Sometimes it's just best to keep your mouth shut.
However, it's always best to never be cocky or at least to know the difference between confidence and arrogance.
We have no idea what secret powers others hold.
And even if we are really great at something, it's best to be humble.
We can still kick someone's butt in whatever joust is thrown down though, just be nice about it, before you get slammed.
Redditor LightPancake914 wanted to know who has accidentally overstepped a few times by asking...
People of Reddit, has someone ever challenged you to something you are an expert at without them knowing? If so, how did it turn out?
Yes.... I enjoyed that day!
"I remember once in high school, there was an assembly in front of the entire school. Can't remember the exact topic, but at one point the teacher pulls up a slide showing the village in Wales with a 58 letter name (Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch)."
"Then he points straight at me and says 'can you say that?' obviously thinking whoever he points at is not gunna be able to do it. Little did he know that my dad had been able to say it as one of his party tricks, and had been teaching me for years."
"Yes.... I enjoyed that day!"
KormaKameleon88
Fly Away.
Giphy
"Guy told me all about how airplanes work, which planes are good, which are bad, you name it. Talked for an hour while sitting at the airport"
"I'm an airline pilot."
Washout22
The Mario Experts.
"My 9-year-old cousin challenged me to a round of Mario Kart (whatever the latest iteration is, he got it last Christmas). After thoroughly handing his ass to him, I pointed out to him that I've been playing the game since before he was born."
stealmyrecords
"My nephew tried this sh*t. he was doing 50cc races and winning and thought he could take me. the fool! I've been playing Mario kart since the beginning, even before his FATHER was alive!"
EricTheRedCanada
Tetris.
"Tetris. A version for Nintendo DS exists where you can link up via download, your cleared lines get sent to the other players screen, so it's a battle. The only other difference is you get a faster drop option."
"Freshman in college, on a trip and my friend was pretty confident (and determined) he could beat me at a game."
"34 undefeated games, just with him, and almost 2 hours determined that was a lie. People started taking turns after he gave up. Still undefeated."
NeonNintendo
Checkmate.
Giphy
"In my first few weeks of this deployment, I was challenged to chess matches pretty frequently, but nobody wants to play me anymore :("
"I grew up playing chess. I've played against my dad a million times and only ever beaten him twice. As of a couple years ago I started teaching my son how to play. As a 2nd grader, he was whooping 4th grader asses at chess. Good times."
Judoka229
"Was out at a bar once and a dude challenged me to game off chess. Im by no means professional at it or even good, but I'm good enough to the point where i can beat anyone that doesn't really play chess. In his drunk mind i was a grandmaster."
luddoro
Stay Humble.
"Not a challenge, but when I was in 5th grade, I was the fastest kid in school. Our school went from K-8 and every year we had our own track meet and the kids who placed in the top three in each category would represent the school in the countywide track meet. 5th-8th grade competed against each other at our school."
"I won every single race by quite a stretch. I have always been fast and have been challenged to race and won every single time. When I went to the countywide meet, I was pretty brash and even my classmates were talking trash to the other schools."
"I came in 4th in the 100 yd dash, 5th in the 50 yard dash. I learned that day not to be cocky and that I actually needed to train and not rely on talent alone."
duckmunch
2 of the old deputies...
"As an infantry Marine, especially in weapons platoon, you get really good at spades. And I mean, really good."
"I left the Marine Corps and worked very briefly at a jail where I met another Marine, even better, a mortarman. We never discussed spades, nor played together at any time."
"2 of the old deputies wanted to play one night and said they were the best and no one could beat them. Since most people have never played spades, nor have a lot of people heard of it, they were surprised when me and the other former Marine knew how to play."
Devil Dogs....
"We went over the rules to make sure the different play styles were addressed and then one person decided to bet us. They lost at an overwhelming pace. Where it started to feel bad on how fast and easily we were winning. We didn't even speak to each other, but read each other's mind while playing."
"Man do I miss playing spades with a bunch of war fighting devil dogs everyday."
TOWonthewire1
Challenges are dumb. Just go home.
Play Hard.
Giphy
"I play rugby in a club. Not really a pro but I can pull out a few moves and I definitely know how to tackle someone."
"A friend of mine challenged me to make him fall on the ground so I did a cathedral (I don't know if it's the right word, English, basically it's when you do a tackle but instead of taking him down to the ground the fastest way possible, you lift him first to make him recoil a bit before putting him on the ground) to him and he never asked me again."
dixthemean
StepMania...
