Now I feel guilty - minor accident/lie 40+ yrs ago!!

[sunnyweatherplease]

I was talking to my mum earlier and she reminded me of an accident I had when I was about 9 on a residential trip.
She relayed how apparently I hadn't been watching where I was going and fell over and hit my face/mouth on a stone, resulting in a lot of blood and facial swelling for a few days.
The issue is, that's not what happened at all! We had been told not to play in the nearby stream. We played in the stream and I slipped and landed on my face resulting in the described injury. We lied to the adults with the above story.

Now I feel guilty about keeping this secret from my mum all this time! Should I fess up? Or take it to my grave?!! I actually feel worse for lying all these years, whenever (v occasionally) it was mentioned, rather than for playing in the stream in the first place! Which is worse? Does it matter? Should I just keep the lie up?

DH says keep quiet, but I feel like I should spill the beans.

I mean the 2 stories are quite similar, you ultimately slipped/fell and hit your face on a hard surface. I don’t think it’s something that realistically changes much either way.

If that's the worst thing you've done in 49 years you should expect to be made into a Saint.

And, she's your mother. She probably already knows what happened, via her maternal super powers.

😂

Seriously? Forget about it. As lies go it fits into the ‘slight deviation of the truth’ category which is entry level and not worth the space it’s taking up. Your mum undoubtedly already knows EXACTLY what happened and only brings it up to wind you up.

Oooooohhhhhh nooooooooo - I'm def no Saint!

I think it's just hit me that I've kept this little lie going for so many years from my mum! I mean, it doesn't get mentioned very often, but as an adult I probably should have owned up by now!

I honestly don't think she knows. I like the idea of it being an entry level lie. Thank you. I'll just keep quiet I think. But I do feel bad for keeping it going!

Of course, the situation would not happen these days as there would be cctv, and someone would have probably sued the site for a (non existent) dangerous path!! And the stream would be fenced off securely, and we wouldn't have been left unsupervised!!! But that was the brilliance of a 1970's childhood 😂

OMG if I went though all the lies I told my parents, we'd never speak about anything else. They certainly didn't stop at 9yo.

Mum just laughs when I do though.

The secrets of maternal intuition, like when you have said 'dont okay in the stream' and then your kid comes home crying covered in blood and also soaking wet lol

There's no way op's mum doesn't know.

That's more an omission than a lie. I'd want my DC to tell me if it was weighing on them, but equally wouldn't care about them having ommited it.
Just say to her "you know you thought I wasn't looking where I was going on that trip, we'd actually played in the stream! It was a good lesson to listen to adults in future we were so worried about being caught out that we said I'd just tripped on the path"
It's a complete non issue and extremely normal 9 year old behaviour in every way.

I guess it just feels odd at my age to be holding up a silly little trivial lie to my elderly mother! I don't think it's actually about what happened, it's more about not being honest to my mum for all these years! It's an odd feeling.
There's probably a whole thread about "silly non-truths you kept going for years from your parents"!

It really doesn't matter.

Do you have your own children? If so, don’t you fully know they sometimes lie to you? And also that it’s natural and normal and you smile to yourself about it when they’re not looking because it’s so blatantly a lie?

"Oh yes, it was a bit of a do mum" move the conversation on. She raises it because she never believed the story I suspect.

My DC have fussed up to a couple of lies over the years. (The rugby ball through the kitchen window, the controls thrown at the TV in temper). Eye roll, and a yes it all seemed far fetched at the time.

To be honest, what strikes me as odd here is that this is even occurring to you as an issue -- it makes me wonder what sort of relationship you can possible have with your mother if you're wondering whether you should confess to a childhood white lie decades and decades on? Do you struggle with boundaries? Do you feel infantilised? Do you think your mother deserves to know literally every single thing you've ever done or not done?

I love my mother, but there are huge amounts of things about me she doesn't know because I have concealed them from her, eg that I was SA as a child, that I had a termination many years ago before it was legal in my home country, that I have had cancer. What would be the point of telling her?