High School Reunion Goers Reveal The Worst Change They've Seen In A Classmate
High school reunions have the potential to be one of the most awkward nights of our adult lives. What will all of our old classmates be like? Will we even want to go? Will they actually be able to find us? With social media keeping everyone connected, we can keep better track of what everyone is up to. But there are always the ones who slip through the cracks.
One Reddit user asked: What was the worst change in a person you saw at your High School re-union?
Aaaaaaand yeah, the responses were goooood. Maybe not "The Rock/Kevin Hart solve an international mystery and still make it to the reunion on time" kind of good... but still really good.
The Next Morning
I got s***faced at my 10 year reunion. I was buying people shots, accosted the DJ to play songs from our high school days, started a dance off and then enthusiastically recruited a group to keep the party going at a local bar. The best part was I was soooooo shy and withdrawn in high school no one remembered me, and no one really knew who I was.
I threw up in my dog's bed the next morning.
No Change
Worst change I ever saw was no change at all.
Murder Suicide
Well, two classmates got married, and then one murdered their toddlers and killed himself. That was a hell of an update.
The Switcheroo
As the evening wore on, it became apparent that the crazy fun party guy who seemed awesome at the beginning of the night was really the weepy alcoholic crying about having nothing left to live for. It was very depressing.
The Popular Girl
In high school, there was a girl I envied because she was the stereotypical popular girl. Blonde hair, blue eyes, full of pep. She had dreams of going to medical school and being a pediatric cardiologist. She was a star in my dance class, the lead in the plays. She could sing. She took advanced placement classes. She was nice too.
On our senior trip at the end of senior year, she told me about how she'd take speed to be up for days at a time, so she didn't have to sleep and could do so much.
She never went to college. She looks really bad. Had a few babies, one of them born addicted to drugs, I believe. She walks around town with her head down, all in black. She doesn't talk to anyone.
It's really, really sad honestly.
Swan Dive
Most handsome, popular, rich, quarter-back-of-the-football-team/class president guy took a swan dive off a high floor of a hotel in front of his wife and kids a couple years back. Didn't see that one coming.
Like I said, handsome, popular, rich, quarter-back-of-the-football-team/class president played college ball and married the head cheerleader. But I think that was the highlight of his life and he never relived the glory and adulation he had growing up. I heard he was working in the warehouse of his dad's business and was passed over to take over and had developed a drug problem. I think he was on his way home from rehab when it happened.
Major Depression
Honestly, it was me.
High school me was very animated, social and skinny. 15-years-later me was very withdrawn, sad and obese.
It's so strange. I never fantasized that I'd be the guy that people talked about having "really gone downhill." I was always such a great student, I was active, I volunteered for things, I made art. A real type-A person...someone you'd want to be around.
But I was the one people whispered about, and it really hurt.
You'd think if someone was going through major depression, they would know, right?
I didn't.
Without drawing this out, the good news is that I'm doing really great now. I'm skinny again. I'm social. I'm out there doing stuff, and I think I can count myself as someone people want to be around. It's kind of scary...having a personality...but exciting scary.
Hopefully, at the 20-year-reunion, the whispers will be different.
Selling Crap Leggings
Had a clique of 4 rich popular girls who ended up marrying fairly young and having kids right out of high school. They all sell Lularoe and have spent most of their husbands' money on the "business." So now they spend their days at home on facebook trying to sell crap leggings to people.
Two of them tried to sell to me and a big group of other classmates before we all just moved away from them and did our own thing. You could feel the desperation coming off of them.
Could Not Locate
Just had our 20th, two people we could not locate but both are known to be drug addicts and homeless. I hope they're both doing ok because they were good kids who had a hard upbringing.
A Literal Cult
I went to my 20 year reunion a few years back. The girl who organized the whole thing was, and is pretty, popular and intelligent. She also turned out to be a high level member of the Keith Raniere cult NXIVM which has been in the news lately. She was using the event to recruit people! The girl is the daughter of one of the founding members, who I've known since I was in Elementary school.
Never had the slightest clue about any of this until this reunion.
It Would Be Funny If
One guy who was a total a**hole to me apparently fathered children with several classmates in the first few years after school. Including both my ex girlfriends. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Party Of One
Well, since I was the only one to show up for my 10 year reunion, it would be me. I got fat.
I Missed Out
I went to my 10, 15, and 20 year reunion.
I think the worst change I saw was that quite a few still haven't changed. They were the same as they were in high school. It was almost cartoonish. Hanging on to who they were 10 or 20 years ago and still trying to be that guy or girl.
