It's extremely difficult to parse through the chatter that leaves the lips of status-hungry teenagers, swirls around a high school cafeteria, and winds its way through endless hallways.
As a high school student, you probably remember hearing all kinds of things. Some of the tidbits were so fascinating and juicy, you hoped they were true. But alas, you doubted it.
The claim just seemed too far-fetched, too similar to the movies, too impossible for one person to have the audacity to complete whatever the mentioned taboo act was.
And yet, sometimes the rumors were true. Time wears on, developments occur, and what was once a far-out claim at the lunch table becomes a mortifying truth that rocks the community at large.
Some Redditors took a moment to share their favorite rumors-come-true.
tall_hopelessromantic asked, "What popular rumour in your school turned out to be true?"
A few people chose to focus on the rumors about teachers engaging in illegal activities.
Every school has its one or two teachers that seem just a little more relaxed than the others. Without doubt, the rumors about those individuals will begin to stir.
But in these cases, the kids were spot on.
Fortress
"There was always a rumor that the head janitor was a huge pothead and would smoke with students in one of the storage sheds away from the main building."
"I always figured it was bullsh** until my friend CJ sent me a pic of him and the janitor smoking while surrounded by folding chairs."
Coming Clean
"In high school: that the biology teacher was growing weed in the environmental lab. Supposedly he did it for 30 years without anyone noticing. No one could ever prove it though."
"Later on, I was assigned to be the agent taking care of some of his financial matters, so I went to his house to have him sign some paperwork. He had a hydroponic setup there, so I asked him about the environmental lab. It was like Han Solo in The Force Awakens."
" 'It's true. All of it.' Then he offered me a brownie."
-- JayMax19
Hiding in Plain Sight
"We had a dean who 'retired' one summer. Turns out, he was busted in a huge prostitution/drug sting by cops. He had 2 sex workers and drugs in his apartment when he got rolled up; ended up pleading guilty to felony drug possession (a few others I can't remember), and sentenced to 5 years of probation."
"He was an advisor for the school's Drug/Alcohol Task Force."
"Nice enough guy. Really cool with all of his students, maybe too cool. Always seemed to have super red eyes."
-- storycaptain
A Different Kind of Illegal
"Biology teacher decided to use the scientific method to personally prove or disprove to himself that humans could photosynthesize."
"He did this by laying bare a** naked on his front lawn, landing him a public nudity charge."
-- Arikan89
Some chose to recall the rumors about romance and lust. For teachers, school is, after all, the workplace.
And the idea of an affair in the workplace actually doesn't seem so far-fetched at all.
Actually, Very Wholesome
"In my Catholic (Jesuit) high school, one of the priests and one of the nuns were very close friends. We all loved them, and we could see that they were quite fond of one another (and they made a really nice looking couple)."
"We used to affectionately kid them about "meeting in the tunnel" between the convent and the rectory. A few years after my class graduated, they both left their Orders, got married, and had kids."
"We're all happy for them."
Not So Wholesome
"That this girl at my school who was maybe 16 was banging all the older kids who never left for college. Well she definitely was and everyone found out when she banged one of the cooler guys still in high school and there ended up being a herpes outbreak at my school."
"Nearly 40 people got herpes"
-- hornyorphan
A Bold Choice of Setting
"There was a rumor going around in my high school that an English teacher and a biology teacher were sleeping with each other."
"I thought it didn't make any sense at all, other than being strict teachers who graded harshly it's not like they had anything in common and I'd never even seen them talking to each other or interacting in any way."
"They were both married and besides, she was young-ish and attractive and he was um...not. I had always figured that someone who managed to flunk both classes at the same time just decided to start a rumor."
"My brother is 6 years younger than me and during his time at the school they both were fired suddenly in the middle of the school year. Turns out it was true all along, they had been caught 'fraternizing' on school grounds."
"I was pretty surprised. Of all the weird rumors that go around in a typical school, THAT was the one that had to be true."
-- Viscant
Overhead Projector
"Our freshman science teacher was a massive jerk to any girl, and would frequently throw the dress code book at girls for the slightest issue."
