Everyone has an opinion, and thoughts on life, often people have too much to say. But if you're willing to listen, most of the time you will here a ton of truth. And truth is always the last thing we want hear. Advice is always unwanted, even when we ask for it, but sometimes, most times, when we expel ego, it's good to listen. Just try.
Redditor u/patrickestillomo wanted everyone to share all the things they've been told to better life by asking... What is the best advice about life anyone has ever given you?
Why so Serious?
GiphyI had a professor once say: "Take your responsibilities seriously, but not yourself."
If everyone on this planet would just chill out and not take themselves so seriously, a lot of society's problems would fix themselves. Gignesthei
Only in Your Head....
You can not control other people, you can only control your reaction to them. sluggardish
I like to say that "Happiness is in your head." Even if you have terminal illness, though it would be hard, you shouldn't fall into the cycle of negative thoughts provoking bad emotions then repeat.
CBT is really helpful even for those with good mental state in the current moment. Yad_
A Change id Gonna Come......
'No matter how good or bad things get, they will change.'
Told to me by my 10th grade theatre teacher. I was in a bad place and he basically mentored me in how to get my stuff together, and that's one bit of wisdom that's really stuck with me.
The idea that change is part of life and the importance of being able to accept change is really important, I think. Diogenic_Canine
A Fool's Errand....
My wife's dad always says, "be cool. Don't be a fool."
So imagine that with a Nigerian accent and you'll feel the gravity of this sage advice. Gignesthei
Take a Chance.....
GiphySometimes doing something wrong is better than doing nothing at all. Joyful_Desecration
The List....
My dad had a handful.
Assume everyone else on the road besides you is a moron. That way if you think they'll do something stupid and prepare for it, you'll react fast when they do end up doing something stupid.
Do a little bit more than what you're asked to do at your job.
Focus on today. If you worry about what comes tomorrow, a week from now, or a year from now, you will become overwhelmed and break down. Focus on what is happening now, and get through it.
Protect and care for your significant other and your family. But don't carry your their burdens and yours alone. They are your partner and your family, not your burden. Lean on them when you need to, because they love you too.Affectionate_Kiwi
Speeches are dangerous....
The best "best man speech" at a wedding I ever heard was short:
"The two of you are going to hear all kinds of advice on how to make a marriage work. Find out what works for you two and ignore all of it. Cheers." Escalus_Hamaya
It's ALL learning...
You can learn something from everyone, no matter who they are or what their station in life is.
Don't ever summarily dismiss anyone. BKStephens
Time is Limited....
My mum told me this.
Travel while you still can walk. You don't want to travel when you're old and have limited mobility and energy to enjoy what the world around you has to offer. bixbygaea
Don't expect to do all of the things you want when you retire. You'll be too tired, and possibly set in your habits. n1c0_ds
From an early age, we're taught not to judge people based on their appearances.
But as humans, it's simply in our nature to be judgmental of others, whether we've gotten to know them beforehand or not.
This habit can sometimes get us into trouble, especially in situations where we have to go up against a person who is secretly a master in their craft. These 50 stories teach us all a very important lesson: Be careful who you decide to take on.
1. The Spreadsheet Expert
I’m kind of the Google Sheets expert at work, and I make lots of new tools for different departments to use. Enter the “new guy” who needed to collect, aggregate, and display a bunch of data. My boss was like, “Send a calendar invite so you can tell her exactly what you want and she can set it up for you.” The new guy was having none of that and insisted he was going to do it all by himself.
Well, a week later, he created this really bad sheet that didn’t have half the information we needed, and we had to have the numbers for the State by the next day. So, my boss asked me to fix it and the new guy was like, “Yeah okay, that’s not really possible. This is as good as it’s going to get!” Boy, was he in for the surprise of his life.
Two hours later, I sent them both a fully functional and automated sheet that did everything we needed it to, and we’d be able to use it indefinitely, which meant that the next time we needed the data for the state report, it would already be done. The new guy ended up saying something like, “I would have added that in if I’d had more time.”
2. A Mythical Blogger
I once went to a museum with my sister and her friend, who I hadn't met before. We got to the Greek art bit and her friend started telling me how she was super into Greek mythology. I thought that was cool because, unbeknownst to her, I was doing a Master's in it at the time and also keeping a blog of myth retellings.
My blog was pretty popular, and it was a relief to have something in common with this stranger. She then got weirdly haughty and told me she probably knew more myths than I did. Being polite, I didn't want to directly challenge her on it, so I just asked her to tell me her favorite so that we could have a conversation about it.
She proceeded to tell me the myth of Daedalus and the Minotaur. I asked her how she'd heard of that one because it's fairly obscure. Her response made my eyes widen. She told me she'd read it on a viral blog post on a blog about mythology. Turns out that it was my blog.
3. Perfect Fencer
two person fencing inside the gymPhoto by Eugene Lim on UnsplashWhile I was in high school, I was the reigning city fencing champion in both the youth and adult tournaments. My high school decided to do a school-wide fencing unit for Phys. Ed. and the coach they brought in to teach all of the students was my actual coach. During my classes, my coach naturally brought me up to help demonstrate the various moves.
However, for some reason one of my classmates didn't understand that I wasn't chosen at random. He started talking about how I looked like I didn't know what I was doing, and how he could probably completely cream me in a duel. Now, he actually was pretty good for a guy who'd never fenced before, and at the first opportunity, he decided to have a go at me. It was about to go down.
I picked him apart, not giving up a single touch, and used the opportunity to practice my parry and ripostes. I admit I took a bit of sadistic pleasure in thoroughly beating him. Afterward, my coach made a point of congratulating the other guy for doing so well against the city champ, which changed his attitude considerably.
4. Unexpected Baller
I'm a very unassuming-looking guy. 5'8", 150 pounds, and not a tattoo to be found. But back in the day, I was pretty athletic and I could hang in games with fringe D1 or semi-pro guys. I can't emphasize how much I didn't look like it at all. Anyway, in college, while hanging out in someone's room, it came up that I played basketball a bit.
Out of nowhere, some dude I didn't know started running his mouth about how he could destroy me. He just wouldn't stop talking. I gave him every out until it basically became personally offensive. The other guys were a bit tired of this guy hanging around and they knew I could play, so we all trooped over to the gym, late in the winter, so we could settle things.
Here's a spoiler alert: I ended up winning 11-0. I'm not sure if we played after that, but I remember it was 11-0 because I made sure to not let the guy score. And I'm a pretty mellow guy—I would have laid off and let him score a couple when it was clear that I was better, but this guy was a real jerk, so I just clamped down on him start to finish. I blocked a ton of his shots.
He stopped hanging around nearly as much after that, so I was kind of a hero to the rest of the guys. I totally drove that snake out of our nation.
5. A Tricky Pool Player
While I'd never claim I was an expert, I used to be pretty good at pool. My aunt and uncle had a pool table in their basement and my parents, for a variety of reasons, would go over regularly and spend all day there. There was nothing else for me and my brother to do, so we just played pool all day for years. Eventually, we got bored and saw that they had a book on trick shots, so we started doing that for fun.
I never really mastered the tricks, but they made for really good practice in understanding how to get the ball to do what you wanted. So anyway, for my buddy’s 20th birthday, he wanted to go to a pool hall and he invited a ton of people. Then he told me it was going to be a tournament, with drinks for individual games and a 50/50 type of deal for the winner.
He would get half regardless because it was his birthday, and he insisted I attend. We got there, started the first game, and they broke. That would end up being the only shot they got. At the end of it, I just looked at him and said, "I told you not to invite me..." I found out afterward that a bunch of them had never even played pool before and I felt pretty bad, so I took the money and bought everyone drinks with it.
6. I’m The Real Pianist!
woman playing pianoPhoto by Rūta Celma on UnsplashI guy I went on a date with tried to serenade me with his mediocre piano skills. He was incredibly patronizing to me and tried to explain to me what the notes were, even though I had told him that I was also a pianist. So, after his endless explanations, I asked him to move over on the bench so I could play. The best part? He had no that I’m a two-time Carnegie Hall pianist. He never called me back afterward. Worth it!
7. A National Competitor
I asked an 11-year-old if he wanted to play pool with me at the small rec room where I was staying in Alaska. That turned out to be a huge mistake on my part—he ended up being a pool genius, having competed in pool tournaments nationally. I won the first one because he scratched on the 8-ball, even though I had only pocketed two. Then he cleaned up the next two games without giving me a chance to get more than one ball in. I was maybe 19 then.
8. Pizza Bake-Off!
A neighbor on my block in Brooklyn challenged me to a pizza bake-off. I recently catered pizza for my daughter’s school and word got around the neighborhood my pizza was pretty darn good. My first thought was, "This guy is a Brooklyn native; my pizza will be terrible compared to his!" But there was something about him bragging that made challenging him irresistible.
He talked about how pizza was in his blood, and how his dad ran the pizza place around the corner years ago. I remained silent and let my skills answer for themselves. I got a buddy to let us use one of Baker's Pride ovens at his restaurant. We even had total strangers try our pizzas. Every last person chose my pizza over his.
I never mentioned to him that I'd worked in pizza places almost every day for the last thirty years. I never mentioned that when I'm not working at a pizza place, I'm making pizzas at home at least once every two days. I never mentioned that at nine years old, I knew that I wanted to be a pizza man. Here I am at 45, getting ready to start my own pizza business.
9. Silver Strikers
a futuristic space station with red and blue lightsPhoto by Joshua Parecattil on UnsplashMy brother and his best friend were in Baltimore for a baseball weekend in 2009. They were hanging out at a bar across from Camden Yards and there was a Silver Strike bowling video game at the venue. In our local bar back in Boston, we had one as well. I’m decent at the gam,e but my brother and his buddy were really amazing at this game. They were bowling 300 games and whatnot.
So these two random dudes were playing the game while drinking. We asked them if we could play once they were done, and they asked us if we wanted to play against them instead. We said sure and the rest was history. My brother and his buddy absolutely destroyed them. Like, it wasn’t even close. The dudes said it was a fluke and they wanted a rematch, but this time for a round of drinks. Again, annihilation city.
Even after that, they kept wanting to play, hoping to eventually win a game. After thirteen whole rounds, they finally gave up. They were great guys. We saw them the next day at the same bar and they walked up to us with drinks in hand, asking for yet another rematch. To this day we still hang out with them whenever we go to Baltimore. And to this day, they have never won.
10. The Fake Expert
I worked with a guy who was supposed to be an expert in what we do. He would blast through jobs and hound our supervisor for more work. He would get through tasks a lot faster than I could and I didn't understand how...until I had to support him one day and found out he was faking everything. He didn't really do good work—anything he submitted was never up to our standards. When I confronted him about it, he got annoyed at me and insisted I had no idea what I was doing.
