Imagine this: your grandfather just passed away. After the funeral, you head over to his house, unfold the boxes, line the bottoms with tape, and begin to pack away the contents of his life. You sift through old records, browned silverware, the silly baseball cap he used to wear to family picnics every year. You open the drawer to pull out his clothing some to keep, some to donate but... hold on...
WHAT IN THE WORLD?
Yeah, you've found it. Your grandpa's collection of anal beads.
As much as it makes you cringe to envision the deepest regions of your Grandpa's butthole, you smile just a little. Yeah, my Grandpa still had it goin' on.
Thanks to the awesome folks at Reddit who contributed their answers to this question. Some answers are silly, some are sad, some are even infuriating. In the end, these are the stories that make us all human. Enjoy!
1/30. A meter long bright pink floppy vibrating snake dildo
2/30. Not a grandparent but a great-aunt. She died in her 80s. Clearing out her kitchen cupboards and we found, in a pile of plastic bags, a loaded Smith and Wesson pistol. We're in the UK. We had to call the police who took it away and disposed of it.
3/30. Not so much shocking, but sad.
My great-aunt had a leather jacket, photos and letters this boy she liked had given her.
I'd heard the story in pieces from her over the years. She was banned from seeing him because he was a Catholic. Her parents hauled her off to Singapore to stop her from seeing him. He died in the war, and her father died during the Fall of Singapore. Her mother re-married, and she spent her whole life living in their house, looking after them until they died.
I never realised she'd kept all his things.
4/30. When I was about 6 or 7 years old, my great grandfather died. After the funeral everybody was invited to go back to his house and go through his belongings. My great grandmother had died the year before, and my grandfather's will stated he wanted all of his possessions to be given to his family. I went upstairs with my mom to my grandfathers room. Upon going through his closet, we discovered a small chest with my grandfather's Klu Klux Klan robe, along with a ton of photos of him at clan meetings. That was also the day I first found out what racism was.
5/30. When my dad died I found a file on his computer that listed all the women he had had sex with. He wrote it in cypher but he's the one who taught me to solve cryptograms so it wasn't too difficult to figure it out. Twenty six women, despite being married for all but two years of his adult life.
6/30. After my uncle passed away in October, we were quite surprised to find that, despite his hermetic lifestyle and shoddy abode, he had over half a million in cash.
[deleted]
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7/30. A sap. It's the lead weighted, leather wrapped club favored by tough guys and mobsters in the 20's and 30's. My grandfather had it in the door pocket of his white ford taurus.
My grandfather was six five, a big man, I have a ring of his you can fit a quarter through. Even at 75 he was not to be fucked with.
I also inherited a pocket sized .25 caliber pistol from him.
8/30. When my grandmother passed, my mom, sister, and I went through the house - top to bottom. Aside from some cool photographs showing my grandmother as a teen/young adult I found some letters between my grandfather and her. In one letter, presumably building off of something she said, he asked if she'd been raped. I only had his correspondence, so I don't know the answer. I stopped reading at that anyway. My mom also found her journal. It was full of comments from a very depressed, tired woman.
Moral of the story: even after death, leave loved ones' letters and journals alone.
9/30. When my uncle died I went and helped clean his place out and I ended up finding his stash of pot. I just threw it away so my grandmother didn't have to see since she was already upset enough.
10/30. After my grandad died we found out that his dad (my great grandad) was a deputy chief Templar in India. We found a photograph and certificate - though now my mother has them (we don't talk, so now I guess I'll never be able to investigate further). We're all from England and had absolutely no idea. Weird.
11/30. After my grandma died I was going through her belongings, and hidden in the very top corner of her closet I found a box containing a "personal massager" from the 70's.
12/30. His porn. I'm not talking about a few DVDs and mags, I'm talking Costco volumes. Oh, and his guide to sado-mashocism, with bookmarks.
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13/30. I discovered that my Great Great Great Grandfather's brother won a Nobel prize.
[deleted]
14/30. I was responsible for my great uncle's estate. I found a briefcase cleverly hidden beneath a drawer. It contained his porn on VHS, a sex-adventure book, and a LOT of possibly prescription pills imported from Europe. Everything else was totally standard.
15/30. After my grandad died I found boxes of lube and condoms. Weird cause he was really old and it was brand new lube.
16/30. Not a parent, but my wife left incredibly loving statements about me in her diary.
I still haven't been able to gut through reading the whole thing, but I did flip to the back and found where she wrote, "I knew you'd look back here. Thank you for slumming it with me all these years."
For the record, I've never "slummed" a day in my life.
17/30. After my grandmother passed we were packing up her clothes to give to charity when we found her purse (she had been sick for years and hadn't used it in a long time). Tucked inside her wallet was a love letter that she had been carrying for over 60 years. It was not from my grandfather. It was from a man she dated before grandpa who had gone off to fight in WWII. The letter was super steamy. He was writing to her from England just before D-Day. We assume he died shortly after.
