Everyone has a moment where they regret not saying or doing something. But what happens when they really do it? Sometimes they learn their lesson, and sometimes they have no regrets. From witty comebacks to angry outbursts, read all the best (and worst) things these Redditors have done in the heat of the moment.
1. Take A Seat
I'll never forget the moment a family walked into the local pub I was working at. This big king-of-the-grill bald alpha patriarch type and his wife and kids came through. I said, "Welcome, where would you like to sit"? And he snapped back, "Well, a table would be nice”. I had the best reply possible ready for him.
Without missing a beat at all, I said "Actually, we usually sit on the chairs here”. I'll never forget the satisfaction of that moment or the look on his face.
2. Hide Your Scissors
My parents used to be tailors, and they used to do a lot of work from home. They had really big, heavy metal scissors they used to cut fabric. When this happened, I was very young, under 10 for sure. My older brother did something to make me mad. I grabbed the scissors near me and threw them at him. I regretted it instantly. It missed his eyes by a small fraction.
He went ballistic on why would I do something like that. Over 25 years later, the memory still makes me sad because of how close I was to seriously injuring my brother.
3. Petty Revenge
When I was in college, it was the first week at a new school. I was on my personal computer waiting for my evening class to start. Someone asked if they could quickly use my computer to log into their student account to see where their class was. I let them do it, but I still had my Facebook account open in the other tab.
They updated my Facebook status to something VERY offensive thinking they were funny, but they forgot to log out of their school account. Once I figured out what they did (thanks to a very furious phone call from my mother), I knew exactly what to do to get revenge. I used their account to drop all of the classes they signed up for. Don’t know what happened after, but it was good revenge.
4. Can He Fix It?
I was working construction one summer, and the “veteran” guy working with me got into a fight with the foreman. He came back to the floor we were working on all angry, pushing things around. We were up on the fourth floor, and windows hadn’t gone in yet. He picks up a huge level and flings it out the window, and about five seconds later says “Nooooo! That was mine”.
5. Watergun Woes
When I was a teenager, I was helping my family clear out our basement, sorting old clothes and toys to donate or dispose of. Me and my brother are horsing around when I spot an absolutely ancient water gun. I pick it up, swiping away cobwebs, and what do you know, water is sloshing around the reservoir. So I pump it a couple of times and spray my little brother directly in his face.
He screams instantly, and not the fun “Haha you sprayed me with water” scream. I immediately knew something was terribly wrong. The water smells like mold and death. It's left over from the last time we played with the guns, which was years ago. He gets a bacterial infection in both eyes, cycles antibiotics, and comes away from it whole. It comes up at every family gathering and it probably will forever.
6. Bad Comeback
I had gotten into a fight with my stepdad when I was 14 and got kicked out of the house. My dad picked me up and was lecturing me about making good decisions. He asked me, "Do you want to grow up to be a loser"? I told him "At least I won't work a bad job and grow up to be like you". The instant it left my mouth, I regretted it.
He even shot back with "Exactly. I want you to be better than me," and I could tell it hurt him. The worst part is that he did everything for me and still does. That conversation pops into my head from time to time and I still feel horrible about it. I did apologize to him later that same day. Regardless, I still think about it and it bothers me that I could say something like that to someone who did nothing but try and make my life infinitely better than his was.
7. Don’t Pee In Someone’s Shoes
When I was in tenth grade, a classmate of mine peed on my shoes. I didn't snap right then and there, but he made fun of my looks a couple of minutes later. I completely lost it, grabbed him by the neck, and slammed his head into a steel beam. In hindsight, I realize that I could have really injured him, but luckily he got away with a bad concussion.
8. Smells Like Teen Spirit
In high school, an older kid used to persecute me purely because I was friends with his friend (my neighbor). They were jocks, I was not. His favorite was to rip my backpack off my back. One day, I was in a super mad mood because of…teenage angst? I don’t remember what, but he came down the hall, calling me names.
I told him to screw off. He laughed and went to grab my bag. It was my final straw. I swung the bag at him, hitting him in the side of the head, and sending him into the lockers with the other side of his head. He was out cold on the floor. Nobody ever snitched on me, and I never had an issue with him again. He was still a prick to everybody else possible but not me.