"I used to play this game called StepMania (Think Dance Dance Revolution but with keyboard instead of a mat) all the time and was actually really good at it, but only 1 friend of mine knew. Another friend of mine was showing off how "good" he was in this new game he had been playing for a couple of weeks and dared us to beat him."
"I had only dreamt of such a moment before but that moment was finally there after about 10 years and he got absolutely destroyed."
bananapiece123
A Bird Duel.
"My girlfriend's sister kind of challenged me to a flipping the bird duel. For some time we flipped each other off unsuspectedly in creative ways. After a while I decided to send her a letter with a card I made. When you opened the card a printed finger unfolded and rose up like a Santa Claus in a Christmas card."
"I didn't sign it or anything. She kept the card and has it to this day. She told me she was really surprised and curious about getting a real letter via traditional mail. According to her boyfriend her reaction was berserk laughter. I won."
graablikk
15 Love.
Giphy
"I got challenged to a tennis match by a house mate during dinner."
"He thought that because I was fat he would beat me easily."
"After some deliberately condescending comments from me he got agitated and we settled on a bet; loser runs home naked (about 2miles through the city)"
"I was indeed fatter than him, my freshman fifteen had become a thirty."
"I also had 12 years of competitive tennis under my belt."
"Nothing spectacular in terms of talent, I had just liked the game a lot, but certainly enough skill to send his skinny butt walking."
"I almost died laughing after the first game already because he was terrible at tennis, wtf was he thinking?"
FeverTreat
Olympic Challenge.
"Classmate challenged me to a handstand contest not knowing that i've been a gymnast for 19 years. Got $100 and bragging rights."
growingtohatemyself
"Haha I was going to share a similar story. I was in gymnastics for a couple of years when I was a kid so I can still do cartwheels and handstands and I'm also pretty flexible."
"But now I'm pretty overweight so at a crossfit gym recently the trainer was convinced I couldn't do a simple handstand leaning against the wall and when I told him I could he was like ya okay sure show me. So I cartwheeled over to a wall and did a handstand and held it for at least 30 seconds."
its_julz
Not in my House!
"My nephews thought they could bring smash into MY HOUSE?!"
"oh you picked Fox? Uncle you must have never played this before have you hahaha, he's not very good"
"They don't want to play video games with mean uncle anymore after not being allowed to touch the ground."
manaworkin
Pok-e Master.
"I did some student teaching in a middle school, and some of my kids challenged me to a Pokémon trivia contest. I wiped the whole entire floor with them. Casuals."
SomeGuyInShorts
"Dumb fool middle schoolers. They don't know about the Pokémon masters of the 90s."
nzcnzcnz
The Lefty!
Giphy
"It's pretty well known that I'm good at tenpin bowling. On a work trip recently, my coworkers drunkenly decided to challenge me to a game - 'and to make it fair, you can only bowl with your left hand!'"
"I beat them solidly."
"(Am left handed.)"
seven_seacat
Dead or Alive.
"At the end of a party a colleague of mine took out his Xbox and asked with a large grin if we wanted to play the fighting game Dead or Alive."
"I was obsessed with it when I was younger but never told anyone I even play video-game. He didn't took a single round with his best character while I was drunkenly playing random characters."
"I even let someone else that never played the game before win a round to screw off my colleague."
Ntghgthdgdcrtdtrk
Speed ice skating!
"Speed ice skating! There was this really douchey guy in our group of friends who felt the need to show me up one night when a bunch of us were skating. I had played hockey growing up, unbeknownst to him, so I agreed to his challenge to race. After I lapped him (a few times) he just started laughing at himself realizing how cocky he had been."
"Turns out he was actually a really kind and caring guy, just so socially inept that it came across as rude. We became pretty good friends and I remember during a really bad flu i missed a few events and he was the only one who thought to call me up and see how i was doing. He got married recently and I couldn't be happier for him!"
JillandherHillsJillandherHills
I destroyed her!!
"When Pokemon ultra sun and moon came out I bought sun, my niece bought moon. I am 32 and have played since I was a little guy, she was a first time player. After a couple months of playing she cockily challenges me to a battle, like constant trash talk... I destroyed her. Like not even close to being close. As the battle ends I look up in triumph and she is crying. Like shaking crying. She throws her DS down and runs off to her room. I felt like the biggest fool in the world."
wham-alama-dingdong
"Indeed you do"
"At a social gathering, a guy that claimed to be a "music maven" <his words> talked on and on about J.S. Bach's Symphony No. 9, "Ode to Joy."
"Without mentioning that I taught music history, I simply remarked that Bach was a baroque composer and never wrote any symphonies - that "Ode to Joy" was Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, not Bach's."
