Non-prep school kids typically don't like prep school kids because they have more fun. Because they're rich. Anyway, enjoy some tall tales from private school students.
HarbingerOfYeet asked people who studied in boarding schools: What are your craziest stories from your school life?
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
Can we top this today?
I went to boarding School from age 9-16.
In my country, parents usually wait until you are at least 12-13 but there was a big war in my town. On the day that the war started, we were all at school. Every car on he road was stoned, overturned and set alight. The riot police came and flung all us little kids into a walled compound adjacent from the school to keep us from the mob. I remember being cold and holding onto my little brother. My classmates were all with me as well. It was pitch dark by the time we heard our parents calling out our names. The next day, it was revealed that 11 children from my primary school had been killed in the riot. Some parents moved, some- like mine- sent their kids to boarding school. I went to the same school as 6 of my classmates. We all had some form of PTSD by the time we arrived at school.
In boarding school, our dorms were connected but there was a distinct boys side and girls side, chaperoned 24/7 by Matron- Comber Of Hair.
Anyway, our new boarding school was right on the edge of a national park and one night we heard a thundering and a trumpeting. Apparently, a rogue elephant had decided to break the fence and go on rampage in our school. We were mostly safe in the dorm, but villagers were screaming, and firing Ak's and trying to distract the elephant. Then a helicopter came and a guy shot a tranquilizer dart at the elephant. It didn't fall right away but teetered dangerously towards our dorms. I mean he could have kicked the door down but mercifully fell like 2 meters from the door. We were terrified!!! the 7 of us were freaking the f*ck out and freaking out the other kids too.
Anyway, a large truck and crane came and they lifted the elephant onto the truck and took him back to the preserve. That night there was no boys side or girls side. all the boys came over to our side and brought their mattresses and slept in the hallway. Eventually the teachers decided to move the boys beds in (all our parents were Okay with this as we needed each other so much) and we had the first co-ed dorm. This carried on for 4 years until we went to the high school section! We remained as a cohort throughout and while other kids got separated, the 7 of us always slept in the same dorm no matter what. Oh and we always said good night to each other, ritualistically.
Suffice to say, none of us has any remnants of PTSD.
Miraculously, none of us even grew up to date each other. We still keep in touch and everyone once in while, someone from across the world will text me goodnight.
Edit: WOW!!! this blew up and my first gold too! Idk what gold is but I daresay I think its good:)The country was Kenya in East Africa. I can't say the school name (idk why but something about not providing identifying details) but it was near Lake Nakuru National Park South Western Mau National reserve, and bunch of other parks. The town where the war was was Kisumu. Dr. Robert Ouko had been killed (allegedly by the president, Daniel T. Arap Moi) and burned, and when his body was found, it sparked a massive riot and for months the town was on lock down.
EDIT#2: Matron- Comber of hair was in charge of combing our hair. I am African but my mother is Indian and for some sadistic reason wanted me to have long hair. Anyone who has tight curly hair knows that its impossible for a 9 year old child to manage long hair on their own. So Matron-Comber of Hair was in charge of combing and braiding my hair every morning and night. She was in charge of all the girls hair, as well as some of the boys (2 were biracial and their hair was HARD!) so anyway, Matron - Comber of hair would line us up and try to comb our hair with a brush for the white and Indian children's hair. Of course it did nothing and it would snag and break my hair. Then I would cry, and then matron would cane me for crying, it was a right clusterf*ck. But I would leave that dorm every morning looking like a normal child instead of a golliwog. Thats what she used to call me, "our little golliwog."
This is kind of impressive.
Not me, but I go to a farming boarding school, and someone bought back a pet chicken from town, and managed to keep it in the dorm for 12 weeks without authorities knowing. It was like a personal alarm clock every morning too.
When you gotta go you gotta go.
Military school.
After evening study hall, my company was called to a meeting. "Don't stick your genitals out the window." Apparently, someone decided to do that rather than go to the bathroom.
This happens more often than you'd think
Edit: And not just at military boarding schools, others as well.
I thought peeing in your sink was the usual practice.
It was.
He raised the dead.
