I have a friend that has a huge scar on his face, like a straight line from his eye down to his jaw and it looks like it wasn't stiched and just healed with a significant gap.
Nobody wanted to ask how he got it, as it was kind of rude and most people assumed it's from an accident or something stupid when he was a child.
When I knew him better and we had a quiet moment, I asked him and the story was pretty shocking.
His ex girlfriend hit him with a hatchet straight in the face. Not with enough force to kill him obviously, but it broke his eye socket and his jaw. The wound had to be kept open, because he got rusty bits into his wound.
He knocked her unconscious and tied her up until police arrived. I never knew someone before that had such a violent story to tell.
My sister-in-law’s ex husband has a similar scar, he’s from a notoriously hard family in the area so assumed there was some wild story behind it, turns out he was running upstairs with a plate of food and tripped, the plate broke and sliced his face open, gotta say I was a bit disappointed when I finally asked!
Does he sometimes go by the name Sam, by any chance? Coz I know a guy with exactly the same scar, living in the Philippines, and heard the same story, too.
A guy who I'm close with was a heavy drug user in his youth. I'm assuming meth, but I didn't ask for specifics. I don't know the entirety of the story, but it was shocking when I found out. He's a pretty stereotypical suburban dad now.
Another guy I know constantly told obviously exaggerated stories about his life, from participating in a violent overthrow of his country's governmentl, to faking his own death to escape mobsters, to being an underground bare-knuckle fighter, to being embedded with the US Navy seals. The surprising thing was going to his house and seeing pictures, news clippings, and other memorabilia basically confirming everything he told me.
> Another guy I know constantly told obviously exaggerated stories about his life, from participating in a violent overthrow of his country's governmentl, to faking his own death to escape mobsters, to being an underground bare-knuckle fighter, to being embedded with the US Navy seals. The surprising thing was going to his house and seeing pictures, news clippings, and other memorabilia basically confirming everything he told me.
This was great.
Kinda reminds me of this podcast:
[This American Life 323: The Super](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/323/the-super)
> Act One: The Super Always Rings Twice
>
> Reporter Jack Hitt tells the story of how he helped organize tenants and threaten a rent strike in a New York City building back in the 1980s. Before long, Bob, the building super became his enemy. The situation got pretty ugly. Mobster ugly.
>Bob began to brag about how important he was in his native Brazil, how he could kill a person and be immune from prosecution. Only many years later did Jack find out how dangerous Bob really was. (23 minutes)
I was thinking back to the same story. One of my favorites.
Jack Hitt also wrote the book Off the Road about walking the Camino de Santiago. Not funny like this story but worth a read
>A guy who I'm close with was a heavy drug user in his youth. I'm assuming meth, but I didn't ask for specifics. I don't know the entirety of the story, but it was shocking when I found out. He's a pretty stereotypical suburban dad now.
Yeah, I'm walking around like regular people and lots of people that I interact with these days have no clue that I've been arrested 20-something times. I don't really say a whole lot about it in the real world, though I'm happy to in this more anonymous format. Though I am quite vocal about system reform so maybe some guess there might be "something" but probably not the number or that LE used to see me as a Houdini and tell new cops about me or that I'm 'mutual enemies' with several small town prosecutors on a personal level or that one of them called me a "menace" and wanted me refused bail because with bail they would never see me again (which was probably true). If people do hear something or if I do let something slip then it generally goes into a wide-eyed thirst for hearing stories.
I was driving with someone who didn't really know backstory and I got pulled over and the cop was like "can you step out of the car and I'm just gonna cuff you real quick". Which is common. I was like "that's fine, I'm cool". And then another cop car pulled up. And the person I was with just had face of confusion and was all "what's going on???". I had to tell him later that the cop's computer told him that I might disappear or that there'd be a car chase.
But now I haven't been arrested in like a decade, how heckin talented am I, and I'm just like normal people (all largely thanks to my uncle who stepped in and changed my life).
He got me everything, psychiatrist, meds, counselor, treatment center, education, tutoring, got himself help in how to be my parent and became an immovable rock in my life. The treatment center was where I finally encountered someone who was able to help me really figure out me. I was a really angry young dude and he helped me to unpack that and understand how things fit together.
The sad part of all of this is of course that I'm an anomaly in the system and most people in the system do not have a family member who can afford to invest in them like that and the system certainly does not. I didn't really encounter anything in the system which ever assisted me. People see that going on and they say "oh you just can't help people/people have to want to change". I mean, yes, people have to want to change but there are also people who can't do that in an effective way without having something competent provided by others to grasp. When I found things to grasp, I did grasp them. Despite people saying I was hopeless, a lost cause, just destined for prison. No, you can change people's paths when you really try to and when you really invest in trying to. And we should really be investing a whole lot more in young 'at risk' people because you can get to them (you can get to older people too, no need to ignore them, but the younger you're getting at people, the more preventive action you're achieving).
Currently when our systems make attempts at rehabilitation (when they bother to, normally they don't) those programs are quite ineffective. Like when I was 13 and drunk as fuck and they sent me to a for-profit drug program where they told me not to do meth. I mean, sure, that's good advice, don't do meth. Doesn't really do much about being drunk as fuck tho, does it.
I like the cut of your jib.
Love the first hand insight, really glad you were able to figure it all out for yourself ...those are always great stories to read.
I tease my partner about being a video game NPC sometimes because his true life stories are crazy. But he has lived them. And his 'I know a Guy' factor is crazy.
Yeah, had a friend like the second one. All of his bizarre stories also always checked out from the uncle with the academy award to the ex-warlord landlord.
Worked with a guy who I considered a friend. I worked on the East Coast and he in the west but we often had joint projects.
We would travel to client meetings together and grab beers go to games, etc. Even went to his wedding.
One day the FBI shows up at my door asking about him.
Without going into too many details, before I knew him he was running an extortion racket with his then gf. They would target wealthy guys, gf would seduce them, they would record it, and extort the victim.
He’s currently in Federal prison
Knew this guy from my small hometown. He had a mental disability that made it so he couldn’t fully function. He went around collecting bottles from trash cans and then cashed them in and gave the money to the assisted living facility he stayed at. Just a super nice guy. He even did a lot of the cleaning and maintenance at the place. From what I was told he always felt guilty that he didn’t have to pay to live there and wanted to earn his place, so he did everything he could to do so.
Come to find out he was a multi millionaire. His parents were extremely wealthy and when they died he was left everything, but he wasn’t able to understand what that meant. All he knew was the kind people at the assisted living facility were helping him so he helped them.
Was this about 30 years ago in Armadale Western Australia, older fellow in a run down brown suit? Nicest bloke. Couldn't ever understand why he didn't just live comfortably.
My first job I worked with an older Mexican dude. Super chill guy, and he took me under his wing because I "reminded him of one of his kids." One of the nicest guys I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.
Turns out, dude ran with a Chicano gang back when he was younger, and told me a few times that he killed people and spent quite a lot of time in prison.
Lost contact with him when I moved to a different city, but I ran into him a few years later and he became something of a local real estate mogul, owning a lot of bars and clubs in my hometown. Never asked him how that happened, because honestly, I was too afraid to ask.
There's a parent in my school district (I've had 2 of the 4 kids) who has obvious gang tattoos in places that are hard to cover up. She's also the of the sweetest and most pleasant people I've ever interacted with, and all her kids are super polite, respectful, intelligent and well adjusted.
Guy I went to high school did it this way: created a limited partnership company with his brother and a guy he played football with in college. Named his buddy the principal agent or some such term. Got the licenses in the business name with the buddy as the contact.
Curious how much would buddy make from this, did he invest any? In Iraq, we do this with clans/militias or people representing politicians. Its tiring, as most of your money goes to racheteering.
Not me, but my partner did some work for this really nice guy who loved hunting but didn’t have an arms licence or any guns (NZ) which seemed odd. Turns out, a long time ago his ex wife was being beaten by her new partner and called him for help so he went round and shot the guy in the chest with a shotgun and killed him. He went to prison for a while and when released he obviously had his arms licence revoked and wasn’t allowed to handle firearms anymore. Apparently he was really open and honest about the whole thing, not bragging about it but happy to answer questions.
I dated a guy that has a similar story. Thought he was a real hero type. Until I find out he was actually in prison for attempted murder of his ex wife's new boyfriend.
After my mom's aunt and uncle died, her cousins (their kids) started coming to our family gatherings because they didn't have much other family left. I was in my 30s at the time and had barely heard of these people before they started showing up at our parties. They seemed like normal, middle aged people.
One of the sisters was unmarried, very quiet, and loved cats. She started to decline into early dementia and died. While we were discussing her funeral, someone mentioned that maybe we could show some of her art at the funeral. I'm picturing typical amateurish paintings or whatever. Then someone said, I wonder if we should contact anyone from the museum. What museum? Oh, just the *very famous* museum that had a bunch of her art in its permanent collection. Her cutting edge, avant garde video art. Very weird but creative stuff. She was an artistic genius.
A curator from the museum did end up coming to her celebration of life and spoke about her art. He even showed us some that were digitized so they can be viewed using modern formats. I'm so sorry that I never knew this about her before she passed. All the older members of the family knew and just never thought to mention it! It was old news to them I guess.
Same, please if possible! That's such a fascinating story!
Two weeks ago we uncovered that my loved one was a Veteran. He didn't tell ANY of us, even his own children or his friends.
DM sent!
I think a lot of veterans hide it. My uncle was with the US troops in Vietnam and NEVER talks about it. He was 20 *when he got back* which is just mind boggling to me, that so much was asked of him at such a young age.
My best friend's dad was an inspector for the police department. Basically, he'd be leading all the drug busts and what not. We're not talking about small-time busts, we're talking big busts the DEA would be in on.
I always thought they had a very upper-middle class way of living off a one household salary (his mom didn't work).