9. The Smallest Kid
This happened when I was in high school. I had been very ill for a long time, and recovered, but was by far the smallest kid at school. Someone decided it was fun to make fun of me. Hitting me, tripping me, etc. Even managed to trip me to fall down the stairs. The rest of the kids commented about it, but could not do much about it.
One day, during physics, he was branding me with a soldering iron. I told him to stop it, but he just continued. I lost it. I do not know how, but he ended up in hospital with a broken arm, several wounds to his face, and lots of bruises. The other kids all testified that he just fell. I never got in problems again.
10. Hoodie Strings
In 10th grade, I was wearing a brand new hoodie and walking back to my desk the week after Christmas. One kid loved to snatch the drawstrings on my hoodies and yank them. This time he pulled too hard and ripped the hood halfway off. Something snapped in my head. I turned around to see if the teacher was still watching his whiteboard, then I turned back and decked him right in his smirking face.
I hit that dude so hard in the eye that he fell out of his chair and the whole class erupted into laughter. Then I quickly sat back down in my chair and turned around just in time to see the teacher notice the commotion and start berating the kid for clowning around on the ground.
11. Talking Smack
I had some neighborhood kid smaller than me decide he wanted to make fun of me because I was nice and easygoing. I ignored him again and again, until one day I went to get another kid from a small party, and he was there. He jumped the fence when he saw me and started talking smack, to which I shrugged my shoulders and said, “Okay”.
He responds by repeatedly punching me in the stomach. Mind you, I'm bigger than him, have a high pain threshold, and a solid core, so I don't so much as flinch. I grab him by the back of his shirt, turn, and run his head directly into a wooden fence. He turns around with a pained expression and I straight-up punch him in the forehead (bad aim) and walk away while like 10 kids just watch.
I was later told I apparently blinded him for like an hour. He talked to me like a week later and asked me to come over to his house and play Ninja Turtles on Super Nintendo. His mom said, “Isn’t this the kid who hit you”? He said yes, but I said, “It’s okay, he deserved it. We’re fine now”. Then we went and played Turtles in Time like the 90s kids we were.
12. Big Words
I work in hospital security, and we hold a lot of psych patients until they can be transferred to a behavioral facility. This surprisingly strong old man tried to hurt a nurse when she was trying to change his briefs, and I responded first. I was wrestling with the guy and trying to hold him in the bed until backup got there.
He finally calmed down, looked me in the eye, and threatened to hurt me and my wife when he got out of the facility. I knew exactly what to say to put him in his place. I responded, "Big words for a man in a diaper". I've never seen anyone rage harder. The dude genuinely tried his best to hurt me. But thankfully my co-workers got there right afterward and nobody got hurt.
13. Printer Rage
I’m a very peaceful person. I do not freak out and I have never been in a physical fight with anyone, but I was so embarrassed to tell my friends this. This isn’t that crazy, but my old company spoiled me and my new one did not. We had to buy all our own supplies without being reimbursed, which now I completely understand that’s a work-from-home thing, but this was new to me and I did not want to work from home to begin with.
I was really mad that my training documents were 60 pages long and that I had to print them without reimbursement. This was because I had to print like 500 pages of nonsense. I got so mad, I smashed my printer with my foot and kept on smashing it. Then it hurt my foot and cut me, so I threw the whole printer at the wall.
The damage to the wall was pretty minimal, but the printer shattered into like 40,000 pieces and we found more after moving. I thought my boyfriend would be so mad at me but he said, “I’m glad you finally allowed yourself to be mad about something. I don’t care about the printer or the wall. Are you okay”? That’s how I learned it’s okay to be angry once in a while.
14. Get Some Sleep
My oldest son was still a baby and I was a fresh teenage dad. It was the middle of the night and he was screaming. I was sleep deprived and I was getting screamed at in my ear. He was sick and cranky and nothing would help. I went to move him, and his baby fist hit me in the eye or something. Either way, I swatted it away really fast and hard and he cried even louder.
I kept rocking him and crying and holding him even after he fell asleep. I felt so bad. Almost nine years later and I still feel awful about it.
