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Have you ever had an experience where it looked like you were up to something sinister, weird, or maybe even illegal but everything was totally on the level?
Those are usually the moments when you have to yell out “I can explain!”
And hopefully, you’re able to articulate yourself enough that no one calls the police on you…
Are you ready for some good, true stories?
Let’s see what AskReddit users had to say.
1. Time for an explanation.
“I used to have to unload stuff from my work truck into my garage. It wasn’t uncommon for me to forget to shut the tailgate on the covered truck bed. In the summer it wasn’t such a bad thing, but in the winter, cats would take shelter in it.
On bad nights, I would intentionally leave it open. These were cats other neighbors just let roam the neighborhood, often forgetting about them. I felt bad for them, but didn’t want to bring them into my house because I didn’t want fleas/disease transferred to my animals.
I got into the habit of smacking the bed with my hand before shutting the tailgate and driving to work. When I smacked the bed, the cats would usually jet out the back of the truck. I would do a quick look in and then shut the tailgate. One wintery, blistery day I woke up late. So I ran out the door, slammed the tailgate without thinking about or doing the obligatory bed-smack/look.
On the way to the job, I stopped to get gas at a station really close to my house and remembered I needed gas for my snowblower. I usually had a gas can in the bed. I stopped at the gas station, which was a typically busy in the morning gas station and started filling the truck.
I went back to the tailgate to open it to get the gas can out. I dropped the tailgate and about six, terrified cats came racing out of the bed. One actually ran up and over me, leaping from my shoulder. They did this big loopity-loop, panic run in the gas station and then headed off into the neighborhood. They all made it out safe and we were only a few blocks from my house.
But for one instant. Everyone in the gas station froze to stare at me. People inside were staring out at me. People at the pumps were staring at me. I’ve never felt so judged in my life, it was like i was trafficking humans. I could feel their eyes penetrating my soul. It was about 10o F out and I could feel myself starting to sweat.
When I went in to get coffee, the silence finally broke and a woman asked me what it was all about. I explained it to her, rather loudly so that everyone who witnessed it could hear it. I don’t think they believed me….”
2. Proclaim your innocence.
“I heard a story once where this guy had sex with a girl and then woke up and she had disappeared, but all of her clothes were still at his house. He was really confused and was texting her throughout the day asking what had happened and if she could come around and get her clothes.
Eventually, she comes and picks them up, but seems really embarrassed and doesn’t explain what happened the night before.
As she gets in her car, his neighbor runs out and as shes driving away, asks the guy if he knows her. The guy says yes and the neighbor says to get her back because the night before, he had seen her outside of the guys house trying to open a window to get back inside.
The neighbor went out and asked her what was wrong, and she said that she had slept-walked outside naked and couldn’t get back in. He offered to take her back into his house so she could get some clothes, to which she accepted. As shes putting these clothes on, the neighbors wife gets home, sees the naked girl putting clothes on and immediately starts shouting angrily at him as she runs out and down the street.
He wanted to get the naked girl back to testify his innocence to his wife, which she eventually did, and all was well.”
3. This is great.
“I have a friend who was once stopped while driving a white van down the motorway. The cop asked to see what was inside….
There were about 20ounces of crack, weed, heroin, crystal meth etc, six pistols, a sawn-off shotgun, a rifle, a box of ammo, a box full of knives as well as a human head, two feet and a hand.
My friend waited for the look on the cop’s face before saying “it’s okay! I have paperwork!”
He works for a forensics lab.”
4. I found it.
“One time I went to a festival with my friends, summer between junior and senior years of highschool. When we returned to the car to go home, we found a dime baggie of crack rocks on the ground. We didn’t want to smoke it, so we took it home, and I kept it in a stash box in my room.
A few months later, I come home from a party much more wasted than I should have been to drive home. It’s late, but all the lights are on in my house. My parents are awake.
I walk in and they are seated in the family room, watching TV. Being drunk, I try to treat the situation as a normal one (it’s 2 a.m., they go to bed at 11.) My dad says, “I was looking in your room today and I found this,” and my dad holds up the bag of crack I had forgotten about. “What is it?”
I shrugged and said, “It’s crack cocaine.” in my best Jerri Blank impression.
My mom says, “We know what it is…where did you get it?” her voice getting louder. I looked stunned for a second.
“I found it on the ground.””
5. I don’t know this person.
“I once got in a lift at a university halls I was visiting with a kind of drunk looking guy who had a little smile on his face, but students being students, I thought nothing of it.