"Everyone said it was because he was pissed his daughter became a stripper... that ended up being true"
-- MsEvelynn
The Old Days
"The captain of the cheerleader squad got a breasts reduction to go from H cups to DD."
"Oh, and also, some relatively unknown girl did porn on her senior year spring break after she turned 18 (and this was 25 years ago, so she had to like send letters and photos in the mail to set it up)."
Looking After the Students
"We had heard an underclassman was sleeping with a local army guy, but nobody really believed it until the day our school got locked down bc her boyfriend showed up with a knife."
"The boyfriend (in his thirties) was intending to force her to get an abortion, but our principal was a bada** who locked her in his office, then took the boyfriend DOWN and held him in a headlock until the cops arrived."
And finally, you probably remember those rumors that felt a bit more unique. These bizarre claims of minute behaviors or strange occurrences that you couldn't believe unless you were there.
And you were NEVER there.
Smooth Cover
"I had a science teacher that was rumoured to get a boner whenever he started shouting."
"We thought it was a myth until we noticed it for real, he would always try put one leg up on a chair to hide it"
So Many Trophies In That House
"My AP US Gov teacher was the daughter of Phil Jackson. We all believed it and during his last Lakers game her and her family was there and shown on screen. Got a screen shot of her at the game and shared with some friends."
"We all knew for sure then but we never really brought it up to be respectful as she didnt like the attention for it."
-- KeDoG3
Concerning Cow
"this was a roumour that went around my elementary school. basically my school had a lock down but they didn't tell us what it was for."
"one kid came in the next day and told us that his sister said it was a cow in the field in between the high school and middle school. so my second grade class went and told everyone else in the school."
"the next day we had an assembly that confirmed this rumor."
A Scary Reality
"That one of the seniors in my school wrote all over the men's room bathroom about bringing a bomb to school."
"The bomb squad evacuated us all, dogs came and they found one in a random locker. It was absolutely nuts, kid got arrested two seats next to me in english class a couple of days later once they could prove he did it"
-- Alienexxa227
MR. H
"A very popular, older man that taught Honors History at my high school- he looked like Doc Brown from Back To The Future, and was just as eccentric. Such an excellent teacher, kept everyone intrigued."
"There was always this rumor though, not to piss him off, as he was like Bruce Banner and could go Hulk in a second. Some said he was Special Forces in 'nam, some said he had a black belt in Jujitsu."
"All kinds of crazy sh*t I never believed."
"Well, one day in between periods, a massive fight broke out in the hallway. 4 of the toughest guys just kicking the sh** out of each other. We all stop to watch of course."
"Then, out of nowhere, Mr. H just appears and starts cleaning fu**ing house! In about 5 seconds, 2 kids on the ground, and 2 pinned up against lockers. He kept the 2 against the lockers until more adults got there."
"Holy Hell! Do.Not. Mess. With Mr H😳"
Deep Cover
"That one of the students was actually a cop. Turns out he was a cop and busted one of the actual students for selling handguns in school."
"If you thought 21 jump street was unrealistic think again. Cop was a 33 year old male and undercover for like half the semester."
A Four-Legged Myth
"In middle school, there was a rumor my 7th-8th grade Social Studies teacher owned a pet donkey. Turned out to be true."
"The donkey's name was Pedro the Donkey."
-- MasterAqua2
The Ugly Truth
"A girl in my Econ Class lost her dad but a rumor started going around that he didn't die...he was arrested as a serial killer."
"Turned out to be true and was featured a few years ago on 'Evil Lives Here' show."
With this as inspiration, perhaps it's a good time to follow up on some of those high school rumors you always wrote off as the insane conjurings of your fellow 16-year-old peers.
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Teachers Describe The Strangest Thing One Of Their Students Has Ever Done In The Classroom
Teachers have a TOUGH job.
They mold the minds of the future, and literally provide childcare for 8 hours a day for countless kids all over the place. The profession demands our utmost respect and gratitude.
Fortunately, there are some perks for those who choose the role of educator.
