People Share Their "OMG, THAT WORKED" Moments That Even Surprised Them
Have you heard of the expression "Throw the spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks?"
It's a pretty tried and true method of adulthood. By now we have all acknowledged that there are no "real" adults and nobody has any idea what they're doing. Which is refreshing, because now we can all laugh about it!
Reddit user NSalonga26 asked the internet at large:
Reddit, what's your top "Holy shit, that worked?" moment?
Here are some of those answers.
Bob-ing for Jobs
A guy we'll call Bob left the company I was at. A year or two later he started recruiting people from our company, I was interested so I flew out for an interview.
First five interviews went great. Seemed like a good group to work with. The final interview was with the HR director. It went okay and then we got to the pay part. I said I wanted X amount. She said the average pay for my experience and position was X - 20k.
My response was "Bob didn't fly me out here because I'm average,"
I have no idea why I said that, but I got the job and the pay I wanted.
Months later when we were getting drinks Bob brought that up. Apparently HR director thought I was very quiet and introverted from our interview so my response caught her even more off guard than it caught me. SardinesGivePower
Different Tools, Same Result
Used an electric palm sander to clean the soap scum out of my tub. Put a sponge right on the bottom and turned that bad boy on.
I thought my tub was just naturally eggshell color, nope. It's pure white. RedditforLent
If I'm Dyin' I'm Lyin'
A very confused patient was fighting me when I was trying to give him IV antibiotics.
"YOU'RE GOING TO KILL ME, WHAT IS MY FAMILY GOING TO DO IF YOU KILL ME?!" he wailed while pointing at his adult son.
"If I kill you, they can sue me and the hospital and be rich," I said.
The man just kinda made an "oh yeah" kind of mumble and let me hook him up to the IV. His son was trying so hard not to laugh! kayquila
Who's Gonna Notice?
I once got fired from a job at the grocery store. I really needed money though, and no other place was hiring, so a week later I just showed up and started doing my job as usual. No one said anything, and I got my pay at the end of the week like normal, and I stayed at that job till I quit a year later. Octofriend
Tree & Sympathy
I had a test coming up and, needless to say, I didn't want to take it. So, nine year-old me decides to jump out of a tree and fake being hurt. I didn't go to school for the next two days.
I realize now that I could've just said that I fell out of a tree, I didn't have to actually do it. epher95
Trick The Technology
My first edition PS3 stopped working in 2011. It would turn on, but would never read a disc. About 6 months ago, I randomly found a video on YouTube with like 120 views that was basically a 12 yo kid showing how if you lift the PS3 vertically when loading a disc, it'll start to read. I tried it and boom that sh*t worked. ironjatt
Fuel Pumpin'
My first vehicle was a 1985 dodge ram that had around 300k miles on it. Needless to say, it wasn't exactly reliable.
Anyway, my friend and I had tickets to go see a concert in a city that was about 3 hours away. We made it there just fine and had a blast at the concert. We couldn't afford to stay overnight so we started on the long journey home. If all went well, we would get home around 3AM.
There was one stretch of highway where there was 60 ish miles between towns. It's pretty much the worst place to break down on that journey. There were big signs warning travelers to fill up with gas before leaving town, but I had half a tank. My truck sputtered out and died almost halfway between the two towns. It sure sounded like I ran out of gas but the gauge still showed half a tank. All had not gone well.
So there we were - 1:45 AM, stuck on the side of the highway in Texas, 30 miles from the nearest towns, no moonlight, and this was before teenagers had cell phones. We were screwed. After a bit of poking around with a flashlight, we discovered that we did have fuel but the fuel pump had died. We decided to sleep in the truck and mess with it in the morning.
On those old dodge trucks, the fuel pump was inside the engine instead of in the fuel tank like a modern vehicle. It was powered by the engine instead of an electric motor. Essentially, the fuel pump would constantly pump gasoline when the engine was running and gas would always be available for the carburetor float valve. The extra pumped gas would just go back into the gas tank.
I was just drifting off to sleep when I got an idea. I worked for almost an hour in the pitch dark. I used some extra hose from an agricultural fertilizer, a drink straw, screw clamps, and duck tape to rig the windshield fluid pump to pump fuel from the fuel line into the carburetor float line.
