People Divulge How The 'Lonely Guy' In High School Turned Out
A Redditor asked: 'What happened to the lonely guy of your high school class?'
CW: suicide.
When we're asked how the "lonely guy" in high school was, we can all think back and come up with an example.
Some peers may have referred to them as weird for keeping to themselves, but sometimes, it's surprising what they end up achieving after all those years of seeming isolation.
Curious about others' experiences, Redditor Sad-[c-word]-420 asked:
"What happened to the lonely guy in your high school class?"
Major Career Move
"Well, I just googled him, and he's a Georgetown law professor."
- BulletDodger
A Simple, Happy Life
"The person I always thought of as possibly lonely retained the same couple of friends for the past 13 years, and they still seem to enjoy getting together and doing the things they did back then. Video games, anime, etc."
- ptbus0
The Lost Friendship
"I lost touch. You can't be a one-way street to someone forever."
- NewPickleballer
Data Science Things
"He is sitting in a data science conference reading Reddit."
"I am sitting in a data science conference reading Reddit."
- zykezero
Tragic Therapy
"He didn’t like to be around people much, so he spent a lot of time riding his motorcycle alone, which he said he found therapeutic. He died at 20 in a motorcycle accident."
- Disastrous-Year571
Sometimes The Loneliness Sticks
"Still lonely, However, he worked his way up within a KFC franchise through high school and bought his first house early on even though he didn’t do well at school. Then he worked in the army for 10 years and bought properties number two and three. "
"Now he works as a director on a cruise liner and goes from country to country by himself."
"No partners or girlfriends ever, but he's financially well off."
- ethereumminor
Secret Model
"He became an actual model for high-class perfumes and brands and not one those Instagram or TikTok 'models.'"
- dkguy90
"I was in the suburbs of Buffalo. A super quiet, shy, plain girl everyone kind of ignored, was modeling on runways in Paris or doing high fashion photo shoots in NYC from about age 13. No one knew until Senior year when she had her portfolio with her because some journalist was going to interview her at school."
- NYCandleLady
Shoutout to the Late Bloomers
"I got a degree, got married, and started a career. Not much different from others, just started later."
- Ben_Thar
Success Stories
"He grew several inches after high school and went into tech. HE was very successful and now has a supermodel wife and a beautiful family."
"Another guy became a pediatric surgeon. He was married and had a daughter... Over the years his wife disappeared from his Facebook post and it was just him and his daughter. In a few years ago, he married a supermodel Eastern European nurse."
- wastingtoomuchthyme
Nothing Short of Tragic
"He joined the army and then literally went AWOL two years later. No one has seen or heard from him since. His mom posts his missing person flier up on my hometown's Facebook page every year on his birthday. It's really f**king sad."
- nails_for_breakfast
Funny in the End
"He became an entrepreneur of a really successful company."
"He employed the three jokers who used to bully the heck out of him. They still don't know who he is."
- AbsurdFormula0
"'Employed the three jokers.'"
"Is he Batman?"
- panzer22222
Hard Work Pays Off
"That was me. I always sat at my own table with the occasional foreign exchange student."
"I got out of school and worked really hard. I just turned 48 and I still haven't peaked. I have a large portfolio of real estate and do a lot of traveling."
"I wanted something more for myself but I didn't really have that confidence until after school. I now live an incredible life. There is hope for us losers who aren't afraid of a little work."
- kjschaben
Wishing Them Well
"He was the smartest person I ever met. He was very quiet, kept to himself, and did 110 percent on anything he was ever given to do. He always got the best scores."
"Me and my best friend were the second and third place, but it wasn’t worth chasing first place with him around. We always tried to be his friend, but he wasn’t interested in friends. He was always polite but didn’t seem to want friends. He always accepted me as a friend on social media though, and we were always friendly."
"I was 21 when he posted for the first time on Facebook. It was a suicide note. Thank God someone got to him in time. I messaged him after and let him know I understood and he could talk to me."
