Around 1995-ish I rented the movie Back To The Future 2 on VHS from our local video shop (Raven Video). I loved it so much that instead of just returning it, I dismantled a VHS video cassette that we had of a show called Button Moon, dismantled the BTTF video, swapped over the reels and returned BTTF with the Button Moon innards.
I remember specifically that there was a tamper hologram sticker on the bottom of the BTTF cassette, but I was able to open it up like a butterfly and swap it out without actually damaging the hologram.
I was only about ten and I can still remember my heart racing as my dad pulled his car up outside the video shop so I could return it. I remember the nervous feeling of sliding it across the counter to the guy, saying “thank you” and scurrying off back to the car. I went home that night and watched the fuck out of that movie in my bedroom knowing that it was mine to keep.
For about 2 months I expected the police or a swat team to turn up at our door, or at the very least a call from the video shop to my parents (who were the account holders) but it never came. Every time the door bell rang I was expecting to be walking out in hand cuffs. Ending up in court and on the front page of the newspaper for stealing a VHS video cassette from Raven Video Rental.
I never told anyone about it and I still feel bad about it. I wonder if anyone ever rented it after me for movie night, and it was Button Moon, which was a young kid’s TV show. I used the video shop loads of times after that and always wondered if the guy knew what I did. I assumed he did know but just couldn’t prove it. I already planned that if he ever did ask me about it, I’d say that I rented it but never actually got around to watching it, so I never noticed it was Button Moon, and therefore it must have been the person that rented it before me..
Either way, I got away with it, and I had many years of sweet sweet BTTF2 goodness, with a side order of guilt,
What’s yours?
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When I was six, passing through the locker room I saw three Warhammer models had fallen out of someone’s locker. Impulsively and without thinking I picked them up, put them in the urinal and peed on them then went back to the classroom without thinking any more of it.
After lunch all the boys in the school were held behind and we were shouted at for five minutes straight by the scariest teacher in the school – “I WILL FIND THE VERMIN WHO DID THIS AND YOU WILL BE SEVERELY PUNISHED, MARK MY WORDS”.
I was never caught but I spent the next week in fear for my life. I still don’t know what possessed me. Sorry Thomas for peeing on your toys.
A friend of mine came to visit for a week, she forgot a hair bobble at my place and asked me to post it to her (it was her favourite one). Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and my lazy arse just couldnt be bothered to find an envelope, buy a stamp and post the damn thing. She asked after it and I swore up and down I sent it, must have got lost in the mail! No Heaven for me….
Went to a school weekend trip away to an activity centre thing. Being an idiot, jumped out of a low window and ripped a hole in my amazing new trackie bottoms. Cried because I was so worried I’d get in trouble. Got home and lied through my teeth to my mom and said they got rip doing an activity. I remember the news about Maddie McCann really kicking off in those few days after I got back and it really took the heat off me and my terrible lie.
No idea why I felt the need to lie or why it was such a big deal at the time but here we are.
i used to wipe my boogers on my furniture when i was a kid, i used to kinda enjoy picking my nose and i wasnt the type that would eat it so i would just wipe it in every nook and cranny i could find. the odd occasion my older brother would discover it and get pissed off at me but i’d just deny it and then continue my dastardly activity.
i do have more f’ed up secrets but i dont want to have to delete this account so the secrets stay with me!
In junior school I thought it would be funny to lock each of the toilet cubicles from the inside. I bolted the door shut, then used the toilet roll holder screwed to the side to climb into the next cubicle, then did it again and again. The last one I came to, I put my foot with all my weight onto the toilet roll holder and it literally tore off the wall and took a massive piece of the wall with it, basically split the wood down the middle. It was the wall of the actual toilet, that crappy mdf-type wood with a fake wood shiny finish.
About an hour later the whole school were called into an assembly about it, telling us that they might have to get the police involved if the culprit doesn’t own up. I never said a word.
When I was about five, I was playing with the cat’s biscuit bowl with my foot, just rocking it backwards and forwards. Inevitably, I pushed too hard and some of the biscuits fell onto the floor. My mum came in and asked what happened (I remember her being quite shocked, as if she walked into a crime scene). I was scared so I blamed the cat.
My mum gave the cat a light smack and called her naughty. I still feel bad about it, but thinking back, what was my mum doing reprimanding a cat. As if the cat understood, or cared even if she could lol.
When I was about 9 I unscrewed a spotlight that was attached to a metal fence at a fair while queueing to go on a ride, shortly after it fell on a women and broke her leg.