I always ended up hanging out with a four or five of the "nerds" that had become amazingly funny, interesting people. Normal people. And I look back with regret that that as a wannabe jock or wannabe tryhard cool kid.
I missed out on really knowing them.
Murder Is A Family Business
Star athlete, great guy had so much potential. Not even a year after we graduated he got caught in a murder case. Him and his uncle murdered a well known writer from the area. Didn't want to believe it at first or at all. He got his sentencing I think this year or somewhere last year. You never know how someone will turn out in the end.
I Wish I Could Apologize
I went to a small rural high school and didn't attend any of our "official" reunions, but our town has a 4th of July festival every year that served as an unofficial reunion for those of us who went away to college.
The summer before my first year of college I was hanging out at the festival with some of my friends when I heard a familiar voice call my name. I turned around, and there was "Debbie," a girl in the class a year ahead of me whom I and my friends had crushed on to varying degrees.
But the person standing before me was no longer that Debbie. High-school Debbie was slim, petite, and pretty, with long dark hair. This person was massively obese, marred by terrible acne and a nose ring that appeared to be infected, and sporting a ragged short hair cut that had been dyed an unflattering shade of brown. We conversed briefly and she mentioned that she'd joined the Peace Corps and spent a few months in Kyrgyzstan (IIRC), but otherwise offered no explanation of her changed look. There was some more small-town chitchat, and then we went our respective ways.
Maybe half an hour after running into Debbie I ran into my friend Chad, and he (who had crushed on her the hardest) asked if we'd seen her. I said that we just saw her and that she was probably still close by (it was a very small town), but he should know that she looked very different these days. I didn't elaborate further, as It was kind of depressing to see her the way she was and I didn't want to come off as mean.
We walked around a little bit more, and sure enough there was Debbie again. I pointed her out to Chad, who seemed unsure about who I might be pointing towards. But then he SAW.
Debbie saw the face, and walked away the other direction.
I came back home for the next three summers, but never saw Debbie again at any of the festivals; and even years later after Facebook became a thing and everyone started reconnecting online I never encountered her. I wish I could apologize for that moment. Lord only knows what might have caused such a dramatic change over that one year of her life.
Baby In The Bathroom
She brought her children. There were 12 of them. She was drunk. Really drunk! Like she turned up drunk!! She didn't leave until 11pm. She left her baby in the bathroom. She used to be president of the chastity club. (100% serious)
Confession
I think it was me.
I was drunk one hour in because it was so awkward so I kept drinking.
Every Racial Slur
I went to high school with a disorganized but well-mannered kid who was pretty well known and not unpopular. He ended up dropping out of college to travel in Asia, where he got into a bar fight, hit someone, and badly injured him. Spent the rest of his college years in an Asian (can't remember where) prison. When I saw him at our reunion, he had a massive face tattoo and was using every racial slur known to man.
Loudly.
She Looked 50
Meth user.
It was a 10 year reunion, but I swear to god, she looked 50 years old.
H/T: Reddit
But then there are those who you just can't figure out but engage in a conversation with anyway until something in your gut tells you to abort.
Whether it's an ominous situation or a mysterious individual, your instincts telling you something is not right is usually accurate and what happens next depends on whether or not you act on what your inner voice tells you.
Curious to hear from the experiences of strangers on the internet, Redditor thenereidsofneptune asked:
"What is Your Best 'I'm in Danger' Story?
These predicaments could have resulted in severe consequences. Or not.
Bearly Escaped
"Driving through jasper on our way to leduc when my dad saw a family on the side of the road looking off into the bush off the side of the road. So we pull over and walk over to ask if they need any help. They say that they saw a bear in there and were throwing rocks at it to get it to come out so they could take pictures. My dad told us to get back to the car and we sped off down the highway. To this day i wonder what happened to those idiots."
– doubled2319888
Crash-Landing
"Not me, but a really close friend was going through flight school and they were going through emergency procedures and the instructor asked something along the lines of."
"What would you do if you noticed the power was lost?"
"And at that very moment, the aircraft lost power and my buddy said 'Well that's a neat trick and makes it feel real.' To which the instructor said 'No, that's not me. This is real.' Apparently, my buddy giggled and said 'oh no.'"
"And then they had to crash into the gulf and he swam away."
"I can't think of a better example than that."
