In our early years of existence, we did strange, dumb things. To be fair, we didn't know any better. Some of those events still make people cringe well into their adulthood. In this article, people share the worst things they unknowingly did as a child that still makes them cringe.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
Oh, THAT Game!
“When I was about 8 years old, I asked my dad if we could play ‘the naked man game.’ My dad, trying not to panic, asked me what it was. I responded ‘It’s the one we play when [the babysitter] is over.’ He then asked me to show him where the naked man game was, so I took him to the closet, opened the door, and pointed to Operation.
He told me years later that he nearly had a heart attack.”
The One Who Ruined Their Parents’ Anniversary
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“I don’t know if it’s the worst, but I ruined my parents romantic anniversary.
I was around 7 years old, and I woke up in the middle of the night because my stomach didn’t feel well. So I went upstairs to tell my parents.
When I opened their door, I remember there were candles, music playing and when my mom saw me she immediately pulled a blanket around herself.
She asked me what I was doing up and before I could even finish my sentence I projectile vomited all over everything.”
The Worst Prank
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“My dad’s best friend and best man in his wedding disappeared out of his life after the Vietnam war. He could never find any information about him and wondered if he survived.
I found out that there was a phone number you could dial that would make your own phone ring, and on April Fools’ Day, I made our phone ring, and in front of my dad, I pretended that the man on the phone had the name of his best friend and wanted to talk to my dad.
My dad started to tear up and with hope in his wet eyes, he put the phone to his ear, and his oblivious jerk 10-year-old son yelled, ‘April Fools’ Day!'”
Not The Right Time And Place For This
“When I was in grade school, a girl a few years ahead of me, in my sister’s grade, suddenly died. She also happened to be my sister’s friend, and she didn’t handle that well either.
I didn’t understand death. I was in the second grade and also dumb. Things have changed a lot since then, of course, now I’m just dumb.
Anyway, the worst thing I did: my dad was trying to explain death, and my sister was in the room as well. All I remember is piping up like I had it all figured out, ‘IT’S LIKE SHE RAN OUT OF POWER!’ That did not end well.
The second terrible thing I did is related to this: our school was a Catholic school so Mass every Friday. To preface this, we had a mouse problem at my house at the time, and one of the little ones woke me up early.
Fast forward to the school service we’re having for this dead girl, and when one person is up there speaking, I suddenly and without warning let out the loudest, angriest, dad yawn in the history of yawns.
Dead silence. Everyone is looking at me. Not knowing the gravity of the situation I find myself in, I simply said, ‘What? I woke up early.'”
The Accidental Hot Tea Incident
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“I got a bad burn on my arm while my dad was taking tea out of the microwave. I thought it would be funny to slam the door on him while he was grabbing it. The result was a huge burn on my arm.
Cut to a while later, my arm was almost healed. But you could still see the burn in spots. I hit my head on a table and cut it open. My mom took me to the hospital to get stitches. Right when they were done stitching my head, I had this conversation with the doctor.
Me: Oh! My other owie is almost gone!
Doctor: What other owie?
Me: From when my daddy poured hot tea on me.
That resulted in an awkward conversation between my mother and the doctor. And the doctor almost calling CPS.”
This Mother’s Life Falling Apart
“I had just come home in the afternoon from middle school, and there was about an hour or so before my parents came home from work. On this day I decided to boil a few hot dogs as a nice little snack while I watched something. My buddy from next door came over and invited me to play video games. An hour or so went by, and I came back into my house and realized the stove was still on and the hot dogs were burning. Apparently, the Teflon from the pan released a noxious gas that is lethal to birds and killed my mother’s beloved parakeet. She came home about 10 minutes later and immediately saw this dead parakeet and started crying. She looked me right in my eyes and said, ‘everything in my life is dying!’ (this was around the same time my parents were getting divorced) and she slammed her bedroom door and I didn’t see her until the next morning.”
Doing Without Thinking
Shutterstock/ Koliadzynska Iryna
“When I was 7 years old, I was in the family change room/locker room at a swimming pool when I noticed a stray thumb tack sitting on the ground under a bench. I didn’t know why it was there but some morbid curiosity told me to place it on the ground in the open with the pin side up. About five minutes later, I started to think about how dangerous that could be and went to go pick it up only to find this teenage girl sitting on the bench in severe pain and nursing her foot while her family was helping and inspecting it. The last thing I remember was the girl saying, ‘Who would do this?!’ And her father responding, ‘An idiot, that’s who!'”
No Apologies For Telling The Truth
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“In kindergarten, I was the kid who blew the whistle on Santa Claus. I thought I was doing everyone a service, but several children cried, and my mom had to talk to my teacher at pick-up time because I talked back when asked to apologize.
My mom was embarrassed. The icing on the cake was when my mom told me in front of my teacher that I would, in fact, apologize to the class, I said, ‘Dad says I shouldn’t say sorry unless I mean it, and I don’t think I should say sorry for telling the truth.’