I got in my truck, hit the windshield fluid lever, and the truck started right up. It took a bit of trial and error but I was able to get the timing down where I knew how often to hit the lever to keep the truck running.
We made it back home just after 4:30AM. My dad wasn't immediately amused with my handy work, but he told all of his friends how clever his son was so I guess it passed the dad test. Nevermind04
I Don't Guana Go
To get out of an after-hours work event, I came up with the quickest thing I could think of and told my boss that my iguana was sick and I had to get to the pet store to pick up his medication before they closed.
I don't have an iguana.
The next day I changed my desktop background to a photo of someone else's iguana. People kept asking me for weeks how my iguana was doing. dudecephus
High School Sweethearts
In high school, I told a girl who was way out of my league, "You should give me your number."
She asked, "Why would I do that?"
I said, "Because if I just dial randomly, it will take forever to call you..."
Waited to be shot down. But she laughed...and gave it to me! We were together for seven years. relativex
Dad Points: 80,000
My son was living nearby and had locked himself out of his room. He called me for help. During my many assignments in the military, I was once stationed with a guy who was also a locksmith. Incessantly told me about locks, lockpics, tumblers, etc.
So I show up at my son's apartment, armed with a basic knowledge about how locks work and two paper clips. I half-straightened them out. Used one to flick the tumblers and the other to pull at the bottom of the lock to turn it. Two minutes later, I was in.
My son says 'Holy sh*t, you did it!' Got serious dad points for that one. OldGuyGeek
Unintentional Piracy
Mine is both a little silly, and recent.
I was using a trial version of a plugin suite for some software I was using (it's a trial that you can activate, or it just dies after 30 days if you use 'Trial' for the key), contemplating buying because it was so expensive. This suite of plugins for a video editing product cost $1000. i wasn't considering buying the $1000 suite. I just wanted one of the plugins that comes with it that cost $400 as a stand alone
As I was contemplating, I started poking around for tutorials. i found one by the author. i was a complete tutorial including the license activation.
During the video he showed how to enter the code.. I thought "there's no way.... Screw it, I'm going to try"
I paused the video, wrote down the number he used in the video and clicked 'activate'
it activated the entire suite.... mindzipper
Magiqu
When I was younger I was into magic and thought I invented a magic trick that used subliminal messaging to get someone to pick a card.
I secretly turned the two of hearts over in the deck, and handed it to the kid my mom was watching.
I asked my mom to name any card, then I said to the kid:
"You too, [name of kid], whatever card is in your heart."
Trying to get him to say the two of hearts.
To my disbelief he actually said the two of fucking hearts. I didn't touch the deck for the entire trick and told him to go through it and he saw his selection turned over. I was in just as much amazement as he was. Nantoone
Duping The Teacher
In school, I belatedly realised I had an essay due the next day, which I simply didnt have the time to do.
What I did have time to do was write slightly more than a page. I then printed only the first, full page, and handed this in, inside a plastic wallet. I then finished the essay at home that night.
So, the next day, when my teacher grabs me in the corridor and says You realise you only have me the first page of your essay, right?, I was able to say Oh, shoot, the rest must have fallen out or something. Ill go print it out right now and bring it to your office. batty3108
Eight Hour Delay
I once showed up eight hours late for work. My company was trying out this crazy three shift schedule that would change every day, but there was no order to the scheme. If you didn't check what the manager put out that day, no one knew when they should be at work the next day. So after a hard shift I forget to check that bad boy, and when I came in the next day expecting to arrive at the shift change, everyone was at their desks working away. Someone sees me and asks, "Hey did you get moved to this shift?" I picked up a clipboard and said, "No, just here to...inspect." I spent about ten minutes walking around the office just nodding or scribbling notes before I went home. Not only did I not work that day, one of the managers thought it was awesome that someone was checking up on projects. saltnotsugar
Freebies
i have a verizon center STAFF lanyard that a buddy gave to me from some concert 10 or 12 years ago. it literally says nothing but "verizon center" and "STAFF." white letters on a black background, and then has a small bar code and some illegible jibberish on the other side. it could be entirely fake, as i've never seen anyone else use one like it.
so far, 3 free concerts and one free NBA game. half-afraid to keep using it, especially since the arena changed its name. i can't get anyone else in with it, so while i can literally go anywhere, i have to do it alone, which is much less fun. cubs_070816
Duping The Teacher, Part Deux
In college, I was taking a class not at all related to my major, because I needed a few credits. We had a professor who was kind of a hardass, along with a delightfully scatterbrained old-guy assistant professor. One of our assignments was to write a paper, which I put off and then ended up not doing.
