We all spend our formative years trying to figure out who we are. Who we think we are actually determines the subjects we take, the things we become fans of, and the friends we make.
This is especially true in high school. Whether it's because of who we already are, or because of labels others gave us, we all fit into different cliques and groups.
Being studious, I fit in well with the honors crowd. My tendency to start new clubs, as well as become a part of already existing ones, also earned me the unofficial title of "all-around joiner."
Curious about these stereotypes, Redditor MountEverest14 asked:
"What high school stereotype did you fit into?"
Now You See Him, Now You Don't
"The military brat."
"I showed up for a year, sometimes less, and then disappeared again and never spoke to anyone from the school ever again."
– FormalMango
The Quiet One
"I was so quiet I was marked absent from a study hall class for nearly a whole semester. That I actually attended and never missed."
"Got pulled into dean's office for it and it got rectified there."
"I grew up in a household where I basically had to live as a be seen not heard...but got too good at it and basically became never seen or heard Milford school "least seen on campus" winner."
– Tee_hops
Unnotcied
"Background actor #4"
– FanciiFrog
The Typical "Nerd"
"Nerd:
- Dungeons and Dragons
- Virgin
"Yeah..."
– AmeripeanBoi
Casper The Invisible Ghost
"Ghost. I was the one who no one knew after going to school together for four years.
I've changed, sometimes I actually participate in life now."
– ofsquire
The Everyman
"The happy go-lucky kid that could hang out with the popular kids, the sporty kids, the stoners and the nerds. Basically a social butterfly."
– thunderfart_99
High School Chameleon
"I was the definition of a floater."
"I was equally loved (and probably hated) across all the stupid cliques. I was an art kid, an ESL misfit, a stoner/skater, I was cool with the jocks, with the nerds... My girlfriend was in the orchestra, my homies were in detention. It was a mess of a journey, but I made it."
– monstersommelier
Non - Spiderman
"the andrew garfield peter parker minus the hot girlfriend and cool super powers"
– ItsDocL
The Tag-Along Nomad
"The new kid. I went to 7 high schools in 3 states. My mum married an old man who didn’t know where he wanted to live"
– 2muchonreddit
Some people discovered who they were in high school. Others discovered who they were not. The good news about high school is, who you are then isn't who you have to be now. Be who you are, and live your best life!
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Thanks to shows like 'Glee' and 'Boston Public' we know that schools can be a hotbed of salacious drama.
The amount of teachers being arrested for being in love with students is staggering.
Kids are violent and cooking meth in class.
It's a miracle one makes it out in one piece.
So let's share some stories.
Redditor Born-Dimension6705 wanted to hear all the tea and crazy about everyone's days as a student.
What went down?
They asked:
"What was the worst scandal of your school?"
I think my school was pretty scandal free.
So tell me some sordid nonsense.
WHAAATTT!!!
"High school teacher slept with a student who was also her daughter's boyfriend."
grieserl
Scary
"A dude stabbed someone in the lunch hall. Same guy later went on to murder and partially cannibalise his best friend. He was killed in prison, I think."
DonatingToWallStreet
In 11th grade, 4 guys went on a murder spree one night killing I think 4 people. One was grown."
"One was his brother (my age at the time). One was a guy that started bullying me. Even started trying to run me over with his car. And one was a hilarious guy that had a great boxing career going for him and had planned on going professional after graduating. They are all in prison now."
Competitive_Lab_3924
Lock your Drawers
"If you want a porn scandal, my wife’s got one. I’ve posted this before on a similar thread, but here it goes. At her high school there was a really nice old physics teacher who was very smart but taught in a poor public school to make a difference to the kids."
"He was really helpful all the time and would stay after class to review the material and talk kids through their outside problems when they were having a bad day. Then, during one class, a girl found and stole a flash drive from his desk. (My wife says that this girl was an annoying brat)."
"It turns out the flash drive had a video of him and two other old men masturbating together. It got spread around the whole school, and pretty soon everyone was laughing at and kind of disgusted by the teacher (this was in a very conservative place). The teacher never got fired but my wife says that his demeanor changed completely, like a 180 from who he was before."
"He never made jokes or stayed after class to talk about problems at home. He was my wife’s favorite teacher until this happened. Now, it’s really irresponsible for a teacher to keep that kind of stuff in his school desk. At the same time, it’s really unfortunate that that one incident ended up taking a lot of great resources away from current and future students."
RowBowBooty
Too Interested...