He thought he had the upper hand...until my supervisor swooped in. When he checked his product, he was reprimanded for doing a poor job. Then, I had to work with him to get him up to speed. After six months, he was still failing, and I was working on his projects as much as I was working on my own. I checked on some of his work, gave him a list of problems I saw, and he completely lost it and didn’t listen to me.
So I left him on his own. I told my bosses that I'd no longer be carrying him. They were getting ready to fire him, but he beat them to it and quit. He found another job where he could be a project supervisor for more money and better benefits. He failed there, too. We sent his new company a basket of muffins and a thank you note. I ended up getting the company car, a $5 an hour raise, and a bunch of other benefits.
11. A Challenging Forecast
People say all kinds of random things about how weather and climate function. Little do they know that I’m a meteorologist in disguise, working as a data scientist but with an actual master's and Ph.D. in meteorology. When I politely correct people, they are usually super interested to know more. But occasionally, I get something like, “Oh yeah?! And how do you know?”
I always respond with the same jaw-dropping answer: "Well, I have published several papers on the matter, and would love to discuss it all night," I’d say to them. So far, they’ve all backed down after that.
12. The Best Shot
people walking on green grass field during daytimePhoto by Michael Satterfield on UnsplashFor reference, this is clay pigeon shooting, known as ‘trap’ in the south. Well, I'm from a rural area and not exactly super "southern," so when I'd go to other trap fields to practice in different conditions, there's always a person or two who place bets with me. This is definitely an old money sport with some of the bets going upwards of 5,000 dollars.
I had an old BT-100 that I got in a trade for a lead shot and some cash on the side. While the shot was not cheap, it was still much lower than other people’s shots and some folks would take that and assume I was a newbie. But they'd end up learning their lesson pretty quickly—the team I was on went to the Nationals almost every year from 2011 to 2018.
It was always funny because some would be good sports, but others would throw an absolute fit. One time, I saw one guy damage a 10,000 Perazzi because someone else had beat him. There was a guy from the county next to us who could blow us out of the water, and he always shot with an 870 pump...from Walmart.
13. Fight Night
In college, my buddies and I always got the new fighting game whenever it came out, and we would put in a few hundred hours or so on it, just goofing around with the various modes before dropping it. During that time, we'd have fight nights a couple of times a week where we'd all get together at someone's place and duke it out.
It's not like I never won, but I was always just middle of the pack. After two years of this, no one would ever consider me to be some sort of fighting game wizard...until one fateful day when my luck changed for the better. For the first time ever, the group decided to pick up a 3D fighter instead of a 2D one: Soul Calibur 3 I think. Unknown to anyone in our playgroup, I had previously been obsessed with Soul Calibur 3, playing for 10 hours a day.
I had done this every day, for three to four years, playing against five other people who were doing the same and were just as good as me. It honestly wasn't even that fun. After the first half-hour, they were playing with 200% health while I was playing with 50%, picking random character select, and I still hadn't passed the controller once. After that, it was agreed that we would all play only 2D fighters from then on.
14. The Chess Master
I'm a Chess master. I think when people hear that, they think, "Oh, he's really good at chess." But what it actually means is that I've played in international tournaments and beaten other masters, earning my right to that official title. Anyway, I get challenged a lot by friends who think they're pretty good at chess.
What they don't realize is that their version of 'pretty good' does not compare to my version of 'pretty good,' and they all end up destroyed by my pieces in less than ten moves every time.
15. Breaking The Language Barrier
three people in lab coats looking at a tabletPhoto by National Cancer Institute on UnsplashMy brother works for a scientific instrument company as a technical expert in gas chromatography. He and his colleagues went to a trade show once to show off their new instruments. A couple of German scientists come up and asked them a bunch of questions, breaking the conversation intermittently to speak to each other in German. But here's the plot twist: my brother is fluent in German.
He let them talk amongst themselves until one of the Germans said, in German: “I bet this instrument is just as terrible as the last one.” To which, my brother replies, in German, how it was, in fact, not terrible because they’d done a tremendous number of improvements. The two Germans, now stunned that they’d been caught, politely thanked my brother, apologized, and walked away.
16. A Professional Lesson
I just graduated from teacher's college and I’ve been working as a casual relief in the meantime. I play lacrosse is generally a small sport and even smaller here in Australia. I tried out for the last World Cup team and made it to the final cut. I was working with another teacher who was also stationed at the school. Before the period he spoke to me and said, “Hey mate, we are doing lacrosse today.”
He continued, “It’s a bit of an odd sport that's hard to teach, so just wait over there and then you can just help with supervision,” and walked off. Being a CRT from an agency, I wasn’t sure how I should speak to him. I tried to tell him that I used to play competitively but he didn’t give me a second, so I just listened and did my thing.
After a few minutes, I had enough. I just grabbed a stick and ball and started to work my way around the class, giving them pointers and hints. The way he was teaching was completely incorrect and I didn’t want to say anything, so when the kids broke off into groups, I kind of just taught them the correct way. He pulled me over at a drinks break and asked how I knew so much about lacrosse.
I told him about my playing history and his jaw dropped. He asked why I didn’t speak up and say anything and I said I tried to tell him. Anyway, I ended up running the rest of the class and even ended up teaching him and the correct way to teach the game.
17. Surprise Ping Pong
I was hanging out with a girl who I was seeing at the time, and they had a ping pong table near the bar. Two guys were playing, and they were making a big show about how good they thought they were. They were showing off with grunting, rolled sleeves, the works. When I handed them back a wayward shot, I made a comment about how it looked fun to play.
They said that I could get the next game after one guy who was waiting, but their “rule” was any challenger they added in the queue to play would have to buy drinks for everyone else if that challenger lost. Little did they know what they were getting themselves into. I played competitive ping pong in a league back in med school and had placed highly in some New York City championships.
I still play every so often in my current city and I have won a few tournaments here as well. I ended up destroying the two guys. I didn’t have to pay for a drink or give up my spot until my date was ready to go. No one even made it out of the single digits.
18. Beware The Water
group of men attending on swimming competitionPhoto by Arisa Chattasa on UnsplashI was a competitive swimmer for 14 years, including four years of NCAA, but I'm on the shorter side, so people don't assume I was any good. I was at a friend’s house on a lake one summer, and a macho guy challenged me to race to a buoy in the middle of the lake, to prove... something, I guess. The lake is deceptively large, about a half-mile across, so I warned him that if he wasn't a strong swimmer, it could be dangerous.
He was running out of gas after about two minutes, so I offered to let him off the hook. He still insisted he would finish. After I went to the buoy and started swimming back, I looked over at him and just sighed. I found him floundering, so I lifeguard swam him back to the house. His ego took a deserved hit that day. Don't get overconfident around water, even if you think you're a strong swimmer.
19. Forty-Eight!
In primary school, I'd say grade three or four, we had a head-to-head times tables tournament. The teacher would ask a random multiplication question to a pair of students at a time, and the winner progressed. I wasn't exactly an expert at times tables, but I was an expert at 6 x 8. For whatever reason, 6 x 8 just wouldn't stick in my head when I was younger, so I had to spend additional time to bring the answer to the forefront of my mind.
I was decently prepared for any other multiplication problem, so while waiting my turn I was constantly repeating in my mind: "six times eight equals 48, six times eight equals 48, six times eight equals 48" over and over again. That strategy would end up working in my favor. Lo and behold, when it was finally my turn to be quizzed, the teacher casually selected 6 x 8.
Not an iota of time had elapsed from the teacher finishing her sentence when I yelled "48!" The astonishment spread as I became a human-computer in the eyes of my peers. Even the teacher was taken back. I went on to win the tournament, having already won in the minds of my would-be opponents. It was more than victory; it was complete annihilation.
20. Kart Battles!
I was visiting Kyoto a couple of years ago. My wife and I walked into a tiny bar that had five people in suits laughing and talking in Japanese. We instantly knew that this was not a tourist bar and felt pretty out of place. The bartender spoke the most English, so I asked him what his favorite Shochu was. Things got a little more comfortable as we drank and eventually, the whole bar tried to talk to us.
Someone mentioned Mario Kart and I said, “Yeah, yeah,” so the bartender pointed to an old Super Famicom in the corner, and apparently, I had accepted the challenge. I smiled to myself and my wife thought it was funny because I used to have some skill at the game. I had no idea what to expect, but when the bartender selected Battle Mode...I was floored.
I hadn’t played in a few years, and he buried me in less than a minute. The whole bar was laughing and I was a little stunned. But then got to the second and third rounds. I destroy him. Three balloons to zero. Everyone cheered except for the bartender. Two shots were put in front of me, and I threw one down. Round 3. We were down to one balloon each and I swear it was the longest battle round of all time.
I was sweating. Shell, dodge, shell, dodge. I had him in my sights and I fired. It missed. The shell bounced off the wall and I self-KO'd. The crowd went wild. So that’s the story of how a self-proclaimed Mario Kart expert embarrassed himself and his country in a small bar in Kyoto. We drank a lot and made a lot of great friends that night that we’ll never see again.
21. Hustling On The Table
man in brown jacket playing billiardPhoto by Carla Oliveira on UnsplashWhile in undergrad, I brought a new college buddy over to an old high school friend's house to hang out. There were a couple of other friends there, just hanging around, drinking, and playing pool. My new buddy was a pretty low-key guy; a wallflower, if you will. When he first meets people, he can be pretty quiet and he tends to seem a little out of place.
But after he gets to know people, he opens up and is a blast to be around. My old buddies, for some reason, decided to hustle my new buddy in pool. I mean, super textbook shark moves. "Let's play a friendly game, and if you think you're any good at it, we can play for money," etc. Well, I knew something that they all didn't. They were in for a shock: My new buddy played on the circuits for a while, winning pool tournaments across Texas.
He lived and breathed pool, and, of course, he saw these guys coming from a mile away. I just watched it all go down. I figured, if they are going to treat someone that I bring over in a snobby way, they deserve what they get. He roped 'em in as only he could. He missed some super easy shots to keep the game interesting and then pulled out the "lucky" win...
Soon after, they played for money. I can't even remember how much per ball, but he played two or three games, slowly playing better or "lucking out" just enough to keep them engaged while still taking their money. Then, the last game happened, and I'd never seen someone come alive more quickly. He sank shot after shot after shot.
These were shots I couldn't make if I practiced for a year straight. The entire time, he kept taunting them and updating how much money they owed them. I don't think my old friend had a chance to take a shot at all. Afterward, they were all furious: "How could you bring this guy over here and let him hustle us like that??"
"How could you try to hustle a new friend of mine just minutes after I bring him over and introduce him to you?" I snarled back. "You earned this one, man." It ended happily, though. They all became good friends and they are still in contact with each other two decades later.