Of course, I had to do the paper in order to pass. So eventually I got around to writing it, weeks after the due date. After the class where everyone's papers were returned to them, I went up to the professor - with assistant professor also present - and explained that I had handed in the paper a day or two late, but had indeed handed it to the assistant professor in the hall one day, and was just wondering if I'd be getting mine back? Assistant professor actually said that he remembered me handing it to him and that he must have misplaced it.
So I offered to print it off again and bring it with me to the next class. Which I did, and I passed. In hindsight it was all way more work than just doing it when I was supposed to, but I was a stupid lazy ass in those days. -Listening-
Sleeping Genius
Back in secondary school I had to take Business Studies, which was easily my most hated subject. I just found it so intensely boring, I couldn't help but fall asleep in every class without fail.
This was a small country school in rural Ireland, so our class only had about 20 students. Falling asleep was pretty risky since it wouldn't be difficult for someone to notice. On top of that, I sat in the first row, right in front of my easily-agitated teacher, who regularly lost her temper with students and would often loudly discipline them for even the smallest infractions.
That day I'd nodded off as usual, only to be jarred awake by my friend sharply elbowing me in the rib. I didn't have time to express my surprise before I realised that the teacher had asked me a direct question and was waiting for a response.
Since I'd not heard her query at all and therefore had idea what her question even was, I snapped out of my dream and groggily mumbled "Uh, it means... they're not... doing their jobs... properly?"
My teacher's face lit up as she broke into a rare smile. "Yes, exactly! I'm so glad someone here has been paying attention."
Over 15 years later and still amazed I got away with it. LadyGagarin
Exploiting The Web
Moved in to a new house, got my first municipal water bill at the new address. Didn't want to go out and buy stamps. Figured, "hey, I'll pay online, excellent!" only to find out that the fucking website wanted me to put in the dollar amount of my previous water bill when signing up with an online account. I tried the current and only water bill I had, no luck, came back with an error.
So I said fuck it, let's see if they're sanitizing their database inputs: put a * in for the value and tried again. Success, it let me in, I paid my bill.
For the uninitiated, the reason this works is because their website was literally taking the information I was putting in to the website, and without looking for special characters or malicious code, querying the database with that directly using a language called SQL. In SQL, the * is a wildcard, so their sql query probably looks something like "select ACCOUNT from ACCOUNT_TABLE where USERNAME = <user_provided_username> AND ADDRESS = <user_provided_address> AND PREVIOUS_BILL_AMOUNT = <user_provided_value>" (edit: yes DBAs of Reddit, I'm aware that this is a gross oversimplification, the billing stuff is going to be in another table) - I had the first two, of course, but the last one I just gave it a * and, because they're not checking for stupid shit like this, it worked and I could see what I needed to to add the house to my account - bypassing their security entirely. Odds are good I could have just put *s for all the fields and seen who lives at every address, and their previous water bills.
I emailed them shortly thereafter saying that it was a security hole. No response.
A few years later I moved again. I had my account, but to set up said online account's connection with the new address... you guessed it, they wanted me to put in the value of my previous month's bill. Fuck it, let's see if they patched this sh*t... nope! * still worked. Mnementh2230
Underage Thinking
I went to NYC for fashion week with a boutique I was working for. After the fashion show we attended everyone wanted to go out clubbing. Me, being young and new, I didn't want to be the buzzkill. So I went with them even though I was only 18. Arriving at the first club we were allowed to skip the line because we knew people and we get to the bouncer. He's going one by one checking everyone's ID's and I'm sweating bullets. When he got to me we just looked at each other.... He goes "ID" and I freeze and for some reason I said "man I already showed you mine" and til this day I don't know if he was being nice or just didn't want to look stupid but he let me in. Needless to say I got hammer off 18$ mixed drinks because f*** it right? BrennanDunlap
Going Under The Fun Limit
The time I avoided getting in trouble by being really boring.