And one of the best bonuses has to be having a front row seat to the truly bizarre things that kids say and do. The not-yet-formed humans of society are a trove of illogical conclusions and confident absurdities.
Lucky for us, some teachers on Reddit filled us in on what's been going on in that classroom.
Spacedoggo73 asked, "Teacher's of Reddit, what is the strangest thing one of your students has done in your classroom?"
For some reason, food comes into play quite a lot.
Several responses in the thread centered around the weird behavior that kids exhibit whenever food and eating comes into play.
First Things First
"I had a student who was new to the class and didn't speak English. In his first few days in the class, I looked around and didn't see him. I had a moment of panic but then happened to look down."
"He was sitting under his desk eating an entire ear of corn. He just looked at me and gave me the biggest smile, I had to let the man finish his meal."
Just Going For It
"I have a 'you can eat in my class as long as the food isn't loud. At any time if your food disturbs me or your peers your privilege is gone' policy"
"Most of the time, zero issues. Everyone agrees no chips or anything crunchy is allowed, no cans of soda etc. Most kids have a sandwich or a banana. At worst, a loud apple."
"One kid, well, he didn't break the rule, but it totally f*cked me up. I'm lecturing about whatever, and right there in the front row, this kid is eating an Orange like an apple, peel and all."
"No noise, but I couldn't get over the fact that he was chewing up the orange peel like it was the best part of the orange. I had to stop lecture and literally address him. Like, you eat the peel dude? What the fu-heck?"
"I didn't want to embarrass him or anything, but I could not really let go of it. It was bizarre. Later I learned some cultures are pro peel eating. Weird"
-- bad_scribe
Chaser
"Not a teacher. It was in 4th grade."
"Somebody came in with a snack and a bottle of hot sauce, and when finished with the snack downed bottle."
-- C1NN430N
Other people focused not on what kids did, but what they said.
Again, children tend to make some strange--and hasty--logical leaps based on very minimal knowledge of the world. This can make for some truly fantastic acts of free association in the classroom.
That's a Fact
"6th grader, who the week prior told me he was getting moved to honors science, stuck a paperclip in a light socket that caused a very short-lived fireball."
"Another time an 8th grader asked, 'when you die, how long before you become a ghost?' Before I could answer, his friend (with the utmost confidence) said, 'yeah, after 10 years.' "
"I couldn't get him to divulge his source for such information"
-- Qerfuffle
Everybody Now
"Wasn't my class, but had a friend whose entire class stood up and simultaneously said 'butt lickers,' and then they all sat down." -- Douglas_Funny1989
"The hivemind has influenced them" -- The_darter
Where Did That Come From?
"Why must I only pick one? Okay I love this story. I had the kids sitting on the rug completely silent while I was writing the morning message (I teach young elementary).
"Out of nowhere one of my students yells 'ride that bi***.' "
"I was crying, trying so hard not to laugh. I called his mom later and had to repeat what he had said without laughing."
"She said 'where did he learn that?!?! I'm married to a woman". Why are you asking me? I have no idea.' "
"I have like 50 more stories, but that one always makes me smile."
-- JLG113113
And finally, some interpreted the prompt in the broadest sense. They simply shared the weirdest antics and behaviors to ever grace the four walls of their class.
Queen Forever
"A first grade girl was making a tiara during free draw time (I teach art)."
"She apparently couldn't figure out how to attach a strip of paper long enough on the front of the tiara she drew and cut out, so she ended up gluing it to her forehead."
"She was super proud when she showed me."
-- gghigh
All Planned Out
"Middle school teacher here. Had a girl come into homeroom, open her backpack, take out a fully inflated balloon (which has taken up a Lion share of the space in her backpack; I don't remember if she had actual supplies with her that day) and began hitting her friend over the head with it."
"I couldn't stop laughing."
At Long Last
"My first year teaching high school, there was this kid who always asked me 'Sir can I throw my chair at the wall?' And I can tell he was serious. The answer was always no."
"Christmas holidays roll around. Him and his friend were the only ones to show up to class. We're last period before end of the day. Bell goes off, 2 weeks vacation."
