I don’t know if this is something people say in other countries, but in my country, there’s this common cliché or “wisdom” where adults will assure you that the people who picked on you in environments like school will universally develop lives of hardship later on, one way or another getting into mayhem.

I asked my mother one day what happened to all those people growing up. I can sense she may have been sugar coating it, but she said something along the lines of “well, I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and became a teacher, and waited some more, and finally watched as my bullies had to go into retirement five years late, yay” (okay, not really like that, but it might as well have been).

Yeah, common theme in my experience that what we hope for is never “that” set in stone. No matter where in the community (or even long-distance communicating) you knew them from, based on life, how much approximate correspondence do you associate with that mindset in the first paragraph?

  • @[email protected]
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    31 year ago

    My Jr Highschool bully ended up accidentally shooting and killing his friend a few years later in high school. He dropped out and found Jesus, seemed to be dealing with it on his own by the time I graduated. Haven’t heard a thing about him in the decade or so since.

  • @[email protected]
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    81 year ago

    He tried to jump from one Jeep to another while offroading at speed, missed, hit his head on a rock, and died. The driver did time because of his actions. He was a massive piece of shit, even years after high school. I feel sorry for his family.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        He wasn’t to the best of anyone’s knowledge, but the driver was drunk. He was as dumb as a box of hair. He was into (American) football since he was a young kid and, knowing what we know about concussive brain injuries, I suspect he was suffering from brain damage.

        • Call me Lenny/LeniOP
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          21 year ago

          They say people with brain injury are advised against getting drunk in general. Which means I wouldn’t put it past him based on those details.

  • @[email protected]
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    111 year ago

    I don’t know any of them anymore, but the ones I’m aware of on Facebook all have “School of Hard Knocks” listed as their school they attended.

  • @[email protected]
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    291 year ago

    I’ve no idea, I haven’t thought about them since I left school and now I can barely remember their names.

    • GeekFTW
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      321 year ago

      This lol.

      I’m fucking 40, anyone I grew up with who made my life miserable are people who I have had no exposure to or communications with since I graduated high school June 16th 2002. Anyone since then who makes my life miserable for more than a few minutes gets told to fuck off on the spot lol.

      • cobysev
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        71 year ago

        You graduated on a Sunday? My school always did graduations on weekdays. I graduated about a week earlier than you did. Juuuust about to turn 40 myself.

        And yes, I’ve either befriended my old bullies (a lot of them were just lashing out because they had a shitty home life/no one to listen to them), or they’ve gone off to live their lives and I never heard from them again.

        My class is finally at the age where they’re keeping tabs on who has died since the last reunion, and the list is very short with none of my former bullies on it.

          • cobysev
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            21 year ago

            I looked it up, because my high school graduation date was right about that time. I was curious if I graduated on the same date.

        • GeekFTW
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          101 year ago

          Might have been a few days off with the date, it’s been a minute lol.

  • @[email protected]
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    71 year ago

    I met one during college. We were both very different people by then and went out for lunch.

    While there were no apologies (there were lines crossed by both of us), there was closure.

      • @[email protected]
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        31 year ago

        This new version of them was not someone I could hate.

        We were completely new people, so it felt like the “us” from before were gone. There was no need to hold onto any of the hate.

  • @[email protected]
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    51 year ago

    One was in a car accident, ended up a quadriplegic.

    Another one, last I saw, he was pumping my gas.

  • @[email protected]
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    101 year ago

    More often than not people become bullies because they have a hard life in the first place. So, sure, feel superior and have this “gatcha” moment or grow up and feel bad for these people, it’s your choice

  • @[email protected]
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    101 year ago

    I was curious about a guy who bullied me in elementary school so I looked up his name on Facebook. His profile picture had a pro-life message in it. I was not at all surprised.

    • Call me Lenny/LeniOP
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      21 year ago

      A bully having a pro-live message? Surprising. You know what’s not surprising? How much you can save by switching to Geico.

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    1 year ago

    One dead, the second one with his life just as stagnant as it was 20 years ago, and the 3rd one I honestly have no idea. 3rd one wasn’t really bad, he just fell in with the wrong crowd. I ran into his sister a couple of years ago, but she didn’t know his whereabouts either. But last time she heard feom him he was doing surprisingly well.

  • @[email protected]
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    111 year ago

    Many people who were assholes as kids turned out to become chill adults. I had a person who I considered a best friend suddenly turn on me in my last year of primary school. He always targeted me specifically and Istill remember coming home crying from the bullying. However, our lives diverged and we didn’t really meet until late in highschool somewhere in a bar in the city. We were both already a bit tipsy (alcoholic age was 16 y/o at that point here), and when he ran into me he basically just acted as if we had never not been friends. It was like the old friend was back, rather than the guy who caused so much pain. It was like he never realized what he had done. At that moment I realized we both had changed so much since the moment that he was bullying me, and I chose to just be glad to reconnect with an old friend.

    This story goes for quite a few people who bullied me. Pretty much all of them, when I met them years later, seemed blissfully unaware of the pain they caused and just greeted me as an old friend or classmate. And with all of them I also recognised that they had grown into chill people, and had changed so much that they weren’t really the same person anymore. So I chose to also consider them old friends or classmates, and if I ran into them now I’d probably just have a nice chat about what our lives became.

    • Call me Lenny/LeniOP
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      61 year ago

      As friendly as the two of you are, I would encourage you to not be afraid to explain to him the pain he caused.

  • @[email protected]
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    51 year ago

    One bully of mine actually beat a young girl to death at a private party some (~10) years ago. Served just a few years prison sentence. I heard that when I was still on facebook, and I’m glad I’m not there anymore.

    • Call me Lenny/LeniOP
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      31 year ago

      Yikes. Always thought it weird when violent crimes get you less than nonviolent ones.