and registered, him and I take it up to the auto parts store to get a code reading, in order to troubleshoot a minor issue. We’re in the parking lot and he’s got the hood popped, and noticed there was a connector that wasn’t plugged in. Thinking it might be the culprit for the issue, he plugs it back in. We jump back in the car and he noticed the ABS (anti-lock brake system) light has gone off. He wonders aloud ‘Hmmm… that plug is obviously the ABS. Why would they have that unhooked?’ Less than a minute later, we found out why. We get not even 500 feet down the road, and as he’s slowing down for the traffic light, we hear a long, grinding whine type of sound that slowly drops in pitch. WHIIIIRRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHHHHH! Dad’s mashing the brake pedal and has it all the way to the floor and we’re still moving. ‘S–t, s–t, s–t!’ The ABS had failed and we now have no brakes. We’re closing in on the bumper of the stopped car in front of us. In an evasive maneuver to avoid smashing into them, he jerks the wheel to the left to coast the car towards empty lane next to us. We eventually coast to a halt. After sitting through the light, we turned off into a parking lot next to us, rolled to a stop and he promptly unhooked the ABS plug. He gets back in. ‘No f–king wonder they had that thing unplugged! Don’t tell your mom about this or else she’ll be scared to drive this thing'” (Source).
Scarred For Life.
“When I was four or five years old, my mom wouldn’t let me watch The Wizard of Oz. She was concerned that the flying monkeys would traumatize me, so she barred me from watching it. That’s why, while she was gone one day, my Dad and I watched a movie… Jurassic Park” (Source).
The Dad Way.
“When I was about seven, my Mum bought a cheap blender for the kitchen, it was one of those ones where the blending thingie points downward, you have to insert the jug from the front, and its designed in such a way that you can basically put any old cup in there and it will still work. Mum was very strict in that we were not allowed to use just any cup, we had to use the special blender jug. Dad hated that thing because it was a pain to clean. Soon, the day came when mum was out, and I asked my dad if I could make a milkshake. He chucked all the ingredients straight into the milkshake cup and stuck that into the blender. I, being a bit of a snot, reminded him that we had to use the special jug, because Mum said so. Dad replied, that ‘Well, Dad can do it this way, because Dad said so’ then promptly turned the blender on, and sent milk, chocolate, banana and ice cream splattering all over the kitchen ceiling” (Source).
Bonding Time.
“My dad owns/is the president of a fairly large company he started right out of college. When I was young, he travelled internationally a lot still trying to establish the company. For a few years when I was probably 7-10ish, he was gone probably 15 days a month on average – sometimes more, sometimes less. My mom was pretty strict about what we were allowed to watch (movies and TV) up until I was about 14-15. So naturally, I would hear my friends at school talk about all the cool movies they watched and it sucked. One night my dad got home from the airport and told my mom that he had to go to the office to finish up some work and that he was going to take me with him since I hadn’t seen him in a few days. So we got in the car and started driving to his office. On the way, we stopped and got a pizza. Then he pulled into the block buster parking lot and went into the store. He came back out and put the bag in the trunk and said he had a surprise. When we got to his office, we went into the conference room and he showed me what he got at blockbuster: a 2 liter bottle of soda (which I wasn’t supposed to have), one of those huge popcorn buckets (mom didn’t want us to eat microwave popcorn either), and the first Pirates of the Caribbean (again, not supposed to watch that). So we had a movie night on the projector in the conference room with pizza and popcorn. We started doing that 2 or 3 times a month for the next couple years – pig out on junk food and watch movies that my dad wanted to see but my mom wouldn’t let me watch with him. To this day she still has no idea we did any of that” (Source).
Q&A.
“Back when I was at school I had a habit of lashing out at people who picked on me. Good for avoiding bullying after a few times, bad for having friends and not being called a psycho. Older boy came up behind me and poured a drink on my head. I responded by turning around and punching him repeatedly in the face. Devolved into usual schoolboy scuffling until he ran off after seeing a teacher coming. I got into trouble as he definitely got the worst of it, but got off the hook as he was older and had a history of bullying. Ended up just being sent home to my parents. My mum was at work and my dad was working from home, so he took the call and met me coming in. I was terrified what would happen (the times I’d fought before that my mum had come down on me hard, as she was the strict one), but the only conversation was ‘Did you start it?’ ‘No.’ ‘Did you finish it?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did he deserve it?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Let’s go watch TV. Don’t tell mum.’ Love that man” (Source).
Dad Approved.
“I was 22, had just graduated college, and was living at home while starting my first ‘real’ job. Being single, childless, and living at home, my living expenses were minimal and I saved a fair bit of money pretty quickly. I wanted to do something exciting, but didn’t know what. I’m not the backpack-across-Europe type, and I come from a rather… bland family. A co-worker told me I should buy a motorcycle, but I knew my mom would never approve of it. So I waited until my parents were out of town one week, and bought a used Honda CBR 250. My mom hated it (now that I’m married with kids, she says it’s ‘irresponsible’ of me to ride such a statistically dangerous vehicle). My dad, however, had always wanted one in his younger years, but never done anything about it. He approved. One weekend not long after, my mom went on an out-of-town shopping trip with my sisters. My dad asked if I wanted to go do anything. I thought for a moment, and asked him if he wanted to learn how to ride a motorcycle. He got this silly/excited grin that I’d never seen before. And that, is how my then-60 year old dad learned how to ride a motorcycle” (Source).
Driver’s Ed.
“When I had my drivers permit my dad was supposed to help teach me to drive. He had me drive him everywhere and teaching me consisted of him leaning the seat back, turning the radio on low volume, and napping until we got to our destination. I remember the first day it happened he just said ‘I’m supposed to be monitoring you closely and keeping an eye on every move you make, but I’m tired. You’ll be fine. Just don’t speed. And your mom doesn’t need to know I’m asleep or she’ll kill us both.’ What dad doesn’t know is when my brother got his permit last year, mom’s way of teaching him to drive was the same concept” (Source).
An Unspoken Understanding.
“I got straight A’s my sophomore year of high school. It was a rare occurrence in my household for me to get A’s so my proud father told me he would take me to Gamestop to buy the new PS4. My mom told us our budget was only $200 bucks, but my dad said f–k it and bought me the PS4 + GTA Bundle, NBA 2k14, Call of Duty: Ghosts (by far our worst investment), an extra controller and a TV for me to play in my room. It wound up to being around $880 bucks but my dad said he would just work extra hours to pay it off because of how proud he was of me. He didn’t even have to tell me not to tell my mother, he just gave me the look in the eye once we got in the car. I love my parents” (Source).
As Long As You Learn Something.
“Was about 14-15 at the time, in boy scouts, on a long campout. As the senior patrol, we naturally had seniority and trust and camped further away from the adults than the rest of the younglings, we were macho like that. We also plotted to each bring some form of alcohol from our houses and proceed to get proper s–tfaced for the first time, you know, like the cool kids. Some got REAL drunk, some puked, others kinda dozed off, I experimented with how flammable the contents of each bottle was. In the morning, we burned all the spills, disposed of the bottles in the nearby gorge and thought we were golden. What we didn’t expect was one of aforementioned younglings was a precocious little twerp last night and caught us being the cool kids. This particular kiddo was also a major snitch, so we were promptly busted. Dad found out from a scoutmaster before I even got home and the conversation went something like this. Him: . Me: . Him: So what did you learn? Me: The Italian liqueur from the cabinet tastes like crap, also doesn’t burn well. Him: Sounds about right. Don’t tell your mother. Me: . We never spoke of it again” (Source).