"He sent me a long message back, and I understood so much of what he was saying. The constant pressure to be perfect, the trap of trying to please your parents, the spiral downwards when you realize you aren’t a superhuman… I had no idea how much pressure his parents were putting on their kids."
"We talked for a bit, but he eventually stopped responding, and I moved to a different country."
"I hope he’s doing well now, he is an amazing guy. Love ya Scott, if you ever see this."
- lorealashblonde
A Thriving Life
"He ended up graduating top of the class, got a full-ride scholarship to Cornel, got his master's, makes seven figures a year, and is happily married with two kids."
"I was one of his few friends in high school and the dude is doing amazing in all aspects of his life."
- Superb-Pattern-1253
Doing Just Fine
"I don't really know what happened to anyone from high school, and I'm okay with that."
- FireyToots
"Found the fellow lonely person."
- Kiltemdead
"So it seems the lonely guy from your high school class is doing fine."
- CleaningMySlate
"I don’t know why, but this made me really proud of myself. Thank you random internet person for making this other random internet person feel good."
- FireyToots
Thinking back on high school, it's surreal to think about all the people we knew but have lost touch with, unable to really know what's going on in their lives anymore.
But some of us might hold a special place for the quiet kids and wondering how their lives turned out. Just because they were quiet in school doesn't have to mean that they didn't make huge change after graduation.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988.
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
If we think back to our childhood and school years, we likely can remember someone who was always getting into trouble.
The assumption at the time might have been that this child was going nowhere, but as some will point out, these troubled kids can wind up being just as successful as everyone else, if not even more so.
Redditor bluewhalebluejay asked:
"Teachers of Reddit: Do you have a former student who you thought was doomed but ended up making it big? What's their story?"
Being Someone's Beacon
"I've had a few kids stand out."
"One of my first ones was a kid who was in my grade 10 drama class. Nice kid to me, with no major issues. Funny, not super academically inclined, but started to really like drama and we got along."
"He missed class somewhat frequently for excused absences that were noted as 'court.' I assume mostly weed related... just because of reasons. But I never asked."
"Anyway, halfway through the semester, he came in and announced it was his last day because he was being sent to juvie and he was upset he wouldn't be able to continue in drama (his other courses they could manage through distance education type things)."
"Was subbing back at the school the following year and ran into him. He'd caught up on all his missing credits while in juvie because he 'had nothing better to do so why not get some s**t done.' He was going to now graduate on time and was super proud of himself. Not sure where he's ended up now ten years later, but weed is legal now so as long as he's not dealing, so hopefully he's doing okay."
"Different school and where I ended up getting a permanent position so I stayed in the same place for a while, had this girl show up in grade nine and had her for Arts and English. She was... a lot. She would fully shut down and just not do anything. Or talk. Or she'd have a full-blown tantrum. She was exhausting."
"I drug her along through the Arts class and got her participating some days, which was apparently huge because in elementary, she was just left to do nothing all day because she wasn't disruptive. I jokingly suggested she take Drama with me the following year, but she hated speaking in public so figured that was a no-go."
"Did get her to do the lighting for the school show, though. She took drama every year. By the end of grade 12, she engaged with people, she could speak in front of the class, and she was completing credits (slowly and with a lot of support), but you could get work out of her. Apparently, I became her favorite teacher and I was one of the only ones she would do work for initially. But my god was she a lot of work some days. Glad I stuck it out because we got there eventually."
- somethingclever1712
Imposed Limiting Beliefs
"I had a teacher tell me I'd probably end up managing a Borders, but they went under in 2011, so the joke's on her."
- Kyengen
"My math teacher in high school moved me to the back of the room and told me to sit there and just look out the window. She said I’d be working at McDonald’s one day. I made $300k last year. She’s dead now."
- albatross_the
Reality Check
"Not a teacher, but I knew a kid who was your stereotypical couldn't give a f**k student."
"He never did his work, p**sed off teachers, cut class, did all kinds of drugs, and always had detention. I remember the highlight of his work was writing an essay on why he was Black, despite being white. About mid-senior year, he dropped out, and he kinda just disappeared. I honestly thought he'd end up in jail at some point."