One time, I had a dorm pet beta fish called Weed von Marijuana, for the little plastic seaweed toy that came with his tank. I regularly maintained his tank, but one time I pulled him out too roughly, and so he got scared and played dead. Thinking I had to bury him, I decided to call the only other person in the dorms at that moment - a very studious, reclusive student - to join me in the burial ritual. We somehow found a way to light a candle (illegal in the dorms) and dimmed the lights, as we made a candlelit burial procession from the kitchenette to the bathroom. All the while, I was holding my dead fish up, lion king style and we wore blankets like hooded robes while chanting somber tunes. When I was at the crescendo of the tunes and was about to pour my fish into the toilet, he started flopping around, and at the last second, I got to keep him.
Nah you just summoned his soul back from the dead.
🤫
Best years of this person's life.
I went to an Episcopalian boarding high school in New Hampshire.
One year anonymous letters were sent to all the black students with a picture of a target and the word "bang" written on them. The incident rocked the school but it was awesome how the community came together in support of each other. The FBI got involved and I remember giving a statement to two agents. I don't believe that case was ever resolved.
One of my classmates got kicked out for academic dishonesty because he cheated on a Spanish test. He was a native speaker.
The school got flooded out one spring and the last few months of the year were cancelled, including finals.
During my 5th form year, my dorm had a massive underground Texas hold em ring going. Of course, gambling for real money was strictly against the rules, but we managed to create a good system for concealing what we were doing even if faculty visited our room while we were playing. Despite being a bunch of high school students, there were never any instances of not paying up, which I find impressive in hindsight.
The mini library in the main academic building was one of the most popular spots for loud sex. I regularly heard people going at it at late hours while passing through.
The school internet from the dorms shut off at night until around 6 am, and it was normally quite slow otherwise. A friend of mine figured out that he could set up a VPN through a laptop he left in the science building. By connecting to that laptop, not only did we have 24/7 internet access, but during the hours the dorm internet was cut off, the VPN internet was blazing f*cking fast - the entire campus's bandwidth being used only by the few people my friend entrusted the information to. We called it Ford Prefect and it lasted a while until a faculty member somehow found out about it. He only got a slap on the wrist.
I'm probably forgetting a lot, this sh*t was so long ago. Boarding school is f*cking nuts and if I had a time machine I'd happily do it all over again.
For girls, boarding school is no fairy tale.
I wish your question was, "people who went to boarding school, how is it different to what you see in the movies?" I went to an exclusive all girls boarding school: it's not hot girls having pillow fights in skimpy lingerie. It's bad skin, braces and men's pj's (as in, that's what we all wore to bed).
When there were school functions (to raise money) we were the waitresses/slave labour. One time I nicked a few bottles of wine from one of these events & hid them up in the roof above our dorm. By the time that story went through the school gossip system (& got back to teachers) I was supposedly running a bar in the attic.
Late at night (2am'ish) i'd sneak out & over to the boys boarding school down the road. We'd just do stupid stuff like take their bikes or skateboards & ride around the neighbourhood, then purposely put them back in different places.
Two girls did get expelled for sneaking out through my escape route to go to a John Mellencamp concert.
Also attended all girls' boarding school and wore pajamas nearly exclusively when we were out of uniform.
Every school has one...
Fall 2012. One of the newer girls in school ran to the teachers in hysterics. She's deathly allergic to peanuts, and claimed someone crushed up some in her room after she got in a shouting match with some of the other girls.
The girls' floor is on lock down, basically. We're all grounded from going to trips to the mall or movie theater or something. The police aren't called or anything, since it would have been impossible to prove anybody did anything. However, regular classes are cancelled, and for maybe a fortnight all we did was team building exercises. Long conversations about what "sisterhood" means to us. I'm sure in the teachers' heads dramatic music was playing like the climax of a chick flick about a close group of friends.
However, a lot of us girls became suspicious. If it were true that somebody basically attempted to murder her, who cleaned up the mess, if not to verify there really were peanuts in there? Why was she still in the same room, and why wasn't any of her stuff sanitized? That girl claimed that she cleaned it up herself, and that she'd only die if she ingested peanuts. A week after the initial incident, she claimed that she was airborne. Later on in the year, she claimed she'd die if she touched someone who happened to eat peanuts in the past 24 hours. Then, she told us she was going through chemotherapy for an overactive thyroid, which, by the way, was why she was morbidly obese. Mysteriously, she didn't miss a day of school or a hair on her head (I know that chemo doesn't guarantee hair loss but still, she looked fine).
