People Reveal The Times They've Realized Others Were Telling Their Story
We all have embarrassing moments. If we're "lucky", some of those moments end up entering into legend. Like the time I fell down a ramp at school and took out no less than a dozen people with me - because I couldn't walk in heels. Some friends are teachers at that same school now, and I was just informed that YUP - people still talk about it. Apparently, the importance of "proper footwear" - particularly on the ramp - is a topic of discussion now on Freshman orientation day.
**It was two decades ago. **
One reddit user asked:
Has anyone ever told you a story like "this thing happened to this guy" and you realized the story was about you, what's the story?
Bedtime Rules
Everyone in my 6th grade class had to go to a outdoor nature center for a 3 day camp. They have been doing it for 20+ years. The goal was to learn about the environment, team building etc.
Well on my last night at camp, 12 year old me rolled off the top bunk in my sleep and cracked my head against the concrete floor. A concussion, skull fracture, and brain bleed later I woke up in the ICU. Long story short, after a duration in the hospital I made a full recovery.
Flash forward to high school and they are asking for counselor volunteers for 6th grade camp. Wanting to prove to myself that I could make it through a camp meant for 12 year olds, I signed up. During the orientation/training they started talking about bedtime rules... Sure enough, they start telling a story about a kid who fell off the top bunk and was badly injured.
Only I knew it was me.
Still Pregnant
I spent 3 months in the hospital before giving birth due to my water breaking at 21.3 weeks. On Valentine's Day of all days! It was just like the movies, except there was multiple puddles of fluid on the floor.
So I go for a scan with the same lady about 2 months later (I had lots of scans between then, just with different techs). They wanted to check fluid levels and the babies growth. The tech asks why I was there and I told her my water broke early and I was in the hospital or something like that.
She then tells me "well at least it's not as bad as this girl whose water broke on Valentines Day. I came in the room and they had thrown down bed pads on the floor to soak up the fluid. I almost stepped in a puddle". I looked at her and said "yeah that was me". She goes "you're STILL pregnant"? Uh yeah. I laughed though
Ruining It For The Children
When I was a kid, I used to impersonate the Rock a lot because he was my favorite. This led the school to ban wrestling themed stuff.
Now, almost twenty years later, my friends kid goes to the same school and can't wear a John Cena shirt to school. Because they still have the rule.
Crazy man.
That Pants Pisser
Someone once told me about a friend of a friend who got mugged downtown and pissed her pants from fright. That pants pisser was me.
Spoil My Legacy
When I was very new in police service, my helmet got stolen when I piled into a fight on a busy Night Time Economy patrol in the city. It came off when I ran in and someone picked it up and cycled off with it. One of the older officers told me that I needed to record a crime for the theft and inform the Inspector personally. Of course, that was rubbish, and I didn't need to inform anyone aside of recording the incident.
Years later, I was listening to two officers talk about "that rookie who got his helmet nicked in a fight" only the story had been so embellished that I supposedly hand-wrote the crime report and delivered it personally to the Chief Constable.
I didn't want to spoil my legacy, so I didn't say anything :)
Flappy Bird
Roommate in collegebhad an unhealthy obsession with flappy bird, this was shortly before the game was taken off the market. He was top 1% in the world, had an insane high score. He talked about hearing people behind him in a lecture hall about how their friend knew a guy that was in the top 1% of flappy bird. To him it was his 15 minutes of fame.
My Website
I came up with a website, we had a launch, received some decent praise locally. Real jobs got in the way so I let the project die. A couple of years down the road I mention to a co-worker about creating a site. He responds "Don't bother, there is already a site that does it." and he mentions the site I had created.
Mr. Steal Yo' Girl
Kind of - when I was younger I had a part time job in a DIY store. There was this guy who I worked with, roughly the same age as me but crazy and could beat me up quite easily but we got on well.
He starts telling me that some guy has been seeing his girlfriend and one of his friends seen them making out at a local club. I don't think too much of it and simply say that you should find the him and beat him.
Fast forward two week - I'm out with my friends and I bump into my work colleague. He's with his girlfriend and well, you've guessed it. His girl is a chick I was kissing in this club a few weeks ago. She doesn't acknowledge me as I think she's too shocked that I know her man. I sure as hell don't let on that I know her to my colleague as I like my body intact. We do the usual "Hey, where you going" etc and I get away from them.
For the next few weeks at work I was crapping myself thinking the next time my colleague and his girl have and argument, she'll spill the beans and I'll get murdered.