"Art teacher was arrested for being too interested in young girls. Looking back he always had his favourites that he would sit on his knee to 'teach' them art stuff."
shinyhappycat
"When I was in high school, one of our physics teachers was notorious for getting a bit too comfortable and friendly with the female students."
"He would regularly walk around the classroom as he taught and always found his way behind one of his preferred female students so could 'casually' rest his hands on their shoulders. It was creepy as f**k. We also had a Biology teacher who would always lift his leg and rest his foot on one of the lower tables or chairs as he taught - best way to describe it is the Captain Morgan pose."
"This would've been fine and dandy, except this teacher was packing serious meat and every time he struck the pose it created a painfully noticeable bulge in his crotch/thigh area. We had more than a few female students suddenly start paying attention whenever he did that."
shaoting
Somewhere
"The girl playing Anita in West Side Story slept with the choreographer the school hired to teach us how to dance. Choreographer was fired and as a result we never learned to dance the way real gang members would."
KapnQueasy
West Side Story is always problematic.
Do a different show.
Violence
"A teacher nearly stabbed the eye of a student by slamming his face on the desk while he was playing with his triangle ruler."
iAmVonexX
Psycho
"Multiple girls accused same teacher of getting them pregnant, teacher is fired without investigation due to the sheer number of accusations, girls give birth, teacher demands paternity tests, none of the kids are his, girls admit to lying and make up story as revenge, teacher sues school, and most of those babies have grown up without knowing their biological dads. Some of them have claimed that the teacher bribed the lab that did the paternity test and threatened them into admitting they’d lied."
Hubbyof5
He didn't survive...
"A teacher lost control of a class which just wouldn't settle down, I don't know to what extent, but it resulted in him storming out to get the (pretty feared) principal to intervene. Unfortunately before he reached the principal's office, he collapsed in the staff corridor of a heart attack. He didn't survive. His son was in the same year as the class in question, just not in the same room. I can't imagine what he thought about his peers for the next two years in the school."
DKoala
The Shooter
"Some kid in middle school threatened to bring his dad's gun to school and shoot another kid. He was taken to the principal's office and the principal took out his own gun, pointed it right at the kids head and asked him if he still felt like a tough guy. From what people said it was a fake airsoft gun another teacher had confiscated and they thought it would scare him straight or something. He told his parents. Parents filed a lawsuit. He 'resigned' shortly after. Idk what happened after that."
supertoilet99
Wow.
My school was boring.
Some of these schools need a TV series.
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Oh our high school crushes.
Be honest. How often do they cross your mind?
There is no shame.
They are the first people to set our hearts a flutter.
And they are forever immortalized in our memory as perfect.
But then went on and lived lives.
Let's see how that went.
Redditor anonymous-46 wanted to talk about the people who made us blush back in the day. They asked:
"How did your high school crush turn out as an adult?"
Mine is "happily" married with kids. So cheers to them and whatever.
Still think about her...
"We graduated from HS in 1989 but went off to different universities. Looked her up about 10 yrs ago and unfortunately she had passed away from cancer. Still think about her!"
FreshStartLiving
Surprised you could find her. Women from high school and college are very difficult to locate without links from Facebook."
"They frequently change their last names. I have a few friends from college I've not been able to locate for 20 years. All my old contact information has expired. College email no longer exists. I no longer have my old phone number. This was before Yahoo Email and Gmail existed."
atari-2700
15 years later...
"She went to Korea to teach English after college, met a man from London, they're married and have a kid in London, he seems nice, she's still a great photographer."
illseeyouinthefog
"Quite a few Girls in my HS class did this as well( not American), especially places like Vietnam, Hong Kong."
"Some of them are still there 15 years later. I don't know how though, English was taken as a second language in my school. We where duel instruction, but hell if I know how some of them got the jobs. I pity those kids who will learn a bastardised version of English."
orbit99za
“he’ll go far”
"I looked one of mine up years ago. One of those “he’ll go far” types, so I expected to find just that. Turns out he’d died in a motorbike collision at 21. Best I could tell someone did something stupid and hit him. Such a waste. Worse was that his dad had died when he was quite young, so I can only imagine how devastated his mom and sister were."
Thanmandrathor
Swing Fast
"She moved to France and became a fairly successful MMA fighter."
astromech_d
An MMA fighter? Now that could been an interesting love story.
Good for her!!
