If you're going back to roots, go back to roots.

This isn't a full "secret" since I have more recently shared it with a couple people but I'm counting it because I don't really know you guys anymore.

I think every family has one of those stories that kind of lives on and on and gets retold whenever you get together. For my family it's The Poo-Sock.

When I was a kid my little brother and two older stepbrothers and I got called into the kitchen and told to sit down at the table by our incredibly upset stepdad and my mom. They placed a sock covered in shit on the table. Very angrily and seriously my stepdad demanded we tell him who used the sock as toilet paper. My little brother and youngest stepbrother made eye contact and immediately started laughing uncontrollably.

He doubled down though. Shouted at us about how "this was a good sock, I would have worn this sock" while my oldest stepbrother and I stared paralyzed in horror and our younger siblings laughed uncontrollably.

It's hard to fully remember because I was maybe 11 at the time, but I know I was outside talking to my youngest stepbrother and asked him if he did it. He told me dead on he didn't, and I believed him, because he was a terrible liar. None of my brothers could lie to me, I could tell too easily. I tried to convince my parents they were innocent.

I don't know how long this went on, I think they interviewed us one at a time or something.

In the end they decided that it was my step-grandfather who lived with us (due to having many strokes and needing to be taken care of).

It wasn't though. It was me.

There was no toilet paper and I was calling and calling until I couldn't deal with sitting in the bathroom any longer. For reasons which have never and will never make sense to me my mom insists that toilet paper be kept out of the washroom. This meant if you ran out of toilet paper you had to call until someone stuck their arm in the washroom and guessed at how to blindly throw it at you.

I figured I would use the sock I saw, hide it behind the toilet, and then throw it away after everyone went to bed so I wouldn't get caught.

I instead forgot it existed until it was placed on the dinner table for my siblings and I to all stare at. I guess my mom found it while cleaning.

My family still doesn't know. It's been literal decades. My step-grandfather literally died with everyone thinking he was the one to blame for The Poo-Sock.

I'm in too deep, they can never know.