The Thing In The Bushes
"When I was about 5-6, my mom and her best friend took us kids out huckleberry picking. We brought a battery power radio so we were making noise and would not startle any wildlife. We were all kind of spread out around these wild berry bushes. The adults heard this snorting, stomping, and sounds of a large animal moving through the dense overgrown areas coming towards us. They freaked out, screaming for us kids to run to them so we could run to the truck together. Moms friend threw her FULL bucket of huckleberries (5 gallon bucket, took all day to fill) at whatever was coming, hoping to distract it..."
"It was a cow."
– indigowulf
You never know what strangers are capable of, especially where drugs are involved.
Sacrifice For The Devil
"I used to work in a group home. I was working a night shift and one of the residents was pacing by his room. I asked him what he was doing, he went into his room quickly. I assumed he was on meth since that's what he liked doing. Thought not much of it until a few hours goes by. I go to get some water and heat up my food, and he is standing in the hallway. Again, I ask him how he's doing and try to check in with him. This guy starts speaking in some made-up language in a loud whisper (think Harry Potter talking to the basalisk). He then takes like 4 steps slowly toward me then stops. He says 'I can't stop him forever.'"
"I call police for his and the the safety of the house."
"Police show up and talk to him for a bit in private. One officer comes back to my office and says 'yeeeah, he's not himself right now. Said the date was May 50, 2100.' It was January... and 2015. They took him away. They also found and took a pocket knife off of him and gave it to me for safekeeping."
"Now if that wasn't already messed up, I went back on the security footage and I saw him stand outside of my office door (outside my view) for like 30 minutes without me realizing. Standing still, like in paranormal activity."
"I checked the camera from when he was speaking the weird language, and he was standing there for like 20 minutes heavy breathing before I walked by."
"2 weeks goes by and he's released from the hospital sober and mentally present again. He decided to move out of the house. He came by to grab his stuff, and pulled me aside to apologize. I forgave him and tried to brush it off. Buddy looks me in the eyes and said that he was planning on killing me that night for a blood sacrafice since he was seeing some crazy stuff and he believed a demon was controlling him, but the police ruined his plan."
"I kept the knife as a morbid souvenir."
– ObelusPrime
The following people these Redditors engaged with were very suspect. No drugs were apparently involved, but they were apparently quite mental.
Regionally Profiled
"So, just for context, I'm Scottish. I was on Holiday in Durham and it was late afternoon. We just arrived and we were going to visit the Cathedral."
"So these lads (likely students, they were obviously on a night out or something) came up to me and were like 'hey do you know how to get to so-and-so street' and I was like 'sorry, I'm not from here.' Suddenly the guy got mad and was all 'are you Irish, ARE YOU IRISH?!' And I was like 'No I'm Scottish' (but I was sure I was going to get beaten up because, let's be honest, if he's like this to someone who's Irish then he'll not exactly be hunky Dory with Scots), but when I said that his demenor did a 180 and he was all 'oh right, you're cool, sorry to bother you' and walked off."
"And that's the story of when I was nearly hatecrimed because someone thought I was Irish."
– OhHiGCHQ
Red Flags
"Went out for a drink with a pretty girl I got talking to on a bus. She was a bit awkward, but seemed kinda fun. She kept talking about her roommate, and the crazy hi-jinks they got up to. She even joked that we would have a threesome if I went back to her place."
"We went back to hers... at which point I found out that her roommate was a barbie doll that she talked to like it was a real person. Her place clearly hadn't been cleaned for years, and the toilet was full of green 'matter.'"
"The final straw for me was when I stepped on her cat's corpse..."
– epsonabcdefg
Not The Basement
"Couple of years ago I was picking up a chair I had bought from craigslist. I drove to this guys house and got a creepy vibe instantly when I stepped inside, for reasons I can't really understand to this day. After a minute or so of small talk, where he was mostly busy staring at me and not completely focused on the conversation, he asked me to follow him down to the basement where the chair supposedly was. As he went for the staircase he raised the volume of the music playing to a level that was distinctly louder than normal."
"I noped the f'k out and went straight home again."
– throwapony
In middle school, I was not a popular kid. So it surprised me when my fellow classmates who were viewed as "popular" actually engaged in a conversation with me during lunch when I was sitting by myself.
They asked me what my favorite food was and what TV shows I watched. I genuinely thought they were interested in me, but I was also skeptical about their forced friendliness.
My suspicions were confirmed when, in my peripheral vision, I saw their buddies dragging a trashcan over towards me.
I blurted, "gotta go!" and I darted. Those jerks were going to throw me in the garbage!
Chocolate milk hair and spaghetti sauce-drenched shirt was avoided that day, thanks to my gut instincts. Damn bullies.