"He asks again, 'Sir, can I throw my chair at the wall?' "
"... 'ok, you get one throw. Merry Christmas.' (I specified he throw it at a particular brick wall, so nothing was damaged)"
"He put everything he had into it."
More Alarming Than the Rest
"A kid in my class handed me some scraps of paper and asked if I would throw them away. I looked in my hand and saw what appeared to be ripped up money."
" 'Yeah, but it's fake. A kid on the bus was handing them out. He gave me these too,' the young man said as he handed me two very real hundred dollar bills."
"It turns out a kid broke into his parents' safe and stole $1300 of his own family's money so he could hand it out on the bus. This was money that his family was planning to spend on Christmas gifts. This was not at all a wealthy family. Fortunately, it was all recovered."
-- Dorseywhite
And so, if you find yourself debating if teaching might be the right career for you, be sure to ask yourself: "Do I enjoy fielding bizarre questions and hanging out with miniatures versions of The Three Stooges all day?"
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College Professors Share Their Funniest 'I Don't Know How You Made It Out Of High School' Experiences
Now that college has become a standard requirement for so many jobs and careers, there is a massive push by high schools to get their graduating students accepted and enrolled at an undergraduate college.
On the whole, that's undoubtedly a great thing. A more educated workforce will be prepared to solve the most complex issues facing human beings in the next several decades.
But there are some pitfalls to the great college push. I barely need to mention the student loan debt crisis.
However, there's another concerning dynamic. Students are herded through the high school-to-college track so automatically that actually educating can take a backseat to logistical considerations.
So when that young adult lands in a college classroom, they're liable to be hopelessly unprepared for the education they're paying for.
Some Redditors shared examples.
redmambo_no6 asked, "College professors of Reddit, what's your 'I'm surprised you made it out of high school' story?"
Many people simply never learned how to effectively convey their thoughts through writing.
Research methods and essay writing are apparently common areas where college students show some serious gaps in knowledge and preparedness.
Dates on Dates on Dates
"As a college freshman, I took Advanced English with a student who didn't know how to write a research paper or even possibly read (I don't know). When I realized she didn't know how to research, I gave her my sources and showed her how to navigate them."
"The next class when we were supposed to edit each other's rough drafts. I handed her my paper to edit, she gave it back to me after 10 seconds without reading it and said it was good."
"She then handed me her 'paper' and it was just a list of random dates."
The Wrong Paper to Butcher
"In grad school we had to do weekly presentations on individual scientific studies within the focus of our thesis and this one girl was completely bombing on a study about biomechanics."
"The professor gently tried to guide her to a different conclusion and she began to argue with him."
"That's when the professor asked her to read out loud the authors of the study and, of course, he was the lead author. She unknowingly chose to butcher a study that her own professor authored..."
-- cjdking
The Be All End All
"Not a college professor, but I worked in my university's writing center for a while."
"I had a girl come in with a research paper bibliography that listed 'my mom' as a source several times."
"When I pressed, she told me her mom looked up everything and sent it to her and she just...put it in the paper. She told me she had always done it that way."
-- SalemScout
Sloppy Writing, Everywhere You Look
"I worked at my university writing center and saw a lot of really terrible writing. SO MANY poorly written essays. I really don't know how you can graduate from high school without at least being able to perform simple tasks like 'Point to your thesis statement.' "
"The whole point of a writing center was to teach students to correct their own work, but there was a direct correlation between how awful a paper was and how likely the student was to throw it at you and say 'I'm going to go have lunch. Will you have it fixed in an hour?' then try to leave."
"The tutors all got really good at an authoritative, 'Stop right there! Sit down. Now let's talk about how YOU are going to improve YOUR paper.' "
"The most frustrating papers were the science majors. I could never tell if the paper was terrible or I just wasn't following the details of their experiment on chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbons or whatever."
"The absolute worst was the ENGLISH MASTERS DEGREE STUDENT who came in several times with absolute gibberish. To be fair, English was his second language but... are you absolutely sure you do not want to consider a career change, my good sir?"
-- hananobira
Other students showed a complete lack of historical knowledge.