Until we graduated, she was basically shunned by everyone in our age group; even the boys avoided her. However, the teachers and much younger students loved her, mostly because of the sweet "big sister" persona she maintained when you first meet her.
As far as I know, she's currently working at a nursing home for the elderly, and that kind of disturbs me. I guess she could have changed in over five years, but then again, she was actually already twenty years old at that point...
I have an overactive thyroid and let me tell you, chemotherapy is not a treatment for it nor is morbid obesity a side effect.
She had crazy stories about her damn thyroid problem. She showed us pics of her at a wedding that took place maybe the summer before she came to our school, and there she looked mildly chubby at best. Apparently her thyroid made her gain well over a hundred pounds. The spring before we graduated, she apparently claimed to the younger girls (like thirteen or so) that her thyroid problem was contagious that particular morning. (Then again, perhaps that wasn't her compulsively lying and rather her just trying to get those kids to fuck off...)
She constantly made excuses for her weight. That is, until a veterinarian told her that her horses' spines were all fucked up because of it, and as a result the guys who owned the barn/hosted horse racing competitions basically forbade her from riding until she dropped a few pounds. She initially claimed they were all fat shaming her, but eventually realized that her horses' physical health was at stake and she took up jogging. She actually lost a decent amount of weight!
...but then she claimed her family was soooo pooooor because they couldn't afford to have their horses live at their house. They had to keep them in a barn and pay their rent like a bunch of bums. Y'know, forgive me if this is judgmental, but if you live in Connecticut, have bought three racing stallions, and go to a private high school that costs ten grand a year, don't be so shocked if you end up living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Poor turtle.
So many. I'll share the first one that came to mind.
My roommate had bought a small turtle on a school trip without asking me. This was against school rules, but we decided to hide it by moving our bunk against the window and hiding its tank between my very large sheets and the window.
Eventually he moved it to his desk, which I also objected to, but our room was never checked. Asshats from the 2nd floor of our building would frequent our room, play with it, and sometimes 'accidentally' drop it.
One day, when we came into our room, it wasn't in the tank. My roommate, who does not give a f*ck about it, decides to just leave the room and let me figure it out. I turn the entire room inside out looking for it, and I'm starting to lose my sanity not finding this thing.
I check under his bed as a last resort, and see his dirty underwear. I decide to grab it just to clean the room some more, and I find the turtle wrapped in it, belly up, dry and not moving. I toss it back in its tank and, after a while, it begins to move again.
Needless to say, I took it back to my house the next break and care for it myself.
Another really fun story was the annual senior dorm retreat earlier this year. We went to a lake with a bunch of log cabins, where we split about 150 kids into 15 cabins. Obviously all the girls are on one side of the lake, and the guys on the other. The about 5 faculty on the trip with us are somewhere in the middle.
My cabin, which was the 2nd furthest guys dorm, looking for some fun, persuaded a small group of the girls to come to our cabin at around 1 AM. To our horror, we look outside and see all ~75 girls pouring over to our cabins little patio. We desperately try to quiet them down but they keep making noise and the faculty catch on.
One of the faculty starts walking over and, thankfully, we had someone keeping watch of them. Our guard quickly notifies the guys, and we alert the girls of the situation. Cornered and with nowhere to go, they desperately start streaming into the 3 closest guys cabins, including ours, in an attempt to hide. I funnel them into our bathroom, out of sight from windows or faculty. Their attempt was futile, however, as the faculty came in the cabin and basically gave the girls one chance to leave or face severe punishment. Suddenly, 30 girls flow out of our bathroom and sprint back to their cabins. The involved faculty never further addressed this incident.
Well, at least you got a turtle out of it. How is he/she doing now?
Thriving! It has quadrupled in size.
Ding dong.
Attended a New England boarding school for two years. It was what you may imagine. Lots of rich kids and athletes. This is a coed school.
Anyways craziest story... our school like many others had a chapel. The chapel had a big bell tower that was only accessible through a locked door.
One day I got to go up there for a photography class. On the way out I left it unlocked. At approximately 10 pm that night I snuck out of my dorm, as did a female friend. We met at the chapel and snuck in a back door.
We climbed the three internal ladders to the top and proceed to desecrate that bell tower, while looking over the entire campus. Not realizing how long we had been up there the clock struck 11 and the bells rang for lights out.
