They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but that's really only applicable in movies that star - or could feasibly star - Sylvester Stallone. Here in the real world, our actions have consequences and most of us have at least SOME sort of conscience. Every now and then, though, someone gets under our skin in just the right way that we decide to just go for it.
Sometimes it works out, sometimes you get stories like these:
One Reddit user asked:
What revenge of yours hit the victim way worse than you thought it would, to the point you said "maybe I shouldn't have done that"?
Thankfully, most of these happened in childhood so we'd like to think some of us have improved our impulse control since then... but there's always a possibility, so ... ya know ... just don't mess with people and you should be good.
These have been edited for clarity where needed.
4 Front Teeth
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When I was in ninth grade a kid ruthlessly bullied me for a few months. I had gotten sick of it and devised a plan for revenge. Every Wednesday we would get to sit outside for "quiet reading time" and this kid would always go back inside for a pee. I had left and waited in the bathroom for him, peeking under the stall for his shoes to appear. I identified him by his shoes, used the bathroom as a place to pick up his trail. The bathroom he used was on the second floor since it was the closest one to the door near where we were at outside. I knew he would have to use a set of stairs to go back down to his next class, one we had together, but I didn't know which one. So I waited.
He came in the bathroom, took his piss, then played on his gameboy for the the rest of reading time. The bell rang and he walked out to the crowded stairwell still looking down at his gameboy. I bumped into him, he fell face first down the stairs.... knocked out 4 front teeth. Everyone on the stairs assumed he fell because he was playing his gameboy. I feel pretty bad about it.
- C0RNDOG
The Unauthorized Roommate
Had a roommate who basically let his new girlfriend move in to our house in college. She helped herself to everything in the house but never contributed. Finally she parked in my parking spot and that was my breaking point. I let all the air out of all of her tires, thinking she'd just air them back up and it would be an inconvenience. Instead she ended up buying all new tires.
Whoops. Never came clean about it.
- SEIVIP
Eli's Black Eye
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I'm still mad at myself for this.
When I was a preteen, my friend and I went to one of those day camps that picked us up in yellow school buses. One of the other kids on our bus was a younger boy I'll refer to as Eli.
Eli was a terror. He would scream and spit and hump things, make a mess, and be as annoying and insufferable as possible. Riding the bus with him was a nightmare for everyone involved most of the time.
So I came up with this idea. I found his family in the phone book, and called up pretending to be a camp counselor. I told his mom that he was misbehaving on the bus and that he would either be disciplined or kicked out of the camp if he didn't stop.
She bought it, said she would talk to him about it. I felt so smart.
- Pyro62S
How's My Driving?
One time I saw a truck with the typical "How's my driving? Call xxx-xxx-xxxx"
So I call and tell them that the guy was driving erratically - because 16 year old me thought that would be hilarious. The lady on the other end sounded like she was writing stuff down and I started to panic realizing that I may be screwing with the drivers livelihood.
So mid conversation I drop the phone on purpose and pick it up and deepen my voice to say: "This is his dad, apparently he thought it'd be funny to call the number on the back of your trucks as a prank."
The lady was understanding and said that it's nothing to mess around with, as they take driving safety very serious. I continued to feel bad so I told her that my son would like to apologize -- so I dropped the phone again and apologized in a regretful way and then hung up.
Probably the most elaborate, stupidest thing I've ever done.
Save File Savagery
My older brother was always quite horrible to me as a child and my parents never really did much about it, he was also much bigger than me so I couldn't retaliate in a physical way cause I would be swiftly cripple cross faced/walls of Jericho'd. One day I had just had enough, My revenge? He had been playing Rome total war for a good 6 hours a day for about 3 weeks. I started a new game and overwrote his save file.
Never seen fury like it.
I regretted it at the time cause cause he was so angry it scared me and it made him dislike me even more but now I praise my 13 year old self for hitting him where it clearly hurt most.
Bald Mother
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I think I have told this before, but. I think i was 15 and was in class and sat next to a friend of mine. He, for no reason, began to say: "HAHA your bald father" which I followed up with "HAHA your bald mother". He started crying and ran to the teacher.
I honestly forgot his mom had cancer and was getting chemo.
Tired Of The Teacher's Pets
When my friends and I where young (middle school or elementary age) there was this pair of sisters in our class. They were the epitome of a teachers pet - helped because their mother was the assistant teacher - and whenever the teachers would leave they would snitch on everyone. Sometimes if they didn't like you they would make shit up and you would get in trouble still.
My friends and I were quite annoying so we obviously got blamed for stuff that we didn't do. No matter what we did we were never believed in our innocence.
So we did the logical thing of talking to every other student in the class and they shared our opinion of how much we all didn't like these girls. EVERYBODY was fed up with their sh*t. So we wrote a paper stating the things these girls where doing and how everyone didn't like them and so on. We then got about 90% of our classmates to sign this paper. Then we gave it to the principal.