Of course, not everyone is a history buff. Not everyone will know about the finer details of an obscure era, region, or event.
But goodness, some of the obvious ones should be clear to most.
Gorillas at War
"Not me, but a friend who taught in the politics department received a paper about 'gorilla' warfare in South America."
"It was so poorly written she couldn't tell if it was a typo, or if they genuinely thought Colombia had been overrun by a Planet of the Apes style revolution."
A Very Old Country
"My graduate school classmate wrote 'America is a country that has been around for thousands of years.' "
"It was a group paper on social policy."
Wrong Guy
"I once got an exam essay that mentioned how much Mandela hated the Jews. After scratching my head for a bit and wondering if I'd missed some obvious signs of his anti-Semitism I realized she meant Mengele."
"As in Josef Mengele, the Nazi 'Angel of Death.' Hard to think of a worse person she could've confused him for."
Time Scales
"Not a professor but in undergrad I was taking an American history course. Our professor was from Maryland and was probably in her early forties."
"This kid asked her if she was one of the pearl harbor survivors. He couldn't grasp the fact that she was very much not alive at that time and that Pearl Harbor was not a harbor in Maryland."
And last, some college professors were simply shocked by a complete lack of fundamental logical thinking. They couldn't believe people made it so far.
After all, one does need to put two and two together just to navigate basic daily life, right?
Measuring is for Nerds
"For a couple years I taught first-year college students in an ENGINEERING program, the majority of whom didn't know how to do unit conversions."
"Not even, like, inches-to-centimeters. To repeat ... college ... ENGINEERING ..."
-- JSanzi
That's the Whole Thing
"I once spent an hour explaining to college junior that an even number is divisible by 2." -- KingofSheepX
"wh-, what? how? literally the definition of an even number is a number that's evenly divisible by 2. what?" -- TheDonutPug
"Not as big of a deal, but in freshman year, I was the only one out of me and a few friends (including a math major) who knew 0 was even" -- StaleTheBread
Convenient Reasoning
"My first year teaching I had a student who had failed the previous year due to missing too many cooking labs to pass and not handing in half the assignments."
"I had rewritten the curriculum and assignments."
"I noticed that this student hadn't been handing certain things in and had been skipping my lectures, so I decided to have a chat with them."
"They thought their marks for that semester were cumulative with their previous year's mark (with a different curriculum, different assignments, and a different professor) so they just had to make up enough marks to get a passing grade."
"This is a post-grad program. They had a BSc in dietetics."
LISTEN
"Not a professor, but I used to TA for undergrad organic chem lab courses. Had a... challenging student once who was not great at reading directions or thinking critically. We were setting up an experiment that required GENTLE heating of a volatile solvent.""I explicitly told the class, multiple times, 'only turn your hot plates up to 2 when heating, these things get very hot." Maybe 30 minutes later I'm making my rounds through the lab and I pass said guy's fume hood and notice his reaction is smoking.""I look closer and see that all of the liquid in his flask is gone and its just a charred, black smoking mess (which is still heating). I ask, "Student! What's going on with your reaction??? What's the temperature set at?!" "The guy goes, oh, I wasn't sure how hot to heat it, so I just turned the plate all the way up to 10. Is my reaction going to be ok?' No, no man, it's not going to be ok... he literally boiled the thing dry 🙄"Validation
"From a friend who is an economics professor: a week after a midterm, a student came up to my friend and said she took longer on the midterm than expected, didn't have enough money in the meter to cover the additional time, and got a parking ticket as a result."
"She asked my friend who in the department should she submit the ticket to for reimbursement"
All Over the Place
"I had a student who didn't know what the stapler was or how to use it. I accepted his assignment as separate pages."
"Unsurprisingly, his writing was similarly disjointed."
Please DO NOT Eat the DNA
"I was a TA for two years. One of my students (outside of class) explained that she and her whole family truly believes that microwaves mutate the DNA of your food (they don't) and mutated DNA is dangerous to eat (it wouldn't be)."
"I couldn't help myself for calling her out. It was such a strange thing that it didn't even occur to me to be sensitive. I just said she clearly needed to take my biology class again."