"In 2019, my job sent me over to a site to do a survey for a company installing our AV equipment. Lo and behold, the guy leading the project was the same wild and crazy kid from high school."
"We chatted and caught up on things, but the guy really turned his life around. He got his GED, quit drugs, took up trade jobs, and worked his way up to a senior position in that AV installation company. It's interesting to see how people change like that when they enter the real world."
- draiman
Lack of Interests
"I had a student who was supposed to be a high school dropout but ended up graduating law school with honors."
- Somerset76
"That sounds like that was a case where the kid was smart but bored and needed a passion to find."
- whatproblems
"This sounds like my father and his brother. They were the same, screwing around in high school with bad grades, smoking weed and drinking and pulling pranks and playing poker all lunch, until college when they found what interested them. Now my uncle is a surgeon and my father is a scientist."
- jkssratmolo
Such a Small World
"I taught geography to a very talented (and now famous) footballer. He wasn't particularly academic but is now a multi-millionaire. The tabloids loved his scandals, but I dare say he's loving his retirement now."
- reiveroftheborder
Mental Health Assistance
"I did some volunteer work in mental health services for teens, specifically with music."
"Probably obviously, teens with mental health problems can be incredibly self-conscious and reserved. This one girl, in particular, was quite timid most of the time when there was anyone with her who wasn't a close friend."
"Over the course of a few years, I managed to coax her into singing in front of me, then to the group, then at a fundraising event for the group."
"The last thing I heard about her was a post on Facebook that a friend showed me. She was complaining about there only being about 50 people at a gig that she was playing! I still remember having to talk her into that first performance with just one or two people there!"
- Raephstel
Unbelievable Outcomes
"Son of two teachers, not a teacher. Our class criminal was acting out in grade school. He was a bully. He'd push kids down the stairs. He grabbed the boobs of the first girl in our class to have them."
"When he'd get in trouble, he'd run away from school, and the principal would get in his VW Bug and chase the kid down."
"In Junior high, he was suspended as often as he was in class it seemed. The same was true in high school. He didn't so much as graduate, as was passed on a plea bargain."
"Many years later, I saw him on Facebook. He's an oil man in Texas. His house is bigger than my yard, by a lot. He has a beautiful wife and daughter. On the surface, he made it and is living the dream."
"Now, he may still be a criminal. Financial success doesn't make one a good person. I don't know who he is these days. All I can say is growing up, I pictured him in jail or maybe in a trailer park as an adult. I never pictured him in a mansion living the high life."
- mike_e_mcgee
"The money may be nice but I'd rather have a small house than work on an oil rig, that's a dangerous life."
- whoamIreallyam8
"I bet he started on a rig or in a field, but he looks like a suit and tie guy these days. I agree 100%, though. My job gets me by (barely), but I'm safe and have a good work-life balance. I'd rather barely scrape by than be financially well off and either in danger or stuck at work all the time not enjoying the fruits of my labor! 40 hours a week is as much as I care to put in (I'd prefer less to be honest)."
- mike_e_mcgee
Deeply Underestimated
"I taught a first-year university course. It was the fall semester, so for many students, it was their first semester at university ever, and I had one student who struggled. She was young, it was her first time living away from home, and she seemed perpetually overwhelmed."
"I think she was just naive and inexperienced. About a month into the semester and her grandmother passed and they were very close. She came to my office to tell me she had to go home for the funeral and would miss a couple of classes."
"She was sobbing and I comforted her and told her not to worry about class. When she left my office, I honestly thought that I would never see her again and that she was going home permanently."
"I was wrong. She came back a week later and she was laser focused. She started speaking out in class and asking questions, she came to all of my office hours and study groups, and she began to make connections with other students in the class."
"She absolutely blew it out of the water, aced the final exam, and finished the course with the highest grade. We stayed in contact and I was actually her reference for an intensive internship that she was very excited about (and she got it)."
"I will never forget her and she truly humbled me. Was really a lesson for me not to underestimate people."
