‘Dad’ in the family WhatsApp group was a random stranger
A MAN has left the internet in stitches after sharing a story of how a random stranger was added to his family WhatsApp group as ‘dad’ by mistake — and never corrected it in six months.
Twitter user @Jonnohopkins racked up thousands of likes as he explained that after setting up the group, his dad would often call to ask about things that had already been discussed, saying: “To which I’d say ‘Dad, you’re in the whatsapp group, YOU’RE READING THE MESSAGES!’ and he’d say ‘Am I?’ and I just put it down to him being old.”
When the group was created, he realised he had added ‘Peter’ (his dad’s name) to the group, rather than the person saved in his contacts as ‘dad’.
But he still didn’t put two and two together, and said it might have carried on “for literally years” if his sister hadn’t asked if he could add their dad to the group as well, and it “dawned on me that it was not my dad’s number”.
It turns out the man he had been addressing as his dad for half a year was in fact a plumber named Peter, who visited his flat to fix the washing machine in December 2013.
He wrote: “I guess after a while the moment for fake dad Peter to pipe up to let us know we’d got the wrong Peter had passed so he just accepted his role as our new dad.”
In response to questions commented on the viral tweet, he explained that he never suspected his ‘dad’s’ silence as “he’s never been a chat room person”.
And sadly it all ended abruptly for Peter the plumber, who, after six
months of loyalty, was kicked out of the group in a panic when the mistake was realised.
His once-adopted son added: “But now I feel bad for fake dad Peter and hope he enjoyed reading my mum’s messages about how she’d thought Coldplay’s album was called A Cold Hard Blow To The Head.
People loved the tale, as one replied to say: “Somewhere in the Twittersphere there is thread from a plumber called Peter talking about a family chat he is part of but too awkward to let them know he is fake dad.”
A second replied: “I think I would have to add dad and then politely keep fake dad too because it would seem rude to out him when he has faithfully kept abreast of everything familyrelated for so long!”