A bell like that ringing by your head is not enjoyable. I nearly fell off of the tower in the scramble to get down the first ladder. Then I was successful in sneaking back to my dorm to play video games or something.
We also had other crazy sh*t happen, lots of drugs, fights, suicide attempts, skinny dipping in the pond in the woods, having friends get you into NYC clubs. Just stupid high school sh*t but with more money.
Hey, it's not all turtles and bell towers.
Nothing crazy, it was just depressing--All we did was study--100% of our senior class was accepted to 4 year universities.
If you went to boarding school, what's your craziest memory?
Reddit user New-Low5765 asked:
"People who work in the airline industry, what are some of the craziest things you have seen?"
Don't Drink And Tow Aircraft
"Worked as ground crew. 2nd day on the job we were issued a notice to gather."
"So when you check in every morning you’re supposed to always take a breathalyzer test to prove you can like you know, ride around the tarmack, use pushbacks on planes, etc..."
"For whatever reason this dude hadn’t taken it/got past without taking it."
"He was not sober."
"He was tasked with pulling a 370 [aircraft] into a hangar."
"He eyeballed it for whatever reason."
"So here we are watching a video of this absolute loon break the whole wing off while damaging the hangar in the process."
"Because he was drunk, insurance doesn’t kick in."
"We were promptly told that Christmas bonuses might be a bit smaller."
~ ProbablyChe
Occupational Hazard
"Someone had the tip of their finger cut off when closing the door to the plane and didn't say anything until the flight landed at the arrival gate and when the door was opened the chunk of finger fell out."
"The staff then said, 'Oh yeah, that's my finger. you can throw it away'."
"I guess he just bandaged and wrapped his own hand."
"It was about 1/4 of his finger including the nail that was cut off. The cutoff portion wasn't particularly bloody and it was really pale."
~ If_I_remember
"A plane I got on once almost left without half of its aircrew on it."
~ BeerisAwesome01
"'Let’s just go, they can meet us there'."
~ InformativePenguin
"Plot twist. That included the pilots."
~ Windyandbreezy
Excess Baggage
"Coffin with dead body inside being left off the flight due to overload without notice either to us or the family and the family realising it by seeing it while the plane was leaving and screaming to us."
~ elenivog
employee of the month ups GIFGiphyNoped Out
"Saw the pilot walk into the passenger area and say 'I'm not flying this piece of sh*t' and get off the plane."
"All the passengers followed him."
~ Jaded-Session8422
"Hell yeah, I'm following the pilot off the plane if something like this happens!"
~ lukaron
Giphy"I had something similar happen, but never got on the plane."
"It was sitting there seemingly ready but they never started boarding."
"Eventually the pilots walk off the plane and a few of us heard them say ‘This junk isn’t going anywhere’."
"Flight ended up getting cancelled a short time later."
~ potatocross
"I was threatened with [pilots walking out] multiple times a week as an aircraft dispatcher."
"Auxiliary power units (APUs) run the air conditioning (AC) in the aircraft and they were always broken down and not fixed quickly, so when the pilots show up it is hot as hell inside and there's no ground crew to connect the external AC."
"So I would get a call from the Captain telling me he is not going to fly this piece of shit because it is too hot."
"Then they'd go on a tirade about how bad the company sucks because they don't do maintenance."
"I would agree with them completely."
Giphy"Then by the end of the call they'd say they will take it but the company sucks and needs to fix the APU."
"Occasionally the captain would refuse it, but then the ground crew would hook up the AC and they would always get back inside and fly it."
"For sure there were issues that popped up where the AC had an unsolvable issue and it would result in a cancelled flight."
~ Winchery
"I’m Dallas-Fort Worth based. No APU/AC in November? Meh, whatever."
"No APU/AC in August in Texas?"
"I’m not going on that airplane. Ground just can’t keep up."
~ poser765
☣️ Bio-Hazard ☣️
"Flight diverted to my airport because a girl in hotpants got uncontrollable diarrhea from the laxatives she took before the flight to help get over her weekend binge in Vegas."
"She sh*t in her seat and down the aisle and all over the bathroom."
"Five other passengers had uncontrollable vomiting because of this and the panic on the plane from the crew and rest of passengers caused the plane to make an emergency landing."
"They ended up having to cancel the remaining leg of the flight to decontaminate the plane."