- littlepinch7
Measurable Success
"I worked administration in an elementary school. But I did take kids with low reading scores to the side to give them tutoring whenever I could."
"One kid stuck out. 15 words read per minute despite being eight years old. She had no confidence in herself, was too terrified to talk to anyone, and burst into tears at any mistake she made."
"Let's just say her family was... unsupportive and difficult. I did not see progress for MONTHS. I was worried about her future in school if she continued to lag behind and be too anxious to make it in the world."
"But eventually, she started talking to me. She stopped crying at mistakes, repeating my mantra ('It's okay to make mistakes, mistakes mean you're learning'). The words per minute score went up little by little as she began to show interest in different reading materials."
"By the end of the school year, she was looking forward to seeing me and her teacher said she was excited when the class took library trips. That teacher and I convinced the school to let me continue monitoring the student into the next school year. They agreed."
"One more year of tutoring passed. That shy, terrified girl became confident and happy. She talked to everyone, helped out in class, and demonstrated a fascination with learning new things. The new teacher told me how this kid was always trying to sneak books in-between classwork. In second grade, when we began, this student was one of the lowest-scored readers in her grade but by mid-year of third grade, she was the highest score. She was even helping out other kids!"
"I worked for a couple of years after she 'graduated' from my tutoring so I got to see her in the hallways. She always liked to tell me what she read in class, what she read in her personal time, and see what I'd recommend for her to read next. By the time I left my job, she was going to middle school and I knew she'd be just fine."
- SkysEevee
The End of the Bullying Era
"I had this classmate in high school who was the biggest d**k I saw in my entire life."
"He would beat people up if he didn't like the way they walked or whatever, would make teachers so angry in class that one of our teachers was rushed into the hospital due to hypertension."
"One day in our senior year, his mom and dad were tragically killed in a car crash, leaving him responsible for his three younger siblings."
"I didn't see him for a few weeks then one day came back and the principal was kind enough to accept him again back to school, but was informed that he may not graduate due to his very low grades."
"I have never seen such a sudden change of personality in my life. The dude became so focused and determined on graduating high school, it was scary."
"Fast forward 20 years to the year 2022, I had some legal issues to deal with, and one of my friends recommended me to a lawyer, and I was surprised when I saw him. All changed, turned his life around, saw the graduation pictures of his siblings displayed on his office wall, and has a beautiful wife and a daughter."
- Newbietron21
Talk About Leveling Up
"A stoner kid I knew who did nothing but doodle on everything ended up being some big shot at Lucasfilms and then Disney."
- hahahahthunk
Coming Full-Circle
"I am a coach and through a coincidence, two kids who used to be my neighbors came through my team. When we were neighbors, their house was known as the crack house. It ran off a generator for a while and the dad was siphoning gas out of neighborhood cars to run the generator."
"Their dog was left outside barking for two nights in a row (another neighbor and I decided if it went to night three, we were taking the dog, the weather was fair). Finally, the house was foreclosed and the pics of the inside lived up to the crack house name."
"Fast-forward some years and I took one of the kids on my team home. We happened to go past my house and he pointed and said he used to live down there. I put it together and asked if he used to have a dog named Oscar, and he did!"
"So it turns out his dad eventually went to jail for stealing cars and his mom was in recovery for addiction to pills. They had to move in with his grandfather in the local trailer park who was an alcoholic."
"So the older brother did well. He's in college in the next state and is gonna be okay. The younger brother, though, is about to graduate high school as the valedictorian and has a full ride to Cal Tech."
- kjm16216
A Different Perspective
"My husband had a teacher tell him with his efforts he would always be a B student, a B husband, and a B father. Another teacher, when learning of us getting married a few years later, said of me, 'Bless her heart.' He was a difficult, under-challenged student."
"I consider him an A+ husband and father, who runs his own 35-person company, a company that puts employees over profit. I'm just sorry those teachers didn’t see what has always been clear to me."