15. Better On Paper
I was in a miserable relationship for seven years with cheating on his end. It was a mess. We had a baby together (happy accident since I love her so much), and he swore up and down everything would be different. That’s when I made a disturbing discovery. I found out he was cheating again. One night, I had been drinking (one of my few nights out) and I woke him up and confronted him.
I’m older and wiser now, but in the moment I was crushed and bawling. I really thought he was going to change his ways. I confronted him and he said, “Who cares, I’m sleeping”. So I punched him in the nose. I know a lot of people would say that he got what was coming to him, but after everything he put me through, I felt sick that I had just lowered myself to his level.
I apologized and never did it again to anyone. I left him not long after and went on to better things, but I will always feel ashamed about it. He went on to make a lot of money, marry a beautiful woman, and have a total of three kids (one per mom). But he’s ill, lost his joint custody of his oldest, lost a lot of custody with our daughter, his middle child, and cheated on his wife.
He could be a millionaire and hate life and himself. I live in a nice single wide with my partner and two kids. I have a chronic illness and we have very little to our name. On paper, he went up and I went down. But I laugh every day, my children love and like me and they know I adore them, my partner is kind and patient and loves me and I’m respected as a mom and person by those that know me. He can keep his sauna.
16. Babies Just Cry
My kid had colic. She’d scream from noon to midnight. No amount of walking, shushing, gripe water, feeding, changing, burping, or change of scenery helped. We were told, “Babies just cry”. One day, she started screaming and I lost it. I had been up all night with her, so I’m exhausted. My husband is at work. I’m alone in a foreign country with no one to reach out to for support.
I just wanted her to be quiet. I NEEDED her to be quiet. The anger, the helplessness, the desperation I felt at that moment was terrifying. I forced myself to lay her down in her crib and walk away because I knew I’d do something terrible if I didn’t. I walked out of my apartment, sat down in front of the door so no one could get in, called my husband, and told him in no uncertain terms that I was not okay and I needed him home NOW.
After I hung up, I took a deep breath, walked back inside, and held my screaming infant until my husband got home. In the end, she’s fine, I’m fine, we’re all fine. I did what they tell you to do: put them down in a safe place and walk away. I have never been to the absolute breaking point again in my life. I can’t explain it to anyone who hasn’t been in that place. I wouldn’t be able to explain it to myself if I hadn’t been there.
17. New Charger
My husband’s laptop had a broken charger for years. While I was using it, it totally broke. The laptop won't charge anymore and he claimed I broke it. I was like, this thing was broken for years, we all knew this would happen one day. He still said it was my fault so I ordered two new laptops. One for him and one for me. I'm not sure what I was trying to prove here, but I'm almost $2,000 poorer now.
18. And The Oscar Goes To…
So my dad and I got into an argument when I was six years old, so I wrote my very specific, very rare first name across the side of his brand new car with a stone. When he asked me if I’d done it, I of course denied it profusely. I am talking Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice level of acting. I should’ve won an Oscar for it.
His reaction was unforgettable. He sort of laughed and said, “You’re telling me someone else came up to my car and scratched your name across it”? I denied it for a whole afternoon while, in fairness to him, my father giggled to himself. I couldn’t figure out why he was giggling. Surely he was going to skin me alive later and wear me around town on a cold evening.
He said he couldn’t help laughing because the lie was so ludicrous but I stuck by it so resolutely that it was one of the funniest situations he’d ever been in. He KNEW he should punish me, but it was also so marvelous he couldn’t bring himself to be angry. I’m nearly 36. Every time he gets a new car now he says “You’re not mad at me for something, are you”? before he shows it to me. I guess I earned that.
19. Hit The Gas
When I was about eight or nine, my mum was talking to my teacher. She worked at the school and wanted to talk about something, so they sent me to wait in the car. Off I trot with the keys and get into the driver's seat. It was an automatic. I turned the car on and put it in reverse. And the car starts rolling. I panicked, tried to hit the brake, but my mom had put a steering wheel lock around the brake pedal.
So I hit the accelerator instead and the car went into another teacher's car. Did a few thousand dollars’ worth of damage to the other car. My mom still works at the school, and I visited a few years ago. She said, “We have to go see Mrs. M”! We get there, Mrs. M. sees me, smiles and turns to tell the story to her entire grade five class. There's no ego hit quite like having a room full of 10-year-olds laughing at you.