About 6 years ago I was at my ex-girlfriends house on a sunday. Behind her house was a service center for city vehicles. So since it was a government building it was closed on Sundays. Behind the main building was a trail that you can walk down for a couple minutes and get into a subdivision.
so me and my ex decide to drive down to the head of the trail behind the building and try out the mini bong I had recently purchased. So we pull up and I take the bong out and I am holding it out the window pouring a bit of water into it when I look into my mirror.
There is a fucking cop car 15 feet behind me flying up and here I am dangling a bong out the window in front of them.
I bring the bong back in and throw it under my seat and pushing a sweater on top it. The cop car has now pulled up right behind me and two cops are dashing up to the side of the car.
"WHAT'S GOING ON HERE, you can't be back here. It is trespassing" said the cop on my side of the car.
"Oh hey officer... we were just.. going geocaching"
"what's that now?"
"geocaching sir.. umm here look" and I take my hiking GPS out of the dash and show it to him.
I then go into a 10 minute long spiel about geocaching and what it's all about and I am super dry about the whole thing.
my speech ends and im looking at him and he just says.
"ok then.... welp.. have a nice day"
"uhhh should I leave sir? you said this was tresspassing"
"whatever don't worry about it"
and both cops got in the car and left.
No idea how that worked. TonyHxC
CW: Suicide
There is so much to learn in life.
And once you acquire certain things mentally, you regret it.
How much 411 have you come across over time that made you think... "How can I unlearn that?"
Yeah, not possible.
Knowledge is power and sometimes it's a nightmare.
Don't we have enough to keep us up at night?
Damn curiosity.
Well let's do some learning.
Redditor RedBoyFromNewy wanted to shed some light on creepy issues we need to be discussing. They asked:
"What’s a disturbing fact that not a lot of people know of?"
So who is ready to spill, and where do you find the info?
From the Guts
"Without mucus your stomach would digest itself."
Ddubsquizzee
"The reason you body produces more saliva before vomiting is your bodies way if protecting your mouth from the acidity of the vomit before you actually throw up."
-AntiVegan-
Death
"There are more suicides than homicides in the US every year."
tmsanch
"60% of all gun deaths in fact are suicides. It is estimated that someone offs themselves with a firearm every 20 minutes in the US. And 80% of them are males."
hymnsees
"And what's worse (knowing, as my family just went through this.)... 70% of suicides have no note. It's a common misconception that most people leave a note and it just isn't true. Mainly because a lot of people who write notes realize they don't want to go through with it. Those who are 'successful' just do it."
jdward01
After...
"You can give still 'birth' if you die while pregnant. The decomp process will force the baby out. It’s rare but it does happen."
MelissaAthalie
"This is usually what ends up happening when a pregnant woman gets murdered. They usually find the fetus either completely separate (like in the Lacy and Connor Peterson case) or in the same location as the mother, but clearly birthed (like with the case with Shanann Watts). It's something I never knew happened until very recently and I think it's one of the most horrifying aspects of death."
rivlet
Disaster
"The deadliest ship disaster was the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship built during the Nazi Regime. In January 1945, she was evacuating 10,000 German citizens ahead of the soviet Invasion when (albeit ironically) a Soviet Submarine spotted them, and fired three torpedoes. The ship was on the freezing cold Baltic Sea, and the davits (ropes) for the lifeboats had frozen over."
"Not only that, but the ship was only meant to carry 2,000 people normally. These two factors, coupled with the harsh angle the ship was sinking at, meant only half of the lifeboats could be deployed. 9,400 people drowned to death that night, and nobody knows about it."
TheNonbinaryWren
I See You
"Your eyes have a separate immune system than the rest of your body, and if your normal immune system ever learns about your eyes, it will target them and you'll go blind."
hiruko_uchiha
Oh my eye. How do we protect them? As if I don't have enough stress.
Launched
"Penguins can launch their poop out of their butts like 5-6m far."
Bela_hrn
Despair
"Cotard's delusion, also known as walking corpse syndrome, is a neuropsychiatric disorder in which the person is in eternal damnation. They literally believe they are dead or dying [or don't have organs], the amount of despair is unimaginable and simply can't be grasped by people not suffering from it."
