When your kids are only wee mites you can have those out loud running jokes with our partner – and oh what a joy it is while it lasts.

However, for one couple an innocent running gag between them went horribly (albeit hilariously) awry.

The mum decided to share the very random tale on Reddit.

“When my son was very little (he’s 4 now and this has never been said in front of him for obvious reasons),” she begins to explain.

“Like most kids, my son was obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine. So much so that Edward, his favourite train, was one of his first words.

“He’d talk about Edward so much that it became a kind of running joke between me and my husband (let’s call him H) that his real dad was a man called Edward who I was having an affair with.”


Tired of everyday household mother sitting on floor with hands on face. Kid playing in messy room. Scaterred toys and disorder. Happy parenting.

A running joke that was not seen as funny by outsiders... Source: iStock

“This is just our humour!"

Then she went on to preface that the couple only have eyes for each other.

“This is just mine and H’s humour, we’ve always been disgustingly in love with each other so it’s never been an actual issue!” she stresses.

“Now my son is the complete double of H, there’s no doubting his parentage whatsoever, so we never thought anything of our little joke.”

Then she starts to get into the nitty gritty.

“One summer’s day we’d invited H’s parents over for lunch in the garden and we were getting things ready when I asked him to grab our son some juice. In our usual fashion, H threw his hands in the air and exclaimed ‘Why me! Why can’t Edward do it??’” she retells.

“And I replied something along the lines of ‘his real dad isn’t here right now, but God I wish he were, so you’ll just have to man up and do it’.”


But little did we know...

At this stage, it just seems like normal silly banter between a couple, that was until she further explained the story. 

“Little did we know H’s parents had arrived and were walking up the path, our door was wide open and they heard the whole thing,” she says, while building the drama.

“Queue: MIL busting into the kitchen calling me a ‘liar’ and a ‘cheating slut’ and asking how I could do this to them while my FIL stood shocked and speechless.”

And as you can appreciate, trying to explain the situation was hard work, to say the least.

“It took a good while to calm the situation and explain that, ‘no, there is no Edward’ and ‘yes, our son was in fact your grandchild’.”

When all was good again, the mum felt somewhat mortified that her in-laws never had any doubt that may have been untrue.

“I kind of felt a little insulted that she’d actually believe it was true so quickly, but I guess that’s our own fault!,” she says.

“Needless to say we never made that joke again and eventually our son got over his little Edward obsession.”