20. Get The Tattoo
My parents approved a very invasive, unnecessary surgery for me when I was a child, and the ultimate results still affect me to this day. When I was 19, my mother found out I was getting a tattoo somehow and started berating me about it. The tattoo was really important to me, and I felt like I was reclaiming my body as my own through that gesture.
I was naturally furious with her. I pulled up my shirt, showed her the four-inch hideous scar she had agreed to put on my body, and said, "Yeah mom, it would be a real shame if I permanently disfigured my body with a tattoo". She cried.
21. Good Friends
I worked on a college campus a long time ago, and we were having some retreat over the summer where they dropped like 200 kids off to stay for a few days. Lots of problems were being caused by them not respecting anything and just being stupid kids. I was getting super annoyed with them, especially since I worked in the library, and they would not shut up.
Anyway, fast forward to like, day three. I leave work and see my car covered in branches, leaves, and other floral debris. I was seeing red, looked at the kids across the street in the commons yard, and just unleashed myself upon them. I yelled so loud I was echoing across campus. The vein in my forehead pounding so hard my ears burned.
The kids were scared, I was mad, and my boss was so concerned that he asked if I needed to take tomorrow off to cool down. I told him I was fine, but these kids were on my last nerve. Anyway, like five years later, I was telling one of my best friends this story, and he dropped a bombshell on me. It wasn't the kids.
It was him and a fellow friend of ours. They wanted to prank me since they knew the kids were driving me crazy. I probably stared at him for like two solid minutes before saying "I told those kids if I caught them anywhere near my car, it would be the last thing they'd do". Then I started laughing. He definitely got me.
22. The Importance Of Sleep
Back when I was 18, I was single-handedly keeping the household afloat. I was working two jobs and taking 22 credits at school. I was taking care of my younger sisters pretty much completely. Taking them to the doctor, dentist, orthodontist, therapist, school back and forth, helping with homework, going to parent-teacher conferences, going to volunteering obligations, making all of their meals, cleaning the house, grocery shopping, taking care of the pets, all of the laundry, everything.
Then on top of that, I was also taking care of our mother. Taking her to and from doctors, bringing her meds and meals, begging her to get out of bed and go on a walk or at least sit on the deck for a little sun. I was getting about two to five hours of sleep at night. I was burning out fast. My little sister (13 at the time) wasn’t helping with anything.
I could see she was going down a dark path and it was making things more difficult. I felt so helpless because I could keep the household running but I couldn’t help her. One day I was begging her to just take the trash out of her room. Not even clean the room, just take the trash out. There was food in there that was rotting and making it smell.
I just couldn’t find the time to do it for her. It ended up turning into a massive blowout fight. At the end, she said “Well, maybe I should just leave,” and before I had even fully processed what she said, I replied, “Well, it would certainly make things easier for me”! I didn’t sleep more than 45 minutes at a time for almost a month after that. I just kept going into her room to check on her and make sure she was still there and hadn’t done anything.
My sister is doing better now but I can never forget what I said and I will never be able to forgive myself for it.
23. Careful At The Cookout
I was made fun of by a kid in high school every day. I got physical with him a few times but he wouldn't let up, and I hated his guts. We went to different colleges, and I never saw him again. A few months into my second year of college, I was at a family cookout and a woman I didn't know mentioned he had died in a car crash a month or so before.
It was like a weight lifted off my shoulders hearing that, and I kind of laughed in relief. I let it all out—and it turned into a nightmare. She asked me what that was about, and I explained and said I wasn't sorry it had happened. I was being honest, he was a bad guy and made me extremely depressed and was the main factor in my anxiety at the time. Well, there was one thing that I didn’t know.
The woman I was talking to was his mom.
24. Hey Batter!
My friend’s husband entered my bedroom after my husband at the time left for work. They stayed the night due to a power outage in their neighborhood. He came into my room before daylight to use our bathroom. He had another to go to, but didn't. Long story short, he started touching me. In the moment I froze—but later, I got revenge.
Later in the day, I confronted him about it with my husband and my friend there. I insisted that I could handle it. I went inside, grabbed my son’s bat, and walked back out. I told him to look at me and that he had one chance to admit what he did. Let me tell you when he said “I don't know what you're talking about,” I swung with all of my might when he got to “you're”.
