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Teachers Share Their 'This Student Is So Dumb It's Scary' Stories

Teachers Share Their 'This Student Is So Dumb It's Scary' Stories

Teachers are here to support all of our students... and trust us when we say that we believe most of them do.

But just wait until they get to the teacher's lounge and all the stories come out.

Not all students are created equal, as we were reminded once Redditor HeyHeyHeywow asked the online community,

"Teachers of Reddit, what is your "this student is so dumb its scary" story?"

Every. Single. Lesson.

britney spears wink GIF Giphy

"I'm a flight instructor. Had a student who really wasn't cut out for flying. Before each lesson he job was to do a preflight on the airplane and make sure everything was working. One of the items you check during the preflight are the flaps. Basically, they are a flap of metal that extends from the aft section of the wing and drops down into the airstream during landings."

"Well, we fly a Cessna 172 where the wings are on top of the cockpit (above the pilot) and the flaps are situated just behind the door. Without fail, this guy opens the door, moves the switch to deploy the flaps, and turns around to run face first into the flaps he just lowered. It's funny the first, concerning the second time, and expected after the tenth time."

"Every. Single. Lesson."

decathlon_flyguy

packing it in....

"I work with kids 12-18 and the amount of middle schoolers who do all of their work and pack it around in their bag without ever putting it in the homework box or handing it to the teacher is astounding. If anyone figures out why they do this, please help me lol"

"Edit: thanks to everyone who shared their stories. I think I gave some better insight now. Hopefully I can help my kiddos more with some starting points."

chrssytna

V-Day Questions...

"I was a former college recruiter who used to set up a booth at low-income schools to help guide first generation students into college. Had a high school girl come up to me and tell me she wants to be a gynecologist. So I start talking about which schools have good pre-med programs, the kind of classes she would need to take, broaching the idea of med school. She says hold up, a gynecologist is a doctor?"

"I say yes. She says Well I do NOT want to go to medical school. I just want a job where I can look at vaginas all day. We ended up talking about possibly cosmetology school or esthetician school. Also, she was not kidding. I got many, many dumb questions like this. When you don't know, you don't know."

Liviabirch

Name Drop

"I'm not a teacher, but I used to volunteer in my daughter's classrooms when they were in elementary school. One day while I was helping grade papers, it became quite apparent that one little girl had copied from the boy sitting next to her - not only were the answers the same, she also had written his name on top of her paper!"

lunatuck

Dear Emily....

Giphy

"I don't usually wear glasses when I teach. Except for one day. And it was subsequently a big deal among all my fifth graders."

"The next day, at the start of class, I noticed a girl in the front row wearing glasses for the first time. Something seemed a little off so I finally decided to chime in."

"Emily... what's the deal with the glasses?"

"These? I need them to see."

"But they don't have any lenses."

"She appeared befuddled and said, "They don't?" before lifting her finger up to one of the eye frames and poking herself in the eye."

rake2204

"? spelling"

"History/gym teacher was telling us about catching people cheating. He said he was always for people who thought up creative ways. On the other hand, when you get a paper that's the same as another, word for word, including one particular misspelled word, with a "? spelling" written above it, well..."

Mrs0Murder

Chompers.

"Told to me by a friend, written in his words."

""The other day I had a student bite into a bar of deodorant. Just... chomped right into it, as if it were a coconut-and-palm-tree-scented ice cream bar. This, after making like he was going to "lick" it and accidentally getting the taste of the deodorant and his own residual pit sweat. Half a second later he just went whole-hog on it and took a chunk out of it, then spat it out. I didn't know whether to call poison control or the principal."

becauseiamtheDM

It's my $$$

"When I was a professor I had a student submit a paper she clearly hadn't written. I called her out on it and she complained by email to me and CC'd the dean of the school. Her argument was that it *was* hers because she had paid *her own* money to have it written."

tatsukunwork

being 21....

children GIF Giphy

""Teaching laboratory skills. Asked a student to mix a tube by turning it upside down gently a few times. Immediately turned it upside down without putting the cap on first...

"Edit: student was a senior undergraduate, so maybe 21 years old?"

QuiveringCloacas

Plate Issues

"I thought I would be teaching about plate tectonics today."

"Ended up having to do a lesson on why the earth isn't flat. 4th graders."

squirmdragon

this fool....

"This one moron currently in my master's program makes me question if I'm actually in a mental institution. How someone like him managed to get into what is generally considered a top tier program is beyond understanding."

"From contributing zero to group projects, to bring an active detriment to group effort, it seems like he is trying to be difficult."

"His "final, ready to be submitted" portion of one class's big final project had 30+ spelling errors, including but not limited to: "revanew", "develuped", "Acers" instead of acres (this one repeated 6 times), "constrans" instead of constraints, "pencells", "skool", "accel", "hite" instead of height. It goes on and on. This was just the errors in one project in one class. I happened to have him in all 3 classes and I happened to have him in all 3 group projects."

