Teachers Break Down Their Funniest 'Your Parents Clearly Did The Assignment' Experience
Teachers have seen it all: horrifying bullies, brutal hygiene practices, sudden tragedy, the soaring highs and crashing lows of teenage love.
Even a short career could cover each of those a few times.
And yet there is another characteristic teacher moment that seems to dominate more and more, particularly in recent times. It is, of course, the regular run-ins with overbearing parents.
Often called helicopter, or even snowplow parents, these are the pressure packing driving force behind so many students from high school all the way down to elementary school.
These parents want success for their child at any cost and always. Anything less, as their logic would suggest, would initiate a calamitous chain reaction that would end in the utter downfall of the rest of that child's entire life.
This severe parent energy is expressed in many ways, both direct and indirect. One of the most common, however, is through help on homework assignments.
When a parent steps way too far in to help complete their child's project, it's obvious and frustrating for the teacher. Some of Reddit's teachers shared their favorite experiences.
scsm asked, "Teachers of reddit, what was the most obvious, 'your parents clearly did the assignment?'"
The Ideal Assignment
"I taught elementary art classes for a few years, and a lot of time would have crossover lessons with certain subjects."
"One year we had the second graders do a project for their unit on Native Americans, where they had to make dioramas of a type of Native American house of their choosing, and then write a little two paragraph essay on who lived in that style of house and why it was built that way."
"Most kids made Tipis or wigwams out of construction paper and birch bark and paper towel rolls. we had a few kids who were clearly getting help from their parents, but it was obvious the kid had input and done the essay. Standard stuff."
"Then we had a kid come in with, I sh** you not, a completely accurate model of Cliff Palace, Colorado. It was stunning."
"Turns out, his dad was a sculptor, and his mom worked at our local museum, as a restoration expert."
-- fluxy2535
Forging Ahead for Success
"Penmanship - no kidding, kid had the maid write it." -- neoldguy
"When I was a babysitter in junior high/high school, I would promise the kid I was babysitting after school that if he did more than half of his math homework, I would do the rest if he went to bed on time."
"I made sure to write exactly like him (holding the pencil awkwardly) and get enough wrong that it wouldn't be obvious."
"I know it was wrong BUT I just wanted an hour to myself to watch TV!!" -- Spasay
When Even the Kid is Upset
"When the student came in crying while holding the project and when asked what happened she announced that she was frustrated that her mom did the whole project, it looked nothing like how she wanted it to, and wasn't allowed to really do anything on it."
"This wasn't the first assignment that came in from this student that was clearly done by the mum but the student finally had had enough of having her education taken from her."
-- LucJenson
Last Hurrah
"6th grade research project that ended in a 3 page paper. One kid turned in a 10 page paper. And it definitely wasn't a bad attempt at plagiarism."
"It kind of felt like the mom was missing her own academic years."
The Plot Thickens
"This discovery was a collaboration between me and another teacher."
"The student in question submitted an assignment that showed no cohesion or ability to connect ideas (Told me about how to 'make' detergent from kiwi fruit in 500 words, the task was a 1500 word assignment on a DNA extraction experiment)..."
"...and then the same week submitted an A standard assignment to their psychology teacher with excellent flow, arguments and great conceptual synthesis."
-- Adonis0
Collage
"English as a foreign language teacher here. During lockdown last year a student sent in a test that had much better work than he usually did."
"When I googled his words, sure enough, he had copied it by mashing the first part of sentences from one source to the second part of sentences from another source. It did at least make sense, but it was still not his work."
"When I confronted him about cheating he said 'I don't think I cheated, cause my mom helped me with it and she wouldn't cheat!'" -- NonCaelo
That Craftsmanship
"12-year-old kid brings in a BEAUTIFUL galleon. All the other kids' galleons look like they are cut out of styrofoam using a butter knife, or some kind of strange 50/50 amalgamation of cardboard and hot glue..."
"...and then there's this kid with a wooden galleon, complete with rigging, cloth sails, a stand...after talking to him I finally get him to admit that his parents had gone to a shop and ordered a custom-made ship."
"What the heck?!?"
-- schoonerw
A Shining Example
"Not a teacher but in middle school I procrastinated as most kids do and forgot about project to make a brochure about a country. My parents stayed up all night helping me (doing the majority of it)."
"Years later underclassmen would tell me that same teacher would pull my project out every year and tell them what hard work looks like."
