As the old saying goes, you can never judge a book by its cover.

And, of course, this is very true when you’re talking about human beings. You just never know where someone is from or what they’ve been through in the past.

That’s part of what makes life exciting!

AskReddit users opened up and shared stories about themselves that you might find surprising.

1. Reborn.

“I died first, and then was born.

I’ve told this story a few times on reddit, but I enjoy telling it so here we go again.

During the Caesarian to bring me into the world, there was some major complication on my mother’s end. She started bleeding internally, drowning me in the womb. When I was removed, the doctors tried to get me breathing but couldn’t.

I was declared dead. My mother was still unconscious, but my dad was brought in to say goodbye to me. He held me in his arms, was saying goodbye when out of nowhere I started coughing up blood and screaming as babies do. Apparently it was the weirdest moment in his life, being abjectly terrified and overwhelmed with joy that I was alive.

It’s my favourite story to tell, because weirdly it takes some pressures off on birthdays. I don’t do well with to much attention by family/friends, but celebrating my “death day” doesn’t bring people the same connotations.”

2. That’s pretty awesome.

“I built a 13 foot tall t rex with Christopher Walken’s head, and New York magazine called it high brow and brilliant.”

3. Family history.

“My great-grandma ran a brothel back at the turn of the 20th century. She was Algonquin and people were pretty racist back then so she had a hard time getting business. Since it was a coastal town (Maine) she bought up a couple leaky old rowboats and would load them up with hookers and booze and row them out to the ships at night.

When ships came in to port most of the crew would get shore leave and hit the bars and brothels in town, but they always had to leave a few sailors on the ship to keep an eye on it.

My Great-grandmother figured those guys had money too and probably felt left out. She basically set up waterbased lot lizards. Or UberHoes.

My Grandpa and his sisters grew up in the brothel and no one would talk to them or socialize with them. My Grandpa met my Grandma picking green beans for a local F*rmer. They fell in love.

When they wanted to get married they had to leave the state to get away from her family that were utterly disgusted that she would marry the son of a wh^re. So they ran off to Detroit because GM was hiring and that’s how my family came to Michigan.”

4. F*ke it until you make it.

“I never graduated high school but I have a bachelor’s degree. I was homeschooled and my mom never went through the legal steps to actually get me a real diploma, so she made one in photoshop that was then used to get me into this podunk community college that didn’t verify it.

From there I got my associate’s degree, which I then used to get into a decent university where I got my bachelor’s.”

5. Very interesting.

“I was once sponsored by the CRUNK energy drink company for sailing. I imagine I was the only sailor on their list. I literally just emailed them saying that I sailed and asked if they wanted me to put stickers on my boat.

They sent me a few cases of the drink, t shirts, hats, the works. My car was known as the crunk-mobile.”

6. Missed opportunities.

“My great grandfather worked in the textile business and started importing rayon fabric from Japan in the late 60s and 70s. Keep in mind this was during the early days of synthetic fabrics and travelling to Japan was not all that common.

On a business trip, he met some Japanese business men who were selling newly designed transistor radios. His contacts wanted to setup an exclusive import agreement for their electronics to North America, but my great grandfather declined, because how many of these radios could you possibly sell?

Turns out that was a short sighted business decision, because that company was called Sony Electronics. He turned down the exclusive import contract for Sony.

On the other side of my family, my Canadian relatives walked away from 100 acres of land in Alberta during the dust bowl and great depression. They decided it was not worth paying the taxes on their land. Turns out that land was right in the heart of the Alberta oil deposits.

Also on my mother’s side of the family, they used to have a citrus orchard near Los Angeles. They sold it cheap to some land developers. That farm was right at Hollywood and Vine.

My family on both sides is bad at seeing long term investments.”

7. That’s pretty crazy.

“I took my mother for a surprise trip to NYC. She got married to my father there in ’68. The surprise was manufactured by way of telling her we were going to Australia (we live in New Zealand, so a trip to Australia is not a huge deal, it’s the type of thing you could do for the weekend) and therefore she packed a bag and brought her passport.

We got to the airport and said “Surprise! We’re going to New York!” and she cried her eyes out with delight.

When we arrived, on our first morning, I said “Okay, what do you want to do?”

She said “When I was last here, in 1968, the Twin Towers weren’t complete, so, I’d like to go to the top of them.”

“Your wish is my command!” I said and off we went to the WTC.

That was the afternoon of September 10th, 2001. Suffice it to say, there was a particular poignancy when we looked out the window at around 8am the next morning.”

8. He’s a legend.

“I was at a store when Tony Hawk was signing autographs. I was only 10 at the time and was a huge fan. One of his early video games had just come out. The store had a couple tv’s on the wall and some video games to play.

