What’s your childhood mystery that you finally solved years later?
I met my wife in college and when we were dating she often mentioned that when she was a kid she had a play doctor’s kit that was stolen from her house.
She had some surgeries really young and so her parents bought it for her to demystify the doctors office.
She’d use it all the time on her dad poking and prodding him.
One day I asked her about the robbery.
Did they take everything?
Jewelry?
The TV?
Other valuables?
No, no, and no.
It hit me.
I asked “so, someone broke into your house and only stole your
doctor’s kit, leaving anything worth fencing there?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Did you ever consider your folks were tired of you using the kit on them all the time after you got better?”
“Oh, damn.”
We confirmed it with her Dad later but for 15 years she had believed some thief broke in and ONLY stole her beloved doctor’s kit.
Edit: spelling
I solved a family mystery for my mom.
I wasn’t allowed to play console video games during the week all the way until I was 18 but some nights I’d really be craving it so I would noiselessly creep through my house into my basement where I could play video games in peace.
But once every 30 times or so one of my parents would need something from the basement and I’d quickly turn off the tv monitor, hide in the guest room and pray they didn’t turn on a light or notice the Xbox was on.
One night I ducked into the guest room and hid behind the bed.
To my horror my mom followed me into the room and turned on the lights.
I was panicking so when she started digging through the
closet with her back to me I made a run for it.
I nearly brushed her shirt and if she’d seen me I’d probably have given her a heart attack.
But I made it and kept going all the way to bed.
About 5 years went by and my mom said something like “you’re such a quiet walker” and I told her it was because of my basement trips thinking I had nothing to lose.
My mom’s face went kinda solemn and when I explained she said “so there really was someone down there.” And she explained that she remembered that exact night and the feeling that there was a ghost in the room.
Over the next couple days she’d stare into space and just say “I can’t believe you were really there.” She
seemed to get over it but she probably checks empty rooms closer now.
One evening when camping, my brother caught a fish that we decided to keep alive in the cooler for some reason.
Well, the next morning we ran out to see the fish and it had grown like 5 inches!
We were so excited and didn’t know how the fish grew that much overnight!
Last year we brought it up and my dad said that he had got up that morning and seen the fish being taken by a raccoon and that he spent the next hour or so frantically fishing for another one.
He said he caught the new fish (the first one he was able to catch) just a few minutes before we got up.
I had never questioned that the fish growing that much as I
grew up, but after hearing what really happened I did feel like we probably should have wondered about that more.
Who ate all the cherries in the cherry cake.
I was blamed for this for YEARS after someone picked out all of the cherries and ate them during a family Christmas party.
8 years later my little sister confessed to me that it had been her.
When i was 10 my godfather gave me 20 dollars as a christmas gift, at the end of the dinner the money had disappeared.
For years my parents blamed me for being irresponsible with my money.
Years later we figured out, after she was caught stealing stuff from my aunt's house, that my cousin's fiancée at the time is a kleptomaniac.
Turns out she was the one that stole the money.
I visited my dad when I was 6 or 7 years old at the place where he worked, or so I was told.
I remember remarking at the time, and people laughed at me, because I said it looked just like a prison.
The people laughing were the guards and I was indeed visiting my dad at Terminal Island federal correctional institution where he was a federal inmate.
My dad used to say he could stop the rain for a moment by snapping his fingers.
He’d do it in the car, when it was pouring.
I was so mesmerized; told all my friends about it, well into late elementary school.
I’ve since realized he’d snap as we drove underneath an overpass.
My mom used to call us in for dinner by yelling out the back door from the kitchen.
I was in middle school before I realized the scream door was actually called a screen door.
I've always wanted to know what was behind the ATMs at a bank, how it worked and where did the money come from.
I grew up and worked at a bank just to find out some fat dude had to squeeze behind the ATMs to refill it:
The random claps at midnight in my house werent from ghosts... And werent claps either.
I was watching Star Trek TNG with my dad when someone told Ryker to “wash his back”.
When I asked my father why someone would say that to another person, he said “So you can smell someone coming up behind you”.
It wasn’t until years later that I understood how easy it was to hear WATCH as WASH...and how committed my Dad was to willfully deceiving his children for personal satisfaction.