-- dahopppa
Jury's Still Out
"Middle school science project, kid came in with a crude internal combustion engine, having previously failed science three quarters in a row." -- Emperor_Cartagia
"I think some people are just naturally good at this stuff though."
"I had a friend growing up who got horrible grades and was in trouble all the time at school."
"He would ask for me to come play with his go cart at their house and I always had to tell him no because to him playing with the go cart was taking it apart and putting it back together again. I wanted to drive the thing."
"He ended up failing out of high school and went on to a trade school and did much better." -- tc3590
Worst of Both Worlds
"As a student, I remember in woodworking that we have to make a foldable chair that we have to work on the whole sem. In the end mine was a f***ing safety hazard aka it can be sit upon but there's like nails ready to skewer your a**."
"Scared to submit that i literally bought new materials outside class and let my dad do it. Teacher was shocked on how good it was and question my authenticity."
"In the end i confessed that it was my dad but my teacher's ego was so high probably thinking he can humiliate me in front of class so he told me to bring the 'original chair.' He sat on it and punctured his a** and fell because the chair did not support hos weight."
"I got suspended not because i hurt him but because i was cheating lmao"
-- joe_nard_vee
The Jig is Up
"We were in quarantine for the final quarter of the year. I had a student transfer to my roster the first day of it. He completed all of his assignments and got 100s on all tests."
"I got him again this year. Kid can barely read, can't form a grammatically correct sentence and accomplishes nearly nothing."
Missing the Point
"Every year I assign a problem the first day of Calculus to understand how the students handle stress, complete work, and their skill level. If an Engineer sees it they will solve it using material the students don't understand."
"Last year I got a new record of Engineers doing their children's homework. I also got an angry email from a parent (MS in CS from MIT) saying I shouldn't start with CALC III."
"I completed the problem and cited my sources in a Precalculus book."
"He then tried to hack my website with their homework problems. It also took him two days to write 5 lines of python for his daughter's homework."
"He's the head of the coding division for an aerospace company. He had a blog post about how over coming obstacles leads to growth. I hope his daughter gets to leave when she is 18 and find out who she really is."
-- TheNatureBoy
Hired Hand
"Pretty easy to tell in art class. One day the student can't draw a square properly and the next day he comes in with a perfectly rendered 3 dimensional still life with depth and shading."
"Separate incident, and even more egregious, a girl didn't even hand in a year end project herself. She spent many classes refusing to do any work in class."
"Then after the project is due, someone else I've never seen comes by with an amazing drawing and said that the student drew this and wants to submit it. Ummmm.... how stupid do you think I am?"
A Thankless Effort
"I don't have one of these, but I have the opposite."
"One time I had a project where I had to make a miniature 'wattle and daub' wall in primary school. I knew how it was meant to work, and 'how' to do it, but for the life of me I couldn't get it to work."
"So my stepdad tried to help me. We spent hours trying to get it to work, and failed miserably, but in the end I had something to take to class."
"Teacher said I obviously hadn't spent any time trying to do it and failed me for the assignment."
-- Musashi10000
Only Half the Battle
"A school chum mine once 'wrote' a perfect, amazing, compelling story for a French creative writing class. Only problem was they couldn't read it."
"Her mother had been forcing their au pair to do all of the friend's homework and the email to her. The mother never realized the friend knew zero French (because she wasn't actually learning it!) We were in boarding school."
"The French au pair took care of Friend's little brother back home. She had never met Friend and assumed Friend could read it."
"Friend's report is infamous for how awful it was to have heard. I felt both terrible for her and impressed that no one had caught her before this report."
Take Your Dad's Esoteric Weapons to School Day
"Not a teacher. I was the student. Senior English."
"I rolled into school with a 18" tall, full steel, fully functional guillotine, bored to fit your standard #2 pencil to use it on for the demonstration. Cut many clean in half."
"I almost got suspended for bringing a weapon to school, after someone got their finger in under the blade, and it made its way to the bone from about 2". Had they had the blade all the way up when it slipped, it'd of taken their finger off."
"My dad was a machinist."
"A friend had a trebuchet, on a semi trailer. His dad parked it out front. We launched gallons of milk round about 500 yards with it. Hit a house over the football field, across the street, in a neighborhood."
"That was a fun day."
Contemporary 'Coptering'
"During quarantine, we have had to institute a no parents on the room with you who like you do schoolwork."