SweetTimpaniofLogic
'hard problem'
"It may seem like we know a lot about the human brain, but our standard way of studying brain activity is an fMRI, where a single pixel contains over 3 million neurons. That is more than many vertebrate animals' entire brains. The truth is, we really have no idea how the brain gives rise to consciousness."
"Edit: Even if we somehow perfectly worked out all the neural correlates of consciousness so we could say a mental state happens if and only if some exact pattern of brain activity happens, we would still have the 'hard problem' of consciousness: Why do these physical processes give rise to raw subjective experience, rather than just happening 'in the dark?'"
zeugenie
2 Minutes...
"If your esophagus closes and you cannot swallow, you have about 2 minutes before saliva starts reaching your windpipe. It is not a long time, but it is long enough to panic..."
grat_is_not_nice
"I have Eosiniphillic Oesophagitis and have had food stuck in the oesophagus for up to 24 hours before. And it’s horrible. You don’t realise how much saliva you swallow, to be constantly choking and vomiting that back up isn’t the best experience!"
AwayFollowing554
Get Lucky
"You’ve probably been closer to dying multiple times in your life then you even know. Just got lucky, or unlucky depending on who you are."
GingeBeardManBro
Well that's enough to disrupt sleep for life. Thanks y'all.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
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Never miss another big, odd, funny or heartbreaking moment again.
The best stories are ones with exciting plot twists.
But the next best type of stories are the ones that continue spiraling out of control.
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor _Mitnix_ asked:
"What's your best 'oh you thought this was bad, it gets worse' story?"
It's story time. You may want to buckle up.
It All Started With A Cat
"This is a long one, but I promise it's worth it:"
"A buddy of mine was cat-sitting for a friend of his while the guy was out of town on a vacation. My buddy didn't have a car, so the dude told him that if he needed to go out and pick up more cat food or anything, he could borrow the car."
"At the time, my buddy was living right down the street from this guy, staying at his parents' house. So my buddy was just going over for a few hours each day to feed the cat and keep it company, then going back home."
"Meanwhile, he's also been flirting with this woman online. She lives several states away, but he feels like they seem to be getting pretty serious. So he decides to take some liberties, really push the envelope on where he'll pick up cat food from, and he takes his friend's car on a little multi-state road trip."
"This is insane, right? Just atrociously bad judgement, especially since someone does need to feed the cat. To solve this, he left his parents a note. It read, 'I am camping in the woods behind our house. Please go over to ____'s and feed his cat. I'll let you know when I'm home.'"
"Boom. Problem solved, right?"
"Except that the 'woods behind our house' are about 20 yards deep. It takes less than five minutes to walk through them and come out into the neighboring housing development. So his parents went looking for him, calling out for him, and couldn't find him. They got worried and contacted a family friend, a local police officer. He subsequently got a hold of the fire department. There was a full-on search party combing through about 1/50th of an acre of woods. Unsurprisingly, they were coming up with nothing."
"This was before cell phones were common, so my buddy was completely unaware that his plan had fallen apart. He was cruising along on his 12-hour drive, expecting to get to this girl's house just in time for dinner. Except he didn't have a GPS. So he got lost. Very lost. Like, by the time he turned up at this woman's house, it was almost midnight."
"When he got there, she was crying her eyes out. He assured her that it was okay, he was fine, wasn't hurt or in a wreck or anything, he'd just gotten lost. And she said, 'No, no, I wasn't worried about you. My dad just died in a motorcycle accident.'"
"So he bailed on his cat-sitting duties, stole a car, and inspired his parents to file a missing-persons just so he could awkwardly watch a woman cry for a few hours and then drive back home."
– GavinBelsonsAlexa
The Beekeeper's Nightmare
"I will try to keep it short. I am a beekeeper. My 3rd year of beekeeping, I suddenly developed a severe allergy to bee stings. It was spring and I was installing bees for the beginning of the season. I was up to the last hive, went to install that package of bees and one stung me right in the top of my head."
"I finished up a few minutes after and went up toward the house to do some other things. I started feeling flush and I could feel my heart racing. After I few minutes I realized I was having an anaphylactic reaction."