18/30. I discovered that my Dad wrote sardonic and witty asides in the margins of many if his books, which were great to read as they were just so him.
Continue reading people's incredible stories on the next page!
19/30. My mom was planning on divorcing my stepdad and kidnapping her friend's baby.
Her death was sudden - an aneurysm in her bran had ruptured. When she was in the hospital her lawyer called her cell phone, which is how I found out about the planned divorce. I never told my stepdad.
The kidnapping wasn't obvious, but we were able to piece it together when going through her belongings.
My mom adored her friend's baby. She had a room in the house for her with a dresser full of outfits. When we were cleaning up we discovered that this dresser was empty, save for a few diapers. Her luggage was also missing. It was odd, but we didn't think too much about it until we found contact information for the landlord of the house she was renting in the next state. A house which she had rented under her maiden name. A house where we found suitcases with my mom's and the baby's clothes.
It sounds terrible, but we were lucky she died when she did.
20/30. After my mom passed, my dad discovered she had been carrying on an affair for years while going through her email account. It's messed him up pretty bad and now he's obsessed with the idea of getting revenge on the guy. I wish I had never found out because it's almost ruined the image of my mom in my head.
21/30. Not my parent, but had a friend disappear 2 years ago and his body was found several states away about 4 months later.
After he had gone missing, his parents got into his apartment and he'd packed up most of his stuff into boxes giving them to different people. His parents each got one, brother, sister, a few friends and I got a small box. He included a note to please honor his request to not open the boxes and give them to the people they were for. They held the boxes until his body was found.
His parents dropped my box by my house after the funeral and we talked for a bit. He'd had some mental issues and they were glad he felt he was finally at peace even though it ended this way.
Going through the box, he gave me ...
some PSone games we'd played together, a small lego set of a car I'd given him for christmas when we were 13 or 14. the last thing in the box was a note book. I opened it and it was a bunch of short stories he'd written. I paged through it and the stories started getting violent and scarey. The last few pages were drawings of dismembered people and animals. It looked very much like Patrick Bateman's planner at the end of American Psycho.
He'd always been a little off and taken medicine for it as long as I'd known him. We would talk 2-3 times a month, but I didn't know it had gotten as bad as it did for him.
I miss him and am sad he's gone, but I'm more sad he thought this was the only thing he could do.
22/30. When my grandma died 8 years ago, my aunts and uncles (my mum has 5 siblings to make a total of 6) found a box. Inside was a black and white photo of a baby boy and a name, date of birth and hospital name scribbled on it. Turns out my gran gave up a baby for adoption after she...
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had my mum, so there's a long lost uncle somewhere out there. As far as I know, no one has tried to track him down yet.
23/30. My grandfather hated cats. Couldn't stand them Wouldn't have them in his house, any time we talked about wanting a cat he'd harrumph and ramble about dogs.
A few years after he passed, my grandmother was moving out to live in a retirement apartment, so she didn't have to deal with stairs or worry about having another fall. As we cleaned, we started going through a lot of my grandfather's stuff. We found, in a box in the basement, a framed picture of my grandfather as a young child, holding a cat. On the back of the picture, lightly in pencil, is the cat's name. No one knows a thing about it, and we can only speculate. But clearly, at one point, he loved that cat.
24/30. When my grandfather died I found an old medal. There were two man on a motorcycle, one of them was driving and the other one was standing up on his seat. I asked by dad about it and it turns out that
my grandfather used to be a motorcycle acrobat. Seriously, how rare was that? How many motorcycle acrobats used to be in middle Europe around 1960/70?
25/30. My dad died a few years ago just before christmas. It was the first death in our family in a long time and it came out of nowhere so everyone was shocked. He still had packages coming in the mail for christmas so I would grab them because I wanted to wrap them up for the people and give them as a last gift from him.
I started opening the packages in my room and just dumping them on my bed. First one was a guitar wall mount, second one was some miscellaneous electronic components and the last one dumped out in slow motion. It was a cock ring, vibrator and some massage oils. I was mortified and just threw them back in the package.
I still have the box tucked on top of my closet because I have no idea wtf to do with it. I just can't give it to my mom because it'd be awkward and I can't use it myself because it'd be awkward so it just sits in my closet and every once in awhile I come across it and laugh.
26/30. My mom died of cancer a couple years ago. While I was going through her office I did some math and figured that she spent just shy of $200,000 on shamans, miracle cures and weird investments in South America during the last two years of her life.
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27/30. My grandfather took my grandmothers phone after she had passed. I had never called the number until 9 months later. Her voicemail was still set to her voice. It made me cry like a baby.
