When I turned 18 I got a letter from a distant Aunt and Uncle wishing me a happy birthday. I hadn’t seen them since I was a a baby, but there’s hundreds of pictures of them and me together when I was a baby. They used to babysit me a lot and take me on vacations with them. My Mom told me they used me to smuggle things. I guess they said it was super easy to smuggle just about anything with a baby. At one point literally hiding cocaine in my diaper.

That I had a much older half-sister. Apparently my father had got some girl knocked up in high school, her parents didn’t like him and thought they were too young to raise a kid, so they just packed up and moved. He knew she existed, but never tried to locate her and just moved on with his life. After I was in college, the sister had contacted him and they got together. Well nobody bothered to mention this fact to me until I come home from college for Thanksgiving and this strange women is sitting at the table and my dad says, “Meet your sister.”

My mother recently (I am 52) told me that I have a half-sibling out there somewhere. She had a child before she met my father and put him up for adoption.

Not yet, but when I was in college and my parents got divorced, my dad gave me all the information on what to do if he passes. Told me where things are, and had me go to his bank to sign a document for access to his account after he dies. When we were leaving the bank, he told me, “your mother is not who you think she is. Everything you need to know is in my deposit box.” I have no clue what he could be talking about—he never elaborated, and my mom laughed it off when I told her about it. Guess I’ll find out one day.

When I was a kid, my dad accidentally killed a raccoon with his car. It had a young one with it that wasn’t hit, so we adopted the baby raccoon. We adored it, but we were not at all equipped to care for it. There was no lock or cage that could stop this thing. It was very clever, strong and curious. It got into cupboards and ate food and trash, and we’d find its shit in the most random places. One day my dad sat me down and told me that my raccoon had “gone to live on a farm.” I was old enough to know what that meant, and I was heartbroken. Just a few years ago I was telling this story to my husband and my dad interrupted me and said that he literally, actually gave my raccoon away to a work acquaintance of his that had a farm and a lot of wooded property. It had become so accustomed to humans it constantly broke into the man’s house and ate his food, and got enormously fat and lived a long ornery raccoon life.

There was story growing up about how a local prince wanted to marry me and offered things like cows for my hand in marriage. When my father passed away I went to my home country and met cousins I had not met before. Turned out the prince was the president’s son and it wasn’t an offer, it was a demand. We snuck out of the country because he was going to make me his wife – bear in mind, I was a toddler. My mom filled in the back story. The company my dad worked for had to smuggle us out of the country. My life was so exciting when I was 6. EDIT: I want to be clear that the dude was not a pedo, this was going to be an arranged marriage for when I became of age.

Most of my college was paid by someone named Tony (random dude to me). I know you’re all thinking that it was some sort of lovechild thing, but it turns out my grandfather was a bookie and Tony was always just a bad gambler. So instead of My grandpa having his knees capped, he made a deal Tony would pay for college.

That college fund that they were always talking about had $148.74 in it.

That secret was revealed to me not when I reached adulthood but when my father passed away. When I was a baby, I had a baby doll which I loved. I still have that doll now that I am 28 y.o. One day, a month about after my fathers death, my mother told me that he had bought me 3 same baby dolls and when the one I was using had gotten damaged, he secretly replaced her with a new one. He kept that secret as a present for the day of my wedding, along with all the baby dolls I had used all those years. He didn’t make it to reveal it to me himself.

My grandma owned a bar when we were growing up but also ran a huge bookie/betting service from the bar. I didn’t know until she passed away. It all made sense, the random police showing up, the robberies.

My grandfather was a small business owner who everyone always thought of as extremely frugal due to growing up poor. Later we found out he spent a significant amount of money on charitable causes and helped a lot of his employees with financial and in one case legal trouble. Positive secret, but it was definitely a secret.

When I was a kid, I used to be friends with the next door woman, who was about 20 years old. To me she was a best friend because she would read to me, or play with me or take me to walks. One morning I woke up and her dad was at my house and gave me a painting she made, then my parents told me my friend had to move to another city for work and she left me the painting to remember her. Some time later we moved to another city but returned years after when my dad died. I found the dad and sister were living there still. There I knew the truth, my friend had died on a car accident back then, but they decided to lie to me because they didn’t want to hurt me.

When we went to go spend the weekend with Aunt and Uncle, Mom and Dad would do a little meth and clean the entire house from top to bottom in about two hours and spend the rest of the weekend “being mom and dad”.

I am 43 and recently found out that my grandfather, he had passed away before I was born, was in prison when he was 16 for killing his father. There were reports of child and spouse abuse and alcoholism. My family looks at is as he was protecting his siblings. When he got out of prison he met my grandmother and they had 11 children that be protected until his death!

The real reason they got divorced. My dad’s a literal cuck and my mom wasn’t into it.

That when my mom met my dad in college, he was her weed and acid dealer

My aunty casually brought up one Christmas after my dad had died that he went missing for TWO YEARS when he was twenty and nobody ever knew where he went! He just reappeared one day “looking like jesus” and never explained where he went or what happened and then continued on living his life and literally no-one ever mentioned it again so I never got to ask him about it. So wild.