22. Whose Paper Is This Again?
There was a story about an old geotechnical engineer who used to work for the company that I work for. Several senior staff had to attend a meeting with the client, and some government regulatory staff were being awkward and not approving the design. The geotech guy was pretty much quiet the whole meeting. Throughout the discussion, the government guy kept referencing this one research document and rejecting any other suggestions.
Near the end of the meeting, the geotech guy asked the government guy if he had the research paper with him. He said yes and placed it on the table. The geotech guy then pointed to the author of the paper while simultaneously sliding over a business card. That's when he executed his "gotcha" moment. Turned out, it was the geotech guy’s own paper that the government guy had been referencing to defend his argument. The government guy went bright red and apparently approved the design the same day.
23. Climbing For Money
A local mall had a portable climbing wall. "Make it to the top and win $100," a sign read. The route was actually pretty challenging. As I walked by, the guy asked me if I’d like to try. He told me, “Nobody has made it to the top, so do you think you can do it, buddy?” At that time, I hadn't disclosed my big secret—I was a top 12-ranked climber in my age group and I kind of laughed to myself.
After taking my $100, I then proceeded to call the rest of my climbing team, and one by one they went to the mall and claimed their $100. After the fourth person, they got suspicious and took the sign down. We later told him we were all nationally ranked competitive climbers, and he got a good laugh. The company that owned the rentals was the one who lost the money—he just worked the booth and wasn’t the one who lost the prize money.
24. Tetris, Attacked!
There is this old SNES game called Tetris Attack that I played religiously when I was growing up. I got pretty good at it. I'm actually still half-decent, but I only play every few months when I visit my family. Anyhow, I was kinda-sorta seeing this guy and I have NO idea how the topic came up, but he challenged me a game of Tetris Attack.
He was NOT ready for what was coming to him. I had sincere doubts that he had ever played before despite his posturing, and it turned out...I was right. I trounced him and he actually said, "How are you so good at this stupid game?" Practice, my dude. Years of practice.
25. Submarine Cruise
My wife and I were taking an evening cruise for adults in Portsmouth Bay. The ship drove around the shipyard, where my submarine and several others were stationed. My wife and I were having a quiet drink when a really loud know-it-all started spouting misinformation about each submarine. He was calling them all the wrong classes, the wrong names, etc.
He literally pointed to my submarine and said, "...and that is a 637 class." My wife finally spoke up and said, "Actually, it's a 688." The guy got all gruff and scoffed: "Well how would you know?" My wife smiled and hugged my arm. She dropped the bombshell in the sweetest way ever: "That's my husband’s submarine, it is the Minneapolis St Paul, SNN-708." His faceturned beat red while his date laughed.
26. Unmentionable Mascara
A Japanese client that studied in France asked me for a translation job but wanted to change all my sentences to prove she was better than me at my own mother tongue. She ended up writing something grammatically correct but it sounded so much like innuendo that if you Googled the terms, you would only find unmentionable videos and writing.
I had to tell my boss what she was forcing me to write (because it was for a mascara brand that was supposed to be sold in France) so he could stop her and after that, she stopped trying to best me.
27. Lifting Weights
man placing weight plate on barbellPhoto by Victor Freitas on UnsplashI am a government auditor. One of the programs I oversee is a sort of boarding school for teens with delinquency history and it’s very athletics heavy. I’ve put on like 30 pounds of body fat since getting this mostly sedentary job and drifting into bad nutrition habits. Basically, I’m meaty underneath with above-average strength.
Prior to this job, I had a side gig as a personal trainer and posing coach. At the program one day, I needed to interview a student who didn’t want to leave his weightlifting class. He told me he’d talk to me if I could deadlift the bar he was working with, like 90 kg. He would soon regret making that wager with me. The staff was visibly annoyed that this guy was giving me a hard time, but I was wearing stretchy pants, so I gave it a quick set-up and pull.
The interview followed and now it’s an ongoing joke at the program that when I ask for interviews, they ask if I need chalk or anything for the mandatory deadlift.
28. Through Fire And Flames
My college has a dedicated gaming room in its central building. There are TVs for people to plug in whatever they want. I went in one day and saw someone playing Guitar Hero. He was playing on Expert, so he was decently good, but he was not perfect. I sat down, chatted him up, and eventually, he challenged me. It was a Pro-Face-Off on Through the Fire and Flames.
I'm not perfect at Through The Fire And Flames, but I figured what the heck, it'll be fun. Well, our fearless protagonist got a little too big for his boots on that one—he couldn't even hit the intro. The higher your combo in Guitar Hero, the more your score is multiplied, all the way up to 4x. If you don't hit the intro and can't keep your 4x through the fast strumming at the beginning, you're immediately behind somewhere in the echelon of 30k to 60k points.
The solos didn't fare him much better. He blamed his gear.
29. Never Again
I had a mate who would play Call of Duty with me a and I'd usually beat him in a 1-v-1 match, but he would occasionally win a game or at least get close before we switched to a different game, Motorstorm Apocalypse. I was a legitimate top 10 player on that game with multiple #1s, while e had just started playing through the offline mode. He was winning the races though, so he thought he was good.
I warned him, but he insisted on a 1-v-1 to show off his skills. Two minutes later, he started sweating like crazy. I'd go on to lap him on a three-lap race, and he ended up quitting the race before he was finished due to embarrassment. He never played that game again.
30. Forwards And Backwards
a group of people in a room with a projector screenPhoto by Kenny Eliason on UnsplashI have studied memorization techniques and mnemonics. I decided to have a bit of fun with my teacher. He wanted us to write down a list of 20 items. He was the type of guy to quickly call you out for not paying attention in class. I sat there memorizing the list in my head knowing full well he would see me not writing anything down.
He chewed me out for not taking notes, as predicted. He took the bait. I said, "I have it all in my head." I knew he would call me out and have me recite the list. The next day, he turned to me in the middle of his lecture and had the biggest smug smile. "So, what were those items from yesterday?" I immediately proceeded to list them in order without hesitation. Then listed them backward. His smile grew bigger and bigger, and the rest of the class was cracking up!
31. The Google Boys
Astronomer here! If we were to just meet on the street, you probably wouldn't guess I was a scientist since I am a woman who enjoys dresses when the weather is nice. This was doubly true when I was a few years younger in my 20s and single. At the end of college, I was doing a summer internship in Mountain View, California where if you went out there'd be a lot of Google boys.
They would literally sometimes wear "Google" shirts so you'd know. I remember getting stuck chatting with one, and when he asked my major, he sneered at me saying, "D you really know the subject?" He asked me if I knew what the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle was, and I explained it in great detail. When I later explained his 20 other questions, he said "it's probably not so hard because they go easy on women because they don't want to scare them off."
Oh, but it gets better—he then he proceeded to tell me at length about a lecture he attended in Mountain View that he'd been lucky enough to visit, as a Google employee, by Jill Tarter who runs the SETI Institute. He even went as far as to tell me about the Allen Telescope Array they were building in northern California because I "might not know about it."
I gave him a minute for his spiel. Then I proceeded to drop the mic on him: I actually was working for Jill that summer at the SETI Institute, on interference mitigation for the Allen Telescope Array. And did he want to hear what she was really like, or see some pictures from the ATA site? I'd also just met Frank Drake, and he was really nice! Oh man, was that guy not happy! But at least he stopped talking to me like right after.
32. Yes, I Do Know, Really
I’m a female mechanical engineer and I often get people working at Lowe’s, car shops, and dealerships talk down to me or say that I don’t understand basic concepts. For instance, a guy at Lowe’s swore up and down that bolt threading and pipe threading was the same thing. Another guy swore there were no diamond-tipped hole saws and tried to sell me a Dremel for the same job. I then found one in the tile section.
I’ve had mechanics swear up and down that my air filter in my car needed to be changed when I had just changed it weeks before, and my filter is circular and not square like the one they brought out to me. The best is the car salesmen though—they don’t seem to really care about my opinion, especially if my husband is there.
I’m usually the car buying decision-maker, but my husband also knows a ton about cars, and so they try to sell to him. It’s always hilarious. I usually just let them talk and clarify later with my husband because I’m not out to embarrass anybody.
33. The Kart Racer
man in red helmet riding orange and blue f 1 car toyPhoto by Ravi Palwe on UnsplashEveryone thinks they are amazing at Mario Kart. They used to be good as a kid and think they still are. I played two to four hours every day in undergrad a couple of years ago. I raced in local and school tournaments and won most of the time. I was within seconds on several course records. I have every course memorized and know exactly when to break on every turn.
I don’t play much anymore, but anytime somebody sees my Mario Kart painting, they tell me how amazing they are. I’m happy to absolutely destroy them.
34. The Punching Challenge
When I was in the army, we had a gut-punch challenge. I chose not to participate since I have very heavy hands, but there was one guy who kept egging me on. I just kept saying no, until he started talking too much trash and I couldn't take it anymore. So, I let him go first. He reared back and I just absorbed the hit. Honestly wasn’t a bad punch.
But then it was my turn. I sized him up a couple of times with practice line-up swings. He mocked me while I did this. I gave him one more warning, and he laughed it off. So, I pulled back and blasted him. Square on the belly button. He doubled over and his face went pale white. Lips blue. Air out of his system. He spent a couple of minutes struggling to catch air.
35. Caught In The Crossfire
There was this game called Crossfire. It’s an FPS game that’s still around I think. Back in high school, this one kid wanted to play me one on one because he heard I was good at it. He talked a big game and had a pretty good rank from his public games, so he seemed like a formidable opponent. I accepted his challenge.
What he didn’t know was just how good I was at the game. He probably thought I just got good from playing it a lot, but in reality, I was on the #1 team in Canada at the time. I was playing against top teams all over the world at that time and would regularly play pick-up games with top players daily. Needless to say, he got absolutely wrecked.
36. Oh, You Don’t Speak English?
blue and white country flagPhoto by Adrien Olichon on UnsplashI live in Northern Vermont, so we have a ton of tourism from French-speaking Canadians coming down from various parts of Quebec. I am a bilingual American and I hold two degrees in French, the master’s being in Quebecois language and literature. While bartending one day, a customer from Quebec tried to pay her bill in Canadian money, which is about .73 cents to the American dollar.
The Canadian bills didn't even add up to the bill total if the two currencies were on par. So, I politely explained all of this in English, but she replied in French, saying that she doesn't speak English. That was my cue to hit her with the surprise of her life. To the delight of my entire bar crowd, I then politely but forcibly explain all of this in perfect Quebecois French. Her face at that moment is almost worth the pain I feel every month paying back my student loans.
37. Don’t Look Like A Gamer, Do I?
When I was a freshman in undergrad, our floor had one of those big icebreaker meet-ups. One of my fun facts was that I really loved video games, which at the time was an understatement. I was bordering on obsessed. I was a girl, pretty athletic, and decent looking, so most of the guys kind of thought that was funny...and they probably thought I was just saying it to be quirky.