28/30. I found a folder of letters between my two grandmothers. My parents split when I was two, and my mother got together with a psycho when I was five. They were basically conspiring for my entire childhood to protect me as much as they could, and make sure that I had something of a childhood.
29/30. I was cleaning out my parent's attic after they both died (car crash) and I found a bunch of stuff from their teenage hood. They got married when they were in their twenties but had been high school sweethearts before that. Everyone just kind of saw them as this perfect, kind of square couple that settled early. Turns out they were both really into the kink scene back in the day. I'm talking old school kink scene, before the days of the internet when different sexual fetishes were accepted and sex positivity was a thing. There were tons of homemade sex toys, bondage material, and a scrapbook of the kink meetups they would go to secretly together. I have a whole new level of respect for my parents.
-Anonymous
30/30. After my grandpa died, I was scouring through his things and discovered a photo album and a few other documents hidden under one of the bases of the drawers in the dresser. It was him with his wife, him with his kids, him holding his grandchild. Except for they weren't my family. I did a little investigating and found an address in one of the photos. I went to the house, which led me to another house, which led me to my
grandfather's second wife. Not second as in the one he had after my Grandma. Like, simultaneous wife. We all knew that he was a huge business guy who was away a lot, but I never thought that it could be to go to his other life three towns away. To my family, he was known as Norm. To theirs, Teddy. I have no clue what his real name even was. I don't even know who he married first. I may have aunts, uncles, related blood family that I've never met, but after figuring it out I asked the woman to never try to contact me and I hightailed it out of there. Somehow I was able to gather all this information from this woman without letting her in on the secret, so I'm the only one that knows (to my knowledge). I don't plan on telling anyone. I don't want to be the reason for so many people's lives being ruined especially when they were all mourning his loss. Wherever you are, Grandpa, I still love you, and your secret's safe with me.
- Anonymous
External image source: Anonymous for Shutterstock
"What is a subtle sign that someone is really intelligent?"
The minds of really smart individuals never stop working.
Resourcefulness
"They draw wisdom from multiple sources. Wait but that might be more wise than intelligent... But I guess those two tend to be seen together a lot."
– Puzzlehead-Engineer
Inquisitive Minds
"They are curious about everything."
"To be intelligent you need to be knowledgeable and you cant be knowledgeable if you are never curious."
– soup54461
The way highly intelligent people interact with others is slightly different.
Social Adaptability
"They can switch up the way they talk to match the person they're talking to without sounding condescending. They listen to how others learn and explain it in that person's language of understanding."
– Wynonna99
Talking On Level Ground
"Talking to people as if they're intelligent at their level and without being condescending or even letting on that it's lower than their level."
"I used to work with a doctor - Tom Howard - and the day I realized he was a genius was the time he guessed every single condition a patient of mine had based on minute pieces of information about him."
– Yoodei_Mon
The Humble Professor
"No joke. The smartest professor I had in engineering school was also the most humble. She was an astounding human being. By week 2, she knew everyone's names by heart in the intro engineering course. In College. With like 180 students. Later, in upper division classes, people would occasionally ask some really stupid questions."
"Like, it happens... you get so deep into some fluid mechanics derivation or something you forget something really basic. People would ask a question like this and everyone would be thinking like; 'Wow, how did you even make it this far?' but then... it's like she would spot the flaw in their understanding so perfectly, and then respond with such clarity and wisdom that the person asking the question would look less stupid and the whole class would be enlightened."
"And here's the thing... I pride myself on being really good at that exact skill. I tutored a lot of people. I was easily one of the brightest amongst my peers. But that woman was on another level. It was mind-blowing."
"And it wasn't just her intelligence, but her organizational skills, discipline, consistency.... And yet... she was so humble. She was quiet and physically quite small. But she just exuded competence and immediately commanded every room she walked into. I've never seen anything quite like it."
– EngineeringNeverEnds
A Positive Effect
"When they explain something they make you feel intelligent."
– gwoshmi
When In Doubt
"They know when their knowledge ends and say something to the extent of 'I don't know and anything else i say on this topic is ignorant speculation.'"
–blutoboy
Some with impressive IQs may deal with questions in the following ways.
Reaction To Delayed Responses
"'You really think about everything don't you?' - a doctor, to me, after he asked me a question and I took longer than 2 seconds to answer it."
"No, I just pull something out of my ass every time and those extra seconds you waited for me to answer were purely to irritate you for my own enjoyment."
– Imakegoatnoises
The Really Good Questions
"They can ask really good questions."
"Edit: to anyone not understanding what mean, I’m talking about people who ask 'really good questions,' not just any questions, really good ones. I don’t know how one would achieve this skill(I know I haven’t)."
– milkmanbran
Taking Pause
"They spend time thinking before asking a question."