My dad is an ex catholic, and every night when he’d tuck me in until I left the house he’d say “We love you.
God bless you.
Goodnight.” And I was always wondering why, since he had stopped going to church long ago.
Fast forward to me being 28 years old and watching an old Bruce Springsteen concert together (one of his favorite artists), and Bruce says, “We love you.
God bless you.
Goodnight!” at the end of his set.
I turned my head towards my dad and asked if this is why he’s said that for years to me at night.
He laughed and said, “I have no original material.”
When I was 4, I vividly remember getting into my mom’s car and her telling me that our cat had died.
She told me how she rushed him to the vet and he was shedding fur; something was seriously wrong.
Despite her best efforts he died.
I never knew why he died, and why it happened so suddenly, but I accepted that it happened.
Fast forward about 15 years, I’m home from college for Christmas.
On Christmas Eve, I’m out driving to the store with my dad and uncle.
They are talking about the cat my parents got for Christmas one year (the cat mentioned above).
My dad says “yeah, that thing was too aggressive, so I took it to a farm and
gave it away.”
Normally, when the family pet dies, the parents lie to the kid and say it “went to a farm upstate somewhere” to ease the burden.
Not my parents.
They told me the horrifying “truth” even though it wasn’t, you know, true.
Not mine, but my husband's (I hope he doesn't see this bc then my cover is blown).
He said in middle school, there was a time that he'd get pulled out of class to shoot free throws in the gym.
Only him.
He didn't think this was strange, but didn't understand why he was the only one that got to do that.
Turns out, his parents told his teachers he couldn't participate in Sex Ed.
hahah
for over 20 years i had a very distinct memory of seeing this movie with my dad around the holidays in our living room, it was a black and white movie, but i had a vivid memory of only this one specific scene.
l was probably about 6 or 7 when i watched it with him.
it bugged me for the longest time, i would think about it periodically for years because i remembered it being so cool, i just wanted to know what movie it was so i could check it out as an adult.
then one day, i cant even remember where, but someone online somewhere had described this movie and mentioned the name and it sounded really similar to the one i remembered.
i looked it up on youtube and it turns out the
movie was Babes in Toyland/March of the Wooden Soldiers.
the scene i remembered so vividly was all of the soldiers marching out of the toy shop.
figuring this out was literally one of the most satisfying things ive ever felt in my life
We grew up poor and at the age of 10 my friends were all having these crazy birthday parties with petting zoos, bounce houses, clowns, etc.
so my mother who is very resourceful decided I would have a sleepover for my 11th birthday.
It was great and we were gonna make ice cream cones!
So we got all the stuff out with my mom, and my mother opened up the box of cones, and they were all smashed up.
She said that we weren’t having regular ice cream, we were having “magic castle sundaes” (because the broken ice cream cones resembles the sections of a castle).
We all thought this was great and we had them.
When my friends went home, they asked their parents to make magic
castle sundaes.
Two days ago I found out that my mother was getting the past sell by foods behind the grocery store (they were not expired, just past sell by date).
She had no idea that the cones were brown up until she opened them with us.
She thought of the magic castle idea quickly, and we all loved it.
Just goes to show how stupid kids are lol.
I figured out my dad wasn’t on a “business trip” in 2005, he was at my uncle’s wedding and didn’t want to take me all the way there because it was in Ireland and he knew I’d want to go if he told me.
In hindsight, I probably should have picked up on the lie.
My dad is a school custodian.
Edit: people seem very curious about why he didn’t take me.
I’d been to Ireland before as my dad is from Dublin.
I was a bad flyer as a kid because I’d get wicked ear infections and he only left for 4 days so he didn’t think it was worth it.
Also a school custodian is (at least here in NYC public schools) kind of the manager of the janitorial staff!
As you’ve probably gathered, I
was not the sharpest kid!
ALSO I *did* eventually get to go to a wedding in Ireland in 2018 so I guess that’s some redemption 😂
I remember there was a time where I had to start asking to go play in the backyard (when I was about 6-7, maybe 8), with my siblings (so she could supervise us).
We never had to do this previously so my siblings and I were very confused, and anytime we didn't ask she got us in big trouble.
