#anyway i have 250 postcards with the wrong date on them who wants a postcard!

[strangewonderful]

i wasn't built to have a job

[pa-awesome]

Small Lies That Escalated Into “This Is My Life Now”

• I'm disabled. I use two crutches to walk. When I'm not actually hobbling along it's one of those disabilities that can be mistaken for just having a broken leg or something. People frequently ask me "What did I do to need those crutches?" When I started university I told a girl that I cage-wrestled a bear. She was drunk and thought it was hilarious. I thought it was clear that I was completely obviously joking. There is no sane way I could have been serious. About three hours later I'm at the student union. Gareth Gates is singing (that one off pop Idol) I'm trying to take a picture of him, and I hear two girls in front of me: "Do you know why he's got those?" "Yeah he got mauled by a bear or something" "Are you serious?" Several months later I have to go meet my partner for our placement study. I've never met her before in my life, but she knows me already as the guy who got attacked by a bear. At Christmas I head home, (only a couple of hours away) and meet up with some friends for drinks. "Turrabo, why the fuck are you telling everybody that you got mauled by a bear?"

• In college my roommate and I had a KFC taco bell right by our apartment. We would go once or twice a week. One time we ordered and the drive through guy said "hey bro, you're - i remember your car!" Since the name was the same as mine, I was like "hey man!" Apparently he thought we had both worked construction together - or he did with a guy who looked like me, drove the same car, and had the same name. Anyway, he ends up giving us our order to for free. From that day on, everytime we went to the taco bell - kfc, we got free food. He would even tell his coworkers to give us free food and would throw in comments like - "you remember steve, he was a real asshole". I would agree and then accept my food. My roommate also apparently started getting free food even when I wasn't there because he recognized him. Doppleganger me must of been a super nice guy, because I got a lot of love. I lived that wonderful lie for roughly 3-4 years to get the free gorditas and fried chicken. I even got a new friend on facebook. Worth it.

• I told people at my former (American) university that I was Canadian, to get them to stop talking to me about U.S. politics. I hate confrontation and didn't know how to just tell them that political discussion makes me uncomfortable. Now I live in Canada and attend a Canadian university. I'm working towards citizenship. Oops.

• I've been making EDM since I was 13, and in my senior year of High School I had the opportunity to play some of my music live with Ableton for my classmates at an event. But, because I couldn't explain what I was doing in the space provided on the sign-up sheet I just put down "DJ", thinking that nobody would be knowledgeable enough to know the difference. Apparently everybody liked it so much that the prom committee asked me to DJ prom, and like an idiot I said yes. I waited for my birthday, and made sure that nobody got me any gifts-just money, which I spent on software and a Mixtrack Pro. I learned how to DJ in three months, did prom, got payed 250$. I'm making decent money off of gigs now, and I do the prom every year.

• When I was little, my grandma would make me these horrible frozen chicken tenders filled with cheese. They were just god-awful. Because I am a good grandson, I told her that I loved them. From then on, every time that I visited her, she would cook me those abominations. Even when I was in graduate school, I would go visit her and for one meal, I would have to slide those gross things down my gullet. Every time I would say, "Thanks! I love them!" The things we do for love...

• I was having a rough time commuting too far for work for a few months. Decided to quit to find something closer to home, but told everyone I had been approved to work from home. When I went to give my two weeks, my manager asked, "I know the driving has been killing you, how would you feel about working from home?" Work laptop to my left and watching Great British Masterclass as I type, been working at home since then.

• My upstairs neighbor called me Mark in a conversation but since that is not my name, I didn't realize she was actually referring to me so I didn't correct her. The second time she called me Mark it was from a distance as she was leaving her apartment and I was getting in; I registered that she thought my name was Mark but I felt it would be weird to shout back that my name is not Mark. The third time she did this I had a bunch of friends over on the stoop outside the apartment and I didn't want to correct her in front of a group of kids (she's an older lady; we were in our early twenties) because I didn't want to embarrass her. All my friends looked confused that she was calling me Mark but after she went inside I explained to them I was too deep into it to correct her. They disagreed since she had only done it three times at that point. That was 7 years ago. I am Mark.

• Buddy of mine shared this one. He told his wife's parents he liked their Christmas ham at the first family function he was invited to. They took that as he loved ham in general. Ten years later it's the only food they have at any meal where it's him, wife and kids and the inlaws. They have dinner twice a month, it's always ham. They send him ham-centric gift baskets every year on his birthday at work. Every holiday it's ham, ham, ham, at every meal. They took a 3 hour detour last year to get a picture of some sign in Ham Lake MN or a postcard or something and thought he'd be so excited when they sent him the photo. It's like they only ever learned one fact about him and it was he likes ham. At this point I'm not sure they remembered his name and heartily pat him on the back referring to him a their ham-loving son in law because they're too embarrassed to ask ten years in and employ complex, Leslie-Nielsen-level schemes to get someone to steal his wallet or get someone to say his name that always fail. He hates ham, always has, its too salty and makes his hands swell up so much his wedding ring can't be removed. His wife now hates ham. He was just being polite. We're attending a christening of their kid next weekend and I'll get to meat the inlaws in question. I will be asking them if they love ham as much as he certainly does. I want to know if everyone in the family hates ham and they're all just smiling while dying on the inside at every meal, passing the ham with anger boiling like a pot of hot ham water just under surface. So yeah that's his life right now, forced to eat ham because he lied about liking ham and he's in too deep.