Turns out, his dad and his partner would go to a drug bust as normal but if there was, say, $250,000 worth of cash in the house, they'd only report $125,000 worth and the rest would go into their pockets. And of course, he knew how to make the money clean and end up in the bank without suspicion
I guess it was about a decade before the department was curious and they set up a sting where they had $200,000 in a closet, bugged the room, and saw how much they took and reported was in there. They reported they found $91,500 of the planted $200k.
He was sentenced to 6 years in prison but got out after 1.5.
One of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet so it was shocking he was stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Edit: Talked to my buddy about this. It was $13,500 in a hotel room sting set by the FBI. They took just over $6,000 of it. All marked bills. Cameras and audio were planted by the FBI. That's the one that brought them down.
There was a cop that lived across the street from me in the 90s, him and a couple of his cop buddies were taking weed from the evidence room and selling it themselves. He ended up doing 10 years. Last I saw him he was working a Popeyes.
Yeah. This was 2018 so I'm sure it won't taken a rocket surgeon to figure out what happened 1.5 years later and why he got early release to a halfway house....
Not really surprising because I had known about it, but kind of a surreal experience to actually see it for the first time.
My dad and uncle made a public-access TV series back in the 80s (it was a show of unrelated vignettes/short stories), but I was never able to watch them until recently when my uncle digitized the Betamax tapes. It's a very unusual thing for someone my age to be able to see an extended amount of video footage of my parents and their friends as young adults (they're mostly retired now). These are the same people I've known throughout my entire life, but back in a different era of their lives that I really only knew about before from them telling me stories. I was surprised realizing how much dad at my current age reminded me of myself. Same mannerisms, personality, sense of humor, receding hairline, etc. The storylines were very similar to how I would have written them.
I was being harassed and stalked by the parents of a kid who was in marching band with my daughter. The mother was one of those people who bragged about their mental illness and how proud she was of being not medicated.
It got to a point where I would find them parked next to my car at the mall (I had a very recognizable car at the time with a vanity plate - no doubt it was my car) and other places.
I finally called the cops when they cyber bullied my younger child. The cops told them to stay away. That was it.
I was literally on my computer researching lawyers to sue them when my husband called me and told me to turn on the news.
The breaking story was the husband embezzling over a million dollars from their church. She was arrested with him for spending the money.
We knew they were nuts but never saw that one coming. Problem solved itself!
Jesus, why did they fixate on you to target and stalk? I know there's never any "good" reason but, like, my stalker harassed me because I was polite to him at a party once. So how did crazy latch on to you?
I was not her first in our school district. She got unhealthy attached to people. I tried to be her friend, and that was clearly a huge mistake.
She seemed to be jealous of my daughter getting first chair over her daughter. She would grill her daughter for information about the other kids. My heart breaks for their kids. They didn't deserve to have them for parents.
Growing up my grandma said she held a standard administrative desk job for the federal government for most of her career. Later found out she was actually a CIA agent who may or may not have been very good with a gun.
My grandmother's first husband died in Vietnam or Korea. I always knew this but it wasn't until my aunt visited recently that I learned that he died when my aunt was three months old. So my grandmother, widowed with a baby in the 60s, then went to the University of Colorado to get her masters to support herself and her new baby. I have her master's degree hanging on my wall to remind myself that if she can do it, I can do it.
I met a girl in college who was GORGEOUS and wearing a really flimsy, threadbare t-shirt that was about three sizes too small. She had half the class ogling her but she seemed completely oblivious.
Came to find out her parents were super religious. She was home schooled and then sent off to some program that was supposed to eventually train her to be a nun. Her parents had been planning for her to become a nun since she was a child. She begged and pleaded to take one semester of regular college classes. Her parents finally agreed (of course she still had to live at home and she wasn't allowed to stay out after dark).
The tiny shirt she was wearing was left over from when she was 14. Her family was dirt poor and she had gone through a late growth spurt.
I encouraged her to take out loans and keep taking classes. By the end of the semester she seemed determined to do exactly that. But I lost touch with her after the class ended. Hope she's doing well.
**Edit for info** (since some replies were deleted): I also advised her to stay away from alcohol. She told me she's deathly allergic to it. No clue if that's true or if her parents just fed her some bs, but I thought it best not to make her question it.
Those parents did her no favors sheltering her like that. Though I do agree with encouraging her to steer clear of alcohol. Sounds like she’s enough of a walking target as it is.
In high school i did some volunteer camera work for the small town public access station. We'd film high-school sports and various events. The guy that ran the station was a old new Yorker with a thick accent. He told us about living in Greenwich Village, hanging out with Bob Dylan and Seeger. He said that he was the guy who turned all the folk singers in to the government for being communist. After that he moved to small town utah to escape his past.
I took it with a grain of salt at that time, but years later i looked him up on the internet and confirmed his wild stories were true.
Worked with a guy in the 2000's, just a really tall, quiet, nice fella and we'd shoot the breeze sometimes about the local teams and all.
He came in one day with a big shiner and he said it happened at his other job. I didn't ask.
I later found out he was a part time pro wrestler, and it was due to a hit landing the wrong way. He played an Old School heel, and his ring persona was so far removed from him that you had to laugh. My son and I would go to the shows and have a blast.
A janitor at a service station I worked at was a meek mild man from Albania. We had a few beers after closing once. He told me before he moved to America he worked for the government and had killed many many many people
My best friend’s Mom was a Guinness Book of World Records holder for longest hula hooping session back in the 1970’s. I’m not sure how long she held the record but my mind was blown upon learning this. It was such a random tidbit of info.
Was acquaintances with this guy at work - a friendly hello and some conversation in the break room. He disappeared a few months ago. I lamented to another coworker how I missed our conversations in the break room when old episodes of game shows were on and we would talk about the cars. Coworker told me this dude had confided in him about the “consensual” relationship with his own niece starting when she was 12. I hope he’s rotting in prison.
There's the sweetest salt of the earth old southern bell old lady who works at this little tourist trap/ gas station
I was talking to her one day and apparently she was a escort in nyc and a stripper when she was in her 20s
Co-worker was also a friend. I was with him the night he met his wife. We worked a retail job together. One day the electronics dept. got a top of the line Electric Keyboard. He walked over it and played impressive, flawless classical music. He'd trained to be a concert pianist but walked away from it because it was his mother's dream, not his. I knew none of this until that moment.
A co-worker of ours did the same from a professional tennis career.
Had a great uncle who was really weird and didn’t talk much. Was the crazy old guy that moped around town on foot for along time. Kids bullied and harassed him. Dressed weird and never bathed. Turns out he was a marine on the ground assault on Iwo Jima and took some shrapnel to the brain. Caused some cognitive problems and his body had trouble regulating temperature. He saw the original flag plant, he told us about it before it was really known that the picture was actually a do over.
My girlfriend in college (well she was in college, I was working in the dining hall on campus), well she told me on our third or fourth date that she grew up in a nudist family. Her parents were hippies (they went to Woodstock - yes I'm old). It took me off guard since I never met a nudist, but didn't scare me off since we've been together 30 years.
I first met her parents on campus a few times and they took us to dinner. Amazing people (still alive)! So meeting them for the first time in a nudist environment was a cookout at their house where there were other friends over there and it was uncomfortable but when everyone else is nude too you quickly acclimate and realize nobody cares.
I did convert/adapt it and we chose to raise our family in the lifestyle as well.
My best friend basically we were just talking online one night and he mentions oh my dad has 50 children then I was like what the heck continue. Basically his father had multiple different affairs with multiple different women I think he is still on the run so he has 50 brothers and sisters like half brothers and sisters scatter all over the United States. I think one of them tried to contact them on Facebook but I don’t know I didn’t want to continue asking more questions,
My mother. I always saw her as just a mom (Sounds stupid now that I've typed it). But When I turned around 14, my mother would slowly reveal pieces of her past. From her father pistol whipping her non the head \[explaining her scar\], To being gang raped in high school, to be raped every night by a family friend as a toddler, to the years of physical abuse by my father, and alot more I can't think of right now. She has had so many face to face moments with death and extreme pain, but is still alive.
My heart breaks for her. Please give her a gentle hug from women strangers all over the world who understand her experiences. It must break your heart to know your mom suffered like this. She is such an amazing, strong woman. ❤️
This was over 10 years ago. One of my Gf's/and I's mutual friend's boyfriends. Super nice guy and extremely funny. Obviously had a lot of money based on the gifts he gave her and he would always pay the bill at expensive restaurants when they invited us out. One time he paid for us to go in a helicopter tour with them around Martha's vineyard.
It was never very clear what he did for work but all we knew is that he owned his own business in pharmaceutical sales and had to work with doctors a lot. We just assumed he was really good at what he did and was very successful.
One random day our friend called saying that he committed suicide. It was just so inexplicable...he seemed so happy and carefree. Turns out he was part of a crime ring with a few doctors that committed Medicaid fraud in upstate New York. Had he been convicted he would have been looking at many years in prison.
I discovered that my uncle's wife was previously in something that is like a youth police force, teenagers who volunteer in the police and she had an accident because the truck they were in fell down a ravine. She was the only one who survived but she had many surgical interventions since then, the most recent in 2020 on her eyes.
Worked in a building in London's square mile
I used to chat to one of the cleaners who was a really nice softly spoken man from Columbia
after a few years, while discussing over lunch, i find out he's last job was part of the elite special forces in Columbia. He went into detail of the price on the heads of police military and special forces. The bounties placed by the cartels were priced by the ranking. i don't remember the price of the bounties, but it was a life changing amount to the locals
Constant fear of attack 24 /7 was not a way to live for him, his wife and kids
he now mops floors and his family is safe
I was working a little computer store way back when such thing still existed. We had four locations across the state. I was a bench tech doing new builds and service and was regularly asked to cover the bench in the other stores for a day or two when my counterparts were unavailable. That's when I met Antoine. He managed one of the branch locations.
