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 The best part was I was soooooo shy and withdrawn in high school no one remembered me, and no one really knew who I was.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
Real life contains the scariest horrors you could ask for. So aren't we all living in a horror movie, in a way? At least, these people sure freakin' were.
MisterSnowman69 asked: What was a moment in your life that felt like a horror movie scene?
In the words of the legendary Mary Vivian Pierce in the film Pink Flamingos, “Murder merely relieves tension”. I’m sure the following Redditors felt differently.
Nothing scarier than the woods at night.
Went into a real deep woods hike for only the second time in my life.
My gps broke and had to rely on my compass. Got turned around a few times because I couldn't remember the direction I came from, and it was getting dark. Lost the trail way.
But the woods are weirdly silent in the dark and alone.
It was around 2am by the time I found the trailhead.
Darn foxes.
the simpsons react GIFGiphyMy friend and I got lost late on one foggy night in the Italian countryside. There were rats all over and every once in a while we heard someone scream.
I've never been more sure I was about to get murdered than I was that night.
It was probably a red fox that was screaming.
Could've also been a lynx, but they are much rarer in Italy.
At least she wasn’t speaking in tongues.
My mom is quite the sleep talker, but it's usually pretty short and incoherent when it happens. One night as a teenager, I woke up to her scream-yelling the Hail Mary prayer (my bedroom was across the house and upstairs).
Difficult to get back to sleep after that one.
Sometimes scary sh*t ends up just being funny coincidences. Super funny. Right?
Don’t give them any ideas.
I was exploring an abandoned mental asylum and then got the scare of my life when a scary looking person inside one of the rooms was just staring at me without moving. Turns out some joker had left a cardboard cutout there.
And now I have plans this weekend... Just need to find a couple of cardboard cutouts and to break into the local abandoned asylum.
Don’t you hate when that happens?
Evil Dead Horror GIF by Coolidge Corner TheatreGiphyI was driving home on backcountry roads at midnight in heavy fog. Like can't see 10 feet in front of you thick. Suddenly I see an all-white silhouette running in front of the car. Every hair on my body stood up. I immediately think "oh god, oh f*ck, it's a f*cking woman in white, I'm gonna f*cking die"
Nope just a drunk who dove into the ditch.
Gotta love paranoia.
When I was about 12, my parents went out for dinner leaving me home alone. We lived out in the country, on a private road with only three other houses, surrounded by cow fields and wooded areas.
I went into the the kitchen and glanced out the window towards the trees and there in the fading light I could see a person walking slowly through the woods. They were wearing all black, moving slowly and appeared to pause behind trees. My heart started pounding so hard in my ears I couldn't hear anything else and I was weak and shaky from fear. I froze and just watched them. Would they come to the house? Where were they going?
This was before cell phones but I suddenly remembered my mom had left the number of the restaurant by the living room phone. Slowly, I made my way towards the living room, trying to watch this stranger in the woods.
Just as I entered the living room, all the lights in the entire house went out. By this time it was nearly dark outside. I started openly sobbing and in the dark I heard a weird boom like noise. That was it, I ran to my parents room, hid under their bed and sobbed. That's where my mom found me hours later (it felt like).
Well, turns out the stranger in the woods was a stupid cow that had busted through a fence, the lights going out was from an accident a few miles away (hit the power line) and the boom was the pilot light in the gas stove. Man, I have never been that scared in my life though!
I have a lot of questions.
A naked man who was covered in blood chased me across a park at 2 in the morning. I was totally alone. He just wanted money for a bus (????) and luckily nothing bad happened but I thought I was going to die.
But of course, the genuine horrors do exist. And they aren’t scary in a fun horror movie way, they’re actually terrifying because they can happen to anyone.
A scary few seconds.
car chase GIF by Mayans M.C.GiphyI am a "baby" in a car seat in between cousins in backseat. Dad is driving. This is in the 80s and it is my aunt's insistence that I am in this seat even though I am like 5.
A sleeping semi driver is coming over into our lane and there is a cliff on other side. Basically my dad did some amazing driving but semi blew us up. I am uninjured sitting in the seat swinging my legs while everyone is unconscious. They all wake groaning. Dad doesnt wake up.
Long story short just minor scrapes and dad has broken leg. But the crunch of metal and those few seconds/minute of being the only "alive" person was quite fear inducing.
Glad they’re all ok now.
Two days after my now boyfriend told me he liked me he fell from a zip line and broke his back. Almost died. 6 months later he got into a car wreck from a drunk driver - almost died. 6 months after that, he passed out and had to have emergency brain surgery, again, almost died. I now have severe anxiety/separation anxiety/and ptsd. That whole year was a f*cking nightmare
Edit: we're both okay now, the brain injury was almost a year ago. But TBIs take a while to heal so he still has side effects. Thankfully our relationship is still strong; he's physically getting better and I'm healing emotionally too. Lucky for him, the trauma of the injuries has caused him to forget the majority of the pain and memories of those incidents.