"The reason being a 16 year old girl and her mother would lie in bed together all class and the mother could be heard telling her daughter exactly what every answer was."
"I had the girl in previous years, and her homework was always leagues better than what she ever did in class, that explained a whole lot."
-- Ninjaraui666
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Lifehacks, if applied properly, can really change the course of a single household chore.
Chores can really be such a pain to take care of, and nobody wants to do it. But with a little life hack under your belt, you might be able to turn chore time into something a little fun.
u/rat-avec-london asked:
What is a lifehack that seems fake, but is a true lifesaver?
Here were some of those answers.
My Finger, The Glass
If your ring gets stuck on your finger windex will slide it right off. Worked at a jewelry store for five plus years.
You can also use any oil (cooking, automotive... anything).
You can also reduce the size of your hand (and finger) by holding it up in the air. Chilling your hand in cold water THEN holding it up in the air for a couple minutes whilst rubbing oil &/or dishwashing fluids in there... trifecta of ring removal.
Should work on anyone that just stole Sauron's prize - though biting it off also works, i suppose.
Multiple Uses
Use shaving cream as anti-fog. I used it on the inside of my motorcycle visor. Smear it on, let it dry, then rinse off and dry. It also works for bathroom mirrors. You can use it on a small spot so you can still see when you get out of the shower.
Shaving cream also removes the smell of urine. If you ever have to take care of someone who is old and/or sick and who wets the bed, a little shaving cream on a rag wiped over their buttocks after they are thoroughly cleaned up helps them really smell clean again.
It's a bit of a sad tip, I know, but you never know when you might end up caring for someone who needs help with things like this. Nobody wants to smell. A dab of shaving cream to restore a bit of dignity? Priceless.
Pretty Important For Stage Actors
Every male should know this. If you want to get rid of an awkward boner flex any muscle in your body maybe an arm. For a minute. The blood will rush to that muscle and away from your penis. Crisis averted.
These life hacks really don't seem real at all, but if you can swear by them, they can save your life.
Obligatory Poop Hack
I saw a comment on one of these kinda threads that recommended gently rocking back and forth while pooping. I've never had any problems in the bathroom, but I happened to be sitting on the toilet when I read the comment so I decided to give it a test drive. I was pleasantly surprised at how quick and effortless the whole experience was and I haven't gone back to my old stationary technique since. As a bonus, #1 and #2 now require the same amount of time in the bathroom!
It's The Alcohol
If you have funky armpits and need to fix them fast, use hand sanitiser. I figured this out years ago when I remembered that the smell comes from bacteria reactions - which antibacterial hand gel kills stone dead. Instant results and the medical smell lasts only a minute. Don't do this routinely though as it's delicate skin.
But Hopefully It's Just A Playing Puppy
True lifesaver: if you are ever attacked by a dog, push your forearm INTO the bite. This pries the jaws apart and prevents them from clamping down. If a dog is attacking you, the best thing you can do is offer your forearm, push as far back as possible, and then grab the dog by the scruff of its neck with your other hand to hold it. The dog is now functionally muzzled and you have control of its head. The sooner and harder you push into the bite, the less damage the bite will do.
Get It Off Anything
That rubbing alcohol removes chewing gum.
I'd go through a 20 layer deep marketing funnel to get to that tip because it really does work.
Also wow! Thank you for all of the awards nice Redditors. I completely forgot I left this comment and came back and my notifications had blown up.
And previously impossible situations will give way at long last.
Sayonara Capsaicin
Rubbing vegetable oil (or any cooking oil) on your hands after you cut up jalapeños or other hot peppers. It gets rid of the awfulness that would normally be left on your hands from the peppers. I rub my hands with oil and then wash it off with dish soap. I can totally remove my contacts after doing this. It's crazy how well this works.
Crying Crying
Put your onion in the freezer for 10 minutes before chopping it. It freezes the juices just enough to slow down the process of it turning in to a gas, giving you a few minutes to chop the onion without tears. I learnt this tip from a kid's science show years ago and I haven't had to deal with onion tears since. So many people don't believe me, and then are genuinely surprised when it works.
Just A Quick Little Base
The cheapest, most effective, and safest insecticide against roaches (especially those huge "water bug" roaches that we have in the South) is a spray bottle of mostly water with just a little liquid dish soap in it.
Shake the bottle & get the water a little foamy, then spray the roaches. They will run, scrabble, and attempt escape, of course, but they will die. The soap film suffocates them faster than any chemicals will.