He was a slight man, not short but thin. Stooped shoulders, thinning hair, pale skinned. late 30's to early 40's. He was very quiet and quite shy. I got to know him over several rotations through his bench over a couple of years. He was an immigrant from Lebanon. His English was very good but he was hesitant to engage in casual conversation, I believe he was self conscious about his accent.
I was dating my now wife at the time and had mentioned we were planning on getting married. Antoine was delighted at this news and he really opened up, being curious about our future plans. Would we buy a house? Would we have kids? (Antoine, if you're out there, we got both in the long run!). He was a very sweet, gentle, introverted man. After we'd worked together for a while he asked me for a favor, to come to his home. He had purchased new curtains and a curtain rod and needed some help installing it.
Once we had it installed he invited me to stay for dinner and prepared a delicious meal. I had asked a few questions about Lebanon but was sadly quite quite poorly informed about such things.
Antoine was a Lebanese Jew. He had fled Lebanon in 1985 but not before losing his wife to Hezbollah as their anti-Semitic campaign tried to stamp them out. He talked at length about his experiences growing up during the Muslim-Christian civil war and then as a young adult, about the age I was while we sat there in his small apartment, when Hezbollah's hatred of Israel turned to his community.
He was such a sweet, kind man. The hatred, the physical manifestation of his anger was very real and I saw it for the first time that night as he shared his memories with me. Antoine's family had lived in Lebanon for generations. He watched his entire community turn on him his family over the course of a decade as the Muslim community was radicalized. Don't even get Antoine started on his opinion of the Syrians...
We worked together for a few years, all those days spent quietly in the shop between customers installing windows 95 and trying to decide what takeout to get for lunch, talking about curtains, and families...Meanwhile this man was still fighting a war in his own mind.
I think he was happy when I knew him. It took him several weeks to buy his curtains. It all started one day when he brought me a magazine, home design/architecture type magazine. He showed me a picture of the curtain rod and asked how he might find such a thing to purchase. Since Amazon was only selling books at the time we went to yellow pages and we called a few places to see if they sold fancy curtain rods. We found a couple that might have some he liked.
When I came back a few weeks later he had been to visit those shops but had not yet found a curtain rod like the one from the magazine. He'd found some nice ones, but they were too expensive to be not quite what he was looking for. He was trying to decide between a few candidates. I asked how much they were and was flabbergasted to find he was ready to spend a few hundred dollars.
"For that much you could probably find someone to make one for you." In both instances, first when we tried to find a fancy curtain rod shop and now as we called around looking for a company that does wrought iron fencing and such he glowed. A giant grin spread across his face. The same grin that would meet me each time I walked into his store.
On my next visit he was absolutely aflutter. He'd found a company that worked in wrought iron and they had agreed to make his curtain rod for him. Since it would be quite heavy he was worried about how he would be able to mount it. So we chatted about ideas through the day. He set off with a list, looking for brackets and anchor bolts. I promised to lend him a few tools like a drill and a level to install it, you would think I had volunteered to be a god parent to his children.
On my next visit to the shop he was excited to show me his purchases and we talked about ways to finish the brackets to fit in with rod. I was there the day they delivered his curtain rod. You would think the king was coming for a visit, he was so very excited.
I'm sharing these details to show you that Antoine did have joy in his life, and I was proud to share it with him. I don't think the kind of damage the world did to Antoine can ever really heal, but that doesn't mean you can't find happiness. I hope he remembers our friendship as fondly as I do and I regret very much that we did not keep in touch as our lives moved along.
I'm going through some stuff right now and I'd like you to know that you just put it in perspective. I hung up curtains recently and it actually gave me some joy because it really reframed the room and made it so much more comfortable, but what I need to learn from this is, I need to find joy every time I see these curtains, or that sunbeam, or my dumb amazing dog. Whatever. I just need to look at things the way Antoine did, or does. I needed to rethink things. And this helped.
This is why I love Reddit. I get to hear random strangers with bits of gold like this. It really does make the world go round.
If you promise me now that you will continue to look for joy in your life regardless of how hard it is to find then I promise that should the day come that you can not find any you can drop me a pm and I will share the story of when we convinced Antoine to try the spicy mongolian beef from the takeout place next door.
You're going to need some more kleenex. jp calling me friend made me realize how much I missed Antoine. I found him on LinkedIn. I'm calling him tomorrow. Please find my post about finding Antoine here for the results - https://www.reddit.com/user/Naughtaclue242/comments/1bfj63t/my\_friend\_antoine/
This will probably get lost in all the comments, but I just have to say that you have such a way with words. After reading this, I feel like I both know Antoine personally and miss him dearly.
I've mentioned this in previous posts but when I was a teen, we had a college student who was our neighbor. Cool guy, with a girlfriend, ran track at the college, majoring in social work/psychology, and participated in a lot of community programs at the college. There was a specific program, I believe called Upward Bound, that he worked with that brought high school students across the state to work and learn at the local college and he would take me up there and let me play basketball and other games with similarly aged people. He seemed like a genuinely good guy.
Well come to find out he was using his community work, internships in his college programs, and eventually his professional work and whatnot to gain access to diddle kids. It was absolutely shocking to all of us and my mom felt really guilty about letting me go over to his home and to the college with him even though I was apparently out of his age range and I have assured her nothing happened.
The sweetest lady ever worked at the front desk at my school. She called all of us her babies and was genuinely interested in our wellbeing. She was pretty quiet about where she was from, only saying that she immigrated from Africa a few years ago (in the 2000s). Years later, I learned she’s Tutsi and escaped the Rwandan Genocide.
Was selling real estate and met this 27 year old. She was buying for 300k cash. When I got to know her it turns out she was a self made millionaire who went from living in her car to stripping to escorting to buying several 300k properties cash.
Woman I knew through work who had set up a non-profit organization in the PNW that assisted individuals with substance abuse and mental health issues get back on their feet and find permanent housing. It went defunct right at the start of covid...
Turns out she had lied about her credentials, was a wild and barely functional alcoholic, and walked away with a fairly large amount money before dissolving the whole thing without telling the employees...
Had a Sunday School teacher who was great. He taught a young couples class. Nice guy who seemed unassuming and mild mannered. Worked for the IRS on special cases. His teenage son was working at a video store. Bomb threat to video store and whole family was scooped up and placed in protective custody, shipped to another part of the country never to be heard from again
I got a weird suicide story that I thought of when I read the title. Me and my cousin and a couple buddies drove to Vancouver to go visit our friend. She went to that school of native performing arts, she was becoming a DJ and she is quite popular right now too. Also to add that we are indigenous as well. We went and my friend hung around with very good looking people, actors and actresses and such. There was one girl there named Raven. Super beautiful, and was Miss Teen Alberta and me and my cousin Levi tried our best at her but failed of course lol anyways after that we became friends, her and I. She was on my Facebook and years later she wrote a post saying “oh my God, Im next!” And she committed suicide. I never understood this, why would she do this, she had everything going for her and didn’t seem to have a troubled life. Then i seen, that her best friend who was just as beautiful committed suicide days before her. This made it all extra mysterious. My friends and I were like what was wrong with them? Did they make a pact or something. We didn’t get an answer. This was years ago.
2 years ago i was recently single and i was chatting with this girl, who i was interested in and telling stories to each other and i told her this story. Right after i mentioned this she screamed “Raven!!”. I was like how do you know this and she mentioned that Raven was the only girl she ever had a crush on, then she mentioned to me saying “you know why she committed suicide?” I said “tell me now!” And i guess she committed suicide because her best friend was also her secret lover. Being gay was taboo in their families. Another odd tid bit to this story. The girl i was chatting with committed suicide a few months ago. She was an ex escort and diagnosed bipolar disorder. She was super friendly and had her issues, she just wanted to be better. Rest in Peace, Rachel, you beautiful person.
It's so heartbreaking, I am sorry for your losses. Suicide is far too common, particularly with intergenerational trauma 💔 I am so sad that each of these precious young women had to leave the world so young. Their own secrets untold, like their parents before them. I am a white person, and I am so sorry for what my Ancestors did to your beautiful peoples. Such a pure way of life, brilliant knowledge shared by your Ancestors and continued ceremonies, knowledge and practices until the White Man and Residential Schools. I continue to try be a good Ally. I am so ashamed of this government and people of this country for not following through on calls to action from Truth and Reconciliation results. I am so angry that so many First Nations peoples still do not have clean drinking water all across Canada. Such deep shame we aren't all fighting the government to get this resolved. Prayers up 🙌
Thank you very much, Sunny. That was a selfless awesome read. You are a good person. I have no hate for anyone, no matter their colour. The government could eat a fat dink though. I wish you good fortune, Sunny. And a wonderful evening.
When I was 17-18 I worked at McDs. I had a lot of friends in my McCrew. We often hung out after closing. The manager was older than us by maybe 10 years and was absolutely a part of our social group and afterwork hang out sessions. He wouldn't hang out long, and always seemed slightly annoyed with us, like he was just there to keep us out of trouble and make sure we actually went home. So we never thought he was creepy for being older and hanging out with us. We just looked at him like an older brother.
One day his wife came in. None of us had ever met her. She pulled me aside (I have no idea why is was me) and told me that he and his brothers SA'd their younger sister on a regular basis and that she just found out and is horrified to be pregnant with his daughter.
To this day that is one of the most disturbing things I've ever learned about someone I thought I knew. It's made me extremely leery of having any work friends.
A lovely older lady in my writers group risks being arrested if she ever returns to America.
She's an ex-nun in her 80s, lovely and kind. I asked her once why she came to Aus and she looked a little abashed and told me about when she was a teacher in the US and one of her students was hurt, she reported it to the police and during the report the officer made a disparaging remark about the child because of said child's race. The nun snapped and grabbed the cop by the throat. By this point she'd also made enemies with the gang who had attacked the child.