– ParkMan73
"Some of the smartest people don’t comment at all."
– metric-poet
I agree with many of the comments saying a really intelligent person knows how to cater the conversation towards another person's level of understanding.
They do have the impressive skill to convey something in a way that can easily be understood. Some of the most venerated professors at my university were like this, and their classes were always the hardest to get in to.
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I'm on the fence about high school. I want to hate it, but nostalgia haunts me. I saw a lot of violence, there is that.
We were on CNN.
don lemon nodding GIF by Red Table TalkGiphy"They started charging us for ketchup in the cafeteria. Most of the school boycotted cafeteria lunch and brought all manner of condiments from home. We were on CNN. They eventually caved." ~ Ash3Monti
No one liked him.
"I was big into drama club and musical theatre when I was in high school. There was a girl in the drama club in her freshmen or sophomore year who was super nice and everyone loved her. Her older brother on the the other hand, was a complete and total douchebag. No one liked him."
"He always made inappropriate comments or jokes and no one liked to be around him. One night, he was driving him and his sister back from school when he took a steep curve going around 100 mph. He lost control and hit a telephone pole. His sister died instantly and he was in a coma for a few weeks but ultimately survived."
"Myself and my friends in the drama club were devastated. She was one of the sweetest girls you'll ever met and we all loved her. A year or two later, the brother messages my sister and tries to use his sister's death as leverage to get laid. F**k you, you piece of crap." ~ FearTheKeflex
Bribes
"Guidance counselor was taking bribes to change grades (Both money and sexual favors). Invited one male student over to his house. Had the student tie him up and hang him by chains in his basement "dungeon." Student was homophobic and while the counselor was tied up, bludgeoned him to death." ~ monthos
H2O Issues...
"This is not that extreme, but it's still disgusting. We have drinking water taps instead of fountains. One parent was suspicious of whether they were cleaning the tanks or not. So they made an announcement that the tank was being cleaned every single day."
"A lot of us didn't believe it, so a group of boys decided to see for themselves if it was true or not. So they put a dead frog in the tank when there was no one around. I don't even know where they found the frog but they swear they didn't kill it. Anyway the frog was there for a few weeks. And obviously the water started tasting weird."
"After the teachers got multiple complaints, they opened the tank and found the frog. The boys were punished, but they fired back with the fact that they lied about cleaning the tanks. They were still punished, because they proved it in a disgusting way. They could've put literally anything in the tank, but they chose a dead frog." ~ R00mTemperature
The Quad
Acds2 Look Away GIF by Anime Crimes DivisionGiphy"A worker doing stuff on the roof. He fell off. Landed in the 'quad' at lunch. A large piece of machinery fell and squished his head. Like a cartoon, only funny. Like 150 Kids saw this." ~ LordInventus
Threats
"The Latin kings gang threatened my cousin and his friends and they had 10 squad cars guarding the whole school and dismissed us the same day early." ~ Terrykrinkle
“it’s gonna blow”
"I had just moved in from Egypt to the states in my senior year of high school. A teacher thought it would be funny to fold a bunch of papers and wrap them in duck tape to make it look like a bomb and threw it my direction and went under his desk saying 'it’s gonna blow.' Everybody started laughing and I was so clueless then I just laughed along. It infuriates me to this day that I didn’t call him out on it or report him." ~ ezzabousaif
Go Fish
"Someone somehow made a bomb threat on a Swedish fish candy. Like one single piece. I don’t know how it happened but he got arrested." ~ ts_13_
Masternid
"A couple weeks before graduation, this kid hacked into the school system and put a Hitler quote and a Boston bomber reference in the senior quotes for the yearbook. One of the affected parties was a trans girl, and we're still not sure if it was a targeted act because of that."
"Administration didn't find out until the entire senior class had received their books. Some people turned theirs in to get their pages replaced, but some kept it because it was a 'limited edition item' or some stupid sh*t like that. Kid got arrested and charged with cybercrime, since he hacked everyone in our school system's school passwords."
"He was so close to graduating too, but got expelled like two weeks before he could. Looked like a rat too. It was all over the news, and everyone in the state of CT basically knows about this now. Got out on bail for $5000." ~ kocorpsie
Season 3 What GIF by On My Block"Apparently one student brought drugs to school and was selling it to her friends. A completely unrelated student caught on and stole the drugs while everyone else was in class. She was caught snorting the drugs in the bathroom by the group selling the drugs and got the crap beat out of her."
"We also had a recently graduated student murder his parents for insurance money . He hid the bodies in a chicken coop and told everybody they were on vacation. It wasn't until 7 months later the bodies were found by the landlord because the rent was late." ~ randomgenericcow
Enjoy high school, at least try too. Maybe if more kids do that, it wouldn't be so insane.
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