"She started dating right out of high school and quickly got married. Has kids, successful family, seems nice. I'm on Reddit, so you know my story didn't go that well."
jayval90
The End
"He moved to a different state, became a cop, and was later arrested for pocketing cocaine that was confiscated from traffic stops. He was one of a group of cops from that city that was involved in it. Not gonna lie, my crush ended shortly after reading about that."
Responsible-Top-6882
"good enough"
"He was very successful for many years. Then he lost his job, no other offers were 'good enough' for him, he had to sell the house because he was unemployed, and he moved his family into a smaller place. He started drinking heavily, then one night shot and killed his wife in a drunken argument while the kids cowered in the next room. I didn't miss much."
nakedonmygoat
So Godpseed to him...
"He got really into giant puppets that take like ten people to move, tie dye, & jam bands, & moved to Vermont, which is really the perfect place to pursue all of these interests. So Godpseed to him on living his best life, but it would be hard to imagine a guy that is more NOT what I want for myself. So glad it didn't work out."
youhaveonehour
Success...
"He's a successful Broadway actor and as dreamy, talented, and kind as ever. He's a good person and deserves good things, so I'm genuinely happy for him. We actually keep in touch and when I'm in NYC he takes me backstage at his shows."
Ok_Whatever_Budd
Well good luck to everyone involved. Hopefully it all worked out as it was meant to.
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Guy Stunned To Learn That His New Boyfriend Used To Be A Homophobic Bully Back In High School
The world is not so big a place, is it?
While we like to think of ourselves as isolated in this billion plus planet, there can be a lot more crossover than we think. We call these instances coincidences, hoping to find the right word to explain what happens when a one-in-a-million chance occurs.
If there's over seven billion plus people in the world, turns out you can run into these 'coincidences' more often than you think.
Reddit user, Ok_Ambassador886, wanted to know how the fates aligned perfectly when they asked:
"What's the most unbelievable coincidence you've ever had?"
The unique thing about a coincidental happening is how fast it springs up on you. You won't see it coming, you won't even be thinking about it, so when it does happen, the surprise of it is enough to make you slap your forehead and go, "Whoa!"
Great Minds?
"My dad and his twin live far apart. Without even knowing it, they both bought, in the same week, the same car in the same colour."
Garaquarubyline
"I’m a twin. The coincidences on what we do, miles apart but almost simultaneously, are too strange to explain. Science underestimates how much of what we are and do is hardwired genetically."
DomingoLee
So Close...
"Lost my wallet on a trip to Chicago. Found a wallet under the night stand in the hotel. It was not my wallet but belonged to someone who lived two blocks from me in DC."
voice_of_craisin
That's How You Know You Got A Bro 4 Lyfe
"Not a big deal but we always laugh about it. I was hanging out with a buddy and I was dropping him off at his house. As he gets out of the car I start to drive off, but I stop, roll down the window and shout him over and say hey man, I have this overwhelming urge to ask you if you want a piece of gum. He burst out laughing and said get the f-ck out bro, I literally was just thinking to myself that I would kill for a piece of gum. Needless to say we're heterosexual life mates"
Idontdanceforfun
"That’s a quality bromance right there"
LordSevolox
As stated earlier, there are more than seven billion people on this planet. The odds of running into one specific person whom you have not seen in years is so high I'm not even going to try and compute it for this because it turns out to find someone you haven't seen in a long time is just go to Disney.
Not You. You.
"Was walking around Boston on vacation (I’m from DC) and thought I saw a guy who I interned with ten years before. He was from California and I had not seen him for 10 years. There was no reason he would be Boston but I thought it was him and then when he got closer I noticed it was not him. I even said to my wife hey there’s a guy i interned with, but was mistaken. About 15 minutes later we were walking on a new block and the actual guy I interned with was sitting on a bench waiting for his girlfriend to get done shopping. Unbelievable."
PropBrother227
No, Not You. The Guy Who Looks Exactly Like You.
"Went to high school on the east coast, moved to Southern California years later. One day I’m at Disneyland with the family watching a show and I see a guy sitting about 5 feet away who has to be a guy I knew in high school so I call out to him and yup it’s him. 6 months later I’m at the airport for a red eye flight and I spot him again eating at a restaurant so I say to him “how do I keep running into you?” He looks at me surprised and I realize it isn’t him, but it is his twin brother who I also knew from high school."