"In one group, we collectively sent him 33 emails and text messages with highlights, bullet points, step by step corrections, and he completely ignored them all, only to blow up at us in a group meeting about how we were all bullying him and he didn't understand what he was doing wrong."

"He would argue with us about whether he was right or not, whether his abysmal work needed to be edited or not. He never spell checked a damn thing. He never reviewed his own work once. He is the biggest piece of crap mentally challenged student I have ever met. Yet somehow he got into this program."

"I hate this dumb fool."

OC4815162342

is it real?

canadian what GIF by CBC Giphy

"Not from when I was teaching, but a buddy's classmate."

"HS Class was discussing the number of stars in the galaxy. My buddy jokingly says 20. Kid next to him (notably not the sharpest kid I've known) goes, "are you stupid? There's gotta be 100 of them. Maybe even a thousand." Serious as can be."

"Honestly not sure what's dumber; him thinking the guess of 20 was real. Or him thinking that 1000 might be too high."

phisch13

Steal Correctly. 

"I'm a professor grading papers now and I have a few contenders right here. This one student blatantly plagiarized in his first paper, I mean just cutting and pasting from webpages - he didn't even steal form the primary sources and they weren't even scholarly webpages."

"I was so surprised at how badly he plagiarized, that I gave him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he didn't understand what it really was. I just gave him a 0 along with an email describing the issue in detail with some additional links for whole sites that do the FAQs really well."

"We met, and I explained it to him. He was abjectly apologetic and explained that he had missed the nuances before."

"Grading the final paper, same crap all over again. And I test this stuff using a free website I found just on Google and it takes like 2 minutes to check. What the hell is he thinking? (Also the non-plagiarized part it so poorly written I don't know how even got in, much less made it to be a junior at, a selective school. The guys is also premed, WTF?)"

zazzlekdazzle

The Book Fair

"I volunteered to do the "book fair" for my old middle school (my mom was the assistant librarian). I had a 7th grader come up to purchase a poster of a car. The price was $3. He pulled out two $1 dollar bills and set it on the desk in front of me. He then pulled out a handful of change and set it on the table. He asked "is this enough?" I said, "well, you need one more dollar." He then picked out 2 quarters and 2 dimes. "Now?" he asked. I said, "that's 70 cents, you need 30 more." He picked out 3 nickels and added them to the pile."

"There you go," he said. I then proceeded to ask him what he thought the denominations for each coin were, and he legit did not know. I had to give him a quick lesson in the value of each coin and helped him count out $1 in change. To me, this situation is ridiculous. We will all have to deal with money throughout our lives. You have to learn to know the value of each coin and know how to add money."

JimmyStrongLegs

Aquatic Problems

"Not a schoolteacher, but I've taught swim lessons in the past. I was once teaching the adult learn-to-swim class and had an incredibly dumb dude (let's call him Rusty) sign up. Rusty was a 100-pound guy with an absolute fear of water, he wouldn't even shower, but he decided that swimming lessons were gonna cure him."

"It was the first day, when we were just getting accustomed to the water and helping people with a phobia start to get over it. The first few people are puttering around in the shallow end (1 meter deep) and getting a feel for the water."

"Some of them were immigrants from someplace very dry and had never been in a pool before, so it was quite the experience for them and things were getting loud."

"All of a sudden, I hear Rusty give his best bald-eagle-screech attempt, sprint down the deck, and launch himself into the deep end (4 meters deep). He immediately starts drowning (no fat, no float) and is going down fast. My assistant, the lifeguard, got in, got him holding on to the rescue tube, and pushed him to the shallow end, still screaming and flailing."

"He hauled himself up the stairs and started sprinting for the deep end again and chucked himself back in. I went in after him since my assistant was still in the water and dragged him out again. He tried to do it a third time but I was able to stop him until security showed up to hold him back for his own safety."

"I never saw him again after that day, but I'll never know why he, an aquaphobic nonswimmer, would think jumping in the deep end was a good idea."

thetaterman314

"wait, then what's a state?" 

"I've had kids turn in papers that were clearly plagiarized, but one kid didn't bother to change the font color on his paper. It was a pretty clear case."

"I had another who was supposed to be researching a technological innovation, the history and impacts of it. One kid chose the telephone. His paper was not only obviously plagiarized, but it was literally an ad for telephones.com. The kid had clearly not even bothered to do anything other than just go to telephones.com and copy and paste."

"But my all time favorite is the kid who stopped me and said, "Is Chicago a city or a country?"

"I told him it was a city."

"He considered that for a minute and then said, "wait, then what's a state?"

edgarpickle

England's Best...

"I'm not a teacher This was in my 11th grade world history class. We were going over WW2 at the time, when this girl raised her hand and asked completely serious, "Wait England isn't a state in the US?" The teacher just looked at her in shock while the rest of the class burst into laughter. I am sure she was serious because she got really embarrassed and after class I heard her ask her friends at lunch if they knew about England. They also started laughing at her too."