-- king063
Keeping It Casual
"I had a student include numerous emojis in a term paper."
"A different student came to my office a week after the final, and asked me why she had failed the course. She hadn't turned in a single assignment, or written the final."
So, yes, it is very possible to find yourself encountering someone with a puzzling lack of knowledge or intelligence throughout daily, adult life.
This list should hammer home just how common that will be.
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Sometimes it seemed like all the rules of high school were more likely designed to make teenagers used to obedience than anything else.
Anybody who passed through the chaotic hallways and droning class sessions of four high school years will be familiar with the realization that the logic behind a school rule is shaky at best.
And even more often, the logic is downright bizarre.
These rules often serve as an apt illustration of just how out of touch school administrations are with their student bodies. They often prevent something that's not even the true problem, or they're utterly ineffective at creating a desire outcome.
Some Redditors gathered to recall their high school's most ridiculous examples of these regulations.
hayley0528 asked, "Students of Reddit, what was the weirdest rule your school ever had?"
As you'll no doubt remember, clothes are a hot topic in high school.
Teenagers are driven to experiment, strive for attention, or adapt to the weather of the conditions around. Schools evidently strive to keep all that behavior in a tight box.
But sometimes that box takes a pretty wacky form.
School Pride?
"During summer you had to bring and wear a school hat during break, if you forgot your hat you had to sit inside, and if you were caught playing on the field with no hat you would get detention.
"I was around 13 at the time and its not even that hot were I live."
-- tinfoilhat17
Not Chill At All
"We had to wear matching underwear in baby blue or white. They would make us kneel down and then they would look down the back of our dress to check." -- Bucketlist074
"that's sus as fu**" -- ae64k
"Sounds like sexual harassment" -- Subject_Candy_8411
A Shoddy Grasp of Botany
"In our school shirts with the Canadian flag were forbidden for a year or so because the principal decided that it looked like marijuana. Never affected anyone as far as I know but it surely was weird."
"Also they forbid shirts with text on them for big test and final exams as students kept printing solutions on them."
Other rules seem wildly specific and borderline unnecessary. They attempt to outlaw some very rare occurrence, so a casual observer will find them absurd.
But these rules always come with a story.
Trying Out Swears
"This rule sounds weird without context, but in 5th grade we were banned from playing Red Rover."
"In context, it was because kids would shout profanities like 'red rover, red rover, send a wh*re over' or something like that"
A Fair Expectation
'' 'It is not allowed to intoxicate school staff with the use of illegal substances.' "
"2 weeks prior, a student thought it was funny to spike a teacher's coffee with XTC."
Sounds Like a Satire of the Midwest
"I grew up in small town USA in the Midwest."
"We were banned from saying the word 'corn' because some bullies were using it to tease the farming kids."
From a Great Height
"We had balconies, think opera style ones, you could watch school plays from and all that. They looked over the primary school building, but we were in middle school."
"We were not allowed to even stand near them, pissed everyone off because they were the coolest place ever."
"Why? Because someone took minerals from geography class and threw them at the heads of primary school teachers."
And some Redditors brought up the relatively common rules many of us are likely familiar with. You may have even had similar regulations at your school.
But again, the flaws in logic were easy to see and point out.
Not Universally Enforced
"In our school it was not allowed to talk in any other language except in English or otherwise they would fine us 10 bucks every time they found someone speaking in any other language."
"The irony is, our teachers spoke in the native language, our principal spoke in native language and even our subjects despite being printed in English were thought in native language."
"So the question is, do we owe the school the fine or they owe us."
Freedom Fighter
"I went to a religious middle school and the genders were very segregated. There was 2 different stairwells, boys and girls couldn't be on the same one."
"My siblings went to the same middle school years before me and back then it was worse and the boys/girls weren't even in the same classrooms, they'd be on different floors."
"They even had a boys only soccer team and a girls only field hockey team, but those rules went out the window when I got my parents to complain and get me on the field hockey team."