It felt like slow motion. His watch flew off and I broke his arm. Not just broke, snapped both his ulna and radius. Had he not run, I'd have crushed his skull. I have no regrets and I would 100% do it all over again. I never heard from either again. A mutual friend told me about his arm. I relayed that if I ever saw or heard from him again we would both be locked away.
25. Trying Their Best
When I was 14 years old, I was a super unruly kid. I lived with my mom who was poor. She kicked me out for spring break and told me I had to live with my dad to help straighten out my behavior. I told her that actually, I’m just going to live with dad for good. He was wealthier and I wanted a better situation for myself.
My mom couldn’t understand why I had chosen my dad over her and convinced herself that I didn’t love her and I was being selfish. I was being selfish. But I loved her so much and still do. She used to write me letters saying she missed me and asking why I didn’t love her anymore, and it made me not want to talk to her as much because it was a major guilt trip.
Well, she got back into drinking and she died a year later. I still think she left this world without me ever letting her know how much I love her, and it’s really heartbreaking. Never be short with your parents. They’re always trying their best even if they’re not the best.
26. Allegedly
As a 15-year-old, I allegedly stomped on another kid's leg over and over till it broke because he stole and ruined my little sister's bike. We were very poor and the bike was the first thing my little sister had gotten that wasn't a hand-me-down. He didn't deserve that and my total loss of control. It could have been one of my worst moments. Allegedly.
27. Sink Or Swim
As a child and preteen, I was on a year-round swim team. It was two or three hours a day, five days a week practice, then meets on the weekends. There was another swimmer, a few years older than me, that made fun of me constantly along with a couple of his friends. I would get tripped, slammed into lockers, whipped with wet towels, and much more.
One day when I was around 10, they were going at it yet again. Of course, there were no coaches or other adults around. After being chased, knocked down, spit on, slammed against a locker, and more, I took refuge in a bathroom stall, standing on the toilet so he could not reach me. The group of them were banging on the door and really whooping it up.
I snapped. I did the only thing my prepubescent brain could think of: I peed on him. I aimed my peashooter at the crack between the door and divider. I then fired off a golden shower that would win an award. My hot spray covered him from head to toe. As you can imagine, the laughs turned into screams. Of course, they immediately tried to point to me as the aggressor to the coach but several other onlookers set them straight.
My "punishment" was to change for two weeks in a separate area. His? Kicked off the team. Strangely enough, nobody picked on me after that anymore.
28. Keep It Casual
In high school, I was staying the night at my girlfriend's house because we were going to see a concert the next day and it was a long drive. We were meeting up with almost a dozen of our friends and we had all been excited about it for ages. As we're lying in bed the night before, she hits me with the “I love you” for the first time.
My 17-year-old brain didn't want to ruin the concert the next day, so I just said it back even though I didn't feel it. I thought we were a casual thing, nothing too serious. Suddenly that “casual” relationship felt pretty serious, and I broke her heart when I ended it a couple of months later. I really shouldn't have said it.
29. The One
I broke it off with a fiancée last fall. "A fiancée" is putting it lightly, she was the one. My mental health began to consume me over the last few years, and eventually, it got to the point where my paranoia was telling me that she was hurting me and slowing me down. I am so thankful for the time we did have together, and I've accepted that I'll never have her back. What an amazing woman though.
30. Out Of The Frying Pan
I am a very "you should never hit people" kind of person. This being said, I did have one incident where I lost it in the heat of the moment. I hit my boyfriend's friend with a frying pan that I was cooking eggs with. He was one of those people who no one liked. Even my boyfriend didn't like him, he was just hanging out with him for "old time’s sake”. He was constantly mean to me despite me trying to be civil with him.
I can't even remember what he did, but it was the kind of thing that would make most people black out with rage. Despite the oil burns and bruises, he never pressed charges. My boyfriend said that he didn't because he was afraid to admit a girl beat him up. This kind of upsets me because I am against the stereotypes that men face that make them afraid to come forward as victims. I had so many mixed feelings about it. I was disappointed in myself, but also he sucks.
