Worst Student Ever Asks Vietnam War Vet Teacher A Horrific Question, But Never Expected Him To Respond Like THIS.

People on Reddit were asked: "What's your best 'I've messed with the wrong person' moment?" And one user, thekoreankid, had the best story to tell.


In high school I took AP US History from a Vietnam vet. He was a stern man with no patience for bullsh*t and a heart of gold. I loved his class. He presented history based on factual documentation and with as little bias as possible. He forced us to critically think and encouraged discussions regularly. His tests were always fifty multiple choice, fifty true or false, and two timed essay questions. You always studied for those because the easiest part was the timed essay. There were no easy multiple choice questions. For example, if it asked you the date of an event, unless you knew the correct answer, all four answers made complete and total sense.

When the class did well, he baked us brownies. I'm not sure if they were delicious on their own merit or because we earned them, but goddamn they tasted like victory. To this day, I've never had a more challenging or rewarding class.

The only sign of his service was a small banner that read "Army Ranger" he kept posted on his window. From time to time he'd tell us silly stories about his unit, but kept most of his service secret. Some kids did some snooping and a rumor he had been tapped for Delta and was a sniper in Vietnam starting flying around school. Aside from AP US History, he also taught Psychology as an elective. I signed up because I loved his classes (also brownies).

On the first day he handed out syllabuses and gave a brief overview of the things we would be covering. When he finished he asked if there were any questions we would like answered. I think part of the reason I loved his AP class was my classmates. We were all there because we wanted to be and took our academic pursuits seriously. Psychology was not the same batch.


This moron kid (who I recently found out is incarcerated on multiple DUI counts as well as domestic abuse and possession with intent to distribute) raised his hand. He asked how many men, women, or children he had killed in Vietnam and whether or not he had kept ears as trophies. Immediately, everyone in the class knew how incredibly screwed this kid was. There are some lines you don't cross, especially when you're talking to a guy who had a heart attack and a week later was out running ten miles (a light jog, as he put it).

The teacher handled it professionally and said he was only taking questions pertinent to the class. The kid followed up with: "So like twenty or what?".

You know that moment when you drop a glass and realize there's nothing you can do to save it? The only you can do is brace for the impact. Imagine that moment lasting longer than it takes for a glass to fall. Imagine it felt that way for a full minute. Two minutes. An hour. A lifetime. That's how it felt in that room. Everyone looked intently at their belly buttons while we waited for the hammer to drop. Well, everyone except for me. My eyes were squarely on my teacher.

He used to say that life is defined by the trying moments, the difficult ones; it's easy to act morally and justly on a full belly. The mark of a man is how he handles himself under duress. His jaw clenched and lips tightened as he placed his hands firmly on the podium he lectured from. He was a master of the slow blink and now employed it with devastatingly terrible connotations.


"Mr. [redacted]. Please collect your belongings and see yourself to the office. I will be along shortly."

The classroom sat in silence. We knew how it felt when he was disappointed we didn't do better on a quiz. We knew how it felt when someone asked a boneheaded question. But this, this feeling here, was new. It was coals of anger restrained only by sheer force of will, it was rage incarnate.

"What?" The kid smiled and looked around at his silent classmates, "Did I say something wrong? Why do I have to go to the office?"

I wish I could say this kid had balls of steel, but all evidence points to the contrary; he had brains of mush.

"Mr. [redacted]," his voice was even and controlled, but radiated power, "you will collect your belongs and see yourself to the office right now..." He repeated again slower and more clear, "...or I will assist you in doing so."

And then it hit. Like a tsunami wave crashing against the shore, he realized how much shit he really was in. He wasn't being sent to the office because the teacher was angry, he was being sent to the office for his own well being. Finally breaking my sight line, I look at the kid. His face was pale and mouth slightly open, signifying the epiphany currently washing over him. He quickly grabbed his stuff, not even bothering to put them in his bag and left.

My teacher took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then said, "Are there any OTHER questions regarding my class?"

What I should have said was nothing. What I actually said was: "We still get brownies for doing well on tests, right?"

He looked at me with the same cold eyes my classmate had earned. My boisterous confidence shrivelled under the gaze. I had taken the anger from being asked if during a war he had butchered innocents and redirected it unto myself with a smartass question. I would be joining my idiot counterpart soon. He gave me a slow blink and said, "Everybody but you, everybody but you." He gave me a small rare grin as the class sighed and chuckled. "Please open your textbooks and begin reading. I have other ahem matters to attend to. I will return momentarily."

The kid transferred classes that day. Three weeks later I received my first, last, and only personal pan of brownies for a perfect score on his test.

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Image by jacqueline macou from Pixabay

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What is the most valuable item that you have seen somebody throw away or have found in the garbage?

And for real ... some of these people scored BIG TIME. Like big time. Like really big.

Like Refrigerator Big

just ask leslie jones GIF by Saturday Night Live Giphy

"Our current refrigerator is a double-door one with exterior ice and water dispensers. We got it for free, with absolutely no problems whatsoever. It's just a few years old."

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"My dad simply asked if he could have it.. and they said yes." - SauloJr

Immigrants In Action

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"I immigrated to the US from Brazil when I was 12. And every Saturday, my mom, stepdad, sister and I would go out at night to upper middle class neighborhoods the day before trash pickup to rummage through the garbage they were putting out."

"We found perfectly good TVs, VCRs, microwaves, couches, lazy boys, tables, books and comics, etc."

