All kids and young people make stupid mistakes at least once in their lives, as that’s basically what childhood is for. Unfortunately, not all mistakes are as easily fixed or forgotten as a shattered vase, a quick trip to the hospital or a telling off at work. Courtesy of Reddit, here are some stories of people whose youthful indiscretions have gone on to haunt them all the way into adulthood.


1. An extended holiday

I pretended to be sick after Thanksgiving break when I was 14 because I didn’t want to go back to school. I kept the con up for so long that it resulted in the removal of my gallbladder.

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To make sure I never forget what I did, the doctor ended up botching my surgery and he paralyzed my stomach in the process. Now I’m really sick with what I pretended to be sick with in the first place.

Ackermace

2. Ears in the cold

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When I was about 11 or 12 I had a cold and as a child, I’d had otitis a few times. It was winter and I was outside without anything covering my head and ears. My mum told me to put something on otherwise I would get otitis again. I didn’t. That night I woke up with unbelievable pain in my left ear.

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I was awake all night, crying from the pain, I even tried to sneak out of bed to find painkillers but whatever it was that I found it did not help. Eventually, the pain went away but so did parts of my hearing. Never told my mum about it. I still have hearing loss in my left ear.

DenyEverythingTA

3. An unceremonious break-up

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Asking out my crush. We dated for like two weeks then my parents found out. They called me names such as dumb, idiot, crazy. Told me I was too young to know what love was. They forced me to break up with her. When school started again, I didn’t know what to say to her so I hoped she would say something first to me.

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That didn’t happen and we haven’t spoken since the text I sent her saying we were breaking up. I was afraid to like a girl all of high school and now I’m an adult who can barely talk to girls.

BruhWhyTho

4. Going with dad

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I was taken from my mom at age ten and put into foster care. After a while, social services found my dad, who left right after I was born and who I had never met. Eventually, I was asked who I wanted to live with, my dad or my mom.

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I said my dad because I had always wanted one and being torn from my mom basically severed our bond through trama. It turns out he and my stepmom were terrible people and I ended up having to run away. It still haunts me to think who I would have been had I chosen my mom. Now I’m estranged from them all.

Emmalemma_dingdong

5. Medically induced mania

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I was prescribed Adderall for most of my teens, but later I was diagnosed as bipolar. My disorder is under control now but maybe if I hadn’t been prescribed a substance that kept me up at night all the time I wouldn’t have been having such intense manic episodes.

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I’m not debating whether or not the medications caused me to be bipolar, as I was definitely going to develop it. It’s just that adding a stimulant to the mix definitely didn’t help.

SuperSaiyanSkeletor

6. Braced for the consequences

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I didn’t wear my retainer. My parents spent thousands on braces and I was too young to think about the consequences of not keeping up with my retainer.

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I am now looking into getting Invisalign to put them back when I already had straight teeth! Not only that, but all the money my parents spent to fix my teeth essentially went down the drain.

HungryKnitter

7. No good deed goes unpunished

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I picked someone up that was 100+ pounds heavier than me and ripped discs in my back. They had to be fused and the surgery was considered “failed” as it did not really help the pain, and I’ve been in pain management ever since.

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I’d like to say the moral of the story is “don’t pick up big people” but she was old and weak from cancer and I couldn’t leave her on the ground in the snow where she fell. I was 27 when it happened, I’m 46 now.

Batata_Salgado

8. Taking the long, hard road

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I got pregnant at 15. I had to drop out of school, but I got my GED, and then I focused on my kid. Almost eight years later, I moved out of my parent’s house and last month I married the love of my life. It’s nice to finally be a parent without someone trying to parent me at the same time.

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I’m working on my second college degree now, and I have a job that I absolutely love, and life is getting better. I’ll be 34 when she turns 18. My life will never be what I envisioned, but it’s totally worth it. But holy heck has it been rough, and it’s only started to get better the last few years.

grimm_reapers

9. Forced out of the family

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When my parents separated while I was in high school, I moved out. I was 14, my sister was 15, and my brother was 12. There was a lot of drugs, fighting, and other things.

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I couldn’t handle it anymore, but my siblings never moved out. It’s a few years later now and mom’s back, everyone’s at home, it’s a happy family with no room for me.