31. Hey Mom!
In my early teens, my friend was over. We were playing video games and he was mad that he lost and said something about my mom being fat. Later, she walks down the stairs into the living room and I immediately say, “Mom, James said you’re fat”! She has and does struggle with her weight and body image. The look of sadness in her eyes. Poor woman.
32. From The Heart
When I was 11, my older brother (16) and I were fighting over who was going to do the dishes that night. Now, my brother had a heart condition from birth. My mom told me that my brother's heart had two chambers and one pump and was facing backward. There were multiple times in his life when he was in severe danger, especially before the age of two. Through multiple catheterizations and procedures, he made it to 16.
The night we had our fight was the night before a routine catheterization. In a fit of anger, I screamed at him, "I hope you don't survive". It’s the moment in my life that I regret the most. Little did I know that just two days later I was going to be getting what I wished for, and I never got to say how sorry or stupid I was for saying it. That was 17 years ago this year.
Not a day goes by that I don't regret what I said.
33. Vacuum That Up
Back in college, I walked in on my boyfriend cheating on me. I grabbed the nearest thing, which was a giant Dyson vacuum, and pitched it at them. I got them both in one shot. It felt good in the moment, but afterward, I felt bad. Not because they were both bleeding, but because it was a really nice vacuum that I had spent good money on.
34. Hear Her Out
My wife started crying in the middle of the night saying that she thought she didn't love me anymore. I was really tired and had to wake up early for work the next day, so I asked if it was the same complaints she's always had. When she nodded, I was so irritated that I said I wasn't going to change into the person she wanted me to be.
She left the bedroom and asked for a divorce about a month later. If I could go back and change one night of my life, that would be it. It probably wouldn't have saved our marriage, but at the very least, I should've heard her out. And that mistake just lurks in the back of my head always.
35. Crystal Ball
I work in medical research for a client notorious in the industry for being incredibly rude. They continuously pin their deficiencies on another team and often yell at us. It's unbearable. This week, their global project leader was reading me a letter about items they knew we asked about but never gave us, as well as information that we didn’t know. I couldn’t hold back any longer.
I told her, "I left my crystal ball at home so I wasn't aware of this communication, and if you sent it to us, the pony hasn't arrived carrying it yet". Needless to say, our directorship level laughed at it because they recognize this client is terrible but brings money in the door.
Public Domain Pictures
36. Twinning
Not the worst thing I've done, but this was an awful foot-in-mouth moment that is seared into my brain. I had an extremely embarrassing conversation with a distant cousin who happened to be adopted, unbeknownst to me. When she stopped to visit, my mom introduced us via FaceTime and we went through family photos.
She, unfortunately, came across a photo of my mom and I, to which I awkwardly blurted, "I look nothing like my mom, but I am my dad's twin. You'll have to see a picture of him. At least you'd know I wasn't adopted". It made sense in my mind since I am the only fair-skinned individual in my family aside from my dad, but I suddenly regretted it when she said, "You know I'm adopted, right"?
No, I did not know. Somebody definitely should have mentioned that beforehand.
37. Get It Right The First Time
At work, our project management team undercut and mismanaged a project so badly. They wanted to get minimum viable products out, so they made them cheaply with the goal to roll out improvements later. The product was released and they all patted themselves on the back and moved on. Then that minimum viable product broke.
In a meeting we had with our directors about the broken product and how to fix it, I asked, "How come we couldn't afford to do it right, but we can afford to do it twice"? No regrets.
38. Physical Damage
I worked in cellphone sales for a few years. A woman came in with a fairly new flip phone (this was 2018, we just still sold them). She was complaining because one of the sides of the screen was dangling off. She said she didn't do anything, it just snapped, and demanded a new phone. I told her, “That looks like physical damage, and we don't have any coverage for that since you didn't buy a phone protection warranty".
She insisted it wasn't physical damage and the phone just sucks and broke itself. She started freaking out and calling me all kinds of names and swinging her phone in my face. Then the top half of the phone LITERALLY snapped off and landed on the counter in front of me. I just looked her in the eyes and said: "Well, that was definitely physical damage".
She lost it at my comment and it was weirdly satisfying.