I didn’t bring my consoles to school because I was worried that my grades would be in serious trouble if I did. One of the guys on my floor invited me over to his dorm to play Xbox with him. When I get there, he asked me if Halo 3 was cool. I thought we’d maybe just go through the campaign together, but I noticed he was setting it up for a one-on-one. Big mistake on his part.
He says something along the lines of: “If I win, will you go on a date with me?” I ended up kicking his butt several matches in a row, with him really trying to win. Finally, I just told him we could hang out and play co-op together.
38. The Kids Section
I was working at a bookstore after school. since I was too shy to talk to coworkers, and no one wanted to get stuck in the kids’ section where I was often placed, I would spend a lot of my downtime reading. It was great as kids’ books are quick and easy, and you can catch up on ten new books in an hour.
On slower days, I could finish some of the kids’ chapter books in one go. Some series I would read from start to finish in a week. I quickly learned a LOT about the books in the children's department. Over time, I made friends with a lot of the local teachers and would try to get recommendations from them.
It was really helpful with summer reading and holiday chaos. I knew just about every book in that department, and a solid amount of the teen section, which was still sort of a 'new' reading section. However, as I was still in high school and it was very apparent that I was just a teenager helping them, some people wouldn't want to ask me for help.
They must’ve thought I was too young. Perhaps they thought a particular series was for little kids, so they needed to ask a parent instead. Whatever the reason, apparently I looked too young to be able to offer the help they wanted. Of course, every situation always ended in the same way—my co-workers would bring them right back to me. I loved proving them wrong and there were a lot of times where someone would assume I wouldn't know what was up
They’d be super vague and frustrated, and then amazed when I would just hand what they asked for within the next 30 seconds, or describe the cover in detail, with some plot points and my favorite part of the story. Some would even come back and ask for my help with their lesson plans.
39. A Really Long Game
a man in a red uniform skating on an ice rinkPhoto by Nathanaël Desmeules on UnsplashA friend of mine is really good at hockey. He played in the OHL here in Canada and was invited to a few NHL training camps, but he never made the cut. Anyway, he ultimately quit pursuing professional hockey after college since it didn’t seem like he’d ever make it. One time I invited him to a drop-in league game where anybody could play.
Maybe two minutes into the game, this one guy on the opposing team (who was kind of good but definitely never played at the level of my friend) scored a goal and immediately came over to our bench to taunt us. “How you boys like that? It’s gonna be a long game for you.” That lit a fire inside my friend. We ended up winning 21-3, my friend scoring 18 goals and never saying a single word back to the other team.
40. Pitch Perfect
I have a perfect pitch. It's not a thing I can turn off; notes simply are a pitch clear as day, much like how red is clearly distinct from green. Anyhow, it was music class in junior high. My teacher explained that Mozart had perfect pitch and he walked over to the piano, played a note, and said: "And just by hearing it, he'd be able to tell you what now that was... now can any of YOU do that?"
At the time, I honestly had no idea this was rare. I raised my hand, and the teacher, with a smug look, pointed at me and he was absolutely gobsmacked when I answered. I hit the note right on the money, octave and all. He figured it was pure luck, so he did it again and asked me to face the other way. I answered correctly again. He also tried it with chords, sequences, and two hands worth of notes.
Still right every time. That day, I learned that perfect pitch is actually kind of rare.
41. Alpha Running
I know a guy who tries to be a major alpha at any interaction with another male. One time, he challenged me to a distance race, saying they could run longer than I could. I knew he wasn't a runner at all, but he did not know I ran ultramarathons and had recently set the course record in a 50-mile race. Well, I said sure, and we set out the next morning at 6 am around a track with three of our mutual friends watching.
I just trailed behind him by like 20 feet at a casual pace. That way, he'd always be expending energy trying to put distance in between us. Surprisingly, he kept that up for like four miles, which is a lot for a non-runner. I eventually ran up to him and stuck with him for another mile talking about my running accomplishments.
Eventually, our friends wanted to leave, so I told him, "If you want, we can run in together." He agreed. But then, during the very last lap, he hit me with a curveball. He said, "Sorry but I'm gonna win" and tried to speed up to pass me. I was like, "Okay," and I dropped my pace. I still came in like 150 meters ahead of him.
He was full of excuses and challenged me to a sprint a few days later. I also completely wrecked him at that. Just give it up dude, you don't have to be "alpha" all the time.
42. Five-Minute Mile
man in white tank top running on track field during daytimePhoto by Colin FitzGerald on UnsplashWhen I was a junior in high school, I was in a PE class of pretty much all freshmen. We were required to take two years of PE and I decided to do it my last two years instead of the first two like everyone else. There was one kid in the class—your typical freshman football player who thought he was gonna be the lead quarterback or something.
Anyway, in the first week or so, I didn't really say anything or talk to anyone because I didn't know any of the freshmen and I was a pretty quiet guy anyway. Soon after, our coach told us we were going to do the mile, and, of course, Mr. Quarterback started talking it up, thinking he was going to win. People like that really annoy me.
What he didn't know is that I had been keeping a secret the entire time—I've been running track and cross country for the last 2.5 years and had a mile PR at that time of about 5 minutes. To make it even better, I was kind of a bigger guy, 5'11", 180lbs; not fat, but you definitely wouldn't guess I could run a 5-minute mile or really anywhere close. Anyway, back to the mile—we lined up and of course, this kid went out like a bullet, so I just trailed a few paces behind him for the first lap and made my move in lap two, just barely overtaking him.
I could've just totally pulled away and won by a long shot, but I decided that I would just stay a few paces right in front of him the whole time to just drag him along. I won just a couple of seconds in front of him with a 6:15 time. He was totally exhausted right afterward while I had barely broken a sweat. He shut his mouth a bit more after that.
43. The Real Competition
Seven teenage boys tried to get my boyfriend at the time to play Daytona, the arcade machine game, with them, as it was an eight-person setup. He offered me his place, which they accepted, thinking a woman in her mid-20s wouldn't be much competition. They had no idea who they were messing with— I worked at an amusement arcade at the time and played Daytona maybe 20 to 30 times a week.
I thrashed them, even playing in automatic mode. I may even have thrown in a "Did you just get beat by a GIRL?" as I strode off. I can still do it too. No-one has ever beaten me in a public playoff, though as a now middle-aged woman, I rarely get asked to take part.
44. On Top Of The Scrabble Board
I got really good at Scrabble after playing for years. Now, lots of people think they are good at Scrabble, but there are those who are ‘pretty good at a casual game’ and those who have the tw0- and three-letter words memorized, think about rack management, open vs. closed board, etc. Unless you regularly play against other competition-level players with timers and the Scrabble Dictionary, you are probably not the second kind of good.
So, I was meeting my significant other's mother and she thought of herself as a great Scrabble player. Not good, great. I tried my best not to play against her, saying I don't play casually, but she got a little aggressive with her insistence and I relented. We drew tiles and I drew high. The first word I played on the open board made her jaw drop.
It scored me 111 points. She and my significant other never got closer than the end of that first round. I was calm, polite, and good-spirited throughout as I demonstrated the difference between casual and competitive play (a few hundred points). There was no big blow-up, but I don't think either ever fully forgave me.
45. Do You Play?
woman playing Yamaha pianoPhoto by Jordan Whitfield on UnsplashI was hanging out with this girl I liked. We were just reading in a classroom that had a piano in it. At one point, I went over to the piano and she said, "Oh, do you play?" Now, I grew up with a piano, and I've learned like three songs from YouTube, but I only know them in a "what to hit in what order" kind of way. However, it is enough to impress most people.
So, I say "Of course," thinking that I would charm the heck out of her. With the most "get ready for your pants to hit the floor" attitude, I sat down and played that song from Amelie. After I was finished, she said "That's pretty good. Can I try?" When she started playing, I knew I'd screwed up. Apparently, she'd been playing piano her whole life.
She even studied classical music at university at some point. So yeah, she was not impressed.
46. Dressing Contest
I was a firefighter in college with a bunch of other college kids. We spent nearly every shift challenging each other to these types of competitions, debating how to shave off time, and I usually was the top finisher. After college, I went on to some small-town, part-time departments. As the new guy, I didn’t want to be a know-it-all, so I never really talked about my experience unless I was asked.
One day, the full-time professional firefighters dropped into one of our training sessions and challenged the new hires to a race to put on all our gear. The standard for this is 90 seconds from wearing street clothes to all clothing with mask, helmet, gloves, and the air tank. I did it around 40 seconds in my prime.
The laughter started to settle down as I tucked my pant legs into my socks and carefully arranged all my gear on the floor...but things got really quiet during my last sequence. I both-foot jumped into my boots while putting the flame hood on mid-air and one handing the mask while putting on the air pack. We didn’t time it, but I was dressed and “on-air” before some full-timers had their coats zippered up.
It then became a regular thing for the full-timers to come up with some new competition to challenge me on and there were rumors they would practice on their shifts. But years of practice meant I’d never been defeated...
47. A Real Distance Runner
I was a competitive distance runner for a while in my early 20s. Not a top professional or anything, but I’m talking 5k in the 14:15 to 14:30 range and 10k at around 30:00 even. Not fast enough to go to the Olympics, but fast enough for local sponsorship and pretty much a guaranteed win at any local road race, usually by a pretty big margin.
I was running a 5k or 10k nearly every weekend for the prize money, which for the record, was never a lot—only $100-$200 or so in value. But it was enough to pay for running gear, travel to races, and other things. Every week, I would search online for whatever race had the most prize money that weekend and I would drive up to race it.
I was going places where people didn’t recognize me. Every so often, the local town hotshot with a big ego who was used to winning their small church's 5ks would “challenge” me or talk hot stuff before the race. It never worked out for them. Normally, I would show up, not really talk to anyone, humbly run my race, and go home.
I wasn’t there to prove anything to anyone; I just wanted the $200 gift card or whatever they were offering. But when this happened, I had fun with it. I’d let them talk, which would always include them bragging about their personal record or recent race times. “Yeah, I won this race last year...I ran a 17:45 and won by a minute”...things like that.
I’d respond with, “Wow that’s impressive!” I mean, an 18:00 for 5k is a good time, but if you know 5k times, you'd know 14:30 for 5k is a different world. For reference, around this time, I ran the marathon in under two hours and 30 minutes. I averaged 17:45 per 5k in my marathon. So, it was not really going to be a “competition,” but I wanted them to think it would be. If they asked me about myself, I’d just brush it off and just say, “Oh, I’m just out here to have fun and support the local charity” or something like that.
When the race came, the real fun began. They'd take off like a bat, trying to prove a point. They’d try to put distance on me, but I’d just stay on their shoulder, letting them dictate their pace. This was almost always a pace they couldn’t actually sustain the whole race. Remember, at this point, they’d told me what they ran, so in my head, I knew what pace they should be able to sustain. I’d let them lead for the first mile, just running right behind them and never letting up.