Savjsspam

10. Skateboarding in the rain

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I had a skateboarding accident in 1974 on a hilly street in Encino, California. It was drizzling and I was 15 years old and showing off in front of my cousins. We were at my Aunt’s house for dinner. I was making a swooping turn on a steep part of the street and I landed square on my face and shattered my front teeth.

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Since then I’ve had decades of dental work, root canals and dental implants. All the work stemming from the damage caused that evening. Today at age 61 I’ve had two years without any procedures related to the accident. A record.

ViaHuerto

11. Making conversation

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Not making it a point to work on my social skills when I was younger. I was a bit of a loner in school, really shy, and I just decided not to try and make friends, even though it’s easier to make friends when you’re a kid and not when you’re an adult.

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Now I struggle to make conversation with coworkers without feeling immense levels of anxiety. I worry that without this skill I’ll never really get ahead.

Nnenrs

12. Friends, your chosen family

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Not fully valuing my family, and seeing my friends as more important. I have none of those childhood friends aside from one today, and my mother unexpectedly passed two years ago from an unknown brain aneurysm.

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I probably annoy my little cousins about how important family and making time for family is now. I’ll never make that mistake again.

illuminateandthrive

13. Forgetting the side-effects

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From the ages of 16 to 23 or so, I was on the depo shot for birth control. None of my doctors ever brought up that I should only be on it for a few years at a time because of some side effects like bone loss.

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I have broken bones that are now leading to what I suspect will be lifelong issues. I had surgery on my wrist after fracturing it in late 2019 and experience pretty frequent pain when I move my wrist or hand just slightly wrong.

BrownEyed_Squrrels

14. A more exciting life

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As a kid, I couldn’t stop lying about things I had done because I was so worried people would lose interest in me if I didn’t seem super interesting. Then I lost track of my lies and couldn’t stop. I ended up burning bridges with a lot of awesome people that I may have been great friends with, with who we shared so many commonalities, awesome personalities, people I genuinely liked.

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I literally have no friends now and have trouble even being able to hold conversations with anyone anymore. I did it to myself, and I regret it so much that I have dreams about things turning out differently all the time. It sucks, and if I could go back in time, I’d grab younger me’s tongue immediately and tell me people liked me and wanted to be my friend, even if I felt like I was boring or not pretty enough.

TastelessAlien

15. Struggling to sleep

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I used to stay up all night and watch TV with my dad when I was four years old. Now I’m 28 and having extreme difficulties in life because I’m not able to stay on any kind of sleep schedule.

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Literally, I might be getting fired in around ten hours because I’m constantly late to work due to exhaustion, but I don’t even know if I’ll be conscious when it happens.

Revenge-of-the-user

16. Too hard in the gym

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I sprained my ankle on a treadmill when I was 13 and I was too stubborn to let it heal properly.

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So now, nearly 15 years later, I can’t walk until like ten In the morning a couple of times a month because my ankle is still a wee bit ruined.

OneMoreLateArrival

17. Spending without limits

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I got into a bad situation with car finance and credit card debt. I was in an unhealthy relationship and it manifested through spending. Luckily one of my family members bailed me out and allowed me to pay them back, saving me thousands in interest and several years of my life back.

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I’m with someone really great now, who has helped me to budget and I’m doing much better. I will be debt-free by September, total debt was $39k.

tablemoth

18. Asleep at the wheel

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I was working 40 hours a week while still in High School, which led to my grades plummeting right as I was saving for college, but also to me being exhausted all the time.

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After six months of non-stop work, I fell asleep behind the wheel and crashed. I lost my leg in the wreck, and have had to learn to adjust.

Mr-Bratt60

19. Atheistic tendencies

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My parents raised me to be a Christian. I got baptized into the religion when I was 13. When I was 26 I realized I didn’t believe in the religion anymore and left.

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Now my entire family including my parents, sister and former social circle from the religion shun me. It’s hard to build a new social circle from scratch.

thejomsjohns

20. No running in the house

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Playing tag in the house. I was like either five or six, I’m 40 now for reference, and chasing my cousin up the stairs full throttle in our house when someone swung open a door. I ran headfirst into the edge of the door so hard and fast I was instantly out and don’t remember much after that except what my mother has told me.

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They thought I had severe brain damage from the amount of force my forehead kissed the door with. I woke up 13hrs later and have memory problems, I can’t remember a lot of my childhood, problems remembering other things, and a visible scar that’s never gone away and a permanent indent in my skull from it.