39. No Critiques
I didn’t realize the nature of my comment when I wrote it, but in high school, one of my teachers did end-of-the-year anonymous evaluations. Everyone hated him, and I understood why, but I still did well in his class. I wrote, “I don’t have any critiques about your teaching, but I think you should work on being a better person”.
40. At Your Desk
I was in the fifth grade in the mid-90s. The teacher was going to read to us and as a treat, we were allowed to sit ON our desks. Well, the kid next to me, named Keith, decided to place his hand on my desk as I was attempting to climb on top. Finding a human hand where there should have only been a desk startled me, of course.
Without thinking I shoved the already-perched-on-his-desk Keith with more force than was apparently necessary to get my displeasure across. But the force wasn’t the only problem. The thing is, the hand Keith placed under me, happened to be attached to the only arm he had. See, Keith had a birth defect and was born with only one arm, which I didn’t know.
As such, the image of Keith attempting to regain balance, with one normal arm, and one “stub” fruitlessly flapping in the air, will be forever burned into my mind. Like a baby bird, attempting to save itself from falling out of the nest. Keith hit the floor and immediately started crying. Permanent damage to anyone? No. A permanently jarring memory? Absolutely.
41. Love Letter
In my freshman year of college, there was a girl in our summer teen theater group that had a crush on me. And for whatever reason, I wasn't really into her. There was nothing wrong with her, I just didn't reciprocate. She sent me a love letter and it was pretty self-deprecating, and she had clearly put a lot of work into it.
One of our other friends took it and read it out loud and I just let her. To this day, probably one of my biggest regrets is that I never got to apologize to that girl.
42. Watch The Remote
I once threw my Apple remote at my TV out of anger because Hulu skipped my paused playback of a hockey game I had waited all week for and ruined the game. Well, I paid for it—literally. My significant other was upset because it was the weekend and we were without a TV, so I immediately bought the biggest TV possible at the nearby Target that night to atone for myself.
Now we had a huge 75-inch flatscreen that we didn’t need. After hours of furiously trying to set up and mount the behemoth, it became immediately clear with just a few minutes of watching that the TV was too big and close for the small apartment living room and we were stuck with it.
43. What’s My Line
I was in an acting class in college, and we were doing a scene where a couple was having a big drawn-out fight. Multiple pairs went through the scene, and I studied it pretty hard, so I knew all the lines. We're about halfway through our performance when my partner clearly forgets what her line is. And because everyone was doing that scene, they could tell she had forgotten, as well.
Her next line was supposed to be: "Well, I'm sorry I asked"! I'm not usually a quick thinker on my feet, but I just filled the second or two of awkward silence with "I bet you're sorry you asked, huh!"? And continued on with my lines. Not overly cool per se, but the class and professor loved it and all laughed. Probably the only quick-witted thing I've ever done in my life.
44. Suspended
Back in high school, I was a slow fat kid. For PE, we'd jog about a kilometer to the beach, have a swimming lesson, then jog back. I was the last one back to the school grounds and the teacher was standing at the gate. He told me that cause I was too slow, he was going to lock the gate and I'd have to jog to the next one.
I said that I'd consider him locking me out of school grounds to be a suspension and just go home. He let me in straight away. I kind of wished he'd tried calling my bluff so I could have followed through and just gone home.
45. Feeling Froggy?
I knew a big burly former Marine from Iraq who was back stateside, this huge mountain of a man. We came to face each other in one of the narrow corridors of the office where one of us was gonna have to turn sideways. Neither of us turned, but we stopped. I'm six-foot-one, 260 pounds, and he still towered over me.
He was a nice guy, but still a little on edge from being in the army. He looked me in the eye and said, "You feeling froggy"? It truly was like something out of a movie. Without blinking I replied, "You better jump". We both cracked up and turned sideways, while the office breathed a collective sigh of relief.
46. Spellcheck
I am a fourth-grade teacher. One day, I was up at the board and struggling to remember how to spell a particular word. I was trying to make light of it, telling the kids that sometimes adults need help with spelling too. I should’ve known never to give a kid an opening for a sick burn. One student replied, “It is because you were poorly educated. But don’t worry, we are poorly educated too”. Double whammy.
47. Genius Idea
I was about 14 years old at school with my sister who was 16 at the time. I had been learning how to wrestle at a couple of gyms since I was eight, mainly for exercise but also for self-defense. Anyway, in steps a mean kid from my sister's class. My sister has red hair, and at the time, was on the heavier side, so she was made fun of often.