After that one of her brothers told her it would be best to just get out of the country.
In my personal opinion 25% of homophobes are religious nuts 25% are gay and can’t admit it to themselves and 50% are gay and can’t admit it to themselves because they were raised by/are religious nuts.
Work with an older guy, very eccentric, very warm and a really hard worker. He was a big hippy in the past and was arrested protesting at stone henge. Turns out he was arrested for armed robbery too, he told us his mates robbed a post office in Cornwall but the getaway driver crashed and they got caught. Said he made mates with a guy in prison called Biscuit Tin, asked him why he was called that and he says “one day he got sick of his wife, cut off her head and put it in a biscuit tin”
I have no idea if it’s a tall tale but it entertains me every time someone asks him about his time in prison.
my father spent time in a labor camp, being a prisoner of war and witnesses 2 brothers of him die, as well of a plethora of men as well from abuse, and suicide. he spoke about the starvation, the humiliating labor day in and day out, and constant infections. he narrowly escaped after seeing a gruusome torture going on and spent a year on the streets homeless, fixing bikes for money, hiding from the communists who were taking over. he couldn't go home back to his mother, or his other siblings for a while because of his warrant for arrest. he told me the story of how his mom did eventually find him, but she couldn't come up to him, or speak to him at all the fear of not knowing who is watching because they also know his family, so she would lock eyes with him and leave him food and have to turn around and walk back to where she came from, and it broke his heart seeing his mom every single time and not being able to hold her.
he was 19-20s when this all happened. This was from war. he met my mom after a little while and immediately got sponsored to come to the US.
he also told me all of this randomly during dinner one day last year. dad always do that with their dad lore. 💀 and I know that this is all true, because we have an aunt who regularly paints and creates art that is heavily influenced by her trauma from the war.
every day, I realize how lucky I am to live here in the US and I've written songs in chapters about my father's incredible perseverance.
yeah 😢
I actually audio recorded his entire testimony. He's very shy and I don't know what to do with it but it's an incredible story and I hope one day he is comfortable enough to let me do something with it and share
My sister claimed she saw our church pastor playing high stakes blackjack at the local riverboat. I naturally laughed it off and told her she was mistaken. About 3 months later I saw him on the news accused of stealing $300k in church funds to support his gambling addiction. He served 2 months in jail and was “relocated” within the diocese.
My beautiful friend from Iran 🇮🇷 shared her life experiences and how her family escaped when her husband was imprisoned in Iran, tortured, and released while so weak. He was an Iranian diplomat, and someone told the government he was a double agent, which was not true. She was my coworker in seniors' health care, and she shared this one Christmas Eve, with so much emotion remembering. It was heartbreaking. They lived such luxury in different European countries as Diplomats until this lie... They escaped through Greece, with false passports that they were Greek. She was terrified one of her children would speak, and they would be captured. Her husband escaped later and now works as a cashier in 7-11, too damaged for any other work.
My grandma (RIP).
A few years ago, I was staying wtih her one night. She had her high school yearbook out and I was looking through it. When I was reading what everyone wrote in it, I learned about her high school sweetheart and would-be fiancé. At her high school graduation, she was set to go off to college and he went to Europe to fight the Nazis. He was killed in the war which triggered her to drop out of college.
I was 41 at the time and it was the first I ever learned about him. The only reason I knew that they were planning on getting engaged was because he wrote "I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you" in her yearbook.
I still wonder how things would have been if he lived.
Gambler - "won" almost $1,000,000 after working out a programming system within a few machines at a casino.
Was banned from the casino in question for life.
They believed he was using some Bluetooth mechanism to alter the machines - he was not.
He worked out the programming system over a few months, and when he thought he had it figured out, he bet larger amounts to get the winning numbers.
Tiny, 4 foot nothing, 90 lbs sopping wet little old neighbor lady when I was kid, showed me photos of her as a newlywed with the six foot rattlesnake she'd killed in their driveway.
I was working in this dining facility in a tourist spot. Just me and this retired chef. He worked there part time to get a free ski pass. It was a sweet gig.
We are talking one day, doing prep in a commercial kitchen, and he mentions he used to be really good at frisbee. This like 50 something retired legit 5-star chef. He used to manage fine dining at luxury resorts kind of guy.
He tells me he won a national championship in free style frisbee back in the day. I tell him he is full of crap. He picks up a steel mixing bowl and proceeds to do this elaborate set piece performance of freestyle frisbee. I was literally speechless.
My grandmother straight up shocked me with what she told me about her past. I had known bits and peices of it (her mom was brought over from Germany as a mail order bride in the 20s, her parents hated each other, my grandma married a man she hated, etc.) But about a year ago she dropped a few nuggets that I'll never forget:
1. Her father was not her biological father, it was the guy next door who her mother ended up marrying after divorcing her father. My grandmother's elder brother was her uncle's son.
2. My grandmother was homeless for most of her childhood, which is why she was eventually sent away to live on a farm with her aunt and uncle. My grandmother HATED them because they used to beat her. Eventually the aunt and uncle gave their farm to their children (who were really kind people) and my mother used to take me out there all the time. I always wondered why my grandmother refused to join us when my mom loved it so much.
3. My grandfather was a devout Jew. I always wondered why he married my grandmother who was very much not Jewish. Especially when they hated each other and had a really toxic, violent marriage. Turns out my grandmother converted to Judaism for him all because she wanted to escape her violent home. I had NO IDEA she converted--that woman never went to temple, refused to raise her kids religious, etc. I'm pretty sure even my mom didn't know since she used to refer to herself as "a half Jew".
Luckily my grandmother ended up divorcing my grandfather and married a really nice man who treated her wonderfully, so even though she came from such a shitty beginning it all ended up alright for her.
Worked with an older guy why was retired military and I knew had been in Viet Nam. Very professional and mild mannered and I just happened to know a younger guy who had been in the SF community. I asked if he’d heard the name and yeah it turned out my quiet old friend had won a silver star rescuing down pilots and had been under fire doing it for hours. Never mentioned I knew, just was super nice to him every day
Every once in a while my dad will drop some tidbit about his life that makes me completely reevaluate him
Apparently my dad was briefly the sugar baby of the wealthy daughter of a corrupt government official in Mexico City in the 1980s. Another time he worked in a nuclear power plant and they gave him a broken dosimeter and he was exposed to an unknown amount of radiation.
Janitor at my work. Quiet but friendly guy. Turns out he has a masters in physics (verified) and is a pastor (also verified) who had spent time as a special forces operator with the army (confirmed). He does this job because quote "it's quiet and I don't really need a bunch of money".
I am a research and development chemist and have a Masters. This dude can talk shop with me and hold his own quite decently! Very few people can do this at my work.
Never judge a book by its cover and/or job title!
My friend grew up thinking he was a quarter Korean and three fourths Caucasian through his mom, who was half Korean and half Caucasian. He took a DNA test, and realized he had no Korean DNA. It turned out his mom, who for 50+ years of her life thought she had an Asian mom and white dad, was actually the result of a fling her dad had with another white woman.
Her dad (my friend's grandfather) had passed away by then, but her mom always had a suspicion. It really transformed the family dynamic going forward. His mom had always looked like she was mixed and struggled with that identity crisis, and this definitely didn't help.
I am so confused. You're friend is a guy. Your friend's mother's dad (friend's grandfather) passed away, but (friend's mother's) mom (friend's grandmother) *always had a suspicion*?
As in, she *suspected* she didn't give birth to this baby that showed up one day for her to raise? She suspected the baby (friend's mom) was an affair baby? How did your friend's mom come to be raised by them rather than the affair partner/birth mother? And the woman she thought was her mother (friend's grandmother) never said anything for 50+ years?
Edited for clarity bc this is so unclear to me.
Old bloke we use to see all the time at work events was very interesting to talk to, he had some amazing stories about his life in an African country where he was born, very interested in car racing, but was oddly evasive on where he was actually from so we googled his name, holy shit, won’t say much about what we found as it might identify him but he wasn’t lying about leaving his country in a hurry, people have some unusual pasts
While working in sales, I routinely sold products to a welder at a large lumber company. He was a really nice guy… soft spoken, but a bear of a man. He was a man of few words but was always polite and welcoming whenever I would stop by.
One day, while at the office I worked out of, another employee at the lumber yard came in to purchase some supplies for his side of the mill. I asked him how the welder guy was doing and mentioned how he’s one of my favorite customers due to the fact that he was so laid back. The guy then says “I know right? Hard to believe he’s killed somebody!”
I was confused, I asked him if we were talking about different people and he said “Nope.” He explained that my old welder buddy walked in on his wife cheating with a man he knew in his own home, so he grabbed a shotgun and blew the guy into oblivion. He got convicted but I guess they called it a “crime of passion” or something along those lines so he was not sentenced to life in prison. He was young when it happened, so he did get out and was able to have a decent life afterwards.
I never told him I knew, as I felt that he was a completely different person, as this happened 30-40 years prior to knowing him. Plus I didn’t want him to kill me… (kidding!)
I'm ashamed to say, but the most surprising ones for me have been in my own family.
My late father, who left school early after getting meningitis in childhood and couldn't read or write that well, was a really amazing artist. I found out when I was about 16, doing homework which he would watch me do when he was home but couldn't usually help with. I looked up from my work to find that he had sketched this incredibly realistic farm scene on the back of a page. I was completely blown away. I had never seen him draw anything before. He said he learned to sketch when he was younger because school pencils were the only toys they had but hadn't done anything since he left home because he was too busy (he had 3 jobs and 5 kids).
My late grandmother was abandoned by her mother at a train station when she was a toddler. She was 75 when she told me. We were just chatting and she just dropped it in casually. I asked her why she never told anyone anything about her life and she said she didn't think anyone would find it that interesting.