Perm
In 2013 I went to a cosmetology school and they supplied us with all kind of cool gadgets. One of which was a very small texturing iron. I loved it and would give myself very curly hair kind of borderline Shirley Temple but imagine tighter smaller curls. So anyway, I loved the look so so much that I decided I wanted a perm. We had been learning the process and I volunteered to be a model for the class...I asked my teacher to use the second smallest rollers in my hair. I had a bob cut. Everyone asked me if I was "sure I wanted to do this."
That should have been a clue. It was not.
So I'm sitting there, with a giant smile on my face, all excited for the results. They wash my hair. Pat it dry. Jheri Curl. No big deal, I'll style it at home it'll be fine..hah, right guys? I go home, it's terrible. I looked like Krusty the Clown. I ask myself in the mirror why I did this, cry and do exactly what I'm not supposed to do - wash my hair. I made it worse. But I'm stubborn and I still didn't learn.
It's the weekend and I can "fix" this, so I go to Sally's buy myself a perm kit and brush perm through my hair the next day. I processed the f*** out of my hair and ended up getting a pixie cut and growing it out.
My instructor was not happy. Everyone laughed. I died inside.
Years later, I meet someone that is attending the same cosmetology school I went to, and happens to have the same instructor I did.... and apparently she tells the story every year as a way to encourage the students to actually listen to the instructors.
Weird Cubicle Rocks
So when I got a new job, I was in a little cubicle. In my desk were some tiny decorative rocks, apparently from a previous employee's broken fountain. So I lined up all the rocks between me and the girl in the cubicle next to me. She didn't mind, she didn't really care.
I got promoted a few months later, moved to a bigger desk. Took my rocks with me, its a bit of a bigger cubicle. I had sat the rocks on a pile on my desk not knowing what to do with them. Another coworker who wasn't in my department asked me where I got the rocks, I told her how they were someone else's abandoned rocks I just took them. She then proceeded to tell me a story of this weird girl who lined up the rocks on the side of the cubicle...she said it was so weird.
I didn't even tell her it was me. I just nodded in agreement.
Arm Snapped Off
When I was in Year 8 I broke my arm very badly in PE playing bench ball. Like snapped in half requiring two surgeries and over a year of physiotherapy bad.
Fast forward to PE in Year 11 and walking back in to the same gym, a girl that I hadn't really started talking to until about a year earlier mentioned "Did you know I heard a girls arm snapped off in here!?" When I questioned her about it she recited all the details of how it happened (apart from my arm falling off, but I'll leave that to the effect of whispers changing the story a little) all the while not knowing she was talking about me.
The ER Trip
I was super accident prone as a child. This lead to a interesting trip to the ER.
My sister was chasing me around the backyard with a little plastic shovel and I was fleeing for my life. I fled to the side yard and dove into some tall grass, turned out there was a huge pile of redwood planks obscured by the grass. I dove in and came to an abrupt halt. I had managed to impale a roughly foot long redwood "splinter" (thing was about as think as a pencil) right in-between my left ring and middle finger, right through the webbing and all the way down to the wrist. I end up in the ER, and I had this very very attractive redheaded nurse that kept my attention even as a 9-year-old. I sat quietly while she slowly removed the whole twig from between my fingers.
Fast forward 2 months. I am camping with my grandparents and my grandpa is teaching me how to fish. I was using one of those little three pronged barbed lures, and when I cast it I noticed nothing hit the water, so I start reeling back my line and lure until it stops and my arm starts hurting. Oh well, certainly that is a coincidence. So I can't seem to reel my lure all the way back to me and I am tugging and reeling and my arm is hurting more and more until my grandpa noticed that I hooked my upper right arm and had successfully dug the barbed lure all the way into my arm. My grandpa being the resourceful one decided he can yank it out with pliers, so he grabs a pair. This pair must have been the original pair, they were huge and probably a good 73% solid rust. Several fruitless attempts later I am sat in the passenger seat of his truck being taken to the ER.
I get in there and I am wailing, and the universe decides to hate me today.
- We end up at the same ER that I went to for my twig removal
- My male nurse is wearing scrubs with a fishing lure pattern printed all over it.
- And lastly when they get me into the room, mister fishhook shirt has the audacity to tell me I shouldn't be crying, that it's not that bad, that some poor kid was in here just a few months ago with a huge stick stuck in his left hand right between his fingers.
I lose it. I start bawling and blubbered out a"That.. that was me!" The nurse looks up at my grandpa and my grandpa just nods a silent "Yup" to the nurse.