Comeputergeek

Page 82

how i met your mother spell GIF Giphy

"Student got access to my Masters thesis and lifted a section out verbatim and turned it in to me as their own work. It truly was an experience. My Master's thesis is around 200 pages so if they had picked some info from say pg. 82 then I might not have caught it as I wasn't using Turnitin. However this student copied the very beginning section which I had spent a ridiculous amount of time on."

collapsingrebel

Be Optomistic. 

"Had some students come up to me the other day to ask if they could go see a teacher during their lunch break."

"I asked why, and one of them said. "We're in trouble because we accidentally made fun of someone with optimism."

"I then asked her to repeat herself, hoping she would correct herself, but said "optimism" instead of "autism" again."

"I let them go see that teacher, because I did not have time to think about how to approach that conversation."

dammithelenjanet

FOR THE CHILDREN!! 

"In my design class, i had this girl who had placed a garage beside the house, but couldn't, for the life of god, figure out why her 90cm by 200cm door was not appropriate for a car to enter through. Same girl planned a small space for children in a library. Said space was only 1.5 meters high, and no matter what the teacher said, she kept going back to "but this space is for children, they are not tall!" "But they will suffocate!" "But it is a space FOR CHILDREN!"

Lupus_Noir

Hey John

"this happened in high school maths: lets call him john"

"Teacher: So john, how do you find an average?"

"John: Kilometer."

"the pain in the teachers eyes was immeasurable."

TheSoviet-Union

Seriously?

Bbc Three Comedy GIF by BBC Giphy

"11th grader spelled his last name wrong. Like multiple letters wrong. I literally sat and stared completely dumbfounded for a few minutes."

Reddit

So Many Kids. 

"I work in IT at schools, so not a teacher. My favorite one is kids bringing their laptop in complaining the internet doesn't work. Turns out the have all but ripped off the top cover and it is held together with just a cable. I show them all the torn cables and ask if they could guess why their laptop doesn't work properly."

"This has been multiple kids between multiple schools."

clemboy500

Mr. President. 

"Okay so I used to be a teacher, and then I went in to teacher education. So I supervised student teachers in the field, meaning I'd go out and observe them teaching their classes. As an observer, one's job is ONLY to observe, not to offer comments during the observation, so you literally say nothing."

"It was a 5th grade social studies class and they were discussing Ben Franklin. One student asked "What number president was he?" And the teacher was like, I don't know. Followed by like a 10-15 minute debate in the class and with the teacher about which number president he was. :("

"Obviously the 5th graders aren't so dumb it's scary ... but ... thank goodness the student teacher finally decided to use the google to answer their question.""

DTownForever

It BURNS!!!

"Not a teacher but a student."

"I was in a geology class and the teacher was talking about lava and this one kid stops the teacher to ask "does lava burn? Like would anything bad happen if I put my finger in it?" Naturally the teacher and the rest of us assumed he was joking and the teacher just kinda laughed. The kid then says that that he's actually serious. The teacher just kinda looks at him like "wtf" and he says yes and carries on not wanting to waste time. I was still convinced the kid was joking so I ask him after class if was just joking and trying to hell with the teacher when he said he was serious. He then tells me that he really was serious."

"That's not the first time he's said something that dumb so I don't find it very hard to believe that he might have been serious."

Morningstar-X

Sometimes the boss is dumb....

"Kid clearly had autism, and rather low functioning at that. I was his key worker and could only get him to respond to textures or music. He was only 2, but wouldn't answer when called and would just sit vacant in the room while all of the other children got up and moved into the other room. Just not 'there' in the here and now unless, like I said, I played a song and he'd come to life. He'd sit at the table vacant unless I put his hands into something that felt different (water, sand etc). I told my boss that I thought he had autism and she replied 'autism is nonsense, he's just lazy'. So I continued teaching him as though he was autistic because that's the only way I could get him to learn. Fast forward and yep, he's autistic."

bo0merKaren

Good Boy

"I had an 8th grader today who was surprised to learn that when he calls his teachers Mr./Mrs. ______, that is their last name, not their first name."

"I go by Mr. Good. He thought my first name was "Good".

goodenough88

The Bad Peaker...

"So I am lecturing on population (15 year olds 9/10 grade). I tell the students that most likely human population will PEAK at 10.5 billion... a hand goes up and says, "Uh what does peak mean?" I'm stunned as well as the class but he is serious so I answer. I have another teacher in the room and when we are alone asked what I had thought when I heard the question. I thought if your father hadn't peaked I would've been spared that question."

"Same kid. Teaching patriarchal and matriarchal society which has nothing to do with sex/intercourse but a hand goes up and he asks, "So if matriarchal is women and patriarchal is men... then who's in charge of the lesbos?" But before I could respond his friend says, "You're a moron. The lesbos take care of the lesbos." My class took awhile to recover."

uhhreally35

The 4th Grade

"Student here, and I was in fourth grade at the time. Well, there was this kid that like to mess with people all the time. One day teacher left the room for a little bit so it was just a bunch of kids in the room suppose to be doing a test. Well this kid hoes in front of the class, and puts a stapler to his ear threatening he would staple his ear if we didn't help him so another kid goes up and hits the stapler stapling his ear. I'm not sure if this is what you mean but its pretty damn funny."

