Lighthearted - is there anything that you did as a child that you feel guilty about to this day?

[redflowerbluethorns]

Lighthearted post. Here are my things that have stuck with me:

Age 5 eating my brothers flake bar which he'd saved for days, then denying all knowledge

Age 12 (this is a bit outrageous), my best friend was coming for a sleepover. My mum told me she'd bought special snacks and rented a video because the next day my best friends mum was moving her to AUSTRALIA but she didn't know so I couldn't tell her. I didn't. We had a great sleepover but the whole time I was sad because I wouldn't see her again. She was telling me how her mum had booked for them to go to legoland the next day and she couldn't wait...the next day comes, she left, I got a phone call a few hours later saying her mum had lied about legoland and that they were at the airport to move to Australia :( she was sobbing and I had to act shocked.
I think about it all the time and wonder if I should have told her.

Kicked my little brother in the balls, he cried and cried!

Just remembered another one. I was a quiet introverted child who stayed at home most of the time and didn't have many friends. At 13 I made friends with another girl my age and she invited me out for the night with her other friends, who were older. My dad told me it was fine as long as I didn't go to any pubs. That was the only caveat.

We were out very late in a park in the city, and the group, predictably, decided to go to a pub. I told my friend that I wasn't allowed to, and asked if she'd go home with me then instead. No. I also, stupidly, didn't know how to get home by myself (overprotective parents, driven everywhere, never been out on my own at night before, and my friend and I were supposed to come back together).

I'm left with the choice of being in this random park late at night, on my own, not knowing how to get home, or going to the pub with the others. So I go to the pub.

Of course my dad figured it out. He didn't speak to me for days. I felt so bad. It was years later before I explained the thought process to him and how it had seemed like the best of two bad options.

Dad had bought me a transistor radio. Loved it and decided to be cool by swinging it around. The very cheap plastic casing broke Dad of course noticed it was damaged. He asked who broke it. Quick as a flash I replied it was my little brother!!

Readers, I felt every single wallop he got and still feel very guilty about it!!

Found out about Father Xmas not being real at age 9 and told my 6 year old sister. She was heartbroken and my Mum didn't speak to me for days !

My dad also had a transistor radio and I wondered if I put it in water the music would sound all bubbly like the radios did in cartoons! It didn't. It broke. I feigned ignorance.
I was in the first year of secondary school so old enough to know better 🫢🤦🏿‍♀️

Feel guilty no more...I once saw on TV a programme explaining that spiders curl themselves into a bubble and have air to breath when they are being washed down the plug hole. That's why they come back.
I've probably not explained that so well, but you needn't feel guilty any more!

@Saracen That is a really beautiful post and has made me teary. You are right - we need lessons, even when we give them to ourselves. The fact we feel bad about things is much better than the alternative. If you understand why you did what you did and how you learned from it, you can move on. You have to keep the memory of the guilt or you'd do it again.

@Saracen that's absolutely spot on. Thank you. And you're right, I have high morals about not stealing these days and I hope I've impressed them on my children.
Also made me a bit teary,what you wrote, probably because it's true.

When I was about 8 we had a large, dark coloured painting on the wall, I scratched my favourite girls name into the corner of it with a compass point. I have no idea why, it haunted me for years! God knows how my parents never noticed it as it was so clear to me. The picture is long gone but I still wonder what on earth possessed me, and I also shamefully admit to being ready to deny all knowledge of it if they did notice!

I used to write notes from my mother to get excused from Games when the weather was bad, the wind fair whipped across the valley, I bought a proper writing pad and envelopes too. I must have been over 40 when I told her and she was furious!

I created a FB account impersonating my biology teacher and gave the kids I didn't like in my class a bunch of homework and scare the crap out of a couple of them pretending I knew they had cheated on an exam.

and scared*

When I was around 10 my friend and I lived on a new estate that was still being built. One weekend we decided to explore the half built houses. In one of the houses we found various things left by the builders- half empty coffee cups, bottles of milk etc. We spent a happy few minutes emptying all the coffee and milk into the men’s wellie boots that they’d also left. We thought it was so funny but I’ve felt guilty for years about those poor men turning up for work and sticking their feet into these horrible boots full of rancid milk and coffee. Then having to work the rest of the day in soggy, smelly socks and damp boots.

Sorry but I proper laughed out loud at that! I wonder what he thought. Did he realise where it had come from?

Oh god that poor girl, I hope she was OK in the end.

My Aunt lived in a street of terraced houses with no garden and we used to tie string across the street from one knocker, handle, letter box to the one opposite, knock on the door and run away.

Just before our Grammar School Speech Day, a big event held in a local Hall, the guest speaker had said it was a disgrace that young people didn't know the National Anthem. We, the Upper Vith, managed to get a couple of compliant teachers to print off the first three verses, then we circulated them round the school and told them to learn them all. On the night the organist played the first verse and when he'd finished the school carried on for two more verses, the Head's gown was flying, he was apoplectic! The speaker had the good grace to stand up, smile and say Touche, and, to the Head she said I'm sure there'll be no consequences!

are you me?! I stole my cousin's doll pillow because it was so pretty and she always had all the nice stuff 😧
I still feel guilty to this day!

I've just remembered a boy with dreadful acne who we used to sing Spotty Muldoon at, we should have known better, we were about 14+, sorry if you read this Philip!
Can't imagine a song like that being allowed on the radio these days

lyricsplayground.com/alpha/songs/b/balladofspottymuldoonthe.html

I don't think I'm you (my hair isn't ginger), but I am certainly relieved to hear I have a sister-in-crime...

Not me but when my little girl was around 3 we were having our house built we were looking round a builders merchants at the bathroom suites that were all set out and we were choosing our colour, suddenly we heard a shout, mummy daddy I’ve finished it was my young daughter telling us she’d just done a wee in one of the toilets on display!

Some one did this to me at primary school, I'm 47 this year and the lead is still in my thumb and visible!

Me, my neighbour and her younger sister "harvested" all the peas and runner beans from their garden. We mixed them up in a bowl, added flour, water and salt and microwaved it to make "flan". Then we stripped the lavender in the front for garnish.

Neighbour's mum was furious and made us eat the "flan". It was obviously revolting but we stoically pretended it was delicious. It had taken them ages to grow the peas and beans and we destroyed the lot. And the lavender never really grew back. In fact it was still there, half bald, until a couple of years ago. My guilt has dissipated now I'm not faced with it every time I visit my mum!

Sorry Mr and Mrs L.

I've just thought of one
My best friend's father has a large coin collection. He had the coins neatly put in blue books with little slots where each particular coin was meant to go.
One summer a new convenience shop opened up down the road...since neither of us got pocket money, we didn't have a cent to our names...Girlfriend came up with the brilliant idea to take a few coins from her DF collection every day for weeks.
As far as I know, he never discovered our thievery, but it still haunts me.....especially when I think of the possibility of us spending a coin with $$$$$ value on a penny piece of candy.🫣

Not lighthearted, but something I've felt guilty for my whole life.

My Dad killed himself, when we told my cousin/his nephew (they were extremely close), he ran out the house, distraught. We ran after to hold him/stop him doing something silly. So a bit of a kerfuffle in the street if you will.

A lady drove past, then reversed back, then shouted out her window, was everything OK. My 18 year old self was rude to her, said it wasn't a circus and to bugger off basically.

Now she may have been a nosey Nora, or maybe she was genuine - but I feel bad about it.