When I was about nine I loved playing with matches. One day during the summer when our neighbours were out I set fire to their palm tree. Everyone blamed the teenage lad who lived behind the neighbours as he had been caught stealing apples from their tree the previous year, even the police. No one ever suspected me, little angel face.
When I was 7 I lied on the blue Peter website in order to get a blue badge. It was successful, so I did it again for a green one. Said I made a compost bin at my school or something.
For years I was terrified the blue Peter police would get me. Or they’d turn up at my school to give me the badge in person. Decades on and I still feel so guilty about it!
I shared this story on another Reddit thread recently and was utterly relieved to see so many other kids had done the same thing lol.
My brother told me to steal a My little pony accessory from my friend. She had been bragging about it. I idolised him so I did it. She was so sad that she couldn’t find it. I felt sick every time I opened the cupboard that contained it. I was 5 I think.
When did this sub become American? These replies are not the Britain I know.
Probably the most mental thing I went with as a nipper. Aged 4/5?
There was a big thing about a kid wanting to show off his scooby doo watch. Like the teacher had him show it off in the morning and put it on display so anyone that didn’t get a look after it went in your noggin could… Have another look?
Anyway I took it, put it on.and when asked said it was mine and I had my own.
It was taken off me and, rather than being left out, put away.
Sorry for trying to nick your watch Connor. Hope you’re not still leaving your watches unattended and flagging them off to people. If I see you and you’re wearing one of those Simpsons Doughnut swatches I’m nicking it while you go to the bathroom.
I’m the guy who rented the tape before you, and I’ve just finished a 25 year sentence for Button Moon video fraud.
We need to talk.
In primary school and my parents had bought me a watch that could turn a TV on/off or change channels.
During one lesson I turned the TV off as a laugh and it turned out that the teacher didn’t have the remote and it was actually impossible to turn back on without it!
Me being a kid I just hid my watch and played innocent with the few classmates who knew I had it
For some reason they believed me when I said it must have been the TV being broken lol.
When I was on holidays when I was about 7 years old, we were staying in an apartment near a beach.
I stole 2 or 3 small plastic farm animals from the shop downstairs, stuffing them in my pocket. I even saw them beforehand and had schemed the heist.
When I got out, I couldn’t take them back to the apartment coz my parents would go WTF.
So I just left them in the lift.
As double guilt, the lift had a sign that said no kids under 12 without an adult.
So I was wracked with anxiety that day.
My friend and I found a bag of change (mostly 5p’s and pennies) under a hedge in our street. We moved the loot and funded a crisps and sweet filled, otherwise boring, summer with it, but felt so scared that men with guns were gonna come and find their stash that we’d intercepted 🤦😂
For context, it was the late 80’s / early 90’s and you could still get 5p crisps, so we felt pure minted. And we lived in a scheme that openly came round with cash tins collecting and fundraising for the IRA – aka “the cause”.
Looking back, some kid probably nicked it from their parents and stashed it for later but we were sure the men with guns would find us
In 1998, I was year 11. Big oasis fan. They were releasing their album Masterplan.
The track list was announced before the album was, or leaked or something along them lines. I noticed I had all of the songs, I had every single one as they were all b-sides from all of their released singles.
So I recorded them all onto a tape in the right order, then told everyone my uncle could get bootleg albums on tape for a fiver each!
When I say everyone, I mean my closest childhood friends!
My friend distracted the bloke on the counter at our local spa whilst me and a mate stole 10+ Cadburys creme eggs. The reason I feel so bad is the shop was run by 2 brothers who really cared about their local community. They’d give out free water and lollies in the summer, people hard up would get free bread, eggs etc. just 2 really nice blokes trying to make a living and looking out for the locals.
There was only 3 of us and we couldn’t even eat all the creme eggs. We fed one to a dog and threw the majority of them. I wouldn’t feel bad if we nicked them from a big Tesco or Sainsbury’s.
I also around the same time really wanted a star wars jawa figure from my local after school club so when no one was looking I threw it over the fence. When my mum picked me up and we walked down the alley I picked it up and came up with a big song and dance to tell my mum, being 7/8 it was obvious I was making shit up… “Oh look mum, I randomly found a Jawa figure. I’ll take it home and look after it, it’s a shame to leave it outside where it will get ruined.” I don’t feel bad about that though as Simon always hoarded the star wars figures and he was a little prick.
I collected match attax and was always allowed 2/3 packets a week if I behaved well, one Friday we went up the local front street and bought some packets – they were all swaps or terrible.