ScruffyGrouch

21. Farm work is hard work

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I started working on a farm when I was 16 and worked there for nearly ten years. The way we sort of crouched over to pick herbs for six to 12 hours a day screwed up my spine.

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I have trouble standing for more than ten minutes now. I also now understand why my grandmother, who worked on farms for more than 50 years pops painkillers like candy.

AmLikelyDrunk

22. No sports after school

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After finishing college, I stopped playing sports. I’ve always been a bit on the stockier side, but through high school and college I was very active in several team sports, soccer, volleyball, floor hockey, so I had a lot of muscle on me too. I didn’t do any kind of exercise (beyond just moving around for work + walking my dog twice a day) for 12 long years. I grew fat, unhealthy, and in poor shape.

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I’ve been trying to work on that, but even when I could go to the gym I would be exhausted after 30 minutes of light exercise. I have hopes that I can at least be healthy (as I work to build up my endurance and tolerance for longer workouts), but I doubt I’ll ever be in the shape I was when I was in my teens/early 20s. And it’s entirely my fault too. I got lazy and I’ll be paying for it for the rest of my life.

partofbreakfast

23. Everything but the bed

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I got suspended for what had to be like the fourth time that school year and my dad took everything away from me, including my name.

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For a month I couldn’t have anything in my room but my book bag and my bed and that I wouldn’t be Brandy I would be called Can’t Get Right. I’m 37 years old and they are still calling me can’t get right.

OsageBrownBetty

24. Turn it down

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I listened to music way too loudly. I’m 37 now and I absolutely need hearing aids, after spending my teenage years and early adulthood blasting my music too loud.

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I’m not deaf, but if there is even slight background noise, everything sounds incredibly muffled. Sometimes I have to ask people to repeat themselves three to four times.

Call_Me_Fingerling

25. Not reading the fine print

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I played in bands in high school and got very good very quickly. Signed two record deals before I even graduated. Hated the two “boss” band members and had a horrible time on tour and recording our feature-length debut. Had a mutual split after summer tour and was sent a release agreement from the label. Asked my dad for help or to have a lawyer look at it. I was only 18. His response: “You’re an adult now, you can figure it out.”

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I was gullible and thought former bandmates were looking out for me. They convinced me to not pursue publishing royalties and offered a bigger split on CD sales. Turns out that the label recoups expenses via album sales while publishing goes straight to the songwriters. I was paid $1,000 on an album that sold nearly half a million copies. I still to this day don’t know how much was “stolen” from me but I always assumed it was at least $100K-$200K… in 2005-2006 dollars.

chiboulevards

26. Studying for spite

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Going to a very expensive out of state college just to spite my parents and get away from them. My dad was offering me a $40 an hour part-time job, and a place to live for free to pay for my college.

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Instead I said, you don’t want me to live my life the way I want to, then go away! I went to a college 2000 miles away and took out a $140,000 student loan.

Certain_Cup533

27. Turning down a full ride

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Turned down a full ride to a D1 school, 50% athletic, 50% academic, because it was a thousand miles away from my HS sweetheart and I didn’t want to play soccer in “hot weather”. Turned it down and went to a nearby private D3 college paying 36k/year.

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I broke up with my boyfriend before I even graduated HS. Graduated college almost ten years ago and still (literally) paying for that choice. 18-year-olds can be so stupid.

Fit-ish-mom

28. The cycle of spending

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Overspending. Got a credit card as soon as I turned 18. It had a limit of £5000 and I was not financially responsible.

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Cut a long story short, more credit cards, horrible cycle of debt, had to dig myself out of it. I got out of debt at 32, lived pay check to pay check for a while. I’m 37 now and this year is first year of my life I have savings.

jennyrob66

29. Spending the fun money

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Not saving money from my teen jobs. I always felt my money was “fun money” so I never learned to budget or save as I spent my money as quickly as I earned it. I am working on it now as an adult, but obviously with adult responsibilities, bills, and unexpected expenses it became more challenging than teen me thought to dig myself out of the financial hole.