Then, I’d slowly come parallel with them and take over. I’d constantly read their pace and run just fast enough to let them think they still had a chance, so they wouldn’t let up. They’d push themselves harder as a result, and you could see it on their face—the grit, the struggle to hold on, and their ego preventing them from slowing down to a realistic pace. They'd got lost in the moment and wouldn't realize what was happening.
That's when I'd slowly start creeping up my pace ever so slightly, but progressively until they started to hit their limit. At about two miles in, it'd be game over for them. They'd reach their lactate threshold, the point in which their muscles are producing more lactic acid than their body can remove and reconvert into energy. This is the physiological breaking point that forces a runner to slow down significantly.
When a runner hits this point, their body literally no longer has the strength to continue at that pace. That’s when I’d kick it into overdrive. I'd leave them in the dust, quite literally taking off nearly twice as fast as they'd slowed down to. By the time they’d reach the finish line, I’d been done for five minutes or more, despite them having been with me for two-thirds of the race. I stay and watch them stumble across the line, slowly, huffing and puffing, defeated.
48. I Didn’t Get The Email!
black laptop computerPhoto by Stephen Phillips - Hostreviews.co.uk on UnsplashThe property management company for my homeowner's association insisted that I had received emails that I never received. So, I asked them to prove that I had received them. I'm a software engineer and at the time I had just finished an enterprise email delivery system; like an in-house, constant contact. I knew the rules of the CAN-SPAM Act by heart. I KNEW exactly how their system worked.
So, this property manager said, "I know how email works. You wouldn't understand." At that very moment, I couldn't help it—I had to put the guy in his place. I started to explain very methodically how email delivery works and how they'd track various actions. I spent about five minutes detailing my credentials and why I was absolutely certain they had never sent me the emails they alleged I received. When I was finished, the HOA board just agreed to waive the fines.
49. With Just One Letter
I dated a guy in college who was incredibly book smart. He was working on his master’s with the intention to pursue a Ph.D. I was doing the good old five-year plan for college and I was quite content with my level of brainpower compared to his. What he underestimated was my fondness for word games, especially Scrabble. I like to think I'm quite good.
Well, in the three years we dated, we only played Scrabble once, and I beat the Scrabble tiles out of him. But the icing on the cake was the epic way in which I had secured my victory—I got a 50+ word score for playing just one letter. He literally wiped all the letters off the board and had a small hissy fit, claiming that I cheated. I got out my trusty Scrabble dictionary and proved his loss.
50. Impromptu Band Member
A buddy of mine was at a concert in bad seats and he started complaining about it via Twitter. All of a sudden, the band started reading some tweets and called my friend up to sit on stage for a couple of songs. They sat him at the piano and during the next song, they jokingly said, "Okay, piano solo!" The crowd laughed, but my buddy's next move shut them up real quick—he just started jamming out, as he plays the piano in his own band. Talk about dream moment getting to play with your favorite band.
Redditor sintemp wanted to hear about the times we've all averted odd ways of perishing, so they asked:
"In what unusual way have you almost died?"
Life is littered with near-death incidents.
It's a wonder we can enjoy living at all.
Oh wait, maybe that's the point.
Close Call
Pop Tv Please GIF by One Day At A TimeGiphy"Almost booked a ticket on MH17 with my mum and brother, before my dad shut it down and said he’s fed up with flying with Malaysian airlines. So we flew with Emirates instead, wise decision."
KenyanJesus69
"Same, my mum booked our tickets for MH17. Then they were changed to a day earlier, my whole family was sad we left early. Saw the news on MH17 when we landed in New Zealand. Scary crap."
Zoutt
Lungs
"When I was born in 1995 one of my lungs was filled with amniotic fluid. The doctors went in to drain it and inadvertently tore it instead. Then they proceeded to tear the other one in an attempt to fix the first one. My mother remembers two doctors getting into an extremely heated verbal argument over this. Doctor 1 thought he could treat me at the current hospital I was in."
"Doctor 2 knew that I would die if I wasn’t transferred to a better-equipped emergency center. They were in such disagreement that Doctor 2 literally had to sneak me out after Doctor 1’s shift was over. Obviously, it worked. I turned out not just making a full recovery, but I left ALOT of people scratching their heads because my body never developed scar tissue from all of that. My lungs work 100%."
Ohlookitsyouagain
Not Faking
"Got pushed off a dock by a bully and drowned in front of a lifeguard who was yelling at me to stop faking. I was 9 or 10 at the time and I couldn't swim. The town had a population of less than 800, only had 1 lifeguard, and I was at the beach 3-5 days a week because of family, so they knew. Brother ended up pulling me out and resuscitating me himself. Lifeguard pretended she didn't notice."
ModularArchive
Death Secret
"I was digging a hole at 12-14 years old. Because I could, kid stuff. I only remember waking up, and it was dark. I had apparently hit an underground electric line. No one knew. I was there for hours. I got up, went inside, and ate dinner. This was in the early 80s. I peed my pants. And felt weird for a day or two. Never told my parents. Thought they’d be mad."
BadLuckEddie
Chew Slowly
top hat fish GIF by GoldfishGiphy"By inhaling a Goldfish. The cracker, not the animal."
"Got pneumonia, hospitalized, the whole 9 yards."
"I don't eat goldfish anymore."
EchoLynx
I knew those little goldfish were dangerous.
Fish are killers with the right cheese.
Horrors
Over It Rose GIF by HULUGiphy"My stomach veins exploded. It was like something out of a movie the blood pouring out of my mouth. Don’t recommend it. Still traumatized."
pancakesquest1
50 Feet
"I came ~50 feet away from getting struck by lightning in April 2015… in Auschwitz. I was there with my dad and we hopped off the main tracks about 15 seconds before lightning hit them in front of us. We always joke (darkly) that we’d have been the last Jews to die in Auschwitz if we hadn’t moved."
chyko9
A beaten body...
"Fell down a mountain. (It was like a slide area that went at an angle off vertical.) My clothes and skin were torn badly, one of my pack straps was broken, and, while nothing felt broken, I felt like I had been beaten by baseball bats for a week. Took me 2 weeks to get out and to medical care. I was bleeding from every orifice and couldn't eat or drink when I entered the hospital."
"For a CAT they dumped something like 1.5 liters of, what we soon discovered, of a dye that I was severely allergic to. I next woke in the same room with a technician sobbing into my face and a doctor who looked like he just ran a marathon holding those shock paddles."
"I was informed of the allergy, told I had died, and had to swear to the, still very upset, technician that I'd always tell others I had such a severe allergy. So, I dragged my beaten body into a hospital for them to kill me in an attempt to find out what was wrong."
Gurpguru
Combat Problems
"Was assisting at a target practice in the military when a trainee misfired and got saved by my Kevlar helmet, the force of the impact pushed my head backward, and fell into the ground with so much force that I got a concussion."
"Next thing I know, the drill instructors are tearing that trainee a new one while I'm looking at a beautiful blue sky hearing shouting far away. Luckily I got hit by a 9 mm. to the helmet and not a 7.62 mm. from our standard combat rifle."
CommieWhacker14
Safety Issues
excited d&d GIF by Hyper RPGGiphy"I almost got crushed in a pin setter when I was working on the pin table (bowling lane). I was lazy and didn’t LOTO because as the manager I didn’t think anyone would turn it on but me. I was wrong and it was a mistake I only made once."
HappyHubby33
Lord, half of these are the worst of my memories.
We're not even safe in our own homes!
Do you have any stories? Let us know in the comments.
Strangers online had a discussion over a hypothetical when Redditor Infinity-X78 asked:
"Your ex calls you and says they miss you, How would you react?"
The window of redemption has expired.
We Are Gathered Here Today
"Amazed, flabbergasted! She's D E A D"
– spook7886
"Don’t trust her."
– NYVines
"means she tried find better but couldnt and now is desperate"
"not worthy of your trust."
– codeboss911
Class Reunion
"My last 'ex' was from 1989 so I would be shocked and confused if the girl I went to prom with a lifetime ago called me."
– TraditionalLock7846
"Ha my Mom had to call her first husband about 20-25 years after they separated because my dad's health insurance found out that she never got divorced from him when she needed her breast implants removed for medical reasons. She thought he filed he thought she filed. He had been married for a while and so had my parents. Only found out about all of this when I woke up one day to a note that said 'went to Arkansas to marry your Dad. Be back soon.' And this was before cell phones were common, so I had to wait like 8 hours to get answers."
– FluffyOwl30
Time for some mischief.
Wrong Number
"After they talked for a while, just act slightly confused and say 'sorry, number isn’t saved. Who’s this?'”
–No_Possession_9314
"I keep every number so I don't have to have the 'New phone, who this?' conversation. If it's someone I don't want to talk to, especially if it's someone I don't want knowing if it's still my current number, I just don't answer."
– F'kHopeSignedMe
Ignore It
"I would miss the call. I don't answer calls from strangers."
– effingusername123
"Reminds me of a quote:"
"'Not friends, not enemies. Just strangers with some memories.' - anonymous"
– OP
The Song Says It All
"'Now you're just somebody that I used to know.' - Australian guy that was popular for 6 seconds, and has been sitting on a pile of residuals for a decade."
– shanster925
"I too am a fan of Got'em"
– zoidy37
"Hearts a mess by gotye slaps."
– Background_Artist_85
Some people were strongly against giving second chances.
Some Advice
"As someone who took the bait, don't."
– CpuJunky
"True. Never go back to what broke you, especially after you've healed."
"Going back to an ex is like opening the fridge and taking a sip of sour, spoiled milk and putting it back in the fridge in hopes that the next day it would be fresh."
– Infinity-X78
Avoiding The Same Drama
"A therapist once told me 'Don’t go back to a poison well just because it’s the only water you’ve known.'"
"Honestly changed my life."
– BrotherOfTheOrder
Changing For The Worse
"Oof, same. She said she learned from her mistakes and changed, but she was more hurtful and selfish the second time around lol"
– Mycatstolemyidentity
"If you ever have a moment of weakness, always remind yourself about why you broke up in the first place."
– Creative_Recover
Some people had an easy time getting things off their chest.
I Hear You, But...
"I miss you, too. You were, and are, the love of my life. And I know you loved me. But you were so very bad at it. Goodbye."
– thedreadedaw
"Damn. Having reluctantly broken up with my ex because he very, very clearly lost every last shred of interest in me, this one hit me hard."
– sassyphrass
"This is really beautiful. The realness of this response"
– gbourg12
Call From The Ex-Wife
"My wife left me and after a year and a half called back. Asked if I ever think about her. I said of course, but...we are not a good fit. Plus, I am a changed man and I'm no longer the same guy you knew before."