- merryrhino
An Irreplaceable Teacher
"For my primary school teachers, I was probably that kid. Never spoke and could never finish a worksheet to save my life. Had all the tutoring in the world and I just couldn’t understand numbers. Didn’t understand punctuation for a while, either. Luckily, English just clicked for me one day and I went from an F to an A in a week."
"Turns out I had undiagnosed Autism and the way they were teaching these fundamentals didn’t slot into my head right. God bless my extra help teachers because they sat me down and gave everything the most arbitrary rules so that it would make sense."
"I can’t remember them properly now but I just remember explaining my young self's logic of the world to her and she made all the punctuation and math symbols slot into those rules so I could use full stops and multiply things without going crazy."
"Now I’m in university studying STEM, probably still applying a lot of Mrs. Brown's logic without realizing it. Bless that women’s patience because I wouldn’t have been able to get into top classes in secondary school without her."
- h0n3yst
The Perfect 'Thank You'
"I was the special ed kid who was regular all along."
"I was semi-nonverbal as a kid, and wouldn't really do school work in Kindergarten through third grade. I didn't really have a support system at home and had no interest in learning to read or do schoolwork, really. I just wanted to go home and play Nintendo."
"Towards the end of second grade, they started actively monitoring me and another young child. They would sit in on my school day, take notes about my behavior, and leave. They wouldn't talk to me at all, and I didn't realize their presence had anything to do with me until much later."
"Based on those reports, they moved me to Special Ed. I'm not sure if they thought I was just slow or on the spectrum, but every day, I would leave class for half the day and go to direct one-on-one class with an aide. She taught me all kinds of fundamentals I should have had before then. I was in the third grade before I learned how to tie my shoes, for example. She taught me how to read. She taught me how to communicate."
"By the fourth grade, I didn't have to go to Special Ed anymore. I was vaguely normal. It would take until the eighth grade before I finally made friends, but it would have never happened with her."
"Unfortunately, much of my childhood is kind of a vague blur. I can't even remember which of the elementary schools I went to where she was. I wish I knew how to unlock this memory and find her if just to write a heartfelt letter of appreciation."
"Wherever you are, whoever you are, thank you for saving me."
- Mmmslash
These stories were both surprising and heart-warming, and they are a great reminder that no two lives look exactly alike, but also, a tough start does not necessarily mean a dark and terrible life.
Warning: There are a metric crapton of spoilers ahead. Obviously. This is an article about movie endings. We're kinda gonna have to talk about endings, ya know?
The first movie I personally remember being shocked by was Old Boy. It's a 2003 South Korean horror/psychological thriller. The ending is such a graphic sharp left turn that it gained instant classic status both in Korea and among horror film lovers worldwide.
I'd tell you about it but I don't have time to explain the relevant spiderweb of character relationships ... or for the amount of trigger warnings it would take.
One Reddit user asked:
What movie had the best unexpected ending?
So lets take a stroll through Hollywood history. You probably already know the twists and turns in several of these, but there might be some movies here you haven't been punched in the gut by yet.
Grab some popcorn and enjoy!
Dirty Apes
Planet of The Apes.
It was super surprising seeing the Statue of Liberty at the end. When I first saw it, my 9 year old brain just exploded. The movie doesn't really make sense up until the ending because of the reveal; but even if you saw it coming, its execution was still phenomenal.
Luke ...
GiphyMy son only recently got into Star Wars. When we got to watching Empire for the first time. The thought that he didn't know what was coming, or the impact it would have, didn't even occur to me.
I wished I'd taken a video of his reaction. He was beyond shocked, like absolutely gobsmacked. He also bombarded me with questions for about an hour straight afterwards. It blew his mind!
How To Train Your Dragon
How to Train Your Dragon.
What other kids movie would dare have the main character get maimed/disfigured during the climax?
And then the second movie was even worse cause Stoic dies! Fck, that death hit me so hard.
Major spoilers below if you haven't seen HTTYD 2:
Him and his long-lost wife had just reunited. You finally got to see the soft, loving side of him. He was finally happy. I almost cry every time I think of that song and dance he does with his wife.