As soon as the doors close he goes right in to a party boy style routine, Velcro rip off trousers and sparkly jock strap, the works. It was very funny at first so I kind of played along and danced with him, but then he proceeds to rip open my shirt and drop to his knees in front of me just as the doors open to a packed lobby, full of people waiting to go up.
The shock on the frozen faces of horror lasted until the doors closed. All I managed to blurt out was “I don’t even know this guy.”
Probably didn’t look great.”
6. White powder.
“I do a lot of crafts. 11 years ago when I moved to the UK, I was unable to ship a lot of my stuff over so I left it in storage with my mother. Less than a year later, her partner was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and they decided to move back closer to family so that they could have some extra support, and so she could spend her time left with her family.
Anyway, my mother phoned and told me if I wanted my stuff, I needed to come and get it asap.
When I went over, I took a large empty bag with me. I went through all of my stuff and sorted out things for a yard sale, and things I wanted to keep. One of the things that (for some reason) went into my ‘keep’ pile was a 5 lb jar of plaster of paris.
Now, as I said, this was a jar, which meant it was hard and unyeilding. I decided it would be much easier to pack if I poured the powder into some ziplock bags. That way, the bags could fit into any nooks and crannies I had left in the bag.
I cut the label off the jar and stuck it into one of the bags so that I would have the mixing directions, and didn’t think any more of it – until I got to the airport.
When I got to the airport and my bag was weighed, it was overweight. The guy at the check-in asked me to go through the bag and see if I could reduce some of the weight by putting anything in my carry-on. I went through the bag, and managed to reduce it by 20lbs by removing the 5lbs of plaster and a 15lb die cutting machine, which I somehow managed to fit into my carry-on.
Next stop, security. This is where my decision to put the plaster in my carry-on suddenly turned into “I can explain!!!”
After walking through the metal detector, I noticed a member of security standing with their arms around my bag. I approached and he said “is this your bag?” I nodded yes and he asked me to follow him.
This was only months after 9-11 and I’d only just encountered men with machine guns in the airport so I was feeling a bit apprehensive, as I couldn’t think what I could have done wrong.
We went to another area where there were all sorts of testing machines. He asked me to take off my shoes and belt (keep in mind this was more than 10 years ago so it was not standard practice at that point).
Then, he starts unpacking my carry-on. He reaches in and pulls out – a bag of white powder. Then another one. And another one… until he had 5 bags of white powder in front of him. When he’d pulled out the first one I immediately realised what it looked like and I couldn’t help myself, I started laughing.
Thank goodness the guy had a sense of humour because when I told him what it was, he kind of chuckled too, but stated that he still had to test it. I had nothing to hide so I was happy to let him do so.
I made my flight with no problem. I bet that guy still tells the story of the woman with the 5 bags of white powder. I know I do!”
7. The same cop pulled up…
“This occurred a bout 15 years ago. I was at a Denny’s in a small, rural, North Carolina town. I was around 17 or 18 years old, I guess, and had been hanging out with a bunch of friends that night. I had a new (to me) car and my friends were checking it out in the parking lot. It was around 11pm or so.
One of my friends, a female, remarks that the trunk of the car is so big that she could probably fit inside it and would find it comfortable. She asks me to help her into the trunk, so I pick her up and start to put her in there. In the process of doing so, she dropped her keys on the parking lot.
A moment later, a police officer pulls up and angrily asks me WTF I’m doing. I explain to him that she wanted to see if she would fit int he trunk. He had heard her screaming — but it was actually just loud laughter.
He asked the keys that were on the ground. I explained that she dropped them. He wanted to know “How she dropped them way over there.” I had to explain that she had been standing there previously before I picked her up.
Things are eventually cleared up after she spoke up and explained that we were just goofing around. He told me he didn’t want to see me back there that night and to “not be droppin’ no more keys.”
A day passes and I find myself at Denny’s late at night with a different set of friends. I’m recounting the story of the previous night when another female friend says “Oh! I want to try the trunk thing!”
Being the stupid kid that I am, I pick her up and walk over to my trunk just as the SAME FREAKING COP pulls up again.
I put her back on her feet, we got in my car, and left before he said anything.
He didn’t bother to follow me or arrest me or anything. I’m really not sure how I got away with that.”
8. What’s the camera for?
“I was shooting a movie with some friends and one scene was a couple in bed having an argument. They filmed at my home and we were gonna do a few more takes later and the team decided to leave the equipment at my house.