I don’t even remember this, but my mom tells this story all the time because I never apologized. The same teacher put me in timeout because I said the Pledge in a funny voice. I don’t think we were on good terms.”
Making A Dramatic Scene
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“My uncle and his new wife came over to visit late one night when I was about 6 years old. I was supposed to be in bed so the adults could enjoy visiting, but I was determined to stay up and see what was going on, so I asked my mom in front of everybody if I could have a snack before bed, even though I’d never had bedtime snacks. My mom was strict about eating right, so of course, she said no and told me to go back to bed. I decided to make a scene and lay on the floor begging for food, saying I hadn’t eaten in ages, that I was starving and asked for just one raisin. My new aunt watched, horrified, as my mom stayed firm and dragged me back to bed as I fake cried and begged her not to beat me. I was a skinny child due to illness, so my aunt probably thought I was being abused, but the truth is that I had good parents, I was just a little jerk sometimes.”
The Toilet Hijacker
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“As a young troublemaker, my favorite prank was to lock bathroom stall doors and then crawl underneath them and exit the scene. One time, my parents dragged me to Costco with them. I went to the biggest stall in the back of the bathroom, locked it and scampered away with a grin. I ended up going back to the same Costco the next day because my parents had to return something. I went to the same stall and it was still locked, this time I actually had to use it. I crawled under the door only come face to face with an old guy looking at me like I was from another planet. I recoiled away so hard that I smacked my head on the bottom of the door and ran from that bathroom like I’d never run in my life. I crack myself up whenever I try to imagine what that guy was thinking when a 9-year-old tried to hijack his toilet.”
Not The Right Type Of Medication
“I had a lot of medical issues as a child, and so we had a massive drawer full of my prescription meds. When I was 9 years old, a friend from school came over to my house. We played for a while before she told me that she had a stomachache. I, knowing just how to help, gave her some of my medicine for a similar issue.
She got sick, and I sat through a long lecture about how we do not give our medications to other people.
I still feel bad about that one.”
The Honeymooners Highlight Of The Day
“When my cousin and I were young, we got hooked on this amazing hot chocolate at a hotel. The hotel had a bar in the middle of the pool, so you could drink it while you were sitting in the water, which made it even cooler. Our parents told us we couldn’t have more, so we went to a random couple and asked them to buy us the hot chocolate.
They did. And they babysat us until our parents found us, a few hours later. We didn’t say anything about the hot chocolate since we didn’t want to get in trouble, so the couple never got paid back.
Looking back, I think they were probably some honeymooning couple and we forced them to babysit two bratty kids.”
No Regrets For This Outburst!
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“I had a habit of storing entire phone conversations between my mother and her mother in my head. I was little and she’d just talked in front of me and assumed I wasn’t listening.
Well, I heard her laughing about how she had a crush on her coworker and grabbed their butt.
My dad would play with our basset hound by grabbing his thigh and he’d reach around to grab my dad’s hand, and then my dad would grab the other side, etc. So I was watching him do this and laughing and then said, ‘THAT’S LIKE WHAT MOM DID TO JASON!’
Both my parents were jerks to each other, rampant infidelity, the works. And they’re both jerks to everyone now that they’re divorced, so I don’t feel as bad.”
Not Leaving Any Money Behind
“Up until I was around 6 or 7 years old, whenever my family and I were heading out of a restaurant, and I noticed that my parents were forgetting cash on the table, I would always make sure to grab it and slip it back into my mom’s purse. I didn’t know tipping was a thing, and it’s not until I made a comment about how they were always leaving money lying around at restaurants, and how I always had to be the one to keep an eye out for it and make sure they didn’t forget it, that they realized what was going on. I cost a lot of waiters’ tips.”
Should Not Have Said That
“When I was around 3 or 4 years old, my family lived in a rented townhouse. We had a small dog that was not well house-trained and would frequently poop and pee in the carpeted house.
Supposedly, my parents were planning to move and painstakingly cleaned the carpets to remove any evidence of the dog going to the bathroom in the house in order to get their security deposit back. Obviously, being so young, no one clued me in on the situation.
On the day the landlord came to inspect the house, I was playing outside in the yard. He stopped to say hello to me before knocking on the door and I allegedly said something to the effect of, ‘Hi! My dog Frankie goes potty in the living room!’ The landlord immediately went inside and began ripping up the carpeting and saw all the stains underneath.
My parents did not get their security deposit back.”
Detaching Baby Teeth
“My parents told us we couldn’t play baseball in the front yard (maybe because we had broken the window out of our neighbor’s house the week before).
One evening, when I was about 12 years old, my younger brother and I snuck out around dusk with the aluminum bat and the baseball.
He threw me a batting practice pitch, I took a heroic swing and connected it solidly with my 5-year-old foster brother’s teeth, whom I didn’t know was behind me.
Needless to say, there is no lie that gets you out of that one. He had to go to the ER. His baby teeth detached a bit early, at least I hope they were baby teeth.
Baseball was not my strong suit.”