Tygergod

Middle Name?

"Had a test on the three states of matter. Student response:"

"First Name = Liquid

"Last Name = Gas""

""That's what we called her the remainder of the year!"

Kagamoosha

tangled....

Duct Tape GIF by A Black Lady Sketch Show Giphy

"My wife is a teacher and she said some kids literally don't know how to rip a piece of tape off a roll. They just keep pulling it until it gets all twisted and stuck on itself and ask for help."

gruss577

Legless....

"So I'm going to keep this short. I was teaching my kids how to spot the difference in things. I started out with a group of boys with blue shirts and boys with white shirts and asked them if they could spot the difference. Cool. So I asked a girl to spot the difference between a whale, a dog, a cat, and a mouse. Like the genius she is, she said, "one doesn't have any legs." Awesome. Now I ask this boy who just doesn't have "it" mentally lol to spot the difference between himself and the students who wore glasses. This boy said, "I don't got no legs." I was in SHAMBLES. I had to leave so I could laugh properly smh."

truthurtsss

Hold Please. 

"Mom has been a teacher for 42 years (8th grade the whole time) and there was one student in particular who did an array of unintelligent things. The one that put the nail in his being expelled coffin was when he didn't want to go to school one day and instead of being sick, it went like this:"

"Reception: insert school name how may direct your call?"

"Student: my name is insert students name and this is a bomb threat."

"Reception: Please hold"

"Student: ok thank you"

"Parents called after police, expulsion and charges processed."

Genericwhitemale86

Denier....

no way eye roll GIF by Bounce Giphy

"I had a student completely plagiarize a research paper. He just lifted it from a website, which I found immediately due to the fact that he left the URL at the top. Still denied it!"

Agodunkmowm

Oh Avraham....

"Not a teacher myself, but my teacher told us this story, I should mention that i live in Israel and ofc the lessons are in hebrew, so we had an essay we had to write in English about people who influenced on our lives, and there was one student who used a lot of Google translate he probably just ran the whole text through it, our teacher's last name is "Ben Avraham", and yes he ran it through the translator, so he called her son of Abraham."

pocerface8

Silly Freshmen. 

"I taught a freshman English class and an 18 year old wrote a persuasive essay arguing that homicide is a good way to keep population down."

viva_la_viva

The Freeze

cold game of thrones GIF Giphy

"Teaching grade 10 history. I cracked a bad joke one day about how the Cold War happened every winter for about 50 years. One of the questions on the test was to list 8-10 important facts about the Cold War. Guess what fact appeared in several student's responses to that question?"

steviendaedalus

Space Camp

"I worked as a Substitute for a while. The first question the kids always asked me was why their teacher wasn't there. They never tell the substitutes this but they expected that I would know. So I'd just start making stuff up and the kids would totally fall for about anything. I had a high school class get very upset that their English teacher didn't tell them she was going to Space Camp."

"I also had a habit of telling the elementary kids that their teacher had to go to the ocean because they were really a mermaid and needed to go to the ocean regularly or they would't be able to change back. They always thought that was a good reason to be absent."

meatball77

Utter silence. 

"I was a substitute teacher for a 6th-grade science class, one in a school that I frequently substituted in. I knew most of the students fairly well and had subbed for this particular class of students quite a few times. There was one particular kid, let's call him Mason. Mason wasn't the brightest bulb of the bunch, but I never expected such a spectacularly idiotic question."

"We were talking about the strongest metals, the densest ones, and we were on the topic of diamonds. Mason raised his hand, and I think the entire class could already sense the loss of brain cells incoming."

"If diamonds are so unbreakable, why don't they just make schools and banks out of diamonds?"

"Utter silence."

tonytonix

Fish Polish

weird fish omg GIF Giphy

"Gonna get buried but had a kid in high school where they were doing a lab with nail polish and the teacher had pet fish. This man dumps the polish in the fish tank and the teacher flipped her lid. He got suspended for 2 days. Btw he was a sophomore in high school."

DolphinsSB2020

Swimming Relief...

"This was before I was a teacher. I took my wife white water rafting for her birthday. We got to a point where people could jump in the pools and float a few meters down river."

"Well one person starts and several follow."

"Suddenly a commotion."

"This one got jumped in. Apparently he couldn't swim. So his girlfriend jumped in after, she could swim."

""Thankfully it wasn't a crazy section and they were wearing like jackets. A few of us grabbed our throw bags and got them to shore."

"Relief.

"Until he did it again! Seriously WTF!""

Joey_the_Duck

"I had to explain to a student..."

"I teach 5th grade. I had to explain to a student walking in line. He would never walk in line correctly. Finally after correcting him for the 1000th time, he snapped. "What do you mean? What do you mean get in line? What's the line? Why do teachers always say that?" It never occurred to me he didn't understand after being in school for years. He was the best though. One of my favorites."

mememenji

"I work in student accommodation..."