"If you’ve never had one, aside from the physical symptoms, they also say you will get a feeling of impending doom. That was spot on. I absolutely felt I was going to die and people do die from these reactions."
"So I am now in the house and desperately searching for Benadryl of which I have none. I am also having trouble breathing, my body is going haywire and I feel like I’m going to black out shortly."
"I call my mom, who lives an hour away, to call 911 because I feel like I will be unconscious soon. She says okay, phone rings 30 seconds later. It’s my mom, she goes 'I called 911 but they said you have to call'. This was my first wtf."
"So I call and it’s a very typical 911 call she is trying to keep me talking and I essentially started vomiting and she is still on the line and I am waiting and waiting for this alleged ambulance."
"A full half hour goes by. At this point I am actually coming out of the reaction. So I go to sit at my kitchen counter. I’m still on the line with the 911 dispatcher. I see the ambulance pull up and I say, oh they’re here. She’s like great, are you okay? I’m like yes and then she says goodbye and hangs up."
"I see the EMTs outside but my driveway has a gate so they are just standing there and they ring the bell on my gate and I am just looking at them, dumbfounded. Like I called for an emergency over a half hour ago, and they’re gonna roll up here and ring my bell and wait for me to come out when I more than likely could be unconscious or dead on the floor."
"I literally had to go out and let them in. Then they basically talked me in to going to the hospital to get checked out. Another huge mistake because this took place in the 2 months in my entire life when I didn’t have health insurance. So I ended up paying $4000 for a late ambulance and some IV Benadryl and epinephrine."
"Oh which also reminds me, a paramedic also showed, put the IV in when I agreed to go to the hospital. Then I felt something dripping and turns out he put it in my artery rather than a vein and it was just pushing the fluid out of the IV."
"0/10 would not go through any of that again…but I did 10 years later when I had another anaphylactic reaction due to a bee sting. However this went a lot smoother and I had epi-pens and a responsive ambulance."
– soline
Oil Everywhere
"Arrive home from work, my house reeks of oil."
"Go in the basement, and there's a pool of oil, with my stuff floating in it. The oil filter on my burner rotted out (it was defective and recalled, but the tech never bothered to notify me or replace it). Call up the tech, he throws a new one, charges me the emergency call fee, and advises I call HO insurance before running away (it was his fault, I didn't know it yet)."
"This was February in NY, about 13F out, and obviously the burner wasn't on while sitting in a pool of oil. But, they get there pretty quickly soak it up, and get things running so my pipes don't freeze."
"Only way to get the smell out is to dry clean everything I own, then shampoo all the carpets, run deodorizers, etc. Takes weeks. Had a headache the whole time."
"Turns out, my basement has cracks, most of it leaked through. They had to cut out my foundation and dig out the contaminated soil."
"Oil in soil means DEC gets involved. Whole new can of worms as they now had to monitor the process, test at every step. Big enough deal I have a spill number in their database."
"A 20 yard dumpster, with 20 yards of oil soaked sand, is so heavy that it broke through my driveway, destroying it. They did that twice, took out my entire driveway."
"Remember how I said this was in February? March brought the COVID shutdown."
"I spent over a year with my basement in shambles, holes in my driveway, plastic sheets taped up, no washer/dryer, and all sorts of equipment kicking around."
"The next spring, they're back and working, and screwed everything up. Not going to get into every detail, but after a big fight, I managed to get rid of them and bring in a new company to fix their screwups and finish the job. Old crew got very difficult when the new crew requested permits and reports. Turns out, they never bothered. Had to do all that before they could start working again."
"New company dropped a storage crate on my yard to store my stuff while working, destroyed my grass, took out a sprinkler, took out my neighbor's driveway curb, got concrete all over my brickwork, but at least the nightmare was finally over."
– MyNameIsRay
These Redditors have been dealt with some major blows.
People who say that things will always get better, are partially right. Things do come around, eventually.
But you never know how many curve balls life has to throw at you until there's a resolution.
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Never miss another big, odd, funny or heartbreaking moment again.
Life is full of disappointments. We lose out on a job opportunity or the one designer article of clothing we really wanted is not available in our size.
But we go on.