After that we went into the Co-op which was struggling due to the arrival of a Tesco in our village, and my auntie worked there. They sold match attax magazines with limited edition packs and players only available if you bought the magazine, I stole the pack from the front of the magazine and got the limited edition player.
The co-op closed down a few weeks later and 11 year old me always blamed myself for stealing a match attack that lost my auntie her job.
Caution not a fun story:
When I was 8 or 9 I’d scratched a wooden surface with a compass or something. I was really interested to see how it made lines on the wood. I’d made a fun pattern.
A few days go by and my dad noticed and went ballistic grabbing me and my brother and being really aggressive, shouting at us, telling us he knew when we were lying (clearly he did not). Eventually he ended up beating my four year old sister in front of me and I’ve never felt such shame.
I’m grown enough now to know it’s not my fault but part of me still wishes I was strong or brave enough to have stood up and taken the beating instead of my little sister.
i paid a 8 quid bill
with a tenner in blockbuster. got change for a 20. the shame….
when I was a kid I managed to get a code out of a club penguin magazine without taking it out of the plastic bag it was in
I feel bad for whoever bought the magazine and discovered the code didn’t work for them 😭
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I was about 8 at the time (c30 years ago) and me and my mum went to visit a local tile shop. There was a forklift with a bunch of keys in the ignition outside, loading stuff for customers. I climbed over it (playing) until my mum said to get off.
Whilst I was getting off, I took a massive bunch of keys out of the ignition and stuck them in my pocket. I later threw them away. Really not sure why.
Felt so shit for years after as I reckon that would have been such a pain in the ass for the driver
I set fire to the church notice board.
We’d been learning about “aging” paper in school, you know, singing the edges, staining it with tea etc. (Do kids still do that?). I wanted to practice, and the parish announcements and flyers in the church notice board looked pretty aged, so I got some matches to singe the edges. Except old, sun bleached paper burns fast, and the dried, cracked veneer burned fast, and the thin ply case caught quicker than I expected.
When the police asked if anyone saw anything at the school the next day, I said I’d seen some boys from the high school playing with matches in the church yard.
Duuuuudddeeeee!!! I used to LOVE button moon as a kid! Saw it on my old black n white TV in my mum’s room!!! (I was like, 5, so about 2007 ish?)
I hid a button under my hand when I had to sort buttons out into type by the childminder.
I was so wracked with guilt that, as I was giving the child minder the different stacks of buttons by type, I pretended to have found this extra one under my hand.
I think I was about 8.
I still feel terribly ashamed for nearly stealing a button.
From about 5 to 7 yo I would eat dog biscuits. They were shaped like a cartoon bone and about 4 inches long. I really enjoyed them! My mum would often say to me, stop feeding the biscuits to the dogs! They are only allowed one a day. We had 2x German Shepards. But mum they would whine and paw at the cupboard door. I can’t resist their sweet little faces when I gave them a biscuit each.
Yes, I blamed the dogs. BTW the dog biscuits are very hard, so you need strong teeth. They are savourly, taste sort of like they have sand in them.
On a school trip to Germany in 6th form we were sharing rooms in a hotel (2 to a room). The lad sharing with me decides to start cannon balling onto his bed. It looked fun and we’d taken advantage of the lower age for buying alcohol. So I joined in and smashed most of the slats on my bed. We bodged it so it looked ok and I slept on the floor. For months after I kept expecting a letter to come asking for the money for a new bed. Still feel bad for the person who used that bed after me.
Mid 2000s, I finally won puberty and came out the other side a strong 6/10. Small town in Devon means you move up to an 8 automatically.
My 30-something neighbour (also a very good friend of my mothers) had been widowed fairly recently and noticed me. Anyway… she had kids, and it got weird. No details but so much shame. My mum got suspicious, it was really cringey and although she made all the moves (my brain was still teenage even if my body wasn’t any more) it still makes me grimace to think about it. Hoping her kids didn’t realise 😬
Many years ago, my dad was in the armed forces, long enough ago that “the troubles” were absolutely a thing.
I grew up on bases in a few countries as a result and as a kid it was both cool and sometimes boring, so boring that we came up with this batshit idea of getting an ice cream container and filling it with plasticine, some wires and a watch.
Yup we made what we thought was a fairly authentic looking “bomb” and stuck it under a car.
Caused a huge commotion when it was found as people were routinely checking under cars in case the IRA had somehow gotten onto the base.
Bomb squad had to be called out and it was the talk of the base for a few days.
Insane thing to do looking back, it would have cost my dad (and my friends dad) his career most likely if it was ever traced back to us.