"I work in student accommodation at a fairly large UK university, and jesus christ the things I've seen. Even if you don't count the things they do while drunk, you still end up being concerned for the future of humanity."

"Things I've seen students learn the hard way:"

  • "Plastic bowls are not an adequate substitute for saucepans, and will melt if you put them on the hob. Likewise, you should take the polystyrene foam out from under your frozen pizza before you put it in the oven."
  • "If your packet of sausages says 'to oven cook: 15 - 20 minutes", that does not mean you can put it in the microwave for the same amount of time. You should also not go and have a nap after doing this, or you'll wake up to panicked flatmates and a corridor full of smoke."
  • "To boil pasta, water is required. Again, panicked flatmates and corridor full of smoke."
  • "Most people know they shouldn't microwave metal. Some people still try to heat unopened cans in one."
  • "If you forget your keys, call security. Don't try to climb in through the 10" x 12" bathroom window because you'll get stuck, and we'll need the fire brigade to come and rescue you."
  • "Dumping the contents of the kitchen bins over the warden's car is a bad idea at the best of times. It's worse if you are already facing disciplinary action for something else (which was actually quite minor, iirc) and the warden already knows who you are. Doing this in front of a CCTV camera, in full view of a security patroller, while the warden watches you from his balcony, and then trying to blame someone else will not improve things."

"I've probably got more, but I'll have to think of some that don't involve alcohol. We'll be here all day if I start typing those up!

lick-a-lemon

"I had a classmate..."

"I had a classmate put a thermometer into the middle of a bunsen burner to "see how hot the fire was".

"As glass and mercury promptly exploded everywhere, I'm pretty sure I saw the teachers soul leave her body. Never saw her look so horrified or pissed before."

BethPercy

"On a number of occasions..."

"On a number of occasions, around five or six, I have had to explain to students that you can still get pregnant even if you don't orgasm. Apparently, it's an old wives tale in a bunch of cultures. And when i corrected them, they fought back."

Spodson

"So he refused to turn it in..."

"When I was student teaching, I had one who was JUST on the verge of passing (thanks to the incredible mercy of the primary teacher). All he needed to do was turn in a worksheet that he finished in class. I know that he finished it because I watched him and helped him do it. All he had to do was give it to the teacher. But, in his mind, that would mean that she had won. So he refused to turn it in. I left the school before the end of the semester, but I would bet money that he failed the class."

SomeGuyInShorts

"I had a little boy..."

"I had a little boy (first grade) who always got 14 as his answer to every problem no matter what. On the second day of school I sat down to do 3+2 with him using counters. We set out a pile of 3 and a pile of 2. I told him to count and watched in horror as he pushed the counters into a line and then counted back and forth and back and forth re-counting them until he got to 14. That was the biggest number he knew, he would have just kept going on."

FoutryFour

"One girl gasped..."

"Kids asked me, "Are you from Detroit or (some other city I forget)?"

"I said "Neither, I moved here from Pennsylvania."

"One girl gasped and asked, "Do they have slaves there?"

LegitimateIntimate

"One of my 10th graders..."

"One of my 10th graders said she saw a crime being committed (bike being stolen in neighbor's yard) and she wanted to call 911 but she didn't know the number."

librarylady1980

Educators all need raises across the board. Do you have similar stories to share? Let us know in the comment section below.

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Old Wives' Tales People Still Believe For Some Reason

"Reddit user the_spring_goddess asked: 'What is an old wives tale that people still believe?'"

Close up of an owl tilting their head to side, looking bewildered
Photo by Josh Mills

The old wives' tales.

They are the stories of legend.

I think we all need a big DEEP Google dive though.

Where did they originate?

WHO ARE THE OLD WIVES!

You don't hear about them as much anymore.

It's like science and logic are suddenly a thing.

But they sure are a good way to keep your kids and their behavior in line.

Redditor the_spring_goddess wanted to discuss the tall tales we've all been fed through life, so they asked:

"What is an old wives tale that people still believe?"

"Wait an hour to swim after eating."

What a crock!

So many summer hours wasted.

I want revenge for that one.

Say Nothing

Giphy

"An undercover cop has to tell you he's a cop if you ask him."

LonelyMail5115

"Pretty much most advice when it comes to cops are old wives tales. I’m not even a cop but most of the advice you hear is pretty off."

I_AM_AN_A**HOLE_AMA

Say Something

"That you have to wait 24 hours to report someone missing."

Severe_Airport1426

"I really think this one is important and should be the top regardless. As it’s a piece of advice that needs to be relearned and the only way to do that is through awareness."

crappycurtains

"This used to be true. I think they changed it after some guy named Brandon went missing back in the '80s or '70s. You used to have to wait 24 hours if the missing person was an adult because they had 'a right to be missing' and then everyone realized that was stupid and stopped doing it."

AlbinoShavedGorilla

Body Temps

"That drinking ice cold water after eating oily foods will solidify the oil and permanently remain in your body. I informed my coworker that if your body temperature ever reached that point, you’d have bigger problems than weight gain."

chriseo22

"Oh, I have a cousin who 100% believed this. One of those guys who believed every early 2000s internet rumor and old wives tale. One night I chugged a big glass of ice water after dinner and he started freaking out and saying my guts were gonna harden."