Then like 10 minutes later he gets murdered in front of his reunited family. Like every time Hiccup does the brave, strong thing it costs him. The first time it was his foot, then his dad, then later on his town, and eventually his best friend.
That series is frikin dark.
- Eode11
And just to add salt to the wound, he was murdered by lovable mascot best friend Toothless while he was under the effects of mind control. That really takes it over the edge for me.
And Toothless gives that goofy grin and assumes Stoick is asleep shortly after snapping out of it.
- ddh85
Yeah and how Hiccup angrily shoos Toothless away and Toothless's hurt and confused face before running away. It absolutely murdered my feels.
No Resolution
The Birds. The movie ending is surprising in that the movie ends with the protagonists just ... driving off and leaving town with literally no resolution to the actual problem of a town overrun by murderous birds.
I love how bizarre and bleak that movie is. And that there is no "reveal" to make sense what happens.
It starts out like a cute romance. It's charming.
Then there's a few birds acting strange. And then it goes bonkers, and it's all screaming and inexplicable chaos.
So they run away. The end. What the hell just happened?!
But the movie is like, "Fck you. We don't know what happened. The birds freaked out."
- Hithigon
Let's Play A Game
The twist in Saw still ranks up there for me.
Low budget film with no expectations and, Wham, an amazing twist.
- kukulele
I tagged along with a group of friends to see Saw. Didn't know anything about it. Never saw a trailer. Didn't even know what genre it was. Just went because I had nothing else to do. Walked out of the theater two hours later completely terrified. I remember my friend didn't even turn the radio on, on the way home. We all just sat in silence.
First time I watched Saw I was alone, and thought it was fine, pretty neat horror movie. When Lawrence sawed his foot off, I figured that was it, that was the twist everyone was talking about. Kinda underwhelmed, but still all right.
And then it happened.
When I watch movies alone, I don't usually react all that much. Even to horror movies, beyond the odd shudder, I'm usually pretty calm. But this one got me to yell "WHAT?" at the screen.
Fooled By The Prestige
GiphyThe Prestige end lines.
"Now you're looking for the secret. But you won't find it because of course, you're not really looking. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled."
This is the greatest line and set up, because until you get over the twist ending, or "the prestige," you don't realise the whole movies been lying to you.
It's all over the place - during "the turn", the middle of the movie, using unreliable narration of documentation created to distract the rival magicians. We know some of it is a fake diary, but we assume we can take some other information seriously when we can't.
The twist ending was great, but once rewatched you realise you're only ever watching a retelling of events, and as these two famously like to mess with each other what we are being told and shown probably isn't real. More than likely the machine didn't work and Jackman killed off his double to frame Christian bale, and the other tanks probably had dummies in.
We were so willing to be fooled we didn't use our logical thinking skills to break it all down.Well I didn't anyway, not till four or five watches later. We wanted to be fooled and forgot everything after the prestige was revealed.
Even though the movie literally tells us that's what's going to happen!
There's a great video on YouTube explaining it all.
Memento
Memento. Absolutely incredible. The ending made the beginning scene even more disturbing.
Me and a few friends watched this one night in college.
When it all comes together at the end and the black and white past meets up with the color present, I went, "gasp Oh sht." Chills ran through my body.
The movie finished, and we talked about it.
I told them, "when it went from black and white to color slowly it shook me."
They both looked at each other slowly and said, "I didnt..... I didn't even realize that happened until you said that".
We went back and watched again lol
- GibbyDat
Excellent movie, and the highest compliment I can pay it is what happened immediately after the movie on the day I saw it.
Remember, this was released in a time when mid-credits and post-credits scenes were not really a thing. As soon as the credits started rolling, no one, not one single person, got up to leave. I went to the movie alone and thus was able to sit and observe those around me. Everyone sat there, just talking with their companions about what they'd just seen (or thought they had seen). It was probably ten minutes before the first couple finally left.
I've never seen anything like that before or since.
Do you have something to confess to George? Text "Secrets" or "" to +1 (310) 299-9390 to talk to him about it.