"I couldn't believe these Americans were throwing out like that. We furnished our entire house with that stuff. The entire Brazilian immigrant community in my town did it. We were flabbergasted." - PhillipLlerenas

With A Note

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"My wife yelled at me that someone put a big TV outside with a note on it. Walked across the street and it was a brand new Samsung 37 inch HDTV."

"They were actually renovating the apartment building and got an upgraded TV. Even had the remote taped to it with batteries, I guess I have really nice neighbors here in NYC." - MadLintElf

Life Hack!

studying busy philipps GIF by Drunk History Giphy

"If you want high end stuff out of the garbage for free, follow these steps:"

"Pick a city with a large university in it. If it's a school well known for its law programs, or medical, or engineering, all the better."

"Search for luxury apartment complexes that market themselves towards students. Look for things like included shuttle service, pools, fitness centers, etc. The more expensive and swanky the better."

"Figure out when finals week is at the end of Spring semester."

"Dumpster dive at those luxury apartment complexes during that week and the following weekend."

"Very wealthy international students will arrive in the US, fully outfit an apartment with nice furniture, big TVs, audio systems, gaming consoles, you name it, and when the semester ends they just junk it all because they aren't going to fly it back to wherever, and it's too much effort to spend the time selling when they do not care about the money."

"It's a smaller scale phenomenon a little like all the luxury cars abandoned at the airport in Dubai." - whattothewhonow

Literal Gold Treasure

valley of the boom david kim stanley GIF by National Geographic Channel Giphy

"I found a gold coin at goodwill for 5 bucks. It was in a case with someone's name and company name."

"It was their gift from the company for retiring. I assume the family threw it out when he died not knowing it was solid gold. It was in a in a thick solid plastic case that had to be cracked opened."

"It literally said 1 oz fine gold on it. I figured 5 bucks was worth the risk it not being real."

"It was a South African KRUGERRAND 1 oz coin. Everyone was just too busy to read it lol."

"Bought it and took it too a pawn shop and sold it for a couple grand." - streetmitch

The Best Day Of My Life

Will Smith Wow GIF by 1LIVE Giphy

"When I was a kid, I grew up right outside the Los Angeles area in the suburbs. My stepdad was a garbage truck driver for the city of Beverly Hills."

"I swear in the late 80s and early 90s we'd have so much basically brand new stuff (still in boxes) brought home on a regular basis."

"I'll never forget one day in particular. My stepdad came home and was like 'get ready, come to the car, I'll need your help.' So I go down there and in back seat of his car he had a few large black garbage bags."

"We haul them up to our apartment and he's like 'go ahead, open them.' Inside was what I could only describe as an 80s kids trove of treasures."

"One bag contained just about every Ghostbusters and GI joe toy you can imagine, they were played with but had every little accessory, there was a bunch the playsets and everything."

"In the other bag was pretty much every LEGO of the early 80s sets, still in their original boxes. I was a big LEGO nerd but was totally thrown off by the old school space ones because they looked nothing like the 90s space sets. I think they even said "NASA" the minifig's chests."

"That was like a random day in July, it felt like Christmas. I was 9 years old and it was basically like the best day of my life up to that point." - Zombgief

Who Throws Away Money?

spongebob squarepants money GIF Giphy

"A jar full of quarters."

"Annual spring cleaning projects happen in a lot of towns where anyone can put almost anything on the curb and it's taken away for free. It's to stop open dumping or stuff being dumped in ditches."

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"In 2012 on north road in Akwesasne I found an estate pile that I shuttled back and forth with my bike trailer getting lots of older tools like a scythe, hammers, saws, screwdrivers and wrenches, a 22 rifle with 100 round of ammo, a bunch of ar15 magazines, cast iron cookware, oil lamps, a hand crank food mill with all kinds of accessories, a black raven axe head (worth $100 easily since they are a collectable), and a quart size mason jar full of change mostly quarters."

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Filing Fever

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"I own a small company which is located directly in front of a state funded program facility. The state decided to have this office shred all of their files as they were going to switch to electronic data (exclusively)."

"We found two of these old rotary filing cabinets outside of their office. They're worth almost $3k each!"

"They just placed them there and we saw them and asked what they planned on doing with them. They said, 'Hmmm.....either donate them or trash them.' The state told them simply to get rid of them."

"We jumped at this and took the two into our already tiny office because there was no way in hell that we were going to let these gems go. (We do use paper files, unfortunately)."

"They wanted to give us two smaller ones but seriously, our office is very small. I made some phone calls and they were picked up immediately by other office workers/friends." - GlitzBlitz

This Sucks - In A Good Way!

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"In the 1990s my moms work had a really nice high end Hoover that stopped working. They threw it out."

"My mom took it home because my dad tinkers and repairs things easily. Turns out since it was a bagged vacuum all the dummies had to do is REPLACE THE BAG."

"Like it never occurred to them to do the most easy and basic step. My parents were excited to have a really upgraded vacuum. Maybe like $500ish." - schweddyboobs

Tiffany's Trash

Audrey Hepburn Movie GIF by The Good Films Giphy

"My dad found an old stained glass window laying out by someone's trash. He thought it would look cool hanging in our cabin, so he stopped and grabbed it."

"It sat in our garage for a few years before he looked at it more closely and found "Tiffany and Co." branding on it. He got in touch with some stained glass window dude who figured it was worth about $40k fully restored, so my dad sold it to him for somewhere around $30k." - throwaway_stopdrink

Have you had any awesomely trashtastic treasures? Let us know!

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