A friend told me about this, & I thought she was nuts, but I tried it & it works amazingly well. Plus it's very easy to clean up and safe around food (not that you want to spray soapy water ON your food).
Incorporating any of these lifehacks into your home may make a big difference. You'll never want to turn back.
Or you will, whatever. But they're worth a try!
Gamers Who Stream Live Share The Creepiest Thing They've Ever Heard Someone Say Into Their Mic While Playing
| Image by Olya Adamovich from Pixabay |
I'm not much of a gamer, but I have quite a few friends who are. I never fail to be unnerved by some of the stories they share about toxic personalities who give the gamer community a bad name. Did you know for example that women often have to deal with misogyny and abuse while playing online? Blatant sexism can turn something as simple as enjoying a videogame into an emotional minefield for women.
After Redditor TerribleVanilla3768 asked the online community, "Gamers of Reddit, what's the creepiest or scariest thing you've ever heard someone say into their mic?" people shared their stories.
Content warning: Some sensitive material ahead.
"Someone walked into their apartment..."
Playing WoW years ago (12 or so years ago when this happened) with long-time guildies. The raid leader was talking and giving instruction and then cut out with:
"What the f*** was that? Hey, who are..."
And then the mic went silent. 40 of us just sat there wondering what happened. No one knew the Raid leader in person (or where they lived), so we tried contacting Customer Service to report it. I don't remember what they/Blizzard did (it was like twelve years ago), but the Raid kind of fell apart that night. I think the cops did get sent because they eventually made it to the Raid Leader's apartment.
The next day, Raid Leader was on and apologized. Someone walked into their apartment and went into their bedroom. Turns out a senior neighbor (I think it was an older lady, but, again, 12 years) got "lost" and thought they were on their floor. They walked into the apartment (RL forgot to lock the door) and got startled in "their" bedroom when he shouted out. The Senior were very confused as to who this loud person was in their apartment but ended up feeding Raid Leader cookies (his own as it turned out) until the police came and sorted it out.
No charges and Raid Leader thought it was funny, and had a nice conversation with the other person and then the police walked them back to their own room and did a wellness check. I guess the senior was living with an adult child, but wandered off and got lost.
So it ended up being a happy story, but hearing your friend/associate get cut off in mid-speech and then going AFK/timing out of the game while shouting "who are you?" was the creepiest thing I overheard. Half of us were sure they just got jumped by someone, the other half thought it was a bad joke. I also was just a year out from my own B&E incident where I was held up at gunpoint and robbed, so I was having a bit of a panic attack too.
This is thankfully a bit more lighthearted than other stories here.
Dementia is no joke.
"I was doing a Destiny 2 raid..."
I was doing a Destiny 2 raid and a guy started violently beating his kids. Like we could hear the sound of a belt in the background and the screams of the children. He then came back and was all chipper like "All right, sorry for the noise, let's get back to it!" And all of us were dead silent.
"A few weeks later..."
Was playing Destiny 2 on PS4 a year ago, when I met some people from a clan. I wanted to do some raids so I joined.
A few weeks later one of the clan leaders told me, in a cold and absent voice that he once killed two people in an accident. He then proceeded that he now works in a warehouse, driving a stapler all day and that he constantly speeds, because people should pay attention where they walk and it's not his fault if they get run over.
I didn't play with them from then on and soon left the clan. I don't want to know what's going on in his head.
"Mostly..."
Mostly people threatening to come to my house and attack me.
One time on Siege, I was in a party with some folks I just met. A new guy joins, and he knows the girl in the party, her address, and starts texting her stuff like which room she's in. We dealt with it quickly.
"The worst..."
Normal crap you hear being a chick on the internet. Lots sexual harassment, etc. I've gotten to the point where it doesn't even register in my head as anything but background noise.
The worst was probably when I was twelve, playing on my iPad. A guy on the text chat threatened to doxx me and followed me around the game world, right behind me, claiming we were "having sex". I just wanted to play a fun PvE zombie game, yo. Dipped pretty quick, couldn't sleep that night. Creeps online don't remember it in a week, but that f**** with me as a kid.
The fact that this is just the reality for so many women...
...is depressing.
"It was 2008..."
It was 2008 and my Xbox 360 was brand new at the time and a birthday gift. I eagerly set everything up and the first game I decide to play was a pre-installed demo called Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions. For a demo, this allowed online team matches and headset usage. This was also the moment when my fellow players found out that I was a girl.