But the biggest letdowns are the ones we never see coming but must contend with.
Redditor Frequent-Pilot5243 asked:
"What is a depressing truth you have made peace with?"

No matter how much you prize a friendship, not all of them are for forever.
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
"A friendship you thought would last forever can end in an instant."
– Febreze4200
The Best Mate Who Quit
"My best mate of 20 years, said that he didn’t want to be my best man and just said he didn’t want to be my friend any more. Hurt like hell."
– Gavindasing
It's Okay To Let Go
"Sometimes people you care deeply about will choose to drop out of your life and all you can really do is have the grace to let them."
"edit. to everyone struggling with being left behind, and to everyone struggling with having to be the one to leave- I hope the pain eases for you soon."
– girlloss
Restarting The Process
"I have a really hard time with this one. Every friendship I've had in my adult life has only lasted a couple years tops. Rarely a falling out or anything, but just drifting apart or sh*t happens type deal. It's hard for me to make friends in the first place because I'm pretty shy, so having to regularly restart that process is really discouraging. Right now I don't really have any friends because I've just kinda given up trying."
– plebeian1523
The harsh reality of losing the people we love hits home for these Redditors.
Grandpa Time
"My grandpa just wanted to get to know me and the man I was becoming during his last year of life. Which I was too young and too selfish to realize."
– MrMunky24
Lost Opportunity
"Yeah, this hits home. I spent 90% of my childhood with my grandparents. I was at their house almost everyday. When I got into my teens and obviously found friends, discovered women, all that stuff and then I just stopped seeing them. They’re both gone now and they died with the memories of me as a child. Although they seen me sometimes while I was older, they didn’t know me because I didn’t give them the chance."
– Loud-Distance-1456
In Grief
"My dad passed away 6 weeks ago and I will NEVER see, hear, chat or get to hug him ever again & that forever is a long time."
– somethinggood19
These sobering facts were huge disappointments.
Truth About CPR
"This is coming from a firefighter:"
"If you have to perform CPR on them, it's most likely over for the patient."
"I'm not sure if I've made peace with it completely, but I've accepted it at least."
– Rukhnul
The After Effects
"I've taken CPR training twice in the past 10 years. The instructors were so completely different... The second one flat out told us 'you're giving them about a 15% chance of living, and even if they live, they will probably have some kind of severe trauma that will dramatically decrease their quality of life.' Wow..."
– DavidAg02
Despite Having Good Intentions...
"No one is coming to help."
– _meddlin_
That Train Has Left The Station
"I'm aging nonstop."
– insaight
Innocence Is Gone
"My childhood is gone, and I have no good memory from that phase of my life."
– anonymoose_mrx
No matter what, life goes on with or without us.
The best that any of us can do while we're passengers on this giant spaceship is to take life as it comes and pick up the pieces the best we can when things don't pan out as we'd hoped.
Sometimes, it's about celebrating the small victories–like finally finding a store that has your shoe size.
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People Describe The Times Someone Mocked Them For Being Wrong But They Were Actually Right
The truth matters.
Something one would think was a given in modern society.
Yet all over the world, there are people so unbelievably stubborn, that they simply refuse to believe the facts.
Sometimes even when presented with evidence.
This could be for something menial, such as refusing to believe that a cotton candy was actually invented by a dentist.
But sometimes, refusing to believe the truth could have serious consequences, up to and including climate change, the effectiveness of masks, and the disproportionate amount of gun violence in the US.
Redditor Lady_Of_The_Water was curious about the many things, both frivolous and serious, people refused to believe were true, leading them to ask:
"Whats something someone thought you were wrong about and ridiculed you for it, but it turns out you were right?"
What's that smell?
"That there really was a gas leak in the apartment building."
"Thankfully, the fire didn't cause much damage."- yamsnavas2.
There's a reason the bill is so high.
"Our water usage at work went up a lot."
"They checked all the toilets, sinks for leaks, couldn't find anything."
"I mentioned that it seemed to coincide with the new water cooler system installation, maybe that should be checked."
"They basically laughed at me."
"That stupid water system never worked good and the guy came in 3 different times and said it was just the filter."
"Every month it needs changed???"
"Didn't seem right."