"Police were sent and interviewed her and her friends and no charges were filed. I don't know if the airline put her on any kind of no-fly list or tried to have her pay for damages."
~ If_I_remember
GiphyHighly Unsuccessful
"There were two suitcases checked in that were full of nothing but weed."
"The police arrested him in the gating area & confiscated the bags."
~ Traditional_Pair4840
"Something similar happened when I was a ramp rat back in the 1960s."
"Law enforcement was going to do the arrest at his destination."
"The weed disappeared before they got there."
~ endadaroad
Stealthiest Catch
"As a baggage handler I once had a shipment of live Alaskan crabs escape their container on the ramp."
"Flights were delayed."
"Turns out those guys scatter when they panic and try to hide under anything and everything."
~ Gregwaaah
"My significant other worked doing maintenance checks on commercial planes."
"This explains why they once found a bunch of dead crabs under the floorboards in the cargo bay. It was a mysterious mystery."
~ Highly_Referential
Avoiding A Strip Search?
"A fully naked woman just walked through the terminal and tried to walk through security like she wasn’t fully naked."
~ Commercial-Chance561
"She was just very considerately trying to make it easier for TSA."
~ TrooperJohn
"They make you take off your shoes but they don't say that's all you can take off."
~ smartguy05
Language Barrier
"I witnessed this in the security screening of a large American airport."
"And to be fair, there was a language barrier as the passenger in question seemed to be speaking mainly French, and struggling to understand the TSA agent's instructions in English."
"Female passenger (tall, attractive, and sophisticated-looking) was wearing a business suit with a pencil skirt and matching jacket, which was buttoned closed, going through security."
"The TSA agent told her she had to remove the jacket. She ignored and tried to go through anyway."
"He stopped her and told her again more loudly (that's when everyone started noticing)."
"She said no. He insisted. She refused again, and tried to walk through."
Giphy"He got angry."
"She tried to explain something but it was unclear because her English was poor."
"It went back and forth."
"They both started getting angry and frustrated. It started holding up the line and other passengers were getting agitated."
"A few people tried to intervene and explain more calmly that she needed to put her jacket through the x-ray machine."
"Finally, near tears, she blurted out 'fine' and removed her jacket, revealing that she was wearing nothing at all underneath, and walked through the screening machine topless."
~ SigmaSeal66
I'm a nervous flyer so it's not something I do often, but I still feel a little cheated that nothing this bizarre has happened while I was traveling.
Has something ever happened during your travels?
Share it in the comments.
A good friend is not always the one with whom you share laughs and fun experiences.
The friendships you want to keep include those who won't abandon you in a time of need or someone who supports you in a variety of complicated situations where not even a family member can be relied upon.
Unfortunately, many of us have experienced a time when a person's true colors revealed to us that the so-called "friend" we've always trusted wasn't one at all.
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor Aesthetik_1 asked:
"What made you instantly realize This 'friend' is not a real friend?"
These Redditors didn't realized at the time that they were being used.
Recurring Favor
"When he only called me when he needed something. It didn't hit me until much later."
– Queasy-Location-9303
"I have one of those 'friends'. She always gushes about how we're friends but she never initiates contact unless she wants me to do something for her."
– StiffAssedBrit
The Errand Girl
"Several years back, I had a friend who introduced me to this new boy she was seeing. Maybe a year later, their relationship blew up in a fury of bs (whole other story), but by the time they split, I was equally friends with both of them. He and I were both photographers at the time, so the friendship was instantaneous."
"One day we started talking about her, neither positively nor in poor taste, just kind of in general."
"He then asked me 'when she texts to hang out, what does she usually want to do?'"
"I paused. I thought. Holy sh*t, she'd either be asking for a favour or for help with some kind of errand. I was her f'king errand girl."
"She texted me a month or two later, just a 'hey'. I never responded. She never texted again."
"I'm still friends with her ex, though. That dude is genuine as heck."
– ChamomileBrownies
Testing The Friendship
"When you decide to let them be the one to reach out. And you never hear from them again."
– plzdontgetmad
"Yup. Made plans with a friend three times, she cancelled each time. I finally told her to let me know when she was free, we haven’t hung out since."
"She was a good friend for the season, but not a lifetime."
– NoMrBond3
People were shocked to discover the moment they realized they didn't really know who their "friend" was anymore.