A guy with the username "KillaMan" messaged me almost immediately and pressed why a girl decided to play a game clearly made for guys. I forget exactly what I wrote, although I said as much as I'm there for the same reason everyone else was. Well, he kept on messaging me, only his messages turned into explicit ones about me "willing to do more than play a shooting game," among other things. I ignored them, then he went so far as to say that he could find out my home address no problem. Even if he was bluffing, I was still freaked out and decided to block and report him. His handle registered as non-existent when I went to look him up.
Weeks went by and I get a message from a gamer tag that sounded vaguely familiar. It was that guy again, but this time he was accusing me of reporting him and threatening me that I "needed to prove I was hot". I said no, then he came back and asked for naked pictures in return for an Xbox Live gold membership. I shouldn't have even entertained him, but I decided to play along. I replied to his message that if he was serious and the code was real, send it to me. If the code didn't work, he wasn't getting nudes.
Guy sends the code and it was legitimate. I thanked him and told him to stay by his email for his "surprise". Once again, I reported him to Xbox and blocked him for good measure. Never heard from him again.
"I was playing with my friend D..."
I was playing with my friend D. We were playing Minecraft with a couple of our other friends and D said something stupid and I told him to shut the hell up and he said, "Keep talking to me like that and I'll bring my Glock to school and take care of everybody who keeps bullying me starting with you."
We know he was joking but this happens a lot.
Does D know that this stuff is not funny?
Seriously.
"This one guy..."
This one guy told us about his "poop bucket" that he used when gaming for too long so he didn't have to go to the toilet.
And this wasn't in some random lobby, we were all part of the same gaming website and were pretty familiar with each other.
Still to this day I don't know if he was trolling or serious.
"Somebody tried talking to me..."
Somebody tried talking to me using my real name and city. To this day I have no idea how or why he doxxed me.
Sadly, there are some gamers out there...
...who seem intent on ruining things for the rest of the community. If you hear something, say something.
Have some of your own stories to share? Feel free to tell us about them in the comments section below!
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People Break Down Their Craziest 'I'm Gonna Die Here' Experience That They Actually Survived
| Image by Anemone123 from Pixabay |
As horrifying as the Covid-19 pandemic has been, I can't help but marvel at the people who got through a bad bout of the virus and are still here with us today. The stories I have heard have unnerved me: Quite a few people I know honestly thought they were going to die before things got better. (That's the crazy thing about this virus––you could feel like hell for a while only to experience a major turn-around within 24 hours.)
After Redditor Rares asked the online community, "What is the worst 'I'm gonna die' situation you've been through? people shared their stories.
"In a particularly rough place of the river..."
I was canoeing with my dad when we were on holiday in France. In a particularly rough place of the river, another canoe bumped us and our boat went upside down. I got carried away by the current until a man pulled me out. To this day I am glad that the man was there, otherwise, I would not be here.
"That same year..."
I was kayaking with some friends down a familiar river but the water was much higher than usual. My boat got stuck sideways across a wave. I could move sideways across the wave but I didn't have the strength or skill to get out of either end. After two or three minutes I realised I had to capsize and swim. I was carried about 200m downstream before I could get out. Someone got my boat and paddle but I'd lost my shoes. I had to walk about a mile downstream barefoot to catch them up.
That same year I travelled to the French Alps to do some skiing. I had lessons and thought I was competent enough but on my last day, I found myself on a run that was too steep for me to handle. After falling multiple times I found the only way I could stop myself from going too fast was to fall again. It took me two hours to get down a slope that others were finishing in about five minutes. I kept having flashbacks to the kayaking incident. I kept thinking how stupid I was not to have learnt anything about keeping within my abilities.
"I got a viral infection..."
I got a viral infection that spread to my brain in 2019. By the time my sister got to me to get me to the hospital, I was blind and deaf and "feral" (bit my sister, she has a scar). Everyone at the hospital told her I would've died a few hours later, definitely wouldn't have made it through the night.
Now I'm a disabled amnesiac with chronic pain.
"Had to make an emergency roof repair..."
Had to make an emergency roof repair on my house during an ice storm. Slipped, slid towards the edge of what would have been a 30' fall onto concrete. Stopped with my feet off the edge.
This is terrifying.
To come so close to that and to be stopped in the nick of the time by some dumb luck!