"I'm forever known as the kid who fought for equality in that school lol"
No Tans There
"My school was very strict about uniform which was strange considering what they missed compared to the measures they took. I'd hazard a guess towards about 40% of all students wearing skinny jeans instead of the school trousers we were supposed to wear."
"While the year after I left, anyone with a tan was asked to bring in evidence of a holiday (there's no sun in Wales) kids with makeup were given wipes to clean it off and were sent home if they didn't and girls with skirts too high would have them pulled down by teachers."
-- Dream_Lands
Now go back and recall your time in high school. Perhaps there were some real doozies that made absolutely no sense whatsover.
Or maybe they did make perfect sense, but only to your high school's small corner of the world.
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People Explain How The Popular Jerk From School Got A Taste Of Their Own Medicine
It's remarkable when Hollywood stereotypes and plot dynamics are replicated in real life. It's remarkable because it's rare, so when it does happen we lose our cynical outlook of movies as far-fetched flights of fancy.
And one of the classic archetypes is the treatment of popular kids.
We all had popular kids in our high school. Unfortunately, as the movies portray so willingly, that popularity often goes straight to their heads, leaving them rude and unkind, to put it lightly.
But sometimes, also just like the movie, karma finds a way. The real-life "popular jerks" encounter justice in the most satisying way imaginable.
Redditors who've witnessed those real life moments of karma recently weighed in on a thread.
flying_luckyfox asked, "How did the popular a**hole of your school get the taste of their own medicine?"
In many cases, the justice comes in the form of physical punishment. Sometimes, a good old clobbering is the most satisfying response to the popular jerk in question.
No One to Help When it Happened
"Middle school when the bell rang to change classes the hallways were a horrific traffic jam. Everyone suffered through trying to get to their lockers and the next class on time."
"Enter the a**hole popular guy, who thought it was funny to sneak up behind some unsuspecting student who's at his locker and smack the back of the student's head, causing the student to bang his head into his locker."
"A**hole guy got several warnings to stop, but he didn't. He thought it was so funny."
"Then one day he picked on the wrong student. A**hole guy got punched square in the face, fell down and lost a tooth. Not a single person, from teacher to student, came to his defense."
"When A**hole's parents came to the school all upset, everyone told them their son got what he deserved."
-- maruffin
1, 2, 3, 4, 5
"He got kicked in the nuts five times in a row by the same kid" -- xXawsomeguyXx
"JOHNNY CAGE CRACKER" -- HeartAttackMemeGuy
"HE KEEPS KICKING ME IN THE D*CK! WHY? WHY DOES HE KEEP KICKING ME IN THE D*CK?!" -- Iceman6211
"I don't believe I've personally ever witnessed something as epic as that sounds , five times??" -- Quuaack
Zero Regrets
"She (white) called my friend the N word. My friend, this real skinny girl who was one of those kids who never ever ever had gotten in trouble, decked her square in the jaw and gladly took the out of school suspension."
"Same girl started feeling woozy during a blood drive I was volunteering at and I helped her over to one of those giant trash barrels to throw up in. She bent over and lost consciousness and fell into the trash. Literally."
When the Training Comes Out
"So in Junior High there was a kid we'll call him Mark and he would always pick on another kid Steve in gym.. Mark would do things like spray him with ax or slap the back of his head,"
"...one day Steve was carrying a book and Mark tried to take it but I guess Steve had been practicing Aikido or something cause one moment Mark's hand is on the book and by extension Steve's hand and the next Mark is laying on his back and Steve is calmly walking away"
"Boss move!"
-- brn0723
Big Bro
"Popular a** hole (for some reason picked on me a lot) hated me and he got 4 people beat the shit out of me."
"Next day my brother (3 years older than me) a 6"5 giant freak of nature in one punch knocked him out Best. day. of. my. life"
Down Goes Toby
"There was this guy in my high school named Toby who was a massive douche but also popular due to being on the basketball team, loved to pick fights and play rough."
"Toby bit off more then he could chew when he elbowed this one classmate named Andy during PE playing a friendly game."
"After taking the hit, Andy just straight up decked Toby in the face , knocking him out and making lose three of his front teeth and a swollen lip. Toby learned his lesson and stopped being an asshole after that."
