To get so irritated when people pretend things happened to them that clearly didn't?

[CalamityKate]

I was watching This Morning earlier and they had an email from a woman who trotted out the whole "Dug Up Rabbit" story. Of course Colleen and Ruth and Eammon had a right old laugh about it.

Which is lovely, but it didn't happen. It's an urban myth that's been repeated and repeated and repeated - often by celebrities on chat shows.

Snopes

It REALLY irritates me when people do this. Why lie? What on earth is the point of emailing a programme, pretending that something happened to you when it didn't?

I've seen it on forums too - people tell a story that is either clearly a lie (as in the Snopes example) or it just doesn't ring true and you just KNOW it's either completely made up or VERY heavily embellished.

I was actually tempted to email This Morning

They aren't all bollocks though!
A slight variation of the rabbit one: my Mum looks after pets for people when they go on holiday. One particular old dear dotes on her two budgies. Both have died in her care on separate occasions and my lovely Mum has replaced them with similar looking budgies. The old biddy thinks she has the oldest budgies in the world although one of them now has an 'attitude problem'!!!
DP works outside and he genuinely did pop a maggot out of a wound.

I know a girl who tells the most hilarious tall tales. She is the inspiration for Victoria Beckham's style and was once taken on a date to Afghanistan with a soldier boyfriend. He took her on a helicopter flight and she hung out of the window waving at the Taliban

Her dad is the same. I remember him telling me a story about loch ness type monster that had taken down a helicopter but the army were trying to keep it hush hush :o

Sad really, but very entertaining :)

'He took her on a helicopter flight and she hung out of the window waving at the Taliban'

I actually laughed so much at that bit :o

I know someone who told the tale of the person with SN who 'trapped' a small person who was a door to door salesman in the cellar believing him to be a troll.

We were all giving it chinnys in the office, she had no idea that we all knew it was an urban myth

There was a child kidnapped in a mall in western Australia who was found in the toilets with dyed hair. It wasn't so long ago, either, maybe 3 yrs. I didn't hear it, I read it on a reliable online paper.

the leaving children and forgetting them has some very tragic true happenings unfortunately where parents have driven to work forgetting to drop child at nursery as they don't often do it DW does and realising later that child was left in car and had died. There was a full article recently in a sunday newspaper with a few of these horror stories.(assumed to be true)
I once had a dream that I did exactly this, it was awful.

I got chatted up by a wierd bloke wearing a "baby grow" the other day while standing outside the pub having a fag gossiping with friends. We wouldn't even have noticed his odd attire if DS hadn't pointed it out VERY loudly. It's gonna take me weeks to live down, as I was winging about the lack of eligible batchelors just before he approached. I had no clue garments like that were even available & suspect DS will one day tell his Grandchildren and be totally disbelieved.

Fact is often way wierder than fiction. The strangest things happen to the most ordinary people. People like the OP mentions often wind up pretty lonely.