"Remainder of their family..."
A person with a gun shoots and kills one neighbor. The remainder of their family runs to our house for protection. We all hunker down as the person with a gun tries to get into our house.
Also terrifying.
Hopefully the authorities arrived in time.
"Facing down my then wife..."
Facing down my then-wife who was armed with a 9mm handgun. She pulled the trigger and thankfully nothing happened. I took the gun away from her and she ran out of the place. Still don't know why the gun didn't fire. She ended up going to jail and I divorced her shortly thereafter.
Well, there's a happy ending to this one...
...I guess? Sorry you had to go through that.
"A woman was being assaulted..."
A woman was being assaulted outside of my apartment by what seemed to be a boyfriend or husband.
I went out to shout at the guy, and he turned his rage on me instead.
I was about 85% sure I was going to be shot or stabbed. Fortunately, he didn't, and he backed down when he noticed that a crow of concerned people had arrived, and everyone was on the phone with 911.
"When I was about 14..."
When I was about 14, my church went on a youth retreat to rebuild a church on the coast that had been devastated by a hurricane. On the Saturday night of the trip, we went to a bowling alley to finish the weekend on a high note.
I was with all my buddies, there were the "hot" girls in the youth group to be impressed. I had way too much soda and popcorn and was ready to light up the night. The church had rented a Chevy express 12-passenger van, the kind where the seatbelt for the middle row of seats crosses the doorway and you have to duck under it. Well, my idea was to get a running start and launch off of the step into the back seat of the van.
So I did it, and it went pretty well. I got a lot of momentum, and when I launched off the step of the van it was almost perfect. I had intended to go under the seatbelt of the van, but I missed. The seatbelt hit me on the chin, and my momentum forced it down, onto my neck. Feeling the pressure on my neck I panicked and slammed into the back of the second row. The impact flipped me over the seat, into the floorboard of the third row, and twisted the seatbelt behind my neck. I'm not a small kid so my arms were pinned and the more I tried to get them free the tighter the seatbelt got because it had locked due to the impact.
The elapsed time of what had happened was maybe 45 seconds, and the youth leader was still inside paying for the rest of what the group owed. It took about five minutes for a kid to realize that I was actually struggling, and run inside to get him. He ended up cutting the seatbelt with his pocket knife and I am convinced that he saved my life.
"I don't know why I never told her..."
When I was a kid, my mom was a single parent and had awful taste in men. This one, in particular, was a drunk, at all hours of the day.
One day, he was babysitting us while my mom was at work and took us to the local park/lake to swim. About 3 hours go by with my sister and me having fun in the lake but we were tired and hungry and wanted to go home.
The guy had been sitting under a tree the whole afternoon with one of those one-gallon igloo coolers that he said was water, and was "sleeping." When we got out to tell him we wanted to go home, he didn't wake up. It took probably half an hour to shake him out of his alcoholic coma, and then my sister and I (about 4 and 8) had to get him up a very steep hill to the parking lot. He wasn't exactly a large man, but we were little, and pushing a grown man up a hill who keeps stumbling back down was not easy.
Finally, we make it to the car. That was when I realized we were in trouble. He actually got into the car and drove us home, and I use that word lightly... We were on sidewalks and people's front yards more than on the road. I was terrified and kept begging him just to stop, but he ignored me. How we made it home without crashing or being seen by police is anyone's guess. The worst part was that to this day, my mom doesn't know about this event. I don't know why I never told her... Maybe I thought I'd be in trouble. But I was a much more timid child after that.
"My scariest situation..."
My scariest situation was when I was about six. My family and I were at a camping site in a forest. I decided to go a little further and I started getting chased by three stray dogs, but I managed to get back to my parents safely.
Everyone you meet has a story.
You really do not know what other people have been through unless you ask. The resilience of the people around you might surprise you.
Have some of your own stories to share? Feel free to tell us about them in the comments section below!
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Married People Describe The Exact Moment They Wanted To Propose To Their Significant Other
It isn't always the case, but for many couples who go on to become married partners, there was a moment when it became clear and obvious that the other was their soulmate.
Like a lightning bolt out of a clear sky, the realization strikes and the truth feels inarguable: that person is who you want to spend your life with.
And while the epiphany is common, the specific circumstances around it are as various as the many couples who experience it.
Some Redditors shared their versions of that story.