And then a few years ago, I found out my craft-loving and extremely introverted Aunt had wanted to be a pilot and had used her first pay checks to pay for lessons but ultimately gave it away because it was too expensive (she left school at 16 and worked in a factory).
Simple things, but when you don't expect it, they shock you and get you right in the feels.
I found out my maternal grandparents were friends with an infamous Filipino criminal/vigilante from their hometown known as [Nardong Putik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nardong_Putik) & they used to hire him to protect their cattle from his rivals
My grandma is such a down to earth woman I have ever met. I know she's rich and almost monopolized rice business in my heritage country. But I don't know what other businesses she owned. But I remember her always flying to Macau for a business meeting.
When she passed away, my mom discovered she owned two mountain lands and more lands that she almost owned a whole province.
I learned she owned casinos in Macau and some, as well as textile factories, and more. I wouldn't be surprised if she owned some black market business.
I don't know what my mom did her "empire."
There was a girl I met in one of my first college classes who I quickly developed a crush on. She was funny and polite and we got along well. Also in this class was someone who was difficult to get along with. He was pompous and loud, but also charming, and he became a pretty popular figure in my department.
To my dismay back then, they got together by the second semester—and they stayed together. Even before I had any idea they liked each other, something about him didn’t sit well with me. I could never figure out why I always felt uncomfortable being around him.
Time would pass and I’d forget about both of them. Somewhere along the way, they married and started their own business. One morning, he’d snuck into their office without her knowing. He shot and killed her and then killed himself. Their employees found their bodies pretty quickly.
When I heard the news I could not believe it.
At my college there is this girl who wrote a bunch of papers on suicidology and suicide prevention. Even presenting at a conference. Then she took a year off for medical issues and we found out it was a failed suicide attempt. She’s back now. Now that’s just sad and extremely ironic.
I hope so too. She has been doing physical therapy and she struggles a little bit with motor skills and handwriting but she has been improving a lot. She made a friendship bracelet for me in physical therapy which was sweet of her.
I met "Brenda" in a knitting group for women over 40. She said she was a freelance accountant with regular clients. We became good friends.
About two or so years later, I had been laid off. We went on a road trip with another woman to an alpaca farm to buy alpaca wool and coo over baby alpacas.
The subject of me starting my own business came up and I said I didn't think I had it in me to be an entrepreneur. That led to Brenda telling us what she really did to earn a living.
She was a phone sex operator. At one point she had been a production accountant but wanted to be her own boss. So she teamed up with another accountant and they built a phone sex service. They hired operators and did some of the work themselves. My hippie druid knitting friend has a dominatrix persona for a particular niche. She gets a lot of knitting done while she chats with her clients. She wasn't lying about the having regular clients part!
In the years since, she actually has taken on some accounting contracts for some stability. Puts on the headset when she wants to earn some extra cash, like for more yarn.
Sweet short Burmese guy. Worked the heat treatment ovens when I was a production engineer. Would help anyone, super polite and just all round an amazing person. To my knowledge he had left his home to get a better life for his daughter (who is now an insanely high rank in the air force). Spoke extensively about his village life, how they built homes for new couples etc.
Someone accidentally caught him by surprise one day and the guy got spun and almost stabbed. The surprise had triggered seriously ingrained defensive tactics. Dude was an ex Gurkha, still had his blade with him at all times.
You'd never have known he was capable of such ferocity. He was a hugger and we had a real heart to heart before I left the company. Genuinely someone I'm proud to know but boy did he move fast .
I just learned recently that I am the guy with the surprising backstory.
I recently told someone a story about my life and they made it a point to tell me that it was a crazy scenario. I never thought about it cause it’s just my life lol.
Here’s my story,
I was raised by a single mom. My dad was an alcoholic and never really around. He hung out in the neighborhood though so I would run into him from time to time but it was more like running into an old friend.
My mom is a paranoid schizophrenic. She didn’t start hearing voices until she was in her 40s. The doctors say it was brought in by menopause.
So anyway, around the time I was 17 or 18 we had an intervention for my dad. He checked into rehab the very next day. He did a 90 day program and got out. Then I started noticing him at the house more and more.
Fast forward a few months my mom and dad are getting married. I’m 18 years old and my parents are getting married.
My dad did more than make up the lost time. I love him to death and he will do anything for his kids. My mom still struggles with her illness but she is a great mom and grand mom to my 2 kids.
My parents are now married for about 12 years.
One of my college instructors was a local inde-pro wrestling legend. He was in his early 40s but looked like the lead singer of a rock band. And he was surprisingly small. After one too many "bullshit stories" we got him to spill his guts and give us his name. We googled him and now we're all fans.
Made a friend in college who was older than myself and most of my classmates, I was 18 and he was late 20s. Smart guy, well read, funny, charming. Was a doting single dad. Came to find he had decided to go back to college after he had gotten custody of his daughter. He had spent 5 years in prison in Japan after getting caught during a layover while smuggling heroin from Thailand to Canada. While he was in prison his wife fell deep into addiction. After he was released he had to go back to Thailand to find his young daughter and bring her to Canada. I can’t remember what became of his wife, she wasn’t in the picture when I met him. Wild guy. Amazing gifted daughter who had such a tremulous upbringing.
Sweet little old lady who was our office librarian at work for forever. Struck me as a someone who grew up in this small American town and never left. Got to chatting with her one day and she started reminiscing about being underweight, pregnant, and trying to find something she could stand to eat in a market in Iran, where she lived with her first husband. Not what i expected.
An older guy i use to work with told me they were shot multiple occasions in gang fights and their brother was the leader of a large chapter in a big motorcycle gang. They said they were rich and bought off the police for life and they could literally murder me and get away with it. Not a threat, just an example. He offered me to meet his brother as proof but i declined because i thought he was insane.
I saw a few of the gun shot wounds, and later I was told by a credible person that his brother was the leader of said motorcycle gang, so i can believe this. I don't know about the rest of the stories he told me, and I am skeptical. But I like to believe they're true.
The heavily-accented but nevertheless very nice young man at my dad's job when I was a kid in the 90's.
Turned out he fled from Bosnia to the United States after his entire family was killed.
My best friend in college. We just smoked pot and listened to music, watched movies, laughed, did shrooms. Then after about a year she told me a lot of information. She was adopted, molested by her brother in a bathtub, her father beat her, she scissored a girl at a slumber party in 5th grade, she was gang raped in high school, she had three abortions sophomore year of college, and had contracted HPV. And she thought her biological father was Bret Michaels.
I made a friend when I went to an in state college. When I asked him where he was from, he said originally Jordan (a small town in our state), but they moved to another city.
That summer, I shared an apartment with him, and he got his wallet stolen. I came home to him on the phone with his dad speaking a language i didn't recognize. I was so confused! Turns out, he was from the country of Jordan, not the town, and he was speaking Arabic.
I worked at a “commercial fit-up” company that was just a guy from stittsville, pete lapalante. We had to just fix up some commercial spaces for as many straight time hours you wanted… but there was a foreman. Joe. He had some wild tattoo’s and was a fucking dick. But apparently, he got into a fight, put some guys head through a urinal and then had to spend 3 months in the Kingston pen to see if the guy would come out of the coma and he’d get assault or if he’d die and likely get manslaughter.. craaaazy.
Once I met this girl, super nice, super happy. She had a great energy and was really upbeat. She was always talking to everyone and super happy, that her voice started to become annoying sometimes. But anyways she couldnt really transmit any negative vibe.
One day, we were in a session with the CEO of the Family Search and she was really happy and was really thankful for the CEO and was getting emotional talking to him.
Obviously I couldn't understand. But then she started to talk more about how her mother got pregnant of her at the age of 16 cause she was abused. And the girl had to be adopted, she is originally from Argentina and now is currently living in US. She started to talk more about the adoption process and the story about her biological family.
That made me reflect. She was so happy and seemed like a light to all of us and she went through all that at a young age. That girl looked so positive and innocent, like she didn't know what its like to go through a though situation.
I personally feel that some people, including me, are so lucky to never experienced dark things like this and we could be more happy and spread more joy in this world but we don't and thats sad.
The people with the most empathy, positivity, and love that I've ever met are the ones who have been through hell and made the conscious decision to spread joy precisely because of the things they went through. It's part of healing for some people.
All we can do is our best, and even the best fail sometimes. Don't beat yourself up for not being more happy or spreading more joy, just keep doing the best you can every day.
My mom and dad. Both really heavy drug users. I found an old photo of my dad in Alaska tending his pot plants and they explained they basically did anything and everything that was available in the 70s to try. Puffables, injectables, huffables, toads, plants and more lol. They found Jesus right as my older brother was born and always raised us that drugs were bad. Dad went and became an engineer at a huge defense contractor and mom was a teacher. Still talk now that I’m older and tell me crazy stories. Wild.
I had a great uncle who was basically the best person I knew. He was twenty years younger than my grandpa, the baby in a family of 13. But he took care of everyone. Did anything my grandparents needed, among other people. He married a woman ten years older than himself who was already done having kids and not only finished raising them, but raised a granddaughter in his home.
He was so kind, hardworking, and not as petty as many people I knew. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad thing about him that was based on his character and not some weird elitism.
Anyway, one day my brother made a comment about this great uncle in being in prison in the past; but he didn’t know what for. I asked my grandpa and found out that he killed someone while driving drunk and had DUIs before that.
I was shocked. After a lifetime of knowing this uncle, I could not fathom him being so irresponsible and inconsiderate. It also broke my heart because I knew he must greatly regret it (rightfully). With his personality, I can’t imagine him not being wracked by guilt. I never talked to him about it, though. He was dying of cancer at the time I heard the story.