"I sarcastically told him to drive me to the hospital if that happened. Obviously, nothing happened and the next morning I said something like 'Thanks for being on standby in case my guts filled with hardened oil.' He just walked off muttering under his breath."

apocalypticradish

Arms Down

"When I was pregnant, I was told by young and old alike that I should NOT raise my arms above my head or exert myself in such a manner because it could cause cord strangulation to my unborn sons and daughters."

Fatmouse84

10 Years Actually

Unimpressed Uh Huh GIF by Brooklyn Nine-Nine Giphy

"Chewing gum stays in your stomach for 7 years."

REDDIT

"I remember accidentally swallowing a piece of gum when I was a kid in like 1995 and just accepting my fate like welp, gonna have this in my stomach til high school I guess."

Gecko-911

I was so afraid to sallow my gum when I was young.

This tale is haunting.

High/Low

Hungry Debra Messing GIF by Will & Grace Giphy

"You can tell the sex of the baby by how you carry."

LeastFormal9366

"Pregnancy certainly wins awards for the most old wives tales. So much absolute BS was repeated to us by everyone we talked to."

IllIIIlIllIlIIlIllI

The Cursed

"If you’re a woman and you wear opal jewelry but opal is not your birthstone (October), you’ll never be able to have children, or will be widowed, or just generally have bad luck or something. You can counteract this by having a diamond in the same piece of jewelry as the opal, though."

"I have a nice opal ring that my parents gave me years ago, and I’ve had other women give me this 'advice' unprompted more than once when I’ve worn it. I have absolutely no idea where it started, but I’m pretty sure this little chunk of silicate rock has no concept of what month I was born in, let alone of how my reproductive organs work."

SmoreOfBabylon

Stay In

"Going outside with wet hair will make you get pneumonia. Or an earache. Or maybe arthritis. Depends on which old wife you listen to."

"Jokes on them - I haven't blow-dried my hair in decades and usually leave the house with wet hair in the morning. On winter mornings, the tips of my hair get frozen. No ear infections or pneumonia or arthritis yet."

worldbound0514

Dreams and Facts

"You never make anyone up in your dreams you've seen everyone in your dreams somewhere else before and never make anyone up entirely."

"How would you possibly prove that to be true? My partner adamantly believes this and tells me this 'fact' whenever I have a dream about someone I've never met before."

mattshonestreddit

"My late wife used to tell me that before she met me she would have dreams of standing at an alter on her wedding day but could never see the guy's face, no matter how hard she tried. After meeting me the face was filled in with mine. Don't know if it's true but one of those things I like thinking of every now and then when I miss her."

Darthdemented

Cracked

Getting Ready Episode 2 GIF by The Office Giphy

"Some people still believe cracking knuckles causes arthritis."

Choice-Grapefruit-44

"There's a doctor (Donald Unger) that cracked his knuckles a couple of times a day for 60 years, but only on one hand, just to prove it. Both hands remained exactly the same."

MacyTmcterry

I love my knuckles.

Do you have any tall tales to add to the list? Let us know in the comments below.

lottery tickets
Erik Mclean on Unsplash

A lot of workers daydream about some day winning the lottery and being able to say goodbye to their job.

Far too many workers are unhappy with their job duties, workplace dynamics or company culture.

But with a taste for luxuries like housing and food, they keep plugging away, year after year.

However not everyone feels that way about their job.

So what are these compelling careers?

Keep reading... Show less
Therapist talking during session
Photo by Mark Williams on Unsplash

Some people stand firmly stand behind their beliefs that everyone would benefit from therapy and that therapy is life-changing.

It's because of the totally life-changing truth bombs their therapist had dropped during their sessions.

Curious, Redditor anonymiss0018 asked:

"What is a little bombshell your therapist dropped in one of your sessions that completely changed your outlook?"

Communication Issues

"'If you don’t have these problems with any other person in your life, why do you think you’re the problematic person in this one?'"

- maggiebear

"I love this. I have a 'friend' who I always seem to run into misunderstandings with. Every time we had a conversation, it somehow turned into a debate even if it was me talking about my day. The conversations were never easy."

"I always evaluate myself first and take into consideration his critiques. He was very good at convincing me that I was contradicting myself or wasn't good at communicating my thoughts."

"I NEVER had this issue with ANYONE else in my life. I kept trying to figure out where the miscommunication was coming from. In the end, I just minimized contact and now I don't run into this issue."

- chobani_yo

"I read this quote somewhere once (and probably have it a bit wrong): 'It's a waste of time arguing with someone who is determined to misunderstand you.'"

- Reddit

Emotional Regulation

"'You can’t control your emotions, but you can control what you do with them.'"

"At the time, I was a young adult who had learned zero healthy emotional regulation skills (only suppression and shaming) growing up, so this blew my mind."

- lil_mermaid

Tough Relationships

"'It sounds to me like you are trying to convince yourself to stay with your girlfriend. I'm not so sure it should be so difficult.'"