"Finally a different technician came in and result was it was never installed correctly."
"I asked, 'could that have anything to do with the increased water usage that started when this got installed?'"
" He smiled 'I wondered if anyone caught that, yes the valve was not correct and water has been running'."
"For 5 months!!"
"If only they had listened."
"Total redemption!"- McTee967.
Have you ever looked at a map?
"I had a coworker doubling down repeatedly, claiming that new Zealand is north of Australia."
"I even told her about how I had lived there and she just assumed I was such a huge idiot that I didn't know where on the globe I was living."
"Brought the smartphone out and put an end to that."
"Let me just say, it's ok to not know where all the countries are."
"The problem is if you heavily assert you are right and others are stupid."- PlopPlopPlopsy.
Is it supposed to hurt this much?
"My husband told me that I was a 'baby' about my IUD insertion and insisted that it wasn't painful."
"That my concerns about entrusting a stranger to shove a foreign object into my body were paranoid."
"I listened to him because really, the info you'd find online is overwhelmingly positive."
"Long story short: the provider placed it wrong, didn't check/fix it when I asked her to."
"I spent 4 years in pain that I eventually 'got used to."
"It expelled half way out my cervix, had to get it yanked out at the ER."
"That's when I was told that copper IUDs are notorious for breaking inside the uterus."
"Because it broke inside me."
"The cherry on top?"
"The female gyno with three kids I saw to get the broken piece removed told me that 'cervixes don't really feel pain' and that I didn't really need to remove it."
"Goes without saying, I was in severe pain for 2 weeks straight before this appointment."
"Tons of women came out with their stories about lawsuits over IUDs, how they got pregnant with an IUD."
" Stories similar to mine."
"And how women should really be offered anesthesia or pain pills for this procedure."
"And when my husband was surprised to learn about the pain I endured I reminded him 'You called me a baby and everyone else told me it was all in my head'."
"Which is why I didn't talk about it."- PopK0rnAndMMs.
Seems like you could learn something from me.
"In sixth grade chemistry a teacher asked us what element was a gas that was lighter than air, and extremely flammable/explosive."
"I grew up on science because of what my dad does for a living and Bill Nye."
"I knew about the Hindenburg, and so I was really proud of myself when I raised my hand and said 'Hydrogen'."
"The teacher laughed at me and said that no, it was Helium, and the entire rest of the class proceeded to laugh too."
"Almost three decades later I work in a lab now, and f*ck that teacher I was right."- vanyel_ashke.
The dictionary is your friend.
"I have worked as a translator and a proofreader."
"For one of my translations, it went something like 'and he piqued her interest'."
"My proofreader docked me for an inaccuracy and switched it to 'and he peaked her interest'.”
"I’m still salty."
"I tried to get the agency I was working for to remove this person as a proofreader since I question his/her command of the English language."
"Had a similar problem with the phrase “lynch pin” used metaphorically."
"I stopped working with that agency because it pissed me off so much being 'corrected' incorrectly."- spot_o_tea.
No, that's just an illusion.
"When I told my mom that the clouds were moving and she laughed like I was crazy."-
Did you even read the menu?
"I was in the passenger's seat at a Carl's Jr Drive Thru with a friend."
"He asked what I wanted and I requested the Fried Zucchini."
"He puts half his body through the window to the voice box and goes on this 'My friend here thinks you have some kind of food I know you don't have so I am just going to say it for laughs because you will get a kick out of this'."
"She wants FRIED ZUCCHINI' and starts laughing."
" Well guess who ends up eating fried zucchini."- User Deleted.
And how do you spell that?
"Believe it or not, the pronunciation of my own middle name."- ThePlantie.
We have standards in this community...
"Not me but my Mom tells a story about how she wrote a paper for school about how tough her small town makes it for any new people moving in."
"Basically if you didn't grow up there you were a social outcast for decades and were excluded from a lot of things."
"The teacher didn't agree so she got a bad grade and scoffed at."
"A few years later a news paper reporter essentially wrote the same thing and won a local award for calling out the same small town BS that was going on."- Jberg18.
It's pretty amazing that anyone in this day and age would jump to tell someone they're wrong without having any authority.
Particularly when someone can quickly look up the truth on their phone in less than a minute.
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