• People picked on my brother in high school for getting jumped by some wannabe “blood” thugs in the bathroom. Popular thugs, if you can believe it. It was relentless. His confidence and any friendships were crushed, cause, you know, people can’t be seen with the loser. One day I was confronted by said thugs, basically talking shit about my brother, and in my infinite wisdom, I said I could box so they better back off. Something to that affect. Looking back, I cringe, but you do what you have to. Needless to say, they did not back off. Somehow, I landed a punch on one of the kids that dislocated his jaw. Like, flapping around like a mouth piece hanging from a football helmet. I became the kid who could “box” but never wanted to fight, which I guess gave me credibility. I don’t really know. Everyone and their hyena came to me asking where they could learn said boxing skills, how I’d learned by 16, all that crap. I’d wanted to just come out and say I had been lucky, but I didn’t want anyone to give my brother shit again. So the lie stayed. Luckily, no one ever picked on my brother afterwards, and I did eventually learn some boxing fundamentals, but most because I felt like I was living a lie. Which I was. As a man, I have not had to keep up the facade.

• I moved to a new city, and got a new dentist. For some reason, the guy thinks I used to see him at his old practice in a town I've never lived in. I corrected him a couple times, but he just keeps bringing it up, so now I just kind of roll with it. He asks after my parents, which is easy enough...but we've had all kinds of conversations about local restaurants I've never been to and other random stuff like that.

• "Yea I'd say I'm pretty good with excel." No. No I wasn't. Annnnnnd now I'm an analyst at a fortune 400 company.

• My mother was a super control freak, so one of the ways I would avoid home was after school extracurriculars. I got the date wrong on a math team meeting, so I lied to my mom about it while actually attending the debate team intro meeting. I probably didn't need to lie, but it was always safer to not disrupt her precious schedule. Eventually, debate became a regular activity for me to avoid home. In 3 years, I was a state semifinalist and in college, I coached the high school national champions and turned that into a free ride for a masters degree.

• A new coworker of mine tried downplaying his bday and eventually after me hounding him about why he didn't like celebrating, he eventually told me in confidence that his best friend was killed on his birthday and he hates thinking about it. Fast forward 8 years -- this guy and I had become really good friends. Best friends. Lived together at one point. He was accepted into my friend group and I always made sure to downplay his bday (his is 4 days after another friend) so we just did a group thing and never made a big deal about it. Finally someone got brave enough and wanted to talk to him about it, and he laughed and had no recollection of telling me that and said he was probably just screwing with me. He always wondered why no one wished him happy bday.

• I moved to a new city when I was in 6th grade and on the same day I started two other boys started and they both knew how to skateboard, so I lied and said I did to. Then for months I lied about being able to skateboard to them and other kids at the school, and I never came clean because I didn't want anyone to call me a poser. So I bought skater boy clothes, and a skateboard and learned how to skateboard because I lied about knowing how to skateboard. Still skating since then. I'm 27 now.

• Once my boyfriends mom asked me if I liked their bathroom soap. It’s lavender, I don’t like lavender. But I decided to tell her “I love it, it smells so good!” Now I have an endless supply, she buys me some all the time. It’s too sweet to tell her the truth, so I just keep it to myself and use the mediocre-smelling soap. Oh well, this is how I live now

• My husband's best friend has a 6 year old daughter that I see often. When she was almost 3 she babbled something to me (I think it was "My friends here!") and my husband interpreted it as "My friend Steve!" and started calling me Steve in front of her. Now her whole family call me Steve when she's around, and she still believes that's my name. For clarity, I'm a female and my name isn't anything close to Steve.

• Back in High School, someone in my freshman English class thought he heard someone call me Louis, so he started calling me Louis. Not really a friend, just someone I spoke to on occasion. Now high school me thought he was just him trying to be funny, and didn't care to correct him and he continued to call me Louis and whenever I heard him call for me I responded. It wasn't until our last week of senior year that he stops me in his tracks and goes. "Someone told me your name isn't Louis. Is your name Louis?" "No." "I-I've been calling you Louis for 4 years! I thought that was your name!"

• "You're here for the copywriting position right?" "Yup!" I was the only one in the waiting area... thought I was there for a design/art direction role. Within 15 minutes of the interview they offered me $2K to move and $45K starting salary a week before graduation.

• My life, my dad's lie. He's a GP in the US and had an older Indian man as a patient. While they were chatting, at some point my dad mentioned that his sister loved elephants and had a collection of figurines. The patient went back to India to visit family, and he brought back a couple small carved elephants to my dad to give to me. He'd misunderstood/misremembered and thought it was his daughter who collected elephants. My dad thought it was a one time thing, thanked him, and said I'd love them. Turns out he went back to India every year. For ten years, I'd get a new elephant figurine whenever that patient had come back.

• Said I was a amateur boxer until a real fight popped off. guy was huge, I just put my hands up pretended I knew what I was doing, meanest face I could make. guy stood down, said "fuck that..you could tell he knows how to fight." I signed up to my nearest boxing gym the next day. I actually love it!