The Chaperon
"I had been giving rides to a girl I thought was my friend. To and from school in high school. She wasn’t really suppose to ride with other teens but due to her mothers work hours we could easily pull this off. I thought we were close."
"One day while on the way home my brakes went out. We were about 2 blocks from her gated neighborhood. I managed to roll in safely and parked at her house to call a tow truck."
"She flipped. Told me I couldn’t stay. She knew my brakes were not working as she had also been terrified when we couldn’t stop. She said she wanted to go to a movie that weekend with other friends and her mom would ground her if she saw me at the house. I offered to lie and say I only stopped there as my car malfunctioned on my way home. I had to pass her neighborhood on my way home anyways."
"She refused. Started to scream at me. She didn’t care what happened I had to go. Started to call the guard at the front gate to tell them I had broken in and was threatening her."
"I left her and that friendship that moment. I managed to roll my car slowly to a mechanic not too far away but never forgot the shi* feeling of knowing I could have been seriously hurt and she wouldn’t have cared. She wanted to see a movie. She had the nerve to sheepishly call and ask me a couple days later if I could give her a ride to school. Told her I was too busy and no longer had time… after all I wanted to help her obey her mom's rules. She rode the bus til she graduated."
– Duffarum
Unwilling Companion
"I had this friend in school. Each year there was a funfair in our city, all students received vouchers for a drink and something to eat. This friend complained the whole day that she had no one to accompany her to the funfair. So, stupid me offered to go with her."
"Once we arrived we met another friend of hers. And another, and another... until we were a group of 5 or 6 people. I didn't know anyone and was basically just walking behind them. This friend took me aside and said, 'My friends think you are annoying, and we would like you to leave.'"
"It was a pleasure to see that she failed her exams a year later."
– Auldale
There's the spirit of competition, but when it's taken seriously, we're no longer game for these friendships.
I Can Do It Better
"Constantly 'one ups' me. A real friend is happy for you."
– Complex-Half8338
"That one time I got a fake bag but she doesn’t know and then 2 weeks later messaged me that she also bought a luxury bag… Then when I got a bf, she also went to get a bf within 3 months which is TOTALLY fine but she constantly messages me for us to go on a double date. Anyways, sadly they didn’t last long :( I mentioned that I wanted to go to Cuba, she went ahead and bought herself a ticket to Cuba but I didn’t end up going lol"
– Hot-Coffee-8465
Never Steal The Spotlight
"When they loved the idea of me shining, but behind their shadow, I could never do or achieve anything above them, and when I did, they would get jealous."
– Jasssin23
"Yes! I recently ghosted a friend because of this kind of behavior. She was trying to compete about EVERYTHING. Like she bragged about how her mom’s car accident was more traumatic than my elderly MIL’s - which is not even an appropriate thing to compare. She would also try to 'outshine' celebrations of my milestones and was mean to several of my friends for no apparent reason. She was a loose cannon at best."
– thefifthtrilogy
All About Me
"ALL she talks about it herself and her problems. Granted she has a a lot but never asks about me or my life until she realizes she just bypassed my attempt to want to talk about something in my life bothering me and continued to talk about herself."
– PokemomOnTheGo
People can just be so rude.
"When I got really sick. Very few came to help."
– Tofflus1
"Same here. I got cancer and everyone I knew was over the top supportive for the first six months and then all but three of my friends just vanished. I saw one of them at a Halloween party while I was going through chemo and she told me that my bald head made people uncomfortable. I was dressed as Captain Picard, it was awesome and she ruined it."
– CatGoNoTail
Not Missing High School
"At lunch, she was sitting with her boyfriend, I was sitting with our friend circle. She came up to me, guilted me into sitting with her and her boyfriend, and then proceeded to ignore me for the rest of lunch."
"She didn't care about me, she just didn't want me talking to the friend circle that she had abandoned for her boyfriend. When I pointed this out to her, she called me a jealous b*tch."
"Ah, high school. How I don't miss thee."
– Symnestra
These examples actually served as a good reminder for me to take a moment and assess my friendships.
Not so much about how I've been treated but more about checking myself to see if I'm respecting the people I call my friends.
We've all been guilty of casually mentioning future plans to get together. I embarrassingly wait for people to initiate something, which is terrible.
Show up for your friends. Make them feel important like the individuals they are.