ALWAYS wear a helmet.
Driving home from work at 23, listening to my favorite song.
I pull up to a red light, and see this guy on a motorcycle coming up next to me in the other lane. I rolled down my window to compliment his bike when he stops. He doesn't, and runs the red light. He hits a car going at least 55mph. His motorcycle shatters apart, he goes flying, hits the hood of another car, and lands on the ground and rolls into the curb (no helmet). The car he hit with his motorcycle was totaled. I had to step over his body to talk to the police. He was still alive when they got there. I regret not holding his hand. It was just a normal day, and all of a sudden it felt like the rug was pulled from out beneath me. He was only 18.
Edit: The song was Sunny by Boney M., for those curious
What did we learn today, kids? Foxes scream like humans, shadowy figures are usually cows or drunken rednecks, and once again, PLEASE WEAR A HELMET WHEN YOU RIDE ANY KIND OF BIKE.
Scary sh*t surrounds us. But where there is horror, there are heroes. So next time you think you see a scary figure in the woods, know that Bruce Campbell is probably right around the corner
Hypocrisy is everywhere; it's like a disease. And sadly everyone does it. Some of us indulge in smaller doses than others. But some people live their life by it. Like how can you support civil servants, like police, firefighters, etc... yet try to find ways to hide money in order to not pay taxes? Tell me... I'll wait.
Manga...
Hungry Night Court GIF by LaffGiphyItalian moms that say you're too fat then say I'm making grandma cry by not finishing my pasta.
Asian moms too! Not only that if you try to not eat, they make to go containers for you. Oh, sorry I have to leave, RUNS AT LEAST HAVE SOME FRUIT.
Phonies...
Celebrities positioning themselves as champions for social justice while launching a clothing line with no comment on the labor conditions their garments are made in.
Sexy Times...
The Porn Industry
Why is prostitution considered a crime, but it becomes perfectly legal once a camera is put beside them?
I think the first amendment helps with that one. There's been many a supreme-court case about whether porn is protected speech.
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall...
You can get away with WAY more crap, in general, when you're attractive.
But we all kind of aspire to attractiveness and it's not like it's attractive people's fault, exactly. So what is there to be done?
So true. Money and beauty are treated like virtues and they aren't. They're luck of the draw. It probably helps you to be a better person if people assume that you are gentle and clever just by looking at your face or wallet.
KIDS
GIF by MOODMANGiphyPeople screaming at you if you don't want Kids and Kids are the greatest thing in the World and then turn around and whine how expensive they are and how annoying yadda yadda.
Yeah see... humans are a mess. And too often then not, personal conviction and dignity are just a myth, or a punchline. Double standards have always been a way of life. And many of us have begrudgingly learned to navigate.
Fashion
Fashion Model GIF by NYFW: The ShowsGiphyIf a skinny person wears something out of the ordinary, it's a fashion statement and awesome. It can even just be something like a crop top or overalls.
But God forbid a fat person wear the same thing.
Distractions
The hypocrisy hypocrisy. People love to call it out but rarely notice it on themselves and if they notice it then it's something completely different or a distraction.
That's the worst. I hate that I have to hate that. But if I don't hate it, then the hate will just continue. So, really, my hate comes from my love of an end to hate. So anyone who hates my hate hates love. And we must hate anyone who hates love!
My Morality
My own personal hypocrisy; When I was a lot less well off financially, delivering pizzas trying to get through college, I kept a cup of coins in my car. When a homeless person would approach me for spare change, I gave them the cup. Most of the time it was nearly full, so there was probably 20-30 dollars in there.
Now that I have a good salaried job, even if I've got a few bucks in my wallet, I tend to not even make eye contact anymore. I know it's awful, I know it makes me crappy, but the last 4-5 years have made me a jaded craphead towards people in general. I used to be so hopeful and I wanted to help everyone, and tried to live a life that reflected that.
Now, while my general and political morality is pretty much the same, my personal morality has gotten more grey. I'd jaded, I hate people, I assume the worst of people I used to assume the best of. I don't really care about the strangers around me like I used to, but I still expect everyone else to.
Placing Blame
Victim mentality.
It's so freaking frustrating when it becomes entrenched. "You did this, it's your fault" "you should've known to do x, its your fault" Yeah bro your problems aren't my problems and if all you do is make excuses and blame me for them, it's not going to be my fault when you don't develop as a person and accomplish your dreams. I'm sure they'll find someone to blame though.
In D.C.
Donald Trump Reaction GIF by Election 2016GiphyPoliticians work part time, are given free housing, education, and health care, and exempt from the everyday violence we experience, but refuse to lift a finger to help us.
At this points most people running for a position in the government are only in it for the benefits of being a politician and the amount of money they can embezzle. Well in my country at least.
Just speak a truth and live it. Yes, it maybe hard. But what part of life isn't? Hypocrisy is just lying. Plain and simple. And it's a sin to lie.
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