Global-Philosophy-11
Maybe The Answer To All These Is Disney
"In 1999, took my girlfriend to Disney World for a graduation present. While at Epcot, we sat outside and ate while talking about the band I had previously been in. Just then, the guitarist walked up and said 'Hey!'"
codallas
Surprise or not, there's nothing more warming to the heart than having a coincidence bring to mind that maybe, in this crazy, mixed up world, you're not alone.
Similar Tastes Carry Far
"I had an old Jeep (that had a very specific window vinyl that I had put on the back window) that I ended up trading in at the Ford dealership in my town. My mom lived by the dealership and watched as it was loaded up and taken away several days later with some other vehicles. Months go by and I drive past a house I had lived in years before, and there sat my old Jeep, vinyl decal still on the back window."
"Now what are the chances that the random person that happened to live in my old house would also wind up with my old vehicle. Blew my mind."
BestKept_Secret
Saved A Few Dollarydoos
"I was driving with an old fully loaded trailer long distance, not quite middle of nowhere but fairly rural, not much around etc."
"Trailer gets a flat tyre. I had no spare. The exact spot where I pull over happens to have around 3 or 4 tyres of various sizes just sitting behind some small bushes."
"I find one that matches perfectly to my flat tyre, which also happens to be the only one of them that’s inflated."
"I swap the tyre and continue driving, thinking what the hell just happened. I still can’t believe it happened."
Beginshere
What A Wonderfully Awful Surprise
"Mom and dad divorced when I was very young. There was no contact what so ever. I was around 10yo when we visited an aunt outside of our city. On the way back to the train station we got kinda lost. It was getting late and mobile phones was not a thing back then. A boy standing at the same bus stop apparently saw my mom panicking and offered to come with him to his parents and his stepdad would bring us to the train station."
"You cannot imagine the shock when we found out that it was actually my dads home. I was to young to fully understand but was happy seeing my dad after so many years. My mom was in shock and almost fainted. I mean if all places"
Ladyvenoms
A Bittersweet Reunion
"It was my first night at a homeless shelter. With nowhere left to go I reserved myself a bed there, and after I was registered and shown around I went to the living room and settled down a bit."
"As I was sitting there, for some reason a close friend of mine came to mind. Let's call him Darryl."
"Darryl and I hadn't seen each other for a while by then, while before I became homeless we would frequently hang out. I figured he must be wondering how I was doing, and why he hadn't heard from me in a while."
"And just when I decided to give him a call the next day, guess who came walking in! Yep, Darryl had arrived at the shelter as well. It took a while before he noticed me, but when he did, naturally we sat next to each other to catch up."
"It was a bittersweet reunion for the both of us. We were happy to see each other, but sad about the circumstances we were in. We both wanted the best for each other, instead we got the worst."
"I'm glad that neither of us had to face the homeless life alone though. I'm glad we found each other and that we were able to support one another. Both of us made it out of there within a couple of months. I now have a cosy apartment with very lovely neighbors. He moved in on a boat and lives in peace and quiet, like he always wanted."
"The end."
Confident_Ad_3573
Home Is Where The Mail Is
"I deployed to Afghanistan and was chatting with the guy I was replacing during some down time. I recognized his name, but it looked like our paths had never crossed."
"We had been stationed at some of the same bases, so I asked him where he had lived."
" 'Base housing' is a pretty common answer, so I asked him what street. He'd lived on my street!"
" 'Which house? Did you know (old neighbor)?' Turns out we had lived in the same house, and I realized why his name was familiar: I had forwarded his Christmas cards that were sent to his old address a year earlier!"
- daytonbob
June 18th
"We went on a family trip to Liberty island to see the Statue of Liberty and had a scheduled time to go to see lady Liberty."
"We got there early and we didn’t know that Ellis Island was included in our ticket (we got our tickets from park service not some second hand group). We figured hey we have time let’s go to Ellis Island as well."
"We got in and went around and we got to the archive and saw we could search all the manifests for every ship that had come in. I called my mom because she had told me my great grand father had come over through Ellis Island."
"She never met he had died when my grandmother was a young child and that is another story on it’s own, worthy of a movie almost."
"She gave me his name I searched and found his paperwork."
"He arrived on June 18th 1920…..we visited on June 18th 2018."
- Long_Fish1973
It's The Climb
"I drove 600 miles with my brother and a friend to climb a very remote mountain in the desert."
"None of us were mountain climbers, so this was not a normal thing for us, but we decided to give it a shot. We get there and after climbing a few hundred feet, I look back and notice someone coming up below us."