Necochan asked, "Married people of Reddit, what was the moment that made you go, 'this is definitely the person I am going to spend the rest of my life with?' "
For some people, the moment came when they observed their partner demonstrate an act of service.
There was something about the way they couldn't help but act, that their whole essence seemed to become obvious--and something their partner never wanted to let go of.
A Gentle Soul
"We were out swimming at the lake, and there was a ladybug in the water. He carefully picked it up and let it sit on his shoulder until it was dry enough to fly away."
"I've never met anyone who was so gentle with animals - his dog, my parents' diabetic cat who needed shots, friends' cats and dogs."
Shameless
"We had fish at a restaurant for dinner. Didn't sit well with me and by the time we were back at his apartment my stomach and bowels were raging."
"I was so embarrassed that I was spending half the evening in his bathroom so he told me about the time he accidentally sh** himself at a 7-11. Keeper."
Supreme Kindness
"My then-boyfriend and I had taken my wheelchair bound brother to dinner and a movie. When we got home I went to use the bathroom before going through the routine of getting my brother changed, meds, and into bed."
"I came out of the bathroom to him getting my brother out of the chair and onto the bed to change, all the while hilarious 'messing up' to make my brother laugh hysterically. I came right in to help but boyfriend shooed me away to do it all himself."
"It took triple the time but they were both in stitches, turning a usually admittedly mundane routine into a ton of fun. We'll have been married eleven years on the 22nd of this month."
Just a Look
"I had appendicitis. I had just come round from surgery and my mum, dad and now husband were there. We had been friends for years and had just started seeing each other. Both still very worried in case it went wrong."
"Well I was still groggy from the anaesthetic, but it was a womens only ward so they couldn't stay. But I didn't want him to leave. I was so afraid. No idea why, maybe the drugs idk. The look on his face as they led him out broke my heart."
"That's when I knew that man would always be there for me. I mouthed 'I love you' for the first time as he walked away. Been together 7 years now and married for 4. I love that man."
-- Daylar17
Other people experienced the epiphany when an interpersonal interaction took on a whole new weight, and they realized this was the person they wanted to always be with.
Time Passing Invisibly
"When our first phone call lasted over 8 hours. We both had so much to share with one another."
"I flew out to see him within a month. I quit my job of 11 years and moved to his city the following month. We have been together almost 9 years now, and he's still my favorite person to talk to."
When Even the Bad is Good
"We were at a low moment. Lots of bickering and stupid fights. I was still making her lunch every morning before she went to grad school, but it was a rough time in our relationship."
"And then I realized I never wanted to be fighting with anyone else. I wanted to work through our problems and spend my life with her. So we did, we've got two kids, and life is really good."
"All relationships have crisis moments. Find someone worth getting through those moments."
-- LiverFox
Another Side of Her
"My wife is a 'strong independent woman who don't need no man' Which I personally love how she wants to do and think for herself. But this also means she has lots of walls and won't let anyone in and always has to be a badass at all times."
"But in private I can make her blush and smile at will. It's a side of her nobody knows about but me, and I love it."
The Only Place
"My then-girlfriend and I were sitting on the couch one evening just talking. I don't even remember what we were talking about, probably something stupid, but I was struck by the sudden realization that there was no place I'd rather be."
"Just being with her, talking about serious topics or nothing at all, is perfect, and there's no place I'd rather be than with her."
Others, however, pushed back on the prompt.
They explained that, for them, there was no single moment. Rather, there was a slow build until they knew they were with the perfect person.
Everything Enriched
"I realized I had found my person when I started noticing changes in myself. I was more confident, happy, relaxed, and so on." -- Mamacourtney
"My boyfriend has chronic health problems and thus has a lot of bad mood moments in relation. But other than that? He's constantly happy, smiling, confident, and it makes me happy knowing that I've given him an environment that keeps his constant emotion happiness, with his health sprinkling in the rain cloud moods." -- Tomoyo_in_Transwise
A Partner, In Every Sense of the Word
"I hear this question a lot, and I never have an answer. Because I think one day you just come to the realization that living any part of your life without them would be awful."
"I got married not because I was madly in love but because I wanted her to experience all of life's highs and lows with me. I wanted to watch her succeed and grow as a person. I don't believe in soul mates, but I do believe in making a relationship work because it brings you joy."
For all you single people hankering for this feeling, trust that one day it will come your way. And for all those who have such a moment in their own biography, maybe today's a good day to reminisce about it with your partner.
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