AskReaders: What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve bullshi**ed someone into believing?

Sometime ago we asked our regular contributors through e-mail, What’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve bullshi**ed someone into believing? We got many interesting response. Here are some of them. We have just copied and pasted their responses, not editing them in any way and most of the respondents have requested to stay anonymous, so no names will be published. Enjoy.

1-5 Ridiculous Things You Bullshi**ed About

1. In my freshman year of college I convinced a lot of people that I was paying my way through college with residual checks from my time as an original Kidz Bop Kid.

2. I once worked with a couple who liked the idea of going to Everest, but really didn’t fancy the effort of the huge trek to get there. I told them it was a lot easier now that a huge series of chairlifts had just been installed which went all the way to base camp. One Monday morning they arrived at the office and had a pop at me because they’d been to a travel agency to book a trip and the travel agent had promptly laughed at them.

3. This was a few weeks ago. I was discussing with my co-worker how scientists recently discovered a new dinosaur species; they found tons and tons of female fossils, but none male. So scientists figured that it might be the earliest evidence of lesbianism in the animal kingdom. She was like, “How can they tell it is female from a fossil?” And I told her it had to do with certain bones that are found only in the pubic area and the lack of certain bones that are found around the penile area. She was fascinated. It went on for about 20 minutes until I told her they named the species was lickalottapuss.

4. As a Welsh person, I have a story about sheep. I once managed to convince my non Welsh friends that Welsh sheep know how to use pedestrian crossings. They didn’t believe me, but I kept at it, and eventually they started to come round. Months later, we were doing a pub crawl in the valleys when we suddenly saw a gang of sheep standing by some traffic lights, looking gormless in a way only sheep and guinea pigs can do. We stopped for a moment, wondering what was about to happen, when suddenly the pedestrian crossing light turned green and the sheep trotted slowly and carefully across the road. My friends: “Bloody hell John, I thought you were kidding!” My jaw was hitting the floor.

5. There is a girl I work with who is extremely gullible, and pretty much believes anything that sounds even sort of plausible, so me and my roommate (who also worked there) would come up with lots of vaguely-believable things to tell her. Things we successfully convinced her of:

• That North Dakota is the highest-elevated point in North America, and as a result the moon appears 20% larger in that state. Most of North Dakota’s money comes from their moon-viewing tourism industry.
• The name ‘Manuel’ is Spanish for ‘bagel.’ We work at a Tim Hortons, so every once in a while she would hand someone a bagel and say “Here is your…Manuel!”
• That we shouldn’t use the word ‘chisel’ because it’s a racial slur against mixed-race African-Asians.
• That my roommate was feral as a child six months after being lost in the woods, and that his speech impediment was a result of the language delays that feral children acquire.

6-10 Ridiculous Things You Bullshi**ed About

6. When my children were all much smaller, I convinced them that it was illegal to supply balloons to minors. I have PTSD and the sound of the balloons popping was terrifying to me, and I didn’t want to deal with it. So I told them that they were illegal. It worked quite well except when we’d be in restaurants and an innocent waitress would sweetly say to them, “Do you want a balloon?” And one of them would say, “Do you want to go to PRISON?! I’m six!”

7. My friend asked me how to say “f**k you” in Vietnamese, I instead taught him to say “I eat sh*t.” He spent the day telling all the Vietnamese people in our school that he eats sh*t, people were too stunned to say anything, so he made it through the day without anyone spoiling it.

8. My mate had a dumb, annoying 20 something year old girlfriend. He also doesn’t eat onion. One night we tricked her into thinking that when he was growing up he had an imaginary friend called Freddie and that Freddie was an onion. That’s why he didn’t eat onions. We said our friend was very self-conscious and emotional about it and didn’t talk about it. Days later she said to him, “it’s okay, I know about Freddie.” He had no idea what she was talking about. She totally believed it.

9. I convinced my kids that the Colonel Sanders head on the KFC sign is a guy called Ken Tucky, and that’s why it’s called Ken Tucky Fried Chicken. Also once my cousins and I were in a Ben & Jerry’s and there was a picture on the wall of Ben, Jerry, and this little Asian dude in between them. Just some fan I’m sure. So, my younger cousin asked who the other guy was and his brother said, “that’s ‘And’.” All the younger cousins believed him.

10. I told my mum that there’s no internet on Christmas Day because it’s a public holiday. She has spent the past five Christmases without the internet and I just don’t have the heart to tell her I was joking.

11-15 Ridiculous Things You Bullshi**ed About

11. In high school, a friend and I once convinced an acquaintance that a wonton was a small furry animal that lived in the back of Chinese restaurant. To make the soup, these animals were boiled and skinned before being tossed into the soup. This kid not only believed us, but went up to the teacher and told him of his newly learned fact. That teacher’s face contained the most pure look of disappointment I have ever seen.

12. When I was in high school our band marched in the Independence Day Parade in D.C. This would have been late 80’s. While getting ready a lady from Ohio came up to us, intrigued by our southern accents (rural town in Alabama). She started talking slowly to us, and it kind of hacked me off. I started into a story about how poor we all were. That my dad was a grit farmer and times were especially tough since the naughas had ruined the crop (small critter, like a beaver used to make Naugahyde that takes 10-15 to cover a Laz-Boy), so my daddy had taken to running moonshine up to TN just to make ends meet. I ended my story telling her our band had to have 27 bake sales just to get shoes for everyone. I did not think she believed me, until her eyes started watering and she commended us for our dedication and hoped we liked, “the big city.”