This kid thought it was a genius idea to throw a sizeable rock at my sister's head. He was accurate. It hit her head quite hard and she fell to the ground, unconscious. I confronted him, not realizing how bad of a place my sister was in, until I heard "She's bleeding"! I turned to see a lot of blood trickling from my sister's head, then turned back to the kid and blacked out.
When I came to, my hand and knee felt like they had been sliced open. There was blood all over my uniform and the kid was on the ground looking, well, not like he did before. I had done enough damage that he required multiple surgeries and will forever have a speech problem. I cost my parents a lot of money in legal and medical fees, but they never blamed me.
I got expelled from school and had years of therapy because I was considered aggressive. The kid never returned to school. However, I did catch up with him some five years later to give the apology I never got to give him. He was a complete shell of a person and that broke me down pretty badly. I regret that day to my core.
48. A Messy Mistake
My childhood friend died when I was about 20. He liked my drawings, so I wrote him a goodbye letter on the back of one of my drawings. He had been cremated, and I found myself alone in a room with the urn, so I opened it up. His ashes were in a bag, so I stuffed the drawing down alongside the bag, thinking that way I could hide it from his family. Big mistake.
When I did that, the bag ripped and I got his ashes all over my hands. I brushed off what I could into the urn but had to wash some of him down the sink. It was awful and I’m still guilty about it decades later.
49. Mosquito Season
I haven’t done anything like this since or before, but I had a moment when I was being harassed at school in grade five by a small jerk kid who just wouldn’t shut up with teasing and everything for a few years. I had been in school with him since grade one and he was always taking shots at me. I’ve always been on the tall and big side of kids.
This guy was small but he was like a mosquito, he just would harass everyone whenever he could. No matter how many times I asked him to stop or leave me alone, he kept on doing it day after day. One day I was grabbing my stuff from my locker and he came over and started harassing me for no reason. I told him to stop or I was gonna ram his head through the lockers cause I had enough.
He mocked and started poking me saying I was weak and wouldn’t do it. I snapped and I did. I picked him up by both arms like a cartoon and threw him into the lockers. I remember he looked absolutely terrified. I dented the locker I rammed his head into knocking him clean out. He came to, had a big bump but didn’t bleed or anything.
The locker was caved in completely, and I remember the first thought I had was I hoped he was okay. I got into trouble even though it was the first time I had done anything like that and I had been harassed for years. I felt terrible because he was so tiny compared to me and I destroyed him. He never said a word to me in harassment again and kept clear of me. He would get super quiet whenever I was around.
I have never been aggressive like that again and I always take the passive route since then. I remember how terrified he looked, the power I had over him when I thought he had taken that power from me for all those years. I should have NEVER done that to him, but I was a child and didn’t know how to get my power and dignity back.
The incident has made me realize how strong I actually am and I didn’t like unleashing it in anger like that. Sticks with me to this day and I’m almost 40.
50. Trouble At The Lake
When my sister was in high school in the early 2000s, she was hanging out with a rougher crowd. The crowd she usually hung out with didn't do much harm, they just skipped a lot of school. The worst thing any of her real friends did was take his mom's car at night to pick up his girlfriend and go to the lake. Pretty standard rebel teen stuff.
However, one of those friends had an older brother, let's call him Daniel. Let’s just say Daniel was a pretty unhinged dude. Plus, he's a 20-something hanging out with teenagers. They're all hanging out at the lake, sitting in the trunk of his car, and he's hitting on my sister. She was super uncomfortable and this dude was not taking no for an answer.
Daniel, being a hick in the south, was walking around shirtless. He also happened to have a piercing in his nipple. He finally leans over, grabs my sister's head, and tries to kiss her. My sister panics, obviously. So she does what any reasonable person would do: grabs his nipple ring and yanks as hard as she can. She ripped the ring right out.
He falls off of the trunk, screaming. My sister books it back to her car and drives home. She gets home and my mom goes "What’s that on your hand"? She still had the nipple ring on her finger, and a ton of blood obviously. This inspired my sister to hang out with a better crowd.
Sources: Reddit,