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Teach your kids about finances! At 21 I didn’t have any idea how credit cards or credit worked, thought that credit card balances just reset every month to zero, I couldn’t fathom how else people could rack up 30+ thousand dollars in credit card debt, I was pretty screwed when I maxed out my first credit card and then couldn’t use it again the next month without paying the balance.

neokittychat

30. Eat your greens

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It is SO HARD to defeat a lifetime of bad habits when you’re in your adulthood and already feeling the effects of ill health from years of bad eating habits. And no I don’t just mean “force them to eat their veggies” and thus just create a totally negative relationship with healthy food.

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You have to find ways to make their importance clear and introduce new ways of eating healthy. Don’t just feed a kid whatever they want whenever they want. I see that SO much and the end result is not good.

kpsdarlin

31. Raising the roof

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At the age of five after being told I wasn’t allowed to climb on the house roof but smart me decides that nobody said I wasn’t allowed on the garage roof and then proceeded to take the direct route back to earth, as a result of the head injury among other things I developed epilepsy.

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Fast forward 30 years I’m now recovering from my four broken backs during seizures in eight years, six fractured vertebrae and one burst vertebrae, but on a positive note, I just finished my first week back at work since the latest injury in October.

part-timecreep

32. Why pick just one path?

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I suppose this is something I technically didn’t do but I never picked a career path, so now I’ve got a cv the length of my arm.

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The CV is made up of various jobs and education that span over three countries, 18 years and with little to no recent experience, due to taking care of my son and helping my ex-husband through education for his career path. I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.

 

33. Dropping a diagnosis

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I asked my mother if I could get tested for ADHD as I had looked up the symptoms and noticed that I checked a lot of the boxes. She said “hahaha honey you don’t have that!” and I was like she is probably right, and I never brought it up again.

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If I had pushed a little harder and explained the symptoms I had, maybe I wouldn’t be suffering the consequences of going through high school with two un-diagnosed learning disabilities, which have led to anxiety, depression, and a general, non-wavering feeling of existential worthlessness.

p4tr0clu2

34. Never work with animals or pet owners

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I’m a 20 yr vet tech. I still love the animals, but I’ve stopped loving my job as much. The animals are the best part of my day, but they’re not all I have to deal with.

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Years of low pay, no benefits and heaps of abuse from clients have made me bitter about the choice I made to stay in this career.

RebeccaX

35. Studying or social life?

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Got straight As in high school because I was not only smart but also highly introverted with no friends, nothing to do but study and watch TV. Parents crooned over me, said I was a genius and the world would be mine when I grew up.

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In college I had an actual social life and came through with a flat B average, have had a decent career but nothing remarkable, and have never shaken off the feeling of being an underachieving slacker as an adult.

Sparkythewondersnail

36. Inescapable calculations

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Rejecting math class. I never cared about math but once I graduated I found out that ALL college courses in my country toss math in because every course has either business or programming. No escape, no exceptions.

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So either I face my math anxiety and go to college or I just try to scrape by and hope to find another route to my dream jobs.

Lavely

37. Slacking off in summer

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Nobody tells you the importance of spending your summers doing internships while you’re in college. I thought good grades and good relationships with your teachers were enough.

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Not at all. I graduated in 2018 and I just jump around between internships and part-time work trying to get experience.

Spyk123

38. Confessing a crush

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I had a crush on a school youth worker and wrote about my crush in my diary which my brother showed mum who told the youth worker and I was banned from receiving counselling from the youth worker.

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My mum still warns any male counsellor or support worker (I am disabled) that I might develop a crush on them. And I am 30 now and was 12 at the time of the diary. I still won’t have a diary even now.

Acountryheart

39. Goofing for ghosts

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When I was eight I convinced my brother the house was haunted by doing little things here and there. He still thinks our childhood home was haunted and has no idea it was me.

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He brings it up all the time and I’m pretty sure I’m the reason he believes in ghosts. I feel really bad because he used to be completely terrified of ghosts.

smm-2019

40. Developing discipline

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It wasn’t until I was about 19 or 20 that I really learned things don’t get handed to you and you have to have real discipline to make things happen.

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It’s only a big deal for me since I’m always around people that grew up as the “Go-Getter” kid so they’ve been like that for far longer than I have and I’m still just learning how to be disciplined and proactive.

itsbepauldo

41. Struggling to study

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I never studied. I didn’t need to from elementary to high school. It was pretty easy for me, so I never studied.