"He emphatically said, "Well, I know what I know."
"And, as I described here in askreddit some time ago, I simply replied, "Indeed you do," and let it drop."
Back2Bach
Raw.
Giphy
"I mean, I would hope that they know I'm an expert on food, since they came to a nice restaurant where I'm the sous chef."
"But a small portion of the guests refuse to admit that they are wrong."
"The most memorable story is the rare seabass. This woman insisted that she wanted rare seabass, even after I told her that seabass doesn't have a temperature gradient like steak... it's either cooked or it's sushi."
"She complained that it was raw in the middle. No crap, lady."
cscott024
The Challenge
"My friend challenged me by giving me a WW2 quiz. Didn't turn out so well because i had, at that time known basically every event in the Second World War and was obsessed with it. Needless to say, I answered every question correctly."
ImTheFluffalo
I'm Dumb
"Back in college I went to go visit my best friend at his college. I don't know what he was thinking but he was feeling pretty cocky and challenged me to a drinking contest, 'I bet I can go beer for beer with you!' I'm 6'3" 200 pound frat guy, he is 5'8" 120 pound skinny kid. We are not even drinking anything heavy, basically Sam Adams and Shiner Bock."
"90 minutes later I'm polishing off beer number 7 barely even got a buzz, he is puking in the toilet. The best part we were laughing so hard, he goes 'I'm a f**king idiot' and we high five as he goes back to puking in the toilet."
RollThemBones
There are always lessons to learn. I do know things...
For many childhood memories are overrun by living nightmares.
Yes, children are resilient, but that doesn't mean that the things we see as babes don't follow us forever.
The horrors of the world are no stranger to the young.
Redditor -2sweetcaramel- wanted to see who was willing to share about the worst things we've seen as kids, so they asked:
"What’s the creepiest thing you saw as a kid?"
Serious Danger
"Me and my best friend would explore the drainage tunnels under the Vegas area where we grew up. These were miles long and it was always really cool down there so it was a good way to escape the heat of our scorching hot summers. We went into this one that goes under the Fiesta casino and found a camp with a bunch of homeless people."
"Mind you we are like 11 years old lol. And we just kept going like it was nothing. It wasn’t scary then but when I look back at it we could have been in some serious danger. Our parents had no idea we did this or where we were and we had no cellphones. We could have been kidnapped and never have been found."
oofboof2020
Waiting for Food
"I was at a portillos once when I was 12 and I was waiting with my little brother at a booth while my parents got our food. This guy was standing with his tray kind of watching me then after a couple of minutes he started to walk over really fast not breaking eye contact with me."
"He was 2 feet from the table and my dad came out of nowhere and scared the s**t out of him. He looked so surprised and just said he wanted to see if I’d get scared or not. He left his tray full of food near the door and left. My folks reported him but we never went to that location again since we found a better one closer to home."
nowhereboy1964
Captain Hobo to the Rescue
"When I was a pretty young teen, my friends and I were horsing around in San Francisco and started hanging out to smoke with some homeless guys. Another homeless dude came up and began aggressively trying to shake us down for anything (money, smokes, a ride, drugs- all of it) and wouldn’t take no for an answer."
"We got in over our heads and could tell this guy was now riling the other 2 guys up and they were acting like they wanted to jump us. Some grandfather-looking old homeless man appeared out of nowhere and yelled at us to get the f**k out of here- nice kids like us don’t belong down here at this hour!!"
"Captain Hobo saved our lives that night. My parents sincerely thought we were at a mall all day lol."
FartAttack911
Survival
tsunami GIF
Giphy
"I was 7 and survived the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. Witnessed the wave rise way above the already massive palm trees (approx. 40ft?) and my family and I watched/heard the wave crash into the ground from a rooftop."
faithfulpoo
These Tsunami stories are just tragic.
On the Sand
Scared The Launch GIF by CTV
Giphy
"We were a group of kids who went to swim in a local lake. And there was a dead body on the beach with their hands raised and their legs bent unnaturally that local police just took out of the same lake. I've never put my foot in these waters again."
oyloff
Be Clever
"I was walking to school and I was about 5 or 6 years old and some guy pulled up beside me in his car and asked if I would get in. He also offered me sweets to do so. I said no. The creepy bit was when he calmly said ‘clever boy’ to me, then drove off. I’ve never even told my parents or anyone else about this as it would most likely freak them out."
OstneyPiz
Bad Jokes
"Dad's side of the family pranked me by burying a fake body on our back property and had me dig it up to find valuables. Was only allowed to use a lantern for light. They stuffed old clothes with chicken bones. Sheetrock mud where the head was... Random fake jewelry as the treasures... I was like maybe 10 or 11.. I remember digging up the boot first and started gagging because it became real at that point."