Being a kid I waited for one controller to open up and someone leave. A kid ended up leaving and I grabbed the controller and started playing and minding my own business. A couple minutes later the store wanted to grab photos of Tony playing his own video game.

He came over and grabbed the second controller and began to play multiplayer with me. Probably played for 10 minutes. The bonus was it was also my 10th birthday. So I played Tony Hawk Pro Skater with Tony Hawk.”

9. What a way to find out.

“I found out my “father” wasnt my biological father in 10th grade Biology class. We were learning about blood types and traits. I raised my hand thinking I was a smart ass, “You’re chart isnt accurate, my dad has AB negative and I’m O positive.”

My teacher said “I think your mom has some explaining to do!”. And we all chuckled.

Turned out, he was not my father.”

10. Proved him wrong.

“My husband (I’m 30), has been my best friend since I was 7. He was the new kid at school and I walked up to him and said, “we are going to be best friends”. He said, “no we aren’t. Leave me alone.”

I bugged him every day for two weeks before he finally said, “if I’ll be your friend, will you shut up about it?” We were married 20 years later. Proved his ass wrong. ?”

11. What a dirtbag.

“My dad kidnapped me and took me to Singapore for very malicious purposes (i’m sure you could imagine). I was 15 and my dad literally had F*ke documents and suitcases filled with random clothes. When we got there we went to a sketchy hotel and after 15 minutes he went to the bar.

A bit after that, some guy just walks in. I was confused but he began muttering saying i was ‘too pale’ and ‘too old’ and he left. I called my dad but he didn’t answer so i climbed out through the window and went to the police. They put me on a plane home that same hour.”

12. It’s not rocket science…oh wait, yes it is.

“I was a rocket scientist.

I worked on the 114-AGM. The science was ‘verifying’ rocket bodies. The back bone of science is to repeat experiments. My job was to make sure we were gonna get the same result every time.

People call me a liar all the time because the idea of a ‘rocket scientist’ is Von Bruan.”

13. Rubbing elbows with celebs.

“Spent a really cool day in London with Christian Slater and his mum.

His mum is adorable.”

14. Frightening.

“I’ve been stabbed 8 times.

I didn’t get the chance to tell my story in court as they pled guilty before I was called. I was drunk and I came out the pub I was in to get some fresh air. I walked past 3 guys and one of them asked me for a cigarette. I told him I don’t smoke and he became immediately aggressive.

I argued with him for a while and his friends started shouting at me and threatening me. At this point he kind of disappeared behind me. One of the others showed me a knife so I turned and walked away. I knew they were following me as was walking back to the pub. I had a bus stop on my left hand side and a building on my right.

I looked up and saw the first guy walking towards me. It was fight or flight and I had nowhere to fly to so I decided that attack was the best form of defence. I think I managed one punch before the 3 of them jumped me.

They had been robbing and beating up people all over town for about 2 weeks beforehand.”

15. That’s a good story.

“In Minnesota in the 70’s, I was sixteen taking my drivers test. Nervous as hell. A highway patrol officer was the “road tester” back then which was even more nerve wracking. But I thought I was doing pretty good the whole time because I had lots of practice with my parents.

THEN towards the end of the driving test, I was at a “T” intersection across from a hospital, I was hesitant to turn onto the road because traffic was busy. I could tell the officer was getting a little impatient, but he was nicely telling me to be a little aggressive.

Suddenly at the hospital across from us, someone pushed out a screen from a window on the third floor (psych ward). A women jumped out the window onto a garage roof underneath, then jumped to the ground and ran across the road right by us.

The officer had me turn around (I was in my mom’s car) and chase the girl in the neighborhood. When I would pull up to a stop sign during the chase, he would say “GO GO GO, JUST GO THROUGH IT”. After awhile, when she started to get away, he gave up with me being the “chase driver” and told me to head back to the DMV office.

I was a complete shaking mess at this point – ready to accept the fact I would not get a license anytime soon (devastating for a sixteen year old boy). He grabbed my score sheet. Said “You passed.” And handed it to me. I got an 88 score. He ran to his HW patrol car and tore off to continue the chase.

I go in the office a complete mess. My Mom was already really nervous because we were gone so long, then she saw me looking like a ghost. She said “WHAT HAPPENED”. Told her I passed, then told her the story on the way home.

She wasn’t amused and pretty pissed at the highway patrol guy. When I tell the story, I say “No BS, just ask my Mom.””

Wow! There are definitely some very interesting stories in there, huh?

Now we want to hear from you.

In the comments, tell us something about your life that most people would be shocked to learn is true.

We look forward to hearing from you!