13. When me and my siblings were much younger my dad owned a Volvo car with a computerised voice. It was a very deep voice that would give you warnings about the car’s status. “The boot (trunk) is not shut” being one I remember. Very creepy now I look back at it. Me, my older brother and our dad would joke that the voice came from “a little man” inside the car. My younger sister was at an age where you could tell her anything and she would take it as gospel. She actually believed there was a tiny person with an extraordinarily deep voice living in the car. We kept it going for a long time until one day someone crashed into the vehicle and it ended up in the scrapyard. As she cried for the safety of the little man we had to tell her the truth. She was mad at us for weeks.

14. In year 8, I convinced a girl that the term ‘Jew’ referred to famous black people. To her, this meant that everyone from Obama to Oprah were Jews. Will Smith? Jew. Nelson Mandela? Jew. Samuel L Jackson? Jew.

15. My buddy convinced a girl that bears lay eggs and she would state it as fact until she was almost out of high school.

16-20 Ridiculous Things You Bullshi**ed About

16. You know how there’s those silly dumb laws, like in Oregon, “Ice cream may not be eaten on Sundays”, or in Texas, “It is illegal for one to shoot a buffalo from the second story of a hotel?” When we were visiting Pearl Harbor, my dad convinced me that there was a dumb law on the books that said “on the grounds of the USS Arizona War Memorial, the United States shall officially remain at war with the empire of japan.” He then pointed at a bunch of Japanese tourists, and said that, technically, we were still allowed to kill them, as long as both us and the Japanese people were actually within the memorial. He went on to say “of course, it would be a terrible thing to do, and nobody wants you to do it. I’m just saying, if you pushed one of them into the water, the only thing they could charge you with is littering.” Then my stepmother whacked him in the back of the head and said “shut up, he’s going to actually do it!” Which I found very offensive, because obviously I’m not just rarin’ to murder strangers, restrained only by the law.

17. Me and a friend convinced a lot of people we were twins but with different mother. The best part was he’s half Asian and I’m white.

18. I used to tell my brother I was working for a spy organization and that if he wanted to join in, he would have to complete simple tasks without alerting our parents. Such as making me a sandwich while I played the Sega Genesis.

19. My mum told me that when I was in primary school I managed to convince the teacher that I couldn’t do homework as I was busy helping on the farm I lived on. At the time my mother asked if I ever had any homework to do, I’d tell her no. I got found out at the parents evening at the end of the year when my teacher asked my mum if I would have any free time to do homework next term.

20. I had two facebook accounts under different names…most other stuff was similar. So I have a friend on the facebook under my name discover my other one and he sent a friend request to it. Which I accepted. I then set forth and convinced him that I actually was two different people who just happened to look identical and worked in the same place and on the odd occasion, went on vacation together. Dumbest person I know in real life.

21-25 Ridiculous Things You Bullshi**ed About

21. I once convinced the midwestern girl I was dating that in my country we all drop to a knee and jazz-hands at the end of the Nigerian national anthem.

22. I convinced a girl I was dating in the early 90s that the Pearl Jam song “Even Flow” was an homage to the popular baby supply company Evenflo. Broke the lyrics down and made them all metaphors for the wonder and awe in a newborn baby’s eyes, the joy of discovery, etc.

23. Oh yeah! Convinced our office hypochondriac, who was flying off on holiday, that he had to notify the airline medical staff about the small cut he had on his arm. Why? Because, I told him, aircraft cabin pressure meant that open cuts, even if they’d partially healed, would burst open, and spray blood all over the inside of the aircraft and he could bleed out. I mixed in some truth – that airliner cabins are pressurized, yes, but to the equivalent of about 6,500 feet, so there was still a substantial pressure differential. The funny thing is that he asked other people to corroborate this, and they, not even knowing that I’d ‘briefed’ him, realized instantly that this was a wind-up and backed up every word. He actually went off to phone the airline, and came back with a face like thunder, swearing at me. I also convinced another colleague, who was flying off to Dubai and had asked whether it was a ‘dry’ state that he needed to buy a Westerner’s ‘booze pass’ on arrival at the airport. Told him that yes, you can drink in Dubai, but alcohol is only for Godless Westerners, and the Arabs have a system in place: on arrival, you have to present your passport and in return, for a few dirhams, you get a Booze Ticket, which you have to present at every bar or shop, when buying alcohol. Otherwise you have to stay teetotal. He wasted a couple of hours Googling where to find the Booze Pass office at the airport, before he too called the airline and came back swearing.

24. In high school my girlfriend drove a Miata. Sometimes she let me drive it to school. I’m stepping out of it and a class mate with an excited look and wide eyes says “Sweet car! I’ve never seen anything like it before! What is it?” Even though it says Mazda right on the back I decided to mess with him and told him it was a special edition Japanese Ferrari and that it was extremely rare. He wasn’t convinced, so I decided to see how long I could drag it out and began showing him pictures of old Ferrari roadsters and told him the Miata I was driving was the final, more modern evolution. As far as I know he still thinks Miatas are made by Ferrari.

25. At an old work place, a colleague and I convinced our manager that Saddam Hussein was my uncle and that he sent me great Christmas presents. After I went home I had assumed that my colleague would tell the manager that we were kidding. Months later I find out that not only did the manager still believe it, he had told everyone else at the work place. It was pretty hilarious at the time.