– series_hybrid
"Mine did the same but we got back together lol."
– gt4674b
Maintaining solid relationships take work.
But depending on how bad they are, it shouldn't cause constant stress and anxiety.
Breakups, in this case, are necessary, and it's not about giving up.
It's about moving on and saving your sanity.
So when an ex calls from out of the blue, it may come from a place of being lonely or pining for the good memories of a lost relationship.
Go with your gut, and be aware that with a few exceptions, people don't really change.
Dating an ex actually has a term: backsliding.
But, if you end up rekindling a relationship that previously ended badly and it is a huge improvement, then you won the love lottery.
Normally, when we meet up with friends, we head out on the town. But sometimes there’s nothing like a chill night at a good friend’s place—unless they live in a pigsty or worse…so much worse. We all think we know our friends, but do we really? These shocking stories blow the doors wide open on the skeletons our friends are hiding in their closets.
1. The Big, Very Un-Comfy Couch
My best friend and I had been friends for probably 12 years so we were super close and our families were super close. We would travel together for sports and stuff. Her parents were basically my parents. Her dad was this big, big guy who was super tough. He was scary if you didn’t know him but he was really just teddy bear at heart.
We would usually spend the afternoons after school together since both sets of parents were working. We ended up at her house one particular day. We walked in expecting no one to be home. We were in for the surprise of a lifetime. Her dad was sitting on the couch just sobbing uncontrollably. It took a while for him to catch his breath enough to tell us what happened.
He told us that someone had walked into his work that day and just opened fire on a bunch of people. He lost three of his closest friends that day. He was in shambles. My BFF just instantly started crying and jumped in her dad’s arms. It was one of the most wholesome, yet scary and awkward things I have ever been witness to.
2. A Very Long Nap
This didn’t happen to me but to my girlfriend. She went over to her friend/neighbor’s house one day and it smelled absolutely awful. Like unbearably bad. She asked what the smell was coming from and her friend just said, "Oh that's grandma. She’s just sleeping over in the next room.” Well, turns out grandma’s little “nap” was more restive than she thought.
Three days later, the sandman (a.k.a. the coroner) was carrying grandma out of the house in a body bag. It’s anybody’s guess how long she had been decomposing in there.
3. Pack Rat Roommates
File:Compulsive hoarding Apartment.jpg - Wikimedia Commonscommons.wikimedia.org
My best friend lives in the basement of his parents’ house. It sounds pretty sweet that he has a whole floor of the house to himself—until you realize his parents’ dirty secret. They’re hoarders. My friend has to walk through a tunnel of car parts, furniture, Christmas decorations, moldy clothes, and dried dog droppings just to go upstairs to use the bathroom.
Whenever I visit, I can tell that they've tried to fill his mostly clean room with junk because he pushes it back out onto the piles.
4. My Door’s Always Open…Always
My best friend’s mom was single but she seemed to have a different boyfriend every other month. She would always walk around in her birthday suit and before you go thinking that that was like a “Stacy’s Mom” situation, it was the most awkward thing ever. She would leave the door of her bedroom open whenever she and her new boyfriend were being intimate.
It was the most awkward thing in the world to play Halo with my friend hearing what was happening just upstairs.
5. A New Kind Of Bed Wetting
When I was a kid, my mom took me and my siblings to visit an old friend of hers. We were playing with her friend's kids while our parents caught up on old times. Her friend's little boy, probably five or six at the time, really wanted to show us his room. I wish I had never, ever seen that little boy’s room. Nothing could have prepared me.
For the most part, it was pretty normal if a little messy. The weirdest thing though was his bed. It was just mattresses on the floor. Then he showed us a hole in the mattress, about one foot in diameter. He explained to us that that was the “toilet.”
6. Go To Your Room! And Stay There!
toddler holding assorted-color Crayola lotPhoto by Kristin Brown on UnsplashThis didn’t happen at a friend’s house but it was still the most messed up thing I’ve seen in another person’s place. I used to work at an apartment complex. One of my jobs was to come in after someone moved out and do a maintenance assessment. It was usually pretty straightforward. Most people left the apartment the way they got it with only normal wear and tear.
The worst exception to this was an eviction case. When I walked in, I found that the tenants had left the living room full of garbage. They had obviously strewn it about intentionally. They also had a dog that they clearly didn’t let outside or clean up after, if you get what I’m saying. As bad as that was, it wasn’t even the worst part of the apartment.
The worst was the kids' room. I guess the kids must have been between three and six years old based on the “evidence” I observed. The kids had drawn on the walls with crayons. In fact, they had practically repainted the walls in crayon. It definitely would have taken them a very long time to do that—they must have been drawing on the walls for months. And it got much worse.
The closet reeked of urine and it was easy to see why. The lock on the door faced outwards into the hallway. The tenants had changed the knob around so they could lock their kids in their room. At that point, I turned it over to the authorities. It was obviously a case of child neglect. So terrible.
7. Rub-a-dub-dub In The Tub
I used to wonder why my friend always wanted to come over to my house to play. No matter what the circumstances were, she just never seemed to want to go to her place to hang out. One day, we ended up at her place and, well, I learned why she wanted to be anywhere but there. Her place was like something out of a horror flick.
Every room in the house was full of trash and looked like a hurricane had gone through it. The worst part was the bathtub. It was filled to the brim with a mysterious, murky brown water. Suffice to say, we kept playing at my house after that.
8. Where Are Your Manners?
When I was about six years old, I would sometimes go to my neighbor’s house for breakfast. We were close friends but I guess I didn’t know his family as well as I thought I did. Turns out his dad had something of a bad temper—or he wasn’t very good at practical jokes. One morning, my friend’s dad asked him to pass the ketchup.
My friend either didn't hear his dad or ignored him. Either way, his dad overreacted big time. He reached over and grabbed the ketchup himself then proceeded to smash it over my friend’s head. Free dye job.
9. Let Them Eat Cake
baked strawberry cakePhoto by Jasmine Bartel on UnsplashI was 19 when I had to babysit the kids of some family friends (a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl) at their house after their usual sitter quit unexpectedly. The first day was rough but I brought some cookies and games to ease into it and get the kids accustomed to me. The second day was a babysitter’s nightmare.
The house was the definition of a disaster: junk everywhere, mud and dirt on most general surfaces, and a musky smell in every single room. The girl I was watching wanted a snack, so I went to the fridge to get something for her. The entire inside was brown and filthy from years of neglect. I gave up on the fridge and went to the cabinet.
It was still a mess but I managed to find some crackers. As I turned back to the living room to give her the crackers, I found the girl holding something baked in her hands. It was beige, kind of dense, shiny, and covered in a foamy fluffy stringy substance. I gasped in horror—it looked like an alien’s idea of food—and asked her what it was.
She pointed to an ornate glass cake display behind a pile of paperwork and junk on the dining table. I looked and inside the container was a cake that, well, had seen better days—or years. That thing was at least two or three weeks beyond the point of being even somewhat edible. It had partially dissolved, was covered in white and green mold and it was sitting in a centimeter of some liquid that I assume was what it was melting into.
I told her to spit it out and she reacted by shoving the whole thing into her mouth, sprinting to her bedroom and removing a piece of wood that covered the broken spot where an old AC window unit used to be. She then jumped out the first-floor window and ran down the back alley. I had to chase her down a back alley and finally grabbed the hood of her jacket and she fell to the ground.
By the time I got her home, the boy had gone halfway down the street in the other direction, throwing fireworks at a mail truck. There was no third day.
10. Fearsome Father Figure
When I was ten or eleven, I was hanging out at my best friend’s place. For some reason, his dad got really angry. He must have been seeing red. He grabbed my friend by the arm and dragged him across the living room. He was so rough that he snapped my friend’s arm. In public, the family blamed it on some skating accident. But I knew the dark truth. It was so sad and creepy.
11. Watering The Garden
I was friends with this girl who had the strangest habit when she was home. She would always get glasses of water (yay, for hydration) but she would pretty much never finish them. Instead of pouring smaller glasses, she came up with a “solution.” When she had had enough to drink, she would just dump the rest on the carpet because "it just absorbs it.”
12. It’s Like A Doll House But Creepier
cooked food on white ceramic platePhoto by Jed Owen on UnsplashI went to high school with a girl who had the weirdest family. They would dress up their house like it was a model home in a magazine or something. For example, they dressed the dining room table with a plastic Thanksgiving feast complete with plastic food on nice plates and fake wine in fake glasses. And that was just the ground floor.
When you walked into her bedroom the bed was made with the top corner open as if she just got out of bed. There was a tray with a fake bowl of cereal and a fake glass of orange juice. On the floor were coloring books and crayons as if a child lived in the room. They kept the place spotless and every room had an odd theme of fake living.
Even her parents’ bedroom had quite a few large African animal statues and fake rose petals leading to the bed.
13. A Gruesome Memento
I moved cities in the second or third grade. I met someone the first day and he invited me to his house that weekend to stay over. Everything was great at first. We played GameCube and stayed up until three in the morning (the latest I had been awake up to that point). When we finally couldn’t keep our eyes open, he said we had to sleep in the basement so that we wouldn’t wake his parents when we went upstairs.
I actually thought it was pretty cool to sleep in the basement. Little did I know, I was descending into a house of horrors. When we got downstairs with our sleeping bags, I immediately knew something was wrong. The worst smell I've ever experienced filled my nostrils the further we descended. I found the culprit in the corner of the room.
There was a bed covered in what looked like crusty blood and some pus-colored streaks. Turns out, his mother had had a home birth the week prior and kept the sheets as a memento. I haven't been back since.
14. I Think I’ve Seen A Ghost
I was friends with my little league baseball coach's son. One day they invited me to their house for a "play date." As I walked through the door, I saw a huge framed white cloth with some weird symbol. I didn't think much about it because at the time I didn't know what it was. My coach noticed me looking at it as I entered the house and said, "My Grandad wore that. It’s been in the family for years.”
Naturally, I thought nothing of it. If anything, I thought that it was cool that they kept old family heirlooms like that. But now that I’m older I realize what that white robe was. It was a KKK robe. And the worst part of it: I’m not white.
15. Money Doesn’t Grow On Trees. Or…
white and black printer paperPhoto by Giorgio Trovato on UnsplashI was visiting a friend this one time. We were having fun so we decided to extend our night by grabbing a 30-pack at the nearby store. I’m no freeloader so I told my friend that we had to stop by an ATM so I could pick up some cash to pay my half. Then my friend just turned and looked at me and said, "Don't worry about it, we can just go to the money drawer.”
Yeah, you read that right. Money drawer. This kid's family literally kept a drawer full (overflowing) with $20 bills in the kitchen. You could just walk up, grab a fat stack of 20s whenever you needed something. It was pretty surreal. I never questioned where all of that cash came from. Probably better I didn’t know.