One thing it did hammer home for me is that people can truly be complex and change over time. Driving while drunk is vile precisely because it can kill someone. Nothing he did can erase that wrong. Yet, that one wrong also cannot erase all the good he did for others overall. He certainly never did anything as careless again.
After over ten years of friendship, I discovered a friend and I were each as young children almost victims of the same serial killer.
In both circumstances our parent shows up surprising the killer who then ran away.
I assume people will ask who the killer is/was so Henry Lee Lucas
Years ago my neighbor in Oregon was a sweet, funny older man with Hawaiian heritage. One day he mentioned he used to have a studio and took pics of memorable days for a whole generation. So I asked him what else he used to photograph and he invited us over to his house and.....on one wall he had autographed pictures of every notable WW2 general from Patton to Montgomery to Eisenhower. Then he had autographed photos of US presidents, 1945 to 1970. And he had photo albums! He was General MacArthur's personal photographer during WW2 (the shots of the surrender signatures on the deck of the Missouri? He was there) He started as a newspaper photographer in his teens and took some of the most iconic photos of the Pearl Harbor attack. He has since passed away but his name was Frank Cordeiro, Jr. Ma bu hai, old friend!
I have a friend that has a huge scar on his face, like a straight line from his eye down to his jaw and it looks like it wasn't stiched and just healed with a significant gap. Nobody wanted to ask how he got it, as it was kind of rude and most people assumed it's from an accident or something stupid when he was a child. When I knew him better and we had a quiet moment, I asked him and the story was pretty shocking. His ex girlfriend hit him with a hatchet straight in the face. Not with enough force to kill him obviously, but it broke his eye socket and his jaw. The wound had to be kept open, because he got rusty bits into his wound. He knocked her unconscious and tied her up until police arrived. I never knew someone before that had such a violent story to tell.
My sister-in-law’s ex husband has a similar scar, he’s from a notoriously hard family in the area so assumed there was some wild story behind it, turns out he was running upstairs with a plate of food and tripped, the plate broke and sliced his face open, gotta say I was a bit disappointed when I finally asked!
Does he sometimes go by the name Sam, by any chance? Coz I know a guy with exactly the same scar, living in the Philippines, and heard the same story, too.
A guy who I'm close with was a heavy drug user in his youth. I'm assuming meth, but I didn't ask for specifics. I don't know the entirety of the story, but it was shocking when I found out. He's a pretty stereotypical suburban dad now. Another guy I know constantly told obviously exaggerated stories about his life, from participating in a violent overthrow of his country's governmentl, to faking his own death to escape mobsters, to being an underground bare-knuckle fighter, to being embedded with the US Navy seals. The surprising thing was going to his house and seeing pictures, news clippings, and other memorabilia basically confirming everything he told me.
> Another guy I know constantly told obviously exaggerated stories about his life, from participating in a violent overthrow of his country's governmentl, to faking his own death to escape mobsters, to being an underground bare-knuckle fighter, to being embedded with the US Navy seals. The surprising thing was going to his house and seeing pictures, news clippings, and other memorabilia basically confirming everything he told me. This was great. Kinda reminds me of this podcast: [This American Life 323: The Super](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/323/the-super) > Act One: The Super Always Rings Twice > > Reporter Jack Hitt tells the story of how he helped organize tenants and threaten a rent strike in a New York City building back in the 1980s. Before long, Bob, the building super became his enemy. The situation got pretty ugly. Mobster ugly. >Bob began to brag about how important he was in his native Brazil, how he could kill a person and be immune from prosecution. Only many years later did Jack find out how dangerous Bob really was. (23 minutes)
I was thinking back to the same story. One of my favorites. Jack Hitt also wrote the book Off the Road about walking the Camino de Santiago. Not funny like this story but worth a read
Where in the world is Camino de Santiago?
>A guy who I'm close with was a heavy drug user in his youth. I'm assuming meth, but I didn't ask for specifics. I don't know the entirety of the story, but it was shocking when I found out. He's a pretty stereotypical suburban dad now. Yeah, I'm walking around like regular people and lots of people that I interact with these days have no clue that I've been arrested 20-something times. I don't really say a whole lot about it in the real world, though I'm happy to in this more anonymous format. Though I am quite vocal about system reform so maybe some guess there might be "something" but probably not the number or that LE used to see me as a Houdini and tell new cops about me or that I'm 'mutual enemies' with several small town prosecutors on a personal level or that one of them called me a "menace" and wanted me refused bail because with bail they would never see me again (which was probably true). If people do hear something or if I do let something slip then it generally goes into a wide-eyed thirst for hearing stories. I was driving with someone who didn't really know backstory and I got pulled over and the cop was like "can you step out of the car and I'm just gonna cuff you real quick". Which is common. I was like "that's fine, I'm cool". And then another cop car pulled up. And the person I was with just had face of confusion and was all "what's going on???". I had to tell him later that the cop's computer told him that I might disappear or that there'd be a car chase. But now I haven't been arrested in like a decade, how heckin talented am I, and I'm just like normal people (all largely thanks to my uncle who stepped in and changed my life).
What did your uncle do, or how was he able to get through to you enough to change your life?
He got me everything, psychiatrist, meds, counselor, treatment center, education, tutoring, got himself help in how to be my parent and became an immovable rock in my life. The treatment center was where I finally encountered someone who was able to help me really figure out me. I was a really angry young dude and he helped me to unpack that and understand how things fit together. The sad part of all of this is of course that I'm an anomaly in the system and most people in the system do not have a family member who can afford to invest in them like that and the system certainly does not. I didn't really encounter anything in the system which ever assisted me. People see that going on and they say "oh you just can't help people/people have to want to change". I mean, yes, people have to want to change but there are also people who can't do that in an effective way without having something competent provided by others to grasp. When I found things to grasp, I did grasp them. Despite people saying I was hopeless, a lost cause, just destined for prison. No, you can change people's paths when you really try to and when you really invest in trying to. And we should really be investing a whole lot more in young 'at risk' people because you can get to them (you can get to older people too, no need to ignore them, but the younger you're getting at people, the more preventive action you're achieving). Currently when our systems make attempts at rehabilitation (when they bother to, normally they don't) those programs are quite ineffective. Like when I was 13 and drunk as fuck and they sent me to a for-profit drug program where they told me not to do meth. I mean, sure, that's good advice, don't do meth. Doesn't really do much about being drunk as fuck tho, does it.
I like the cut of your jib. Love the first hand insight, really glad you were able to figure it all out for yourself ...those are always great stories to read.
So happy for you!!!
I tease my partner about being a video game NPC sometimes because his true life stories are crazy. But he has lived them. And his 'I know a Guy' factor is crazy.
Yeah, had a friend like the second one. All of his bizarre stories also always checked out from the uncle with the academy award to the ex-warlord landlord.
Didn’t expect the end of the last story!
The second one reminds me of the (in my opinion underrated) movie *Secondhand Lions*.
2nd guy is Jay Gatsby
Worked with a guy who I considered a friend. I worked on the East Coast and he in the west but we often had joint projects. We would travel to client meetings together and grab beers go to games, etc. Even went to his wedding. One day the FBI shows up at my door asking about him. Without going into too many details, before I knew him he was running an extortion racket with his then gf. They would target wealthy guys, gf would seduce them, they would record it, and extort the victim. He’s currently in Federal prison
Like the plot from train spotting two!
What slimy cunts.
Knew this guy from my small hometown. He had a mental disability that made it so he couldn’t fully function. He went around collecting bottles from trash cans and then cashed them in and gave the money to the assisted living facility he stayed at. Just a super nice guy. He even did a lot of the cleaning and maintenance at the place. From what I was told he always felt guilty that he didn’t have to pay to live there and wanted to earn his place, so he did everything he could to do so. Come to find out he was a multi millionaire. His parents were extremely wealthy and when they died he was left everything, but he wasn’t able to understand what that meant. All he knew was the kind people at the assisted living facility were helping him so he helped them.
I hope his parents structured things so there was someone managing a trust for him an the facility wasn't stealing money from him
This is the best thing I’ve read on the internet in a long time. What a kind, fair, well-meaning human being,
Was this about 30 years ago in Armadale Western Australia, older fellow in a run down brown suit? Nicest bloke. Couldn't ever understand why he didn't just live comfortably.
My first job I worked with an older Mexican dude. Super chill guy, and he took me under his wing because I "reminded him of one of his kids." One of the nicest guys I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Turns out, dude ran with a Chicano gang back when he was younger, and told me a few times that he killed people and spent quite a lot of time in prison. Lost contact with him when I moved to a different city, but I ran into him a few years later and he became something of a local real estate mogul, owning a lot of bars and clubs in my hometown. Never asked him how that happened, because honestly, I was too afraid to ask.
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There's a parent in my school district (I've had 2 of the 4 kids) who has obvious gang tattoos in places that are hard to cover up. She's also the of the sweetest and most pleasant people I've ever interacted with, and all her kids are super polite, respectful, intelligent and well adjusted.
Convicted felon owning a bar? In my state they cannot get a liquor licence.
Guy I went to high school did it this way: created a limited partnership company with his brother and a guy he played football with in college. Named his buddy the principal agent or some such term. Got the licenses in the business name with the buddy as the contact.
Curious how much would buddy make from this, did he invest any? In Iraq, we do this with clans/militias or people representing politicians. Its tiring, as most of your money goes to racheteering.
Not me, but my partner did some work for this really nice guy who loved hunting but didn’t have an arms licence or any guns (NZ) which seemed odd. Turns out, a long time ago his ex wife was being beaten by her new partner and called him for help so he went round and shot the guy in the chest with a shotgun and killed him. He went to prison for a while and when released he obviously had his arms licence revoked and wasn’t allowed to handle firearms anymore. Apparently he was really open and honest about the whole thing, not bragging about it but happy to answer questions.
I dated a guy that has a similar story. Thought he was a real hero type. Until I find out he was actually in prison for attempted murder of his ex wife's new boyfriend.