Alegan239
YOU
Who Are You Reaction GIF by MOODMAN
Giphy
"Woke up to find my little brother staring at me in the dark, asking, Are you really you?"
PrettyLola2004
Siblings can really be a bunch of creepers.
No one should talk to others in the dark though.
Not all pet owners have the same relationship with their pets.
While anyone who decides to become a pet owner, or pet parent as some say, love their pets equally, some never ever let them leave their side.
Taking their pet with them to work, running errands, even on vacations.
Many pet parents even allow their pets to share their bed with them when going to sleep.
For others though, this is where a line is finally drawn.
Redditor Piggythelavasurfer was curious to hear whether pet owners allowed their pets to share their bed with them, as well as the reasons why they do/don't, leading them to ask:
"Do you let your pet sleep in your bed? Why/why not?"
The Tiny Issue Of Water...
"Absolutely not."
"I have fish."- Senior-Meal3649
Everyone Gets Lonely Eventually...
"I adopted an eleven year old cat the day before Halloween."
"She has mostly lived in my closet since I got her, and she hasn’t been too interested in coming out."
"Last night, she came out of my closet and jumped up on my bed, and crawled under my covers and curled up by my feet to sleep."
"I was so happy!"- YellowBeastJeep
The Comforting Reminder That You're Not Alone...
"I recently lost my Greyhound but I used to let him sleep on my bed with me."
"The company was nice and he was no trouble to have on my bed."- HoodedMenace3
Hungry Cookie GIF by De Graafschap Dierenartsen
Giphy
What Do You Mean Allow?
"I have no choice."
"She is a cat, cats do whatever they want."- Small_cat1412
"He lets me sleep in my bed."- Poorly-Drawn-Beagle
Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way
"I carry my old boy upstairs to bed every night."- worst_in_show
Hug GIF by The BarkPost
Giphy
Who Needs An Alarm Clock?
"I let my two cats sleep with me."
"They're so full of love and just want cuddles all the time."
"And so do I."
"We've all developed a lil routine."
"Get to bed, oldest sleeps on my feet to keep them warm, youngest lies in my arm while I lie on my side (she the little spoon), then when I snooze my alarm for work in the morning the youngest paws at my face and meeps loudly to wake me up."- GhostofaFlea_
Whose Bed Is It Anyway?
"Yes."
"They're also kind enough to let me squeeze into whatever space they've left for me."
"Although I do get a few dirty looks off them."- Therealkaylor
"I found this tiny kitten screaming her head off under a car."
"Would not come out."
"Got some food and some water in dishes."
"I stood by the tire so she couldn't see my feet."
"She got curious about the food and water and started gobbling it down."
"I thought she would bolt when I squatted down."
"She was too busy eating."
"I grabbed her by the nape of the neck and all four legs went straight out and she tried to scratch me to death."
"I got her in the door and tossed her toward the couch."
"She ricocheted off the couch as if she was a ping pong off a table and I lost sight of her."
"I put out food and water and a sandbox and did not see that kitten for three days."
"On the third day, I came home and she was on my bed pillow."
"I thought she would bolt when I came near, but she didn't."
"I wanted to sleep so I tried to scoot her little butt off my pillow."
"She would not go."
"I put my head down to sleep and that is the way it was from then on."
"She ran the roost."- Logical_Cherry_7588
sleepy kitten GIF
Giphy
Sleeping Is A Prerequisite...
"No, he's a cat and he cannot keep still during the night."
"He walks across the headboard, opens the closet doors, jumps into the windows and rustles the blinds, etc."
"If he would sleep he could stay, but alas, he's a ramblin' man."- Spong_Durnflungle
Saying No Just Isn't An Option...
"'Let'."
"Lol."
"It's a cat's world and I'm happy to be on her good side."- milaren
Felines Only!
"The cat does, the dog doesn't and the horse certainly does not either."- Xcrowzz
Angry Tom And Jerry GIF by Boomerang Official
Giphy
Is That My Hair On That Pillow?
"My dog is perfect."
"She comes up, cuddles til we start to fall asleep, then gets down to sleep on her bed so she doesn't get too hot."
"Jumps back up in the early morning for wake up cuddles."
"The hair everywhere is the only downside but she is so cozy, what can you do."- HoodieWinchester
It is easy to understand how some people are able to fall asleep more easily knowing their friend and protector is there, in bed, with them.
Though we can't blame others who don't want to run the risk of being scratched or bitten in the middle of the night either...