Immediate Justice
"Star quaterback tried to assault his girlfriend..."
"She was a golden glove boxer."
"She put him in the hospital for a week."
Other times, the karma comes in a psychological form. These moments involve a person being handled exactly how they treated others.
It's a kind of poetic equalizing.
The Last Can He Ever Stole
"The teacher wouldn't let one guy in my classroom to go to the restroom to pee so he peed in an Arizona can."
"When the bell rang the guy started heading to the restroom to empty the can and the biggest bully of the school bumped into him, took the can and, of course, sipped it."
"He soon realized it didn't taste like tea... It was glorious."
One Step Above
"Band was pretty popular where I lived. I mean there were super popular kids in band. They had a lot of hazing. I don't know their pecking order, but if someone 'senior' to you told you to do something band-related, you had to do it."
"There was this one chick who was the second-senior person in the whole band. She was always shi**ing on everyone every single day."
"One day, that one girl who was senior to her called her out and made her march all over the school in front of everyone and made her sing a bunch of chants and more. I wasn't even in band and it still seemed harsh to me."
-- Azzizzi
The Teacher Jerk
"My teacher. She loved to use humiliation against me (I was severely depressed at the time and she thought I was a slacker). I'm a little person, and she would get me to turn off the lights for the projector, or to write on the whiteboard, only to feign ignorance and apologise when I struggled to reach."
"One day she crossed the line, and I went to the deputy head teacher. He decided to reprimand her, during a lesson, in front of her entire class, to give her a taste of humiliation, too."
-- Usidore_
Subtle Payback
"He copied my exams for English, Math, and Science in our junior year."
"Except he didn't know that I purposely put the wrong answers for 80% of the questions and then redid the exam after he turned his in."
"He failed all three classes miserably and when he confronted me to see if I failed too, I just shrugged and said we must have had different versions of the exam."
Watching Her Squirm
"A popular girl bullied me all through middle school, then in high school she sat next to me the day we were given one of those "read the directions" tests.
"She was not so wise as to read the directions.
"I got to sit there for ten sweet, sweet minutes watching her panic more and more over the ridiculous tasks the test asked of her."
Other dynamics of karma take a more subtle and longer-term trajectory.
In these cases, the difficulties of the long years of life that come after high school can be powerful reminders that high school is a small world, and the pecking order there doesn't necessarily mean much.
Flip Flop
"Star athlete picked on the fat kids in gym. Fast forward a couple decades. He's fat and bald. Saw him using a Wal-Mart scooter recently, buying crap food."
"One of the kids he picked on got in shape, stayed that way and became a top tier endurance athlete. So sweet."
The Other Side of the Peak
"Never bullied me but apparently was a giant a**hole to everybody. Star football running back, had multiple scholarships to Division I. Then he broke his leg and all the offers evaporated."
"Went to a DIII school. Had a couple kids, got divorced, then posted all of his old scholarships to Facebook at age 40. Really sad to see."
"Literally argued with every single person on the reunion Facebook group, everyone told him how much they always hated him."
"He's now literally insane, posts 30-40 times a day on Facebook of foreign Instagram models with long diatribes about love and life translated into 10 different languages. Posts nearly-nude shots of himself also, most hyping himself up."
"A dark spiral."
-- powabiatch
Nothing Lasts Forever
"He was the most attractive boy in the school. Girls would literally fight to be his girlfriend."
"Then like Prince William, his free trial of hair and premium face expired and he got downgraded. Basically went from a PS5 to Mr Game and Watch over the course of 5 years"
Day In, Day Out
"The popular kids all stayed hot and married each other, but I imagine that having the exact same relationship and social circle since the age of 14 probably has a certain Groundhog Day element to it." -- botulizard
"Apparently this happened to the popular kids from my school too, only one dude worked his way around his friends' wives and now they all hate each other." -- BringBackRobotWars
Ideally, the person met nonviolent ends that made them reform their ways of rudeness into kidness.
But let's face it, that doesn't always happen. Instead, sometimes a sudden scheme comes together just right to give a taste of their own medicine.
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