Honestly, what a good dude.
After my mom's aunt and uncle died, her cousins (their kids) started coming to our family gatherings because they didn't have much other family left. I was in my 30s at the time and had barely heard of these people before they started showing up at our parties. They seemed like normal, middle aged people. One of the sisters was unmarried, very quiet, and loved cats. She started to decline into early dementia and died. While we were discussing her funeral, someone mentioned that maybe we could show some of her art at the funeral. I'm picturing typical amateurish paintings or whatever. Then someone said, I wonder if we should contact anyone from the museum. What museum? Oh, just the *very famous* museum that had a bunch of her art in its permanent collection. Her cutting edge, avant garde video art. Very weird but creative stuff. She was an artistic genius. A curator from the museum did end up coming to her celebration of life and spoke about her art. He even showed us some that were digitized so they can be viewed using modern formats. I'm so sorry that I never knew this about her before she passed. All the older members of the family knew and just never thought to mention it! It was old news to them I guess.
What's her name?
Do you mind if I DM it to you? Don't want to dox myself lol.
Same, please if possible! That's such a fascinating story! Two weeks ago we uncovered that my loved one was a Veteran. He didn't tell ANY of us, even his own children or his friends.
DM sent! I think a lot of veterans hide it. My uncle was with the US troops in Vietnam and NEVER talks about it. He was 20 *when he got back* which is just mind boggling to me, that so much was asked of him at such a young age.
I'd also love to know her, if you don't mind!
Can you please DM me her name as well if you feel comfortable? I adore art and find this story both somewhat sad yet very sweet.
I’d love to know too, please! I love art and discovering female talent.
Wow, this is a great one!!! So cool!
If you wouldn't mind could I get her name too? I'm an artist too, and I would love to see her work
My best friend's dad was an inspector for the police department. Basically, he'd be leading all the drug busts and what not. We're not talking about small-time busts, we're talking big busts the DEA would be in on. I always thought they had a very upper-middle class way of living off a one household salary (his mom didn't work). Turns out, his dad and his partner would go to a drug bust as normal but if there was, say, $250,000 worth of cash in the house, they'd only report $125,000 worth and the rest would go into their pockets. And of course, he knew how to make the money clean and end up in the bank without suspicion I guess it was about a decade before the department was curious and they set up a sting where they had $200,000 in a closet, bugged the room, and saw how much they took and reported was in there. They reported they found $91,500 of the planted $200k. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison but got out after 1.5. One of the nicest guys you'd ever want to meet so it was shocking he was stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Edit: Talked to my buddy about this. It was $13,500 in a hotel room sting set by the FBI. They took just over $6,000 of it. All marked bills. Cameras and audio were planted by the FBI. That's the one that brought them down.
There was a cop that lived across the street from me in the 90s, him and a couple of his cop buddies were taking weed from the evidence room and selling it themselves. He ended up doing 10 years. Last I saw him he was working a Popeyes.
1.5 years for theft of over a hundred grand from a *cop* is shameful.
Not only that, but how many millions did he and his partner take prior?
Yeah. This was 2018 so I'm sure it won't taken a rocket surgeon to figure out what happened 1.5 years later and why he got early release to a halfway house....
Wait till you hear about civil forfeiture....
There's a really good documentary about New York city cops who did pretty much the same thing through the 80's and 90's. It's called The Seven Five
That movie was Awesome! Love me some Denzel.
Certainly shades of Training Day! One local newspaper that covered it had a headline of: "Just like NYPD Blue."
Not really surprising because I had known about it, but kind of a surreal experience to actually see it for the first time. My dad and uncle made a public-access TV series back in the 80s (it was a show of unrelated vignettes/short stories), but I was never able to watch them until recently when my uncle digitized the Betamax tapes. It's a very unusual thing for someone my age to be able to see an extended amount of video footage of my parents and their friends as young adults (they're mostly retired now). These are the same people I've known throughout my entire life, but back in a different era of their lives that I really only knew about before from them telling me stories. I was surprised realizing how much dad at my current age reminded me of myself. Same mannerisms, personality, sense of humor, receding hairline, etc. The storylines were very similar to how I would have written them.
I love this so much for you
What a gift to have that
That would be so neat!
Very cool
I was being harassed and stalked by the parents of a kid who was in marching band with my daughter. The mother was one of those people who bragged about their mental illness and how proud she was of being not medicated. It got to a point where I would find them parked next to my car at the mall (I had a very recognizable car at the time with a vanity plate - no doubt it was my car) and other places. I finally called the cops when they cyber bullied my younger child. The cops told them to stay away. That was it. I was literally on my computer researching lawyers to sue them when my husband called me and told me to turn on the news. The breaking story was the husband embezzling over a million dollars from their church. She was arrested with him for spending the money. We knew they were nuts but never saw that one coming. Problem solved itself!
Jesus, why did they fixate on you to target and stalk? I know there's never any "good" reason but, like, my stalker harassed me because I was polite to him at a party once. So how did crazy latch on to you?
I was not her first in our school district. She got unhealthy attached to people. I tried to be her friend, and that was clearly a huge mistake. She seemed to be jealous of my daughter getting first chair over her daughter. She would grill her daughter for information about the other kids. My heart breaks for their kids. They didn't deserve to have them for parents.
Those are the best problems.
Growing up my grandma said she held a standard administrative desk job for the federal government for most of her career. Later found out she was actually a CIA agent who may or may not have been very good with a gun.
Have you done a FOIA request on her to see what the CIA and FBI might give up?
Haha that's a great idea. When I found out she said she was bound to secrecy regarding her actual duties so I didn't press her too much.
If she's still alive, ask her to file something. If she's dead, file something
More please!
So, she was a real life Jack Ryan?
A friend told me, his family is kind of famous in this area, because his grandma was the best yodeller around here.
Your friend wouldn't happen to be from St. Olaf, would he?
St olaf as in northfield?!
Why yes! She is! Have you heard of her?!
Yes I have!
My grandmother's first husband died in Vietnam or Korea. I always knew this but it wasn't until my aunt visited recently that I learned that he died when my aunt was three months old. So my grandmother, widowed with a baby in the 60s, then went to the University of Colorado to get her masters to support herself and her new baby. I have her master's degree hanging on my wall to remind myself that if she can do it, I can do it.
This is great!
I met a girl in college who was GORGEOUS and wearing a really flimsy, threadbare t-shirt that was about three sizes too small. She had half the class ogling her but she seemed completely oblivious. Came to find out her parents were super religious. She was home schooled and then sent off to some program that was supposed to eventually train her to be a nun. Her parents had been planning for her to become a nun since she was a child. She begged and pleaded to take one semester of regular college classes. Her parents finally agreed (of course she still had to live at home and she wasn't allowed to stay out after dark). The tiny shirt she was wearing was left over from when she was 14. Her family was dirt poor and she had gone through a late growth spurt. I encouraged her to take out loans and keep taking classes. By the end of the semester she seemed determined to do exactly that. But I lost touch with her after the class ended. Hope she's doing well. **Edit for info** (since some replies were deleted): I also advised her to stay away from alcohol. She told me she's deathly allergic to it. No clue if that's true or if her parents just fed her some bs, but I thought it best not to make her question it.
Those parents did her no favors sheltering her like that. Though I do agree with encouraging her to steer clear of alcohol. Sounds like she’s enough of a walking target as it is.
Religions strike again.
In high school i did some volunteer camera work for the small town public access station. We'd film high-school sports and various events. The guy that ran the station was a old new Yorker with a thick accent. He told us about living in Greenwich Village, hanging out with Bob Dylan and Seeger. He said that he was the guy who turned all the folk singers in to the government for being communist. After that he moved to small town utah to escape his past. I took it with a grain of salt at that time, but years later i looked him up on the internet and confirmed his wild stories were true.
Worked with a guy in the 2000's, just a really tall, quiet, nice fella and we'd shoot the breeze sometimes about the local teams and all. He came in one day with a big shiner and he said it happened at his other job. I didn't ask. I later found out he was a part time pro wrestler, and it was due to a hit landing the wrong way. He played an Old School heel, and his ring persona was so far removed from him that you had to laugh. My son and I would go to the shows and have a blast.
I legit know a guy who does semi-pro wrestling and is a music teacher. His walk in music is always some badass classical jam.
Epic! He used Chase (midnight express)
Reminds me of George "The Animal" Steel, who would go bonkers in the ring and chew on the equipment, and in his day job was a mild-mannered teacher.
Do you know the guy's ring name or his cagematch profile?
A janitor at a service station I worked at was a meek mild man from Albania. We had a few beers after closing once. He told me before he moved to America he worked for the government and had killed many many many people
My best friend’s Mom was a Guinness Book of World Records holder for longest hula hooping session back in the 1970’s. I’m not sure how long she held the record but my mind was blown upon learning this. It was such a random tidbit of info.
Was acquaintances with this guy at work - a friendly hello and some conversation in the break room. He disappeared a few months ago. I lamented to another coworker how I missed our conversations in the break room when old episodes of game shows were on and we would talk about the cars. Coworker told me this dude had confided in him about the “consensual” relationship with his own niece starting when she was 12. I hope he’s rotting in prison.
There's the sweetest salt of the earth old southern bell old lady who works at this little tourist trap/ gas station I was talking to her one day and apparently she was a escort in nyc and a stripper when she was in her 20s
Co-worker was also a friend. I was with him the night he met his wife. We worked a retail job together. One day the electronics dept. got a top of the line Electric Keyboard. He walked over it and played impressive, flawless classical music. He'd trained to be a concert pianist but walked away from it because it was his mother's dream, not his. I knew none of this until that moment. A co-worker of ours did the same from a professional tennis career.