"I suggest we take a breather and wait for the newcomer and say hi."
"He gets within earshot after about 20 minutes and we start talking while he pauses to rest below us. Turns out we are from the same state (Texas), and both drove almost the same distance to the site."
"He asks where about in the state we live, and it turns out he knows the town."
"He asks if we know a certain family in that town. I point to the friend who came along with me and say, 'Here’s one of them!' ”
"It ends up this guy dated our friend’s older sister several years before that."
"When he finally climbs up the rest of the way we all recognize him! My brother had actually met the guy when he was dating our friend’s sister, but hadn’t seen him since."
"We all made the rest of the climb on this remote mountain almost a thousand miles from home together."
- Onomatopoeia_Utopia
The Night Of The Accident
"In 2014, my wife and I were involved in a terrible car crash that resulted in the death of someone."
"I was driving us home one night, when a lady ran out in front of our vehicle. I’m still not sure how she made it past the car next to me but our car hit her on the passenger side front lights."
"At first, I thought I had popped a tire but when I looked back and saw her lying there, shock set in."
"I ran back to her as fast as I could but there was nothing I could do. It was just an awful situation and still feels very surreal as I am typing this."
"Later that night, we found out the lady had been a passenger in a car that had been rear-ended on the same road 20 minutes prior."
"According to her friends, she just walked off. Then in front of everyone, including responding police, she took off into the road."
"She crossed 3 busy lanes of east bound traffic, across the median and then made it into our middle lane heading westbound. Her friends said she had been feeling down lately but we never heard anything else."
"Fast forward 3 years and my wife and I are still living in our small cottage on the beach. We often took our dogs on late night walks and decided to go to the local gas station a few blocks from us."
"It had to be around 2 in the morning so there wasn’t many people out but as we got there, we heard a helicopter landing in the park across the street. A young lady had been in an accident and was getting help."
"As we watched, we mentioned to a guy next to us how we’d seen so many accidents in the years since we had moved to Florida from Michigan."
"He then goes:"
" 'Listen to this, my boss was once driving his truck down Gulf to Bay Blvd and rear ended a car by the local high school. He says, it was the craziest thing, one of the ladies got out of the car, said she had to go to the bathroom and walked into oncoming traffic.' "
"My wife and I were shocked, I said that was us. I was driving the car that hit her. At first it didn’t seem like he believed us but we ended up talking for a little while."
"Even though we never got many answers about why she took off, besides wanting to use the bathroom, it was somewhat therapeutic."
"I had trouble driving for a while after the accident, still do in certain situations but talking about it and writing like this does help."
"Another kind of strange coincidence, we recently watched Your Honor on Showtime. It centers around a kid that hit and kills a Mob Boss’s son."
"Although circumstances were different, I mentioned to my wife how watching the accident in the show was hard due to our experience."
"Then later in the episode you find out the accident takes place on October 9th - the same day as ours did."
- spartydownsouth1
The Universe Has A Sense Of Humor
"I was sitting at the Raleigh-Durham Airport, waiting for my flight to Newark, NJ."
"I started a new chapter in the book I was reading; and it was about someone taking the flight from Raleigh-Durham to Newark."
"The book hadn't been about air travel or either of those locales up until that point, but about Astral projection."
"Definitely one of those moments that makes me think the universe has a sense of humor."
- le4t
Wolfville
"I'm from Wisconsin. My wife and I were vacationing in Nova Scotia on a bus tour of Evangeline country."
"The bus broke down (when does that happen), just outside a little town called Wolfville. We decided to go for a short walk to kill time and saw a small cemetery. It was old and had a directory."
"My ancestor from the early 1700's was buried there. I am related to dozens of families in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. I had no idea."
- Current-Health2183
Noah
"About 5 or 6 years ago I was taking the NYC Subway when I sat next to a very nice elderly lady."
"We talked about how sh*tty and gross public transportation is, and after getting off on my stop she told me 'see ya later!' And I smiled knowing damn well I was probably never gonna see her again."
"I kid you not, about 6 months ago I was taking the L in Chicago, when a nice elderly lady sits next to me and says 'hey Noah how have you been?' ”
"Literally like half a decade later, this random old lady I met one time in New York found me again in Chicago, she somehow remembered me, and we had a nice conversation!"
"I Hope she’s doing well."
- ItsDocL
Keep your eyes open, because the long arm of coincidence might be out there coming for you some day.
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