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Now, I’m in college, and I am facing the consequences of that. I have no idea how to study effectively, and it’s reflecting in my test scores.

Kabrallen

42. Cheaters never prosper

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Cheating. Everyone talks about how mean it is, but no one ever talks about realizing your mistakes and trying to pick up those pieces you shattered just to have no one trust you or want to be around you.

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So if there’s a lesson to be taken, feeling socially awkward because you have to tell someone you no longer love them is much easier in every way than getting yourself vilified for life, and have everyone know your name, that sucks.

booboosdad

43. Cast out at the dance

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In 11th grade I got in a fight I should’ve walked away from. I broke the guy’s jaw and broke my right ring finger knuckle. I cut the cast off three weeks later because I didn’t want it on for Sadie Hawkins dance.

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Fast forward to today, Every. Single. Time. I shake someone’s hand my knuckle *pops * and the other person feels like Superman thinking they almost broke my hand, I stopped explaining years ago. Mind you, I’m in the people business so I meet new people every day.

chuckzilla49

44. Seeing through one eye

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I went through the usual emo/scene phase as a kid, so all throughout high school I had long bangs covering one eye. Well now as an adult my vision is screwed, with that covered eye a worse prescription than the other.

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I’ll be dealing with that for the rest of my life. I personally feel like it’s even affected my depth perception.

screamanddream

45. Chemical chaos

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I worked at a nursing home in the dietary department when I was 16. My boss handed me a bottle of industrial strength oven cleaner after demonstrating how to use it safely with goggles on. Only problem was he hadn’t screwed the top back on and he dropped it. It spattered into my eyes and gave me a chemical burn on my cornea.

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There were no eyewash stations in the building so the chemicals had extra time to work as we tried to get my eyes under running water in a sink. I was in the hospital for a couple of days and my sight has never been the same. My parents never sued for workman’s compensation benefits so I am stuck paying for glasses and eye exams and treatment myself without ever being compensated.

firemomo3

46. Asking the real questions

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I didn’t ask my mom any super deep or important questions about her life, her experiences or her beliefs. She was ill off and on since I was nine and ultimately died when I was 20. I was a kid, busy at university and trying to figure out what I wanted in life.

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Additionally, my mom hid the severity of her illness from me in later years, so I wouldn’t be distracted from my studies. I thought I had more time. But I didn’t. I still regret not asking those questions and not getting to know her on a deeper level when I had the chance. There are so many things that I’ll be wondering about her until the day I die.

belvetinerabbit

47. Eating twice as much as needed

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I was a picky eater as many children can be. When I was especially young though, my grandmother would feed me like a foie gras goose. I would get home from school and eat a Totino’s personal size pizza or an entire box of mac and cheese or an entire sleeve of graham crackers and milk or an entire bowl of cheese/croutons/ranch or half a bag of chips with dip or sometimes a combination of them.

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I would drink one to two sodas there. On top of that I still had lunch and dinner. I wish my grandmother and parents had some sense as to not let me eat two or three times the needed calories.

Diabetesh

48. A mediocre marriage

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Married someone thinking that they’d change into what I desired. Dated her for about eight years then engaged for three more. Always thinking that she’d get a lot more mature and interesting after we got married. I was dumb.

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She’s not an evil person at all, but she’s just overly simple, closed-minded, unadventurous, incredibly boring, uninteresting, has no interests, can’t carry a conversation if it isn’t about her teaching position, etc… Our kids are 20 and 14 years old and we are still together. I love our kids but I’m incredibly miserable with the marriage.

reddit4fun6

49. Superhero landing

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I had a treehouse that was about ten feet off the ground and I would regularly jump out of it. Being an idiot, I wouldn’t brace myself when I landed because I thought I looked cooler doing it that way.

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Just straight up land on my feet without so much as bending my knees. Well guess who’s got bad knees before they’ve hit 30.

Technicolourlovr

50. Riding alone

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When I was 12 years old, my mom said, “Don’t go horseback riding alone”. I didn’t listen and took my horse out about a mile from home, where she spazzed out and threw me onto the side of a gravel driveway at a pretty quick running speed.

I dislocated my sacroiliac joint from the left side of my ilium, limped home and never told anyone. My parents noticed me limping and said I deserved it, not knowing I was actually injured. I healed out of place and didn’t go to a doctor for almost two years.

Lady_Lucatiel

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