We were both terrified for months afterwards and regretted it deeply.
We never told a soul, ever.
This made me feel both like a carefree child again and also a dinosaur.
I once stole around 20 Pokemon toys from this kids birthday party
I never liked the kid but our dad’s were friends. I did my best to avoid him the whole day. I don’t know exactly how it started, just that he had so many toys I thought he wouldn’t notice a few missing
He had so many I wanted I just couldn’t stop taking them. At one point I’m walking around this kids birthday party in a big puffer jacket with dozens of these little pokemon figures stashed in the coat. It was awkward to move without making a noise. I thought at any moment I would get caught
I asked my dad if we could go. He said sit with Ben (The kid who birthday it is) for abit and we will go
He’s playing Spiderman on the playstation. I’m looking at yet another pokemon toy on the floor. I won’t get to pocket this one, he’s too close but it’s a good one.
He sees my interest and offers me it. I now feel so guilty. I don’t like him still, but any excuses I’ve told myself that this kid deserves it no longer soothes my conscience.
My dad taps me on the shoulder, I almost shit myself with surprise. We leave, I don’t return the toys.
I’ve never forgotten what I did nor did I ever confess. I look back at it as a dark moment in my life and glad to say I haven’t stolen again.
I’m forever surprised by my own audacity as well as how surreal it was I didn’t get caught. The whole thing feels like a fever dream, actions taken by another person. But I will likely never forget that day and how hard it is to reconcile with the person I have now become
When I was about 14/15, some friends and I found a way into the basement of an old woollen mill. The mill had long since stopped wool production, and the space was used as a kind of flea market and indoor cat boot place…Anyhow, the basement was a pretty cool place to hang out, plenty of old cardboard boxes to sit on and make dens with. As the weather got colder though, we thought it would be a good idea to light a fire with some of the old boxes. What could possibly go wrong?? As I ran home, my three mates behind me, I can almost still hear the sirens of the fire engines now. By the time I got home, the local news was already broadcasting from the location, reporting on the “Huge mill fire, resulting in evacuation of the surrounding streets…” What was left of the building eventually had to be knocked down as the damage was so severe. I don’t actually know what happened, but I did hear blame was put on the owner who had kept getting planning permission refused. We knew this balls up was so serious, that I don’t think any of us ever spoke to each other about it again. This was 35 years ago, so if any of the three are reading this, then I apologise lads, I finally broke.
Omg I loved button moon! I would have been made up
When I was in first year seniors the girl with a locker next to mine was in third year and a right bitch so I put rolled up sellotape in her lock. A couple of hours later I saw her and a teacher trying to work out what was wrong. I just went to mine all doo-dee-doo-dee-doooo but was shaking like a shitting dog inside. Still, sorry not sorry, she was awful to me.
Also in the mid-90s, I stole a roll of brown packing tape from Tesco. Not even like a new good roll, but a half used one that I saw tucked behind a till at the checkout. I got it home, but then was so pained by guilt that I buried it in the garden. So I am now doubly ashamed as I look back and realise I also hurt the environment.
Also there was the time I set fire to my mother’s shoes, whilst she was wearing them, that has never felt good and I wonder what I was thinking at the time.
I was playing with the glass on a ‘smash in case of fire’ type alarm at the local leisure centre in the early 2000s and suddenly it went off, all of the pools had to be evacuated in the middle of winter with dozens of shivering children standing soaked in the car park with foil blankets on for over an hour. I was about 8 and never owned up to it, on the drive home my mum blamed the naughty kids and I just nodded along.
When I was 20ish, me and my mates went on a night out in Nottingham to visit a friend who lives there. We got a hotel room, and she was to go home after the night out, that was the plan. We all got a little worse for wear and we had to carry the friend to our hotel room, rather than let her go home alone. She slept on the bathroom floor, as she needed to be close to the toilet.
Fast forward an hour or so, I wake in the night, knowing I’m going to vomit. I run to the bathroom, knowing it’s coming up exorcist style, and release the stream of vomit……all over my friend who is still headfirst in the toilet 😬 I attempt to stop and try to redirect it into the shower tray, the only other option, then stagger back to bed.
In the morning, we realise that Laura has thrown up all over the bathroom, and that horror of horrors, she’s then rolled in it in her sleep and is just covered in vomit. She must have been so out of it that she didn’t realise what was happening when I went in there. I’ve never told a soul that it was me and just let them take the piss for years.