I'm not 100% sure what happened next. But I do remember the principal coming into our class after recess and she began to ask if this paper was true and so forth and everyone who signed it agreed. A few days later these girls where kicked out of school (or maybe they left due to humiliation/parents decided to pull them from the school). Their mother was still the assistant teacher and she was crying about the whole thing and she was saying things about how we are horrible and how could we lie about her angels.
I felt a bit bad but I was quite happy that those girls were no longer there because they were mean and massive liars. The problem is that people like that don't go away. I thought I'd be rid of them by now, I'm an adult. But there's always people who can do bad things and get away with it because people see them that way.
The only thing that changed when I got older is the severity increased.
Stab And Burn
I was 11, my older brother was 16.
We would fight and argue but one time I was running up the stairs away from him and he whipped the back of my legs with a long rubber chew toy. It left a pretty big, figure-8-shaped welt on my legs. I knew he was faster and stronger than me and I knew if I tried to attack him he'd stop me.
So, I grabbed a flathead screwdriver and held it over the stove until it was red hot. I ran up to him and very openly went to stab him, knowing he'd stop me. He grabbed my wrist to stop my thrust (as anticipated) and I pushed the red hot head of it into his forearm as hard as I could.
Man, I was a crazy as$h0le as a kid. Sorry Mike.
A Weighty Consequence
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Had a neighbor yell at my younger brother about his weight and I took it extra personal. If my memory is correct, I believe my brother was doing some yard work or playing and became out of breath and winded so he stopped.
The adult neighbor said something along the lines of:
"if you were skinnier you wouldn't have this problem!"
My brother had been made fun of a lot in school for his weight because he couldn't keep up with other kids at lunch. If you've never been able to play with other kids because of medical problems it's really degrading and hurts. So when an adult pointed out his insecurities, he felt like they were real and not in his head. It really messed with him and made him feel awful.
I didn't know how to get back at the neighbor without getting caught. Then I figured out I could place nails just under the back of the tire so when he pulled out of the driveway he'd run over them.
Turns out he was super poor and couldn't afford the repairs. My dad had to carpool with him to work for a month or so.
I've never told anyone.
Aaron And The Boxing Champ
This one wasn't really a planned revenge, but it's one I still feel guilty about whenever I think about it.
When I was a kid I was extremely easy to scare with jump scares, and I HATED them. I would always enter fight-or-flight mode whenever something jumped out at me, and then I'd be mad as hell afterward. When my buddies caught on to this they made it their business in life to jump out at me and scare me any chance they got. Despite my hate of being scared I was a HUGE fan of Halloween and I had a Halloween party every year either close to, or on, the big day.
Naturally this was the night when all my friends would do their damnedest to scare me so bad that I would bolt and run. They succeeded a few times when we were all under 9 years old, but something shifted in me the year I turned ten, and none of us knew it until it was too late.
As usual I had my big Halloween party, as usual all my buddies were there, and as usual one of them wanted to try and scare the pants off me. About midway through the evening I went down the hall to use the restroom and while I was in there my friend (I'll call him Aaron) scampered down the hall after me and hid in a darkened doorway. I came out of the restroom, started down the hall, and Aaron jumped out at me and grabbed my arm. Ordinarily something like this would have made me bolt like a little chickenshit, but for some reason that night the Flight side of my Fight-or-Flight got turned off. The moment he grabbed me I whirled and punched him square in the face without even thinking about what I was doing.
It was all pure instinct and after impact I realized what I'd just done and freaked out. Aaron wrenched his mask off and was clutching his face and groaning (or so I thought) and I yelled for my dad, concerned I had really hurt my friend. My dad and all my other friends came running down the hall to find out what had happened, my dad flipped on the hallway light, and what greets us? Aaron with his face covered in blood. I am instantly horrified, thinking I busted his nose, but as I'm spewing apologies to him I begin to realize he's not groaning, he's laughing.
He grabs me by the hand I'd punched him with and yells "What're you apologizing for?! That was freakin' awesome!" and he yanked my hand up over my head like I was a boxing champ and starts telling everyone how cool it was of me to just haul off and slug him.
If you haven't guessed, Aaron was a pretty cool kid. He thought it was great that I'd suddenly found the courage to defend myself. My dad helped get him cleaned up (though he insisted on keeping his now bloody costume on) and inspected his nose. Thankfully it wasn't actually broken but I still feel a wave of guilt when I remember the sight of his face covered in blood, and remember the feeling of my fist hitting him in the schnoz. I'll always be grateful to him for handling it so well, and encouraging me for standing up for myself, but I still feel so guilty about decking him that I can't even imagine how I would feel if I had actually broken his nose.
H/T: Reddit