Turns out the neighbours were harbouring a known pedophile in their house, and that's why mom got so upset with us going outside without asking.
Edit: I have no idea of this man was on the run or not from the authorities, my mom probably had no idea either.
Though if she
knew he was on the run she for sure would have tipped the authorities.
Mom did catch the man having sex with a teen on our front lawn, and called the police.
Not sure what happened after that.
Also, at this time my neighbours did not have a child of their own.
I had meningitis when I was 2 years old, and my baby brother had it also and he died.
I had the viral form, he had the bacterial form.
I grew up thinking I had it first and always felt like I gave it to him and was the reason he died.
I know, I know, but you can't help what you think, especially when you're a kid.
It wasn't until I was an adult that I learned that he actually had it before me.
I don't know why no one had ever told me that before, except maybe they didn't because they weren't aware that I always harbored this guilt about it since I kept everything inside.
Not one person had ever mentioned to me that he had died before I got it, or maybe I was in the hospital when he died,
that part still isn't clear to me.
I was in the hospital for about 3 weeks, so it could have been before or during my hospital stay.
I used to go to our local YMCA after school and during the summer when I was a kid.
We went swimming in the pool almost every day and being the curious kid I was, I always wondered what was behind the caution doors with the weird triangle markings.
Fast forward 8 years and I’m now working at that YMCA as a lifeguard.
And behind the doors?
Old, smelly pool chemical testing rooms.
Very anticlimactic
I remember being about 8, and in the car with my dad.
I was in the front seat and we were driving somewhere, and this song came on the radio.
He cranked it and said something about it being the best guitar playing ever.
He really jammed out, which was really uncharacteristic because he was usually so stoic.
It was the only time I heard the song, and he died before I could ever ask him what song it was.
When I asked around, no one knew wtf I was talking about or what song I was thinking of.
So I had this melody in my head for years, but how do you look up a song that has no lyrics?
So for years and years, this song stayed on the back burner in my brain.
I was afraid to forget it.
Somehow this story pops up when I'm like 26 or so, chatting with my husband and we searched YouTube for "best guitar songs".
After about 15 minutes, we find it.
*Cliffs of Dover* was the song that I'd burned into my brain on repeat for 16 years.
Now I jam out to it with my kids.
When I was in elementary school, I always wondered what the teachers staff room was like.
It seemed so mysterious - and I remember trying to get a peek anytime I walked by and the door would open.
Later became a teacher and can fully confirm they’re dull, often toxic spaces full of cranky teachers complaining about students.
Jontra Volta was actually John Travolta which really made a lot more sense
How Sinterklaas made the pepernoten fall through the ceiling.
I quickly discovered Santa wasn't real when I was a kid, but I was CERTAIN that the Dutch version (Sinterklaas) was real because in December, pepernoten (tiny Dutch cookies) would suddenly rain down on me, and I thought Sinterklaas was on the roof dropping it through the ceiling.
I was so convinced about this that I bragged to the kids in my class that MY Santa was real and theirs was fake, but the Dutch Santa only visits Dutch kids in America.
Apparently my mom would carry handfulls of pepernoten in her pockets and when I wasn't expecting it, she would throw it up in the air above me.
I don't know how I didn't
realize what was going on at the time, the first year I was in on the secret and I watched my mom throw pepernoten on my brother it seemed so obvious.
Edit: yes, I know that Sinterklaas isn't exactly "Dutch Santa" and I know about calling them kruidnoten vs pepernoten.
Didn't care to be technically accurate because I didn't know this would blow up.
Thanks for the awards!
When I was a kid in the 70s my parents worked in Canada's arctic, but were from Nova Scotia.
I had a pet mouse, Pixie.
Pixie died the night before our family flew home to Nova Scotia for summer vacation.
It was many years later before I realized that probably wasn't a sad coincidence.
When I was really young.
Me and my siblings would play in my grandparents yard.
My grandfather would tell us to stay away from the skunk hole at the edge of the yard.
We lived in south Texas so this wasn't something out of the ordinary, and we just avoided it like any other animal home.
Years later it dawned on me.
It was actually the septic tank access.
In preschool I had a substitute teacher who had a long pinky nail.
I asked him how come and he told me it just grows faster.
Years later I realized
Turns out I have adhd.
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