That was fun.
Cursive
When I took the SATs, they had us write that whole honesty sentence in cursive for some bizarre reason, as if that makes it somehow more legitimate than actual handwriting. I hadn't written a word in cursive in like 9 years, and couldn't remember how to write some of the wackier letters. It took me several minutes longer than anyone else to write that entire stupid sentence.
Later, one of my friends mentioned how one of his buddies had to take the SATs with this stupid kid who took forever to write a cursive sentence.
feelsbadman.jpeg
#SuitUpSunday
Co-worker was talking about their brother having been up skiing at my local mountain, and they apparently saw a guy snowboarding in a full suit, carrying a briefcase and sipping coffee while carving down the hill. Apparently it made for a really surreal day for them.
I informed her that the guy in the suit was me, and that I do that every Sunday at my mountain, often times as part of a whole crew of folks wearing suits. #SuitUpSunday, been at it for almost 10 years now, but this was the first time I felt like a celebrity because of it.
I'm just out there to make memories for people, so I was very happy I had succeeded.
Roommate
When I was in college, going into sophomore year, three friends from the dorms and I decided to get an apartment together. We lived together over the summer before moving into a different apartment in the fall. There was one girl who never paid rent, was a complete slob, ate all our food, just was awful. The worst incident came when I came home late one night and she was sleeping in my bed and peed in it on purpose when I asked her to leave, right in front of me. When we tried to have discussions with her about the mess and the money, she would flat out deny everything or just literally put her hands over her ears and say 'la la la'.
Anyway, after the bed peeing incident, we replaced her on the lease for the fall. It was over a month beforehand so she still could sign up for the dorms (or find another apartment).
So by crazy coincidence, I was at a random party in another state three years later, right after graduation. I was talking to this girl who said "Oh, you went to **university?" and started to tell me this story of her childhood friend who went there who had a terrible apartment story. In this story, three mean girls played an elaborate prank on this girl, tricking her into living with them then throwing her out to literally live on the streets. They stole her books and all sorts of s***. So I was like, oh that is really mean. Then she said,"oh here she is now," and lo and behold ...
It was my former roommate.
Some Desperate Girl
I once tried to flirt with a guy in college and knew the guy loved Star Wars. Said something along the lines of:
"Why don't we watch all the Star Wars movies together and then not actually watch them ????"
Needless to say, he was NOT into it, but I remained friends with the guy and we had overlapping friend groups and hung out often.
Throughout the years he suffered a few concussions due to rugby, and as a result, he often confused events and overall had a bad memory. We were out at a bar with all his friends and he starts casually talking about some desperate girl who tried to get him to come over by using Star Wars as an excuse to bang!
All his friends died with laughter.
I sat there, red as a tomato, completely mortified and not saying a word.
Near Robbery
When I worked at Gamestop, I was told there had been a plan by some kids to tie me up, beat and rob the place when I took out the trash one night. But my boss wouldn't let me leave for vacation tomorrow without cleaning the store. So instead of taking the trash out at 9, I got around to it at 11.
In that time, one of the other stores noticed the people waiting by the trash, called the cops and they were arrested. I was oblivious to all of this.
A month later I had moved and been promoted. On my first managers I had to learn about the new rules in place. One brand new rule was that if you were closing the store alone, you couldn't take out the trash. You had to leave it by the door for the morning. Then they told me the story of why the new rule was in place. An employee narrowly escaped possibly being murdered
No one knew it was me who had been working that night.
I Got Killed
I met a girl in college who started telling me about her brother's friend who had the same first name as me. Proceeded to tell me my life story (drug addiction, abusive relationship, abortion) but apparently her brother heard that I got killed.
My Crush And My Dead Dog
When I was in middle school, my family went on vacation. We left our dog at home and asked the son of a family friend to take care of her for the two weeks we were gone. This boy was about a year older than me and was dreamy(at least to my 7th grade eyes). I still consider him my first official crush.
Well about a week into our vacation, my dad gets a call. Our dog has been hit by a car and has passed away. Tears all around.
About a year later, I am hanging out with some girls from my class when one of them starts laughing and telling this story about how one time she went on a date with a boy and they walked this dog he was taking care of. They weren't supposed to take her downtown, but they wanted ice cream. They got so distracted making out that they didn't even notice when she ran out into the street and got hit by a car. Who was she on the date with? My crush. And my dead dog.
I've never told my family.
H/T: Reddit