Sorry Laura 😬🤣
My best friend accidentally left their Nintendo DS at my house and it had their Nintendogs game still in it. They’d been kind of rude to me that day while we were hanging out so I went onto the game and transferred all their dogs to the pound (or whatever it was that got rid of them, can’t fully remember).
Then when I gave it back and the dogs weren’t there, I said there must have been some sort of glitch. They were distraught, not sure if they believed me about the glitch thing but they didn’t question it to me.
I was 6 years old and lining up after playtime at primary school, waiting to be let back into the classroom, and I saw a boy in the year above me drop a toy from his bag. It bounced under coat pegs.
A short time later, I asked to leave the classroom to go for a wee, walked down the corridor and found the toy under the coat pegs, popped it into my backpack and took it home.
That toy is a 1988 Battle Beast Shadow Warrior; Rainbow Samu. It’s in mint condition and worth a bit of money as a collectors item.
I call him Eagley and he lives on a shelf in my lounge.
Basically the opposite of this. When I was about 19, I was working for a landscaping company during summer break. I was a university student at the time. My supervisor was an absolute dick. He hated the fact that I was at University, and told me he was sure that I would call in sick every few days. One day we were out cutting hedges. He was doing something with a pair of Clippers while I was picking up leaves and putting them in a bag. I had seen a couple of boys maybe 11 or 12 years old walking past in the past few minutes. He asked me where the hedge trimmer was, and I said I had no idea as I hadn’t touched it. The hedge trimmer was never found. I was sure that the two boys had done something with it because they had a weird smirk on their faces. He got really really irate and said that I had done something with it which of course I hadn’t. In the end it couldn’t be found so we went back to base. The next day I was fired for losing company property. He looked so happy. A few weeks later I found out through a friend that the hedge trimmer had been found in the field behind the Hedge we’d been cutting. I know it was those two kids, but I have no evidence. I certainly didn’t touch it. Bastards.
We had a teacher who always looked like he was asleep or just blind. He had really thick glasses and never seemed to focus his eyes on anything. One lesson we even switched seats and did a bunch of stupid things and he didn’t notice.
When we had our end of school assembly he did his usual job of getting up to read out the list of lost property that had been found. It was our last assembly so this felt like a very boring thing for him to do. He would look down at the list intently, then glance up and say names. Every time he looked down basically the entire assembly of kids would start stamping their feet, then stop as soon as he looked up. This probably happened about 5 or 6 times before he just walked off and we got a telling off from a very scary staff member.
I started the stamping.
When I was about 13/14 I used to go to ballet class which involved taking a bus into the next town. I used to wait at the same bus stop each week and most weeks I ended up getting a lift from a guy who was passing and who sang in the same choir as my Dad. Sometimes I would have my hair tied up and sometimes it would be long and loose, and sometimes I wore my glasses and sometimes not. Anyway Bill (the guy in the choir, who gave the lifts) got it into his head that I was actually twins. And used to ask which one I was!? So I played along and made up another name – Gillian, for my non-existent twin. Bill used to tell my Dad that he had picked up one of the twins going to ballet. My Dad thought he had a drink problem!!! I never confessed.
I did a 2hr overtime shift on a Sunday at double time for a supermarket I worked at when I was 17. They accidentally paid me 20hrs and I never said a word…..
Button moon was an excellent show
In yr9 of secondary school we had a chemistry lesson with a substitute teacher. He handed out these really cool little gizmos that demonstrated the action of atoms in a solid, they were like hundreds of ball bearings held between two clear sheets of perspex. Whichever way you tipped it the balls would all align in neat tesselating rows. The smallest gizmo was maybe 2.5in square and I immediately felt a mighty need to keep it. Feigning ignorance I shut it in one of my books and took it. (Bear in mind I was an absolute goody two shoes and NEVER got in trouble at school).
The substitute teacher CAME AND FOUND ME the next day and asked if I had seen the gizmo. I said I thought it had been left on the table but I would check all my belongings. While probably looking pale, bug eyed and guilty as hell. He knew… He absolutely knew.
A couple of weeks later my best friend and I were at a convention about 50 miles out of town for the weekend, and staying at a little campsite/holiday park thing. We went to check out the outdoor pool. And oh my freaking god. The substitute teacher emerged from the pool like a pasty T-1000 and said hello to us 😭 I genuinely felt in my soul like he was after me. However, it’s now 30 years later and I still have the gizmo in a little box like a dirty secret 🙈
When I was five I fell down a bank at school and muddied my trousers. My mum seemed angry about it so I told her that the school bully had pushed me down the bank (who I don’t think even knew I existed). My mum phoned the school and the headteacher made him come and apologise to me.