16. It’s Quiet. Too Quiet.
My now ex-girlfriend’s house and family was so creepy because it was so normal. Like eerily so. Her family was kind of your typical Midwestern family. They were extremely nice and amazing people. Not a bad bone in their bodies. Anyways, I met them and everything was great. Her mother made an amazing dinner and we feasted like kings.
Afterward, we sat down on the couch and we all just talked. No TV, no cellphones, no bickering, no fighting, no trash talking about other family members or curse words. Nothing. Even her nephews sat on the floor and listened to the stories the older people told. It was like an episode of The Brady Bunch. And then it hit me.
Coming from a rambunctious Irish Catholic family, I was probably the dysfunctional one from a weird home. It was really a life-changing event for me just to know that families like that do exist. A weird experience for me. A great experience.
17. The Multiplex
I went to meet a friend of a friend and to pick up some of their belongings as they had moved out. It was the first time I was meeting that guy—and definitely the last. We walked into his place and he had three TVs and various computer screens set up in the living room. All of them were playing…adult entertainment. That guy and my friend thought that it was completely normal and my friend didn't warn me.
After we left, my friend just shrugged and said, “That's what he does.”
18. That Ain’t No Kitty
brown tabby cat on white wooden windowPhoto by Bogdan Farca on UnsplashMy friend Todd and I were both ten years old. I spent a lot of time at his house, but always had the feeling that things were just off in some way. I didn't know what his mom did for a living but I knew that she slept until two in the afternoon every day. Something that always threw me off was the overpowering stench of urine in their place.
Todd told me that the smell was from his cat and that it wafted up from the basement. But I couldn't understand how one cat was capable of that stench. Turns out, it wasn’t. Eventually, his mom and stepdad eventually were caught manufacturing speed.
19. Mannequin Make Out
I showed up at my friend’s house unannounced as was the style at the time. His mom or dad or somebody was outside and told me to just go right down as he was in the basement. I probably should have announced myself when I went—I could have spared us both a really awkward encounter. My friend was in the basement in his backroom.
When I went down, I found him making out with the top half of a mannequin. He had even dressed it up with makeup and everything. I wish I hadn't let out a noise of surprise and could have just left him cause dude really freaked out that I saw him and I felt so bad.
20. The Other Crocodile Dundee
One of my friends was friends with this kind of shady guy. He was filthy rich though. I thought that he maybe had some high connections in low places if you get my drift. Anyway, my friend and I went to this place and he was like, “Bro, want to see my crocodile?” I laughed, thinking that he was talking about fancy, expensive crocodile shoes. Nope.
Dude opened the door to the basement. Sure enough, there was a crocodile. Probably kept it around to get rid of “evidence.”
21. That’s Weird. Period.
white and multicolored beach ballPhoto by Raphaël Biscaldi on UnsplashThis happened many years ago. My friend invited me over to her place to swim in her pool. She was someone I had just met through another friend of mine so I didn’t know her that well. The three of us were in her room changing into our swimsuits. That's when I noticed something disturbing. There were a bunch of used—read: bloody—maxi pads laying open on her desk.
I asked her what that was all about and she very nonchalantly answered, "It's so my mom knows I'm not pregnant.” We were maybe 12 at the time.
22. A “Log” Chopper
The strangest thing I saw in my friend’s place was in their bathroom. Honestly, they had a normal house apart from this. I had to take a trip to the loo when I noticed a real machete hanging from the bathroom door. When I asked my friend why they had a machete in the bathroom, he basically said, “Just in case, man.” In case what exactly?
I guess it was there in case someone broke in when you were busy fighting dirt dragons—you wouldn’t be at a total disadvantage. Everyone at his place was surprised when I said I'd never heard of it. But I now keep a bathroom hammer handy, because, really, you never know.
23. That New Box Smell
I was at my friend’s place and we were getting something out of his dad's closet. I noticed that there was a ton of expensive electrical equipment stuffed into the back of the closet. It was all still in boxes, in the wrapping and everything. I asked him about it. Apparently, his dad kept everything new for a year before unboxing it and actually using it.
My friend didn't know why his dad did that. Not the creepiest thing but still boggles my mind. Very strange.
24. The Bubble-Wrapped House
blue and white abstract paintingPhoto by Emily Bernal on UnsplashThe weirdest (and I mean creepiest) thing that I saw at a friend’s place was the extent to which his family went to "preserve" their furniture. Each piece of furniture, including the lampshades, had a custom-cut plastic shell draped over it. Every furniture leg had a plastic bowl underneath it to distribute weight across the carpet, preventing indents.
The strangest part was the plastic pathways laid out across the floor. These pathways were kind of like "plastic carpets" laid on top of the real carpet. They didn’t allow you to walk on the actual carpet. Instead, you had to walk on these plastic mats that crisscrossed the floor and connected all the rooms to each other.
It looked like the entire house belonged on the set of Dexter.
25. Father, Dearest
My friend’s dad was actually the weirdest thing in his house. When I was a kid, I used to stay for dinner. But my friend’s dad wouldn’t eat with us. The mom would make a plate of food, take it down the hall and slide it halfway under the door to the basement. A few seconds later the plate would disappear to the other side. No one at the house seemed to think this was odd.
The other odd thing his family did was every weeknight at 7:00 PM on the dot, the family would clear out of the living room so my friend’s dad could come and watch Star Trek. Once the show was over, he would go back into the basement and the family would move back into the living room. It was creepy. He was like a cave troll.
26. Here, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Kitty
When I was a kid, I went to a friend's house. It was my first time going to his place—and I wished it would have been my last. There was this really pretty kitty asleep on the couch so, naturally, I went over to pet it. But if I had been expecting a soft, cuddly, furry animal then I was in for an unpleasant and morbid surprise.
My friend’s family had their cat stuffed taxidermy style after it passed and they just had it proudly on display on their couch. Gross.
27. Whose House Is It Anyway?
white wooden kitchen cabinetPhoto by Jason Leung on UnsplashI hate to admit it but I used to be the kid with the messed-up house that I didn’t want my friends to see. Ever. My mom boarded dogs out of my childhood home for money but she wasn’t any good at it. The dogs were always doing their business in the house—number one and number two. She took on way more than she was capable of handling.
The dogs were always so loud and I couldn’t go downstairs without gagging on the stench and having these dirty dogs jump all over me. Honestly, I hated my life. I could barely keep any friends and I couldn’t convince my mom to get rid of the dogs. She thought I was trying to “take away her happiness” by wanting a clean, quiet, calm home to live in and invite friends to.
28. Anybody Home In There?
I went to my friend’s place to pick up some headphones he was selling to me. When I walked into the living room, I noticed a lady sitting in a chair. She was totally unresponsive. I mean, practically comatose. When I asked my friend if she was doing alright, he said, “Oh, that's my aunt. She's high on smack.” It seemed perfectly normal to him.
I said, “Hi,” but she didn't seem to notice because she didn’t blink or anything. I got the headphones and got the heck out of there.
29. Get Your Head In The Game
When I was growing up, we used to have a human skull in a glass case in our living room. It was years before I figured out that was really weird. My mom got it from a doctor friend or something. It was just some random head, not like a relative or anything. We called him Freddy and had to superglue his jaw back on every few years when it fell off.
I wonder if my friends who came over thought that it was weird.
30. Diaper Duty
white and blue van on brown dirt road during daytimePhoto by Tyler Casey on UnsplashThis wasn’t a friend’s house but it was still really weird. I was an adult literacy volunteer and I went to this couple's trailer. A shirtless kid, maybe five or six, walked in wearing a diaper. At first, I thought it was a joke. Then I thought maybe he had developmental issues. Then the mother said, "About time to change your diaper, ain't it?"
In perfect, clear English the boy said defiantly, "You ain't gonna change my diaper."
31. Grandfathered In
I went to a friend’s house and my friend’s dad had the strangest collection. He had lined their halls with grandfather clocks. That was a little weird but I didn’t think much of it. The weird part came when his dad told me and my friend, "Don't you kids go around telling anybody about my clocks.” In all fairness to him, they were probably worth a fortune.
32. The Writing On The Walls
I will never forget visiting my friend’s house when we were kids. The thing that stood out to me was the wallpaper. They had it in all of the hallways. The pattern was of totally undressed women. All throughout the apartment. Just a bunch of a pattern tiny, unclothed women. We were maybe eight years old. It was amazing. And kind of weird.
33. Cat Got Your Tongue?
white and black cowPhoto by Wolfgang Hasselmann on UnsplashI went to my friend’s house for his birthday. Honestly, their house was normal but the birthday party was…well, very abnormal. Instead of a birthday cake, they had a cow tongue. It wasn't like they couldn't afford a birthday cake either. They just had a cow tongue with a single candle in it. I hope he wished for a normal birthday cake.
34. Is Your Toilet Running? Then You Should Flush It
I was about 12 or 13, visiting my best friend's house for the first time. After lunch, I got the urge to take a dump, so I went to the restroom and did my thing. I finished up and flushed...only nothing happened. I took a step back and flushed again but still nothing happened. At that point I started freaking out—I had just broken my friend’s toilet.
I was getting so nervous. I didn’t have any money to pay to fix the toilet or buy a new one. Worse yet, I was stuck standing there, sweating, with my “delivery” just floating in the toilet. I tried to figure out a plan but after 15 minutes I couldn’t think of anything. I finally decided to fess up and face the embarrassment.
I stepped outside and sheepishly told his mom that I broke their toilet. She started laughing, went into the bathroom, and very calmy turned on the water flow to the toilet. She waited a few minutes then flushed and down went the log. Everyone (my best friend, his mom, and his sister) took the opportunity to start laughing at me because I didn't know it was "normal" to turn the water on/off whenever I needed to use the bathroom.
To this day if I'm unfamiliar with a restroom, I always do a precautionary flush just to make sure everything is working the way it should.
35. Are Those Bones Or Are You Happy To See Me?
When I was dating my first girlfriend in high school, she invited me over to her house for dinner and to meet the parents. At one point I was talking with her father in his study and I noticed lots of old-looking phallic-shaped objects on the shelves in the room. On closer inspection, I discovered that they were, in fact, mummified phalluses. There were dozens of them.
Fortunately, there was a perfectly rational explanation—her father was not, as I feared, castrating her boyfriends. Turns out, he was a urologist and an amateur archaeologist. Still…it was pretty creepy and intimidating.
36. I Like Your Stash
File:Hoarding living room.jpg - Wikimedia Commonscommons.wikimedia.org
My friend was a bit of a slob but that was nothing compared to his parents, who were really bad hoarders. My friend had a full-sized trash can in his room and it was always full, but his parents had him beat. By a lot. They had dedicated an entire "wing" of their home to their “hoard.” They said that it was off-limits which, of course, only increased our intrigue.