"At the time he said this, I remember it was like he said, 'The earth is flat.' I thought he was crazy when he suggested relationships don't need to be difficult. But eventually, I started to realize I was trying to change myself to stay with this person rather than just being who I am."

"It took me three more months to finally break up with her but from that day on, I vowed to never again abandon myself just to be with someone I had convinced myself was better than me."

- metric88

High-Stress Situation

"I was at a high-stress time, and I asked her how people live like this."

"She replied, 'Oftentimes they have cardiac events.' She said it as an urging to care for myself as much as possible."

- KittenGr8r

The End of Alcohol

"I was struggling with my alcoholism, and we were discussing how I had been cutting back."

"She asked what I would consider success, with regard to my drinking."

"I said I wanted to get to a point where it wasn't interfering with my daily life. I wanted to just be able to have a glass of wine at holiday dinners or family gatherings."

"She simply asked me why. Why was it important for me to drink at those times?"

"It was as if she'd turned on a light. Alcohol had always been a key ingredient in every family function, for my entire life. When I smell bourbon, I think of my uncle. When I smell vermouth, I think of my dad. Alcohol ran through almost every happy childhood memory."

"But, even more than that, I was very afraid of the explanation I'd have to give when family and friends asked why I wasn't having a drink. I had tried to quit before but failed. What if I admitted my problem, only to fall off the wagon?"

"When she asked why I didn't want to completely quit, it was the first time I saw that last part of the big picture. I'd be willing to drink myself to death in order to avoid being scrutinized, or judged for possible future failures."

"That was the day I quit. I've been sober since May 6th, 2017. 2,407 days."

- sophies_wish

Acceptance vs. Enjoyment

"'Accepting something doesn’t mean you have to like it.'"

"That took away a lot of my inner conflicts about situations because I could accept a situation without expending energy internally fighting against the injustice of it."

- alibelloc

Emotionally Immature Parents

"You are not responsible for your parents' emotional wellbeing. They are independent adults who have been on this earth for many more years than you."

- SmokedPears

Not So Lazy

"'Why do you think you're lazy?' Then she listed off all the things she knows I'm doing for my family, my job, and my life."

"It kind of blew my mind when I struggled to come up with an example."

"She also described family dysfunction as water. Some families are messed up in a way that everyone can see the huge waves across the surface. Others are better at hiding it, but there's still a riptide that you can't see unless you're also in the water."

"It made me realize that trying to keep the surface from ever rippling doesn't erase what is happening underneath."

- flybyknight665

The Harm in People-Pleasing

"'Why do you make people more comfortable when you are uncomfortable?' when talking about people pleasing and fawning."

- ERsandwich

Agree to Disagree

"'Stop trying to get everyone to agree. When you need everyone to agree, the least agreeable person has all the power.'"

This really changed my outlook on planning family events."

- freef

Grieve and Start Anew

"For context, I had a major TBI (traumatic brain injury), seizures, strokes, and all around not a fun brain time when I was 28."

"They said, 'You have to grieve the loss of yourself.'"

"Most people wanted me to go back to how I was. The f**ked up truth is that part of my brain is dead. The person everyone (including myself) knew died. I needed to grieve the loss of myself."

- squeaktoy_la

Multifaceted Identity

"They told me that my job and career is just a way to make money; it's not my life or identity. That took a lot of pressure off me."

- unfairpegasus

Breaking the Cycle

"They validated me."

"'You always talk about not wanting to do to your daughters what your mom did to you. You worry about it so much in every interaction you have ever had with them."

"But your children are 19 and 21 now. They are happy and healthy and they trust you because you’ve never abused them in any way. So I just want to validate for you that you really have broken that cycle of violence."

"You did that. And you should be proud of it. I’m proud of you for it.'"

- puppsmcgee74

The Grieving Process

"I was constantly bringing up how I felt like a completely different person after my mom died... like there was a marked difference between before and after her death."

"But once, she was asking about my hobbies, I got really into describing all the things I loved to do or at least used to do before I got into a deep depression."

"She was like, 'Wow, you seem very passionate.'"

"And I just sat there like, 'Well, I mean, I can't change what I like to do, they're still fun to do.'"

"And it's like she knew when to take a step back, because it was like, wow, I may be super depressed about my mom passing, but I'm still me. I'm still my passions and those don't go away."

"I don't know, maybe it only makes sense to be, but it really started getting me back on track."

- Hannibal680

Sharing the Load

"I've never really had friends. I've had colleagues and classmates and housemates and people who have hung out with me, but I never really felt close to any of them."

"And I did that thing you see on here sometimes; I stopped reaching out to see if I would be reached out to, and I wasn't, which I took as confirmation that they didn't really want me around, or at the very least, that they wouldn't mind my absence."

"I was talking to my therapist about people I'd been close to in college, and she told me to pick one and talk about him. So I did. After I shared some basic stuff like his name and his major etc., and a couple of anecdotes, she asked me what else I knew about him."