I go on a date with a girl and everything is well and good and she gets brought back to my place. Things get serious and we head to the bedroom where she is greeted with camera equipment aimed at the bed. She is creeped out and I explained…
She wasn’t that understanding.”
9. That doesn’t sound good.
“My wife found an empty condom wrapper in my car.
Explanation: Wife and I still use condoms. I occasionally fling the wrapper dramatically in the heat of the moment and yes, sometimes I forget to pick it up and throw it out.
One day we had company over. I was leading a few people (who we didn’t know that well) into the bedroom to show them something, and I see the condom wrapper peeking out from under the dresser. I quickly picked it up and shoved it into my pocket and forgot about it.
Maybe a week later I wore the pants again. While in the car I reached into my pocket for some change for the meter–the condom wrapper fell out. I puzzled for a minute…then remembered how it got there and tucked it into the cup-holder to throw out later. I forgot (see a trend here.)
Wife borrows car that night. Comes home. Waits for appropriate moment then asks me.
It was….uncomfortable.”
10. At the hostel.
“A couple of years back I was staying in a hostel in London. I got assigned to a 3-person room with a couple already occupying it. I stuffed my bags under the bed where nobody could see it and used a locker in the corridor for my valuables, then hit the town.
I returned at about 3 AM, unlocked the door, and since the room was dark and I did’t know whether my temporary roommates were sleeping, I decided not to hit the light switch. Instead, I pulled out my cellphone and used it’s vague light to inspect the beds and determined that they were empy.
I turned around and was just about to make my way towards the light switch when the couple returned, unlocked the door and hit the lightswitch, revealing me, standing fully dressed in jacket in a jeans jacket and leather gloves in the middle of the room for no apparent reason.
They stopped and looked at me in disbelief for a moment before I introduced myself. That was an awkward first night, but the next day I explained my side of the story and we all laughed about it.”
11. A strange situation.
“I had a school project pertaining to WWII. We shot a video in which I played Hitler, after shooting we had a little more time so we decided to shoot a Hitler music video at my friends house. My friend lives a crossed from a farm field and I decided the video needed a shot of me spinning around in the middle of it for some reason.
So I get to the middle of the field and begin twirling around in full Nazi uniform with a Hitler stache, after a minute of this I hear “hey young man”. I turned to see an elderly man about 65 years of age. He continued, “that field was just planted”.
I looked awkwardly at him and slowly walked away, my friend filming was obstructed by a shed so the man had no clue what I was doing….he found a 17 year old dressed in full Nazi uniform twirling in his field and asked no questions….”
12. Sex scene.
“I recently started teaching English in Mongolia and today my class was finishing up watching the rest of “Big” starring Tom Hanks. 5 minutes into class and the seduction scene starts, where the girl slooowly takes off her shirt and Tom Hanks turns the lights back on so he can stare at those pretty titties and BAM!
There’s my co-worker who is coming in to see what I’m doing today and to grab some dictionaries.
Well. I’m showing the class how to fondle tits, sir. He leaves and I’m like, thank god he’s gone now we can all chill OH NO He’s back ..with another teacher….and the sex scene still isn’t done.”
13. Time to call your parents.
“Back in high school I drove a white chevy venture. It wasn’t in the best shape, had some scratches and dings, a big thing of black plastic hanging off the front bottom of the car (I’ve been told it’s a splash guard), etc.
I was just starting to grow facial hair and hadn’t shaved in a while so I had a nasty looking “beard” thing and mexi-stache. Also, I had about 16 inches of curly red hair.
I had returned from a camping trip recently and still had all my gear in the van, sleeping bags, Pringles cans, McDonalds wrappers, and so on.
So anyways, it’s a Monday and I’ve got to take my two little brothers to early morning swimming with me (5:30) and as we leave the house I asked them if they reeeeally wanted to go to swimming. They naturally said no, so we drove for a bit, then turned off onto a side street and pulled over by a tall hedge to take a nap.
After a while my youngest bro says he has to go pee, so I tell him to just open the slidey door and go in the hedge which he proceeds to do. A few seconds later I notice there’s a sheriff pulled up behind me and he’s approaching my window. Yup, he’s seen my little brother and then he sees the inside of my van.
Needless to say he didn’t buy my story and called my parents, (Which mortified me cause I had never had a run in with cops).”
Life sure is weird, huh?
You bet it is!
And now we want to hear your true “I can explain!” stories!
Please be a good friend and share them in the comments, won’t you?
Thanks in advance!