Crushing Their Christmas Dreams
“To be fair, I was a naïve kid and didn’t realize that things you say had weight sometimes. So during Christmas Eve, I felt a stocking get put on my bed (family tradition ‘Santa’ used to do). I looked up and saw my dad slowly creep out of my room, so it was obvious who put the stocking there. He didn’t see me, so I just went back to bed, but I thought this was big news that everyone needed to hear. Fast forward a couple of days and everyone at school is talking about what they got for Christmas. So our teacher asked what did everyone get for Christmas and me being the know it all said proudly, ‘Santa gave me a toy lightsaber.’ Now that doesn’t seem too bad. I was happy I got a lightsaber but then I said, ‘I also saw my dad give me my presents, so Santa’s not real and it’s our parents.’ I said this in front of my second-grade class and thought nothing of it. I didn’t mean any harm to be done, and I just thought it was a groundbreaking thing to expose Santa. Long story short, my teacher talked to me about thinking before you talk, and I didn’t get into to much trouble, but I sure do feel guilty looking back on it. Whenever I see my old classmates and know I might have crushed one of their childhood dreams of Santa, I die a little bit inside.”
A Deep Love For Coffee
“I’ve always loved coffee, even as a kid. My mom told me not to drink it because it would stunt my growth. One day, when I was about 5 or 6 years old, we were out, and there was one of those canisters of coffee, and I begged my mom to let me get some.
I got the same response I always got. ‘It’ll stunt your growth.’
I looked at the line and noticed a little person. ‘Is that what happened to her?’ Cue pointing and loud child’s voice.
I didn’t understand what I did for many years, but I still feel bad about to this day.”
No, He Was NOT Fine Eating The Hot Dogs
“I remember my wiener dog sniffing the fridge whenever I opened the door. Apparently, some hotdogs had spilled or something earlier in the afternoon, and he seemed interested in it, so I gave him a lift into the fridge and shut the door.
I told my sister (five years older) about it about five minutes later, and she freaked out, opened the door and rescued him. I didn’t understand why he needed rescuing, he was in there eating the hot dogs on the middle shelf. He was content enough.
Some days my sister taunts me with this story (which I remember), and I retort with, ‘HE WAS FINE, HE WAS EATING THE HOT DOGS.’
He was maybe 3 years old then, and lived until he was 14.”
Flooding The Neighbor’s Basement
“When I was 3 years old, we lived in a duplex. The neighbor had our shared hose through his window to fill his water bed. One day, I turned on the hose at the faucet then went to find the end. When I couldn’t get the end out of the window, I turned the hose off.
I didn’t know my right and left yet, much less ‘righty tighty, lefty loosey.’ I turned the faucet all the way on, exploded his water bed, and flooded his basement.”
The Accidental Ball Hit
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“I went to a birthday party where I didn’t know anybody besides my parents. I think I was about 6 years old. A teenager noticed how bored and lonely I was, and took the time to play with me. I suggested stickball but after grabbing a stick the only ball around was a rubber bouncy ball. He said it was fine and lobbed an easy one at me.
I ripped it straight at his face, and his glasses exploded in shards. I don’t remember much after that besides a lot of blood and some adults yelling. I got scared and ran off. Never heard of what happened or saw him again.”
Getting Stuck On An Elevator
“One time my family was staying at a hotel in Myrtle Beach. It was about 10 floors high, and we were staying on the sixth. I went down the elevator to get something from the car. On the trip back up, I pushed all the buttons on every floor and got off. Another family got on and the elevator, and got stuck between the fifth and sixth floors. I heard them ringing the emergency button. I ran to my room and never said anything. Later when we left the room, there was a closed sign on the elevator door. I believe they were stuck for 20 minutes.”
Not The Right Thing To Say. Ever.
Shutterstock/ Ollyy
“My mom and dad divorced when I was young because my dad was cheating, and he was a hardcore addict. Well, my mom recovered and tried to get back into the dating world a few years later.
One day when I was around 7 or 8 years old, I realized I’d seen her with three or four different guys over the course of a year or two, and I came up with the bright idea to say, ‘Wow, Mom! You’ve been with a lot of guys! Are you ever going to find one that loves you?’
It was an honest, naive child question, and I couldn’t understand why my mom ran away crying.”
Incidents That Keep Him Up At Night
“I’m not sure which of these was the worst, but these are the things that still keep me up at night at the age of 29:
My Dad’s ex-girlfriend (who I adored!) and I saw some of those huge fish pillows while shopping when I was around 9 or 10 years old, and she said she thought they were hideous. A couple weeks later, I was with her at her friend’s mom’s house, and there was one there and I said, ‘Oh, [dad’s girlfriend] HATES those.’ Turns out, it was a gift for her.
My mom made me a lemon cake from scratch for my fourth birthday. I hated it. So every year until I was in my teens, I demanded a chocolate cake and emphasized how that lemon cake was the worst cake ever. I apparently was twisting the knife every year.”