"And I couldn't answer. It wasn't really a broadly applicable bombshell, but she said, 'What else?' and I started crying because I realized that for as simple as the question was, my inability to answer spoke volumes."

"I've never had good friends because I've never been a good friend. I'm withdrawn and reserved and I always made others do the work to drag me out, without ever extending my own friendship in a meaningful way in return. If I wanted to have meaningful relationships with other people, I would have to build them."

"I'm still working on this, but I'm trying to make more offers and extend more friendliness to others in my daily life."

- Backupusername

The discoveries in this thread were incredibly touching and profound; it's no wonder these were lasting concepts for these Redditors.

It's important to keep ourselves open to inspiration and insights from others, as we have no idea how their experiences could help us, or how we could help them.

Aerial view of a church in a small town
Sander Weeteling/Unsplash

There's something comforting about living in a small town.

It's characterized by close communities where neighbors know each other by name and there is an abundance of kindness extended to others.

Gift-giving is a commonality, as is the sharing of recipes, and people going out of their way to help each other in a time of need.

The pace of living in small towns is also a striking contradiction to city life, where crowds of people go about their busy lives without much interaction.

Curious to hear more examples of what small town living is like, Redditor official_biz asked:

"What's the most 'small town' thing you've witnessed?"

These are positive examples of a tight-knit community.

Live Updates

"We have a village Facebook page. Every time the ice cream man drives into the village, the entire page goes ballistic. People send live updates of where the van is and which direction he's heading. The ice cream man has started accepting DMs so he knows which streets to go down."

– PyrrhuraMolinae

Brush With The Law

"I’m from a town of less than 2,000 people. When I worked at the grocery store there people would often drop off stuff for my family members because they didn’t want to drive all the way down to our house. I no longer live there but recently got a call from my daughter. She had been stopped for speeding and handed over her license and insurance which happens to be in my mother’s name. The officer goes 'Hey, you’re Donnie’s granddaughter! I ain’t gonna write you a ticket but I’m telling Donnie when I see him tomorrow cause we’re going fishing.' She replied 'I think I’d rather have the ticket.'”

- Reddit

Roadside Catchup

"The traffic on the 'main street' of my town is so sparse, two drivers going opposite directions can stop and talk to each other for a few minutes without causing any problem."

– anon

When things go wrong, people take notice without incident.

Bank Robbery

"A guy robbed a bank and everyone knew immediately who he was and the teller got mad at him."

– AlexRyang

"A local bank was robbed and one of the tellers told the police to bring her a yearbook from about ten years earlier and she would be able to point the robber out. He had been in the grade before hers in school."

– Strict_Condition_632

Wise Woman

"When I worked at the bank in town there was an older lady that had worked there through 5 mergers."

"She knew everyone, there was a young guy yelling at me one day. She walked out of the back and he immediately quieted. She went off about telling his grandmother that he was treating young women like sh*t. She also said that if he didn’t straighten up not one girl in town would ever marry him she would make sure of it."

– ilurvekittens

Intoxicated Local

"Town drunk was paralyzed and used a motorized wheelchair to get around. I was driving home one Saturday night and said town drunk was passed out in his wheelchair doing circles almost directly in the town square. Had to call his brother who came and picked him up on a rollback truck. Strapped him down and drove off into the cold dark night."

– DoodooExplosion

Grazing Over To The Bar

"In my former small town, there was an older guy who'd lost his license after getting a few DUIs. Every day, he would ride his John Deere lawnmower to the corner bar around 3PM and sit around watching TV and sipping his beer well into the night. Then he'd head the couple miles back home on his mower. He even had a little canvass shell he put on when it rained or got too cold."

– brown_pleated_slacks

It's not surprising how small town people behave differently than those who are from metropolitan areas.

Welcoming Committee

"I lived in a small town. When I moved there, people would ask, 'Whose house did you buy?'"

–MoonieNine

"Move to a small town. 30 years later, you are still the new guy."

– impiousdrifter

"I lived in a small town for most of my childhood but I wasn't "from there" because my grandparents weren't from there."

– raisinghellwithtrees

"Worked with an older guy, relative of the owner of the business, he was 73. I asked him if he was a local, he said 'no his parents moved here when he was two.'"

– realneil

A Busy Day

"Lived in a town of about 5,000: A woman walked into the DMV on a Friday, saw that there were 3 people ahead of her and left to come back another time when they weren't so busy."

– KenmoreToast

Who Let The Dogs Out?

"My dogs got out while i was working. the police called my niece's elementary school (she was a 5th grader) to get her to round them up and take them back home."

– mediocrelpn

"There was a small kennel behind the police station for runaways. They called us saying they had our dog, and moments later our dog showed up home. He broke out of jail."

– Worried_Place_917

While life in a small town sounds appealing, I don't know if I can ever live in one.

I'm so used to life in big cities, I think it would be quite unnerving to adjust in a neighborhood where everyone literally knows your business.

I would be paranoid.

And I'm sure the same could be said of life in the big city.

Would you consider making the switch to life in a different setting?