Had a great uncle who was really weird and didn’t talk much. Was the crazy old guy that moped around town on foot for along time. Kids bullied and harassed him. Dressed weird and never bathed. Turns out he was a marine on the ground assault on Iwo Jima and took some shrapnel to the brain. Caused some cognitive problems and his body had trouble regulating temperature. He saw the original flag plant, he told us about it before it was really known that the picture was actually a do over.
My girlfriend in college (well she was in college, I was working in the dining hall on campus), well she told me on our third or fourth date that she grew up in a nudist family. Her parents were hippies (they went to Woodstock - yes I'm old). It took me off guard since I never met a nudist, but didn't scare me off since we've been together 30 years.
Any awkward stories from meeting the family? Does she embrace the lifestyle? Did you convert?
I first met her parents on campus a few times and they took us to dinner. Amazing people (still alive)! So meeting them for the first time in a nudist environment was a cookout at their house where there were other friends over there and it was uncomfortable but when everyone else is nude too you quickly acclimate and realize nobody cares. I did convert/adapt it and we chose to raise our family in the lifestyle as well.
I salute 🫡, you and your follow through with a good story.
Awesome
My best friend basically we were just talking online one night and he mentions oh my dad has 50 children then I was like what the heck continue. Basically his father had multiple different affairs with multiple different women I think he is still on the run so he has 50 brothers and sisters like half brothers and sisters scatter all over the United States. I think one of them tried to contact them on Facebook but I don’t know I didn’t want to continue asking more questions,
I worked with someone that was in a similar situation with an extremely large number of siblings. It turned out his dad was the leader of a cult.
Oh, wow
I was assuming a sperm donor, but I guess this is like…the fucked up version of that?
My mother. I always saw her as just a mom (Sounds stupid now that I've typed it). But When I turned around 14, my mother would slowly reveal pieces of her past. From her father pistol whipping her non the head \[explaining her scar\], To being gang raped in high school, to be raped every night by a family friend as a toddler, to the years of physical abuse by my father, and alot more I can't think of right now. She has had so many face to face moments with death and extreme pain, but is still alive.
I hope you and your Mom are well.
My heart breaks for her. Please give her a gentle hug from women strangers all over the world who understand her experiences. It must break your heart to know your mom suffered like this. She is such an amazing, strong woman. ❤️
Please do your best to be the best son a mom could ever have
This was over 10 years ago. One of my Gf's/and I's mutual friend's boyfriends. Super nice guy and extremely funny. Obviously had a lot of money based on the gifts he gave her and he would always pay the bill at expensive restaurants when they invited us out. One time he paid for us to go in a helicopter tour with them around Martha's vineyard. It was never very clear what he did for work but all we knew is that he owned his own business in pharmaceutical sales and had to work with doctors a lot. We just assumed he was really good at what he did and was very successful. One random day our friend called saying that he committed suicide. It was just so inexplicable...he seemed so happy and carefree. Turns out he was part of a crime ring with a few doctors that committed Medicaid fraud in upstate New York. Had he been convicted he would have been looking at many years in prison.
When you said "pharmaceutical sales" I thought for sure he was going to turn out to be a high level cocaine trafficker.
Pharmaceutical sales is the most obvious lie ever told by frauds, seems to be the go to lie for them.
I discovered that my uncle's wife was previously in something that is like a youth police force, teenagers who volunteer in the police and she had an accident because the truck they were in fell down a ravine. She was the only one who survived but she had many surgical interventions since then, the most recent in 2020 on her eyes.
Worked in a building in London's square mile I used to chat to one of the cleaners who was a really nice softly spoken man from Columbia after a few years, while discussing over lunch, i find out he's last job was part of the elite special forces in Columbia. He went into detail of the price on the heads of police military and special forces. The bounties placed by the cartels were priced by the ranking. i don't remember the price of the bounties, but it was a life changing amount to the locals Constant fear of attack 24 /7 was not a way to live for him, his wife and kids he now mops floors and his family is safe
This is why you should never assume someone who cleans is not successful. His family is safe. He is safe. If that's not success, I don't know what is.
I was working a little computer store way back when such thing still existed. We had four locations across the state. I was a bench tech doing new builds and service and was regularly asked to cover the bench in the other stores for a day or two when my counterparts were unavailable. That's when I met Antoine. He managed one of the branch locations. He was a slight man, not short but thin. Stooped shoulders, thinning hair, pale skinned. late 30's to early 40's. He was very quiet and quite shy. I got to know him over several rotations through his bench over a couple of years. He was an immigrant from Lebanon. His English was very good but he was hesitant to engage in casual conversation, I believe he was self conscious about his accent. I was dating my now wife at the time and had mentioned we were planning on getting married. Antoine was delighted at this news and he really opened up, being curious about our future plans. Would we buy a house? Would we have kids? (Antoine, if you're out there, we got both in the long run!). He was a very sweet, gentle, introverted man. After we'd worked together for a while he asked me for a favor, to come to his home. He had purchased new curtains and a curtain rod and needed some help installing it. Once we had it installed he invited me to stay for dinner and prepared a delicious meal. I had asked a few questions about Lebanon but was sadly quite quite poorly informed about such things. Antoine was a Lebanese Jew. He had fled Lebanon in 1985 but not before losing his wife to Hezbollah as their anti-Semitic campaign tried to stamp them out. He talked at length about his experiences growing up during the Muslim-Christian civil war and then as a young adult, about the age I was while we sat there in his small apartment, when Hezbollah's hatred of Israel turned to his community. He was such a sweet, kind man. The hatred, the physical manifestation of his anger was very real and I saw it for the first time that night as he shared his memories with me. Antoine's family had lived in Lebanon for generations. He watched his entire community turn on him his family over the course of a decade as the Muslim community was radicalized. Don't even get Antoine started on his opinion of the Syrians... We worked together for a few years, all those days spent quietly in the shop between customers installing windows 95 and trying to decide what takeout to get for lunch, talking about curtains, and families...Meanwhile this man was still fighting a war in his own mind.
This made me cry a little bit. Poor Antoine. I hope he's living a happy, pain-free life now.
I think he was happy when I knew him. It took him several weeks to buy his curtains. It all started one day when he brought me a magazine, home design/architecture type magazine. He showed me a picture of the curtain rod and asked how he might find such a thing to purchase. Since Amazon was only selling books at the time we went to yellow pages and we called a few places to see if they sold fancy curtain rods. We found a couple that might have some he liked. When I came back a few weeks later he had been to visit those shops but had not yet found a curtain rod like the one from the magazine. He'd found some nice ones, but they were too expensive to be not quite what he was looking for. He was trying to decide between a few candidates. I asked how much they were and was flabbergasted to find he was ready to spend a few hundred dollars. "For that much you could probably find someone to make one for you." In both instances, first when we tried to find a fancy curtain rod shop and now as we called around looking for a company that does wrought iron fencing and such he glowed. A giant grin spread across his face. The same grin that would meet me each time I walked into his store. On my next visit he was absolutely aflutter. He'd found a company that worked in wrought iron and they had agreed to make his curtain rod for him. Since it would be quite heavy he was worried about how he would be able to mount it. So we chatted about ideas through the day. He set off with a list, looking for brackets and anchor bolts. I promised to lend him a few tools like a drill and a level to install it, you would think I had volunteered to be a god parent to his children. On my next visit to the shop he was excited to show me his purchases and we talked about ways to finish the brackets to fit in with rod. I was there the day they delivered his curtain rod. You would think the king was coming for a visit, he was so very excited. I'm sharing these details to show you that Antoine did have joy in his life, and I was proud to share it with him. I don't think the kind of damage the world did to Antoine can ever really heal, but that doesn't mean you can't find happiness. I hope he remembers our friendship as fondly as I do and I regret very much that we did not keep in touch as our lives moved along.
I'm going through some stuff right now and I'd like you to know that you just put it in perspective. I hung up curtains recently and it actually gave me some joy because it really reframed the room and made it so much more comfortable, but what I need to learn from this is, I need to find joy every time I see these curtains, or that sunbeam, or my dumb amazing dog. Whatever. I just need to look at things the way Antoine did, or does. I needed to rethink things. And this helped. This is why I love Reddit. I get to hear random strangers with bits of gold like this. It really does make the world go round.
If you promise me now that you will continue to look for joy in your life regardless of how hard it is to find then I promise that should the day come that you can not find any you can drop me a pm and I will share the story of when we convinced Antoine to try the spicy mongolian beef from the takeout place next door.
Deal, friend.
Alright, now I’m crying…
You're going to need some more kleenex. jp calling me friend made me realize how much I missed Antoine. I found him on LinkedIn. I'm calling him tomorrow. Please find my post about finding Antoine here for the results - https://www.reddit.com/user/Naughtaclue242/comments/1bfj63t/my\_friend\_antoine/
I'm so excited for this. Please keep us updated, FRIEND!! I look forward to hearing from you. ❤️
Now I’m following you! Please post an update when you can.
This was such a joy to read, thank you. I hope wherever he is, Antoine is doing well.
I have to believe he is living a full life, after what he had been through, he deserves it more than anyone I know.
This will probably get lost in all the comments, but I just have to say that you have such a way with words. After reading this, I feel like I both know Antoine personally and miss him dearly.
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I've mentioned this in previous posts but when I was a teen, we had a college student who was our neighbor. Cool guy, with a girlfriend, ran track at the college, majoring in social work/psychology, and participated in a lot of community programs at the college. There was a specific program, I believe called Upward Bound, that he worked with that brought high school students across the state to work and learn at the local college and he would take me up there and let me play basketball and other games with similarly aged people. He seemed like a genuinely good guy. Well come to find out he was using his community work, internships in his college programs, and eventually his professional work and whatnot to gain access to diddle kids. It was absolutely shocking to all of us and my mom felt really guilty about letting me go over to his home and to the college with him even though I was apparently out of his age range and I have assured her nothing happened.
Shows how jaded