My friend would take anyone and everyone into the “off-limits” wing when the opportunity presented itself. While the rest of the house was relatively messy, it was nothing like that wing. Behind that door there were boxes, old newspapers, and random stuff everywhere. The hall that led to their room had a narrow pathway carved out with dust built up several inches to the side of it.
The most shocking thing was their bed. It was visually lopsided. They were big people and apparently that was the side they got jiggy on. Fortunately, there were all of those boxes and mountains of dust to muffle the sound.
37. If It’s Yellow…
I found a dog poop on my friend's carpet next to his bed. When I pointed it out, he elected not to pick it up but to leave it and clean it up later. At the same sleepover, I went to use the restroom and the toilet had not been flushed by the previous person. It was just pee in there, but it had been in there so long that when I peed into the water, I broke through a solid thin layer of film created by the unflushed pee.
38. Two-Ply, One-Ply, No-Ply
Two friends of mine shared an apartment. They started fighting about who bought the most toilet paper. I didn’t realize how intense their feud got until I visited once. It wasn’t so much what I found but what I didn’t find. Their fight had gotten so bad that they both stopped buying toilet paper altogether. And they resorted to desperate measures.
It got to the point that they only used the washroom when they had to shower. Sometimes it’s the things that aren’t there that are the most shocking.
39. The Franken-Puppy
dog holding flowerPhoto by Celine Sayuri Tagami on UnsplashA friend from middle school had parents who would always get him dogs even though they didn't bother to take good care of them. My friend loved those dogs but the parents would always let them out somehow and they'd run away. One day I went to his house and he told me about how his current dog was hit by a car and half its body was smashed.
I assumed that the dog had passed in the accident but when I visited his place, I was shocked to learn the truth. He walked me to the backyard with a small plate of food for the dog. The parents had dug a shallow hole and threw the dog in there while it was still alive. Poor thing was withering and suffering while maggots were eating its lower half.
The next day, he told me that his dad had put it down himself. At that point, it was a mercy.
40. Shocking Revelations
When I was 13, I was at a neighbor friend's trailer (we lived in the same park). As we were hanging out, my friend's older sister got into a fight with her mom and they started yelling at each other. His sister was shouting that no one ever believed her and then dropped the big news. She said that her deaf uncle (her dad's brother, also living in the trailer) had been forcing himself on her at night.
It was the most uncomfortable situation I'd ever been in—and remains so to this day. I wanted to leave immediately but was halfway way through coloring in his older brother's tattoo so I couldn’t just cut and run.
41. Little Terrors
When I was about 15, I went to a friend’s house (let’s call him Doug). From there, we met up with one of his friends at their house (let’s call him Tyler). Down the hallway at Tyler’s house was a door with a deadbolt on the outside. Tyler asked us if we wanted to see something “hilarious.” I said, “Sure,” and immediately regretted it.
Tyler unlocked the door and there was a little old lady, probably in her mid-to-late 80s, in the corner of a dark room. She was surrounded by dirty dishes and half-eaten bologna sandwiches. She looked up at us, startled, and said, “Who are you? What do you want?” Without answering, Tyler then picked up one of the sandwiches and threw it at her.
He got the poor, little old lady covered in mustard and bologna. He then threw a drink at her. It was awful. At that point, she got up and started yelling, “What the hell are you doing?” and cursing at him. Tyler ran out the door and locked the deadbolt behind him. She was banging on the door. It was awful. Anything but “hilarious.”
A minute or so passed and Tyler unlocked the door and walked in. She was so visibly confused and sweetly, calmly asked why she was wet and what was all over her. “It’s alright Grandma,” Tyler said, “just sit down and eat your food.” Tyler and Doug thought it was the funniest thing in the world and didn’t stop laughing for hours about it.
I left and didn’t go back to either of their houses again. Just witnessing that made me sick to my stomach.
42. The Weirdest Family Values
The Twilight Zone 1960 | Northridge Alumni Bear Facts | Flickrwww.flickr.com
I dated a guy whose family was just…odd. Visiting their house felt like stepping into the twilight zone. They just did things so differently, sometimes I wondered if they weren’t aliens. For example, no one in the house knew how to use a stove. They used the microwave or ate out. They left every cabinet and drawer in the house wide open for no discernible reason.
His mother walked around the house in her birthday suit pretty much constantly and took about ten baths a day. His parents would go to McDonald's to watch TV despite having a very nice TV with satellite. And his family had a lot of grandiose tales. Things like they saved two men from a plane crash and how the mother outran a pack of wolves in suburban Arizona.
There were a lot more oddities but those were the strangest of them.
43. Kids, Bath Time!
I spent the night at a friend's house in the sixth grade. To put that into perspective, we were eleven or twelve years old. Anyhow, he lived with just his mom—his dad wasn't in the picture and he was an only child. Seeing as though it was just the two of them, they developed a close relationship but, in my humble opinion, they were way too close.
We were having a great time until his mom called him for bath time. With her. Like, together. They even left the door open like it was nothing.
44. House Slitherin'
I had a friend named David and he invited me to his house once. Little did I know that his family were horrific hoarders. You couldn't see the floor of his house, and I was literally stepping in bowls filled with cereal. At one point, I saw a snake just slithering through the refuse. That was way more than enough for me.
I immediately made up an excuse that I was sick so I could go home. It was an actual nightmare.
45. The Lion’s Club
lion lying on green grass during daytimePhoto by Mike van den Bos on UnsplashMy parents were in a bowling league and would bring me with them. I made friends with a girl who hung out at the bowling alley because she lived in a home on an acre of land next to it. One night, she invited me to over to her house while my parents bowled. I asked my parents and they said I could. I was in for the story of a lifetime.
We walked to her house and when I walked in there was a lion cub (like Simba, like a giant wild cat) chained to a coffee table in the front room. She asked me if I wanted to pet the lion and of course I did! I pet the lion, we hung out and I got back to the bowling alley like nothing happened. I really should have taken a picture.
When I told my parents about it, they were like, “Sure,” in that indulgent kind of way that I knew meant they didn’t believe me. The joke was on them though. Years later, I was reading the newspaper and saw that the girl and her family had been charged for illegally having exotic cats. I showed my parents and had the best "told you so" moment in my life.
46. My House, My Rules, My Face. Everywhere.
One of my wife's co-workers invited us to a dinner party. I wasn't really friends with that guy because, well, you’ll see. Anyhow, he was a very accomplished doctor who, supposedly, was the foremost authority in his specialty. I knew the man had a huge ego but nothing prepared me for what I saw when we went to his home—or shrine, as it turns out.
As soon as we walked in the door there was a life-size painting of himself that one of his patients had given him as a gift. There was nothing too strange—if a little self-centered—about that. He saved a patient’s life and they were very grateful so they gave him a painting. No biggie, right? Well, that house might as well have been an art gallery…in his honor.
His wife took our jackets, hung them up then walked us to his massive living room where the rest of the guests were mingling. As I looked around the room to take in what a magnificent home this man had, I noticed that there were hundreds of pictures lining his shelves and walls. Every single one of those pictures was of him. Not of his wife, not of his four children, not of his siblings, parents, etc.
Even the pictures that looked like they may have been group photos, he had clearly cropped so that he was the only one in the frame. I'm terrible at hiding my true feelings. My face usually gives me away every time but I spent the next hour desperately trying to pretend like that wasn't remotely strange. After a few drinks, I decided to head to the bathroom.
I had to take a dump and I'm not shy about doing so at another person's home. I walked into their guest bathroom, closed the door, lifted up the lid, sat down, and grabbed one of a dozen books that were sitting next to the toilet. The first book I picked up was—surprise!—written by our host. So, I picked up another book and you guessed it, that guy was the author.
I checked all of the books in the stack and not surprisingly, they were all written by this guy. Part amused and part disgusted I looked up and noticed there was a picture on a small table across from the toilet. That guy again, staring at me while I tried to use the washroom.
47. Is That A Feather Boa?
I had a friend who lived on his own in high school and we partied at his place a lot. He had a revolving door of roommates to help with rent. One of these roommates was a seriously sketchy character. He was extremely paranoid and rarely spoke to us besides uttering vague threats. The one he always repeated was that we never, EVER go in his room. Seemed easy enough because he always kept it locked.
Well, one day he found himself locked up—in the clink. He communicated through family again not to enter his room, saying that eventually, his family would come get his things. Weeks went by and a strange smell started coming from the locked room. This dude and his family were super scary so we didn’t want to mess around and find out.
But finally, my friend just couldn’t take the smell anymore. He figured that it was probably just rotting trash and that he could take it out without touching anything else. He was way in over his head though. When he finally entered the room, he found a massive, decomposing boa constrictor. It wasn’t even in a tank.
48. Everything That Glitters Ain’t Clean
white mug spilling milk on brown and black mugsPhoto by Clarissa Carbungco on UnsplashI was at my friend’s place and he asked me to get us a couple of clean coffee mugs from the dishwasher. I’ve been second-guessing everything I’ve ever eaten at his place ever since. Besides the two “clean” mugs in the dishwasher, I found a couple of other not-so-clean items. Staring back at were two toilet brushes, just washed. No amount of dish detergent would make that kosher.
49. A Family Photo Album To Remember
My good friend in high school’s parents were discussing putting in an alarm on their house once while I was over, but were balking at the price. I told them I would cable it for them, which made they very excited. The attic access was in the master bedroom closet so I had to go through there. And their closet had some skeletons.
When I went up into the attic, I found a bunch of pictures of my friend’s mom with a guy who was not her husband. I mean a bunch of pictures—and she was doing it all with this dude. My friend’s dad was permanently disabled and didn’t have great use of one side, so I’m guessing that’s why she thought that was a safe place to hide her dirty secret.
I never said anything to their family about it.
50. It’s A Feline Frenzy!
I went to high school two towns south of where I grew up and I made some new friends through sports almost immediately. The two girls I befriended invited me to this other girl's house. I hadn't really talked to her much but she seemed nice so I went with them. After a little while of jumping on the trampoline, one of my new friends asked this other girl to show me her "cat room.”
We went up to the bonus room above the garage and opened the door to a house of horrors. There were countless cats and kittens of all ages, colors and sizes. But not even Catwoman would have been comfortable in there. The whole room—the ceiling, the walls, the floor, everything—was covered in filth. The poor cats were crawling over one another.
The girl whose house it was didn’t seem to think it was off. She just started playing with the kittens and tried to hand one to me to play with. I don't even know what I did. The two girls who invited me were laughing hysterically and I tried to make some type of excuse to get out of there and one of them was like, “Oh, but you haven’t met "Sprinkles" yet.”
The girl whose house it was went off in search of one specific cat and we were trapped in there for another ten minutes while my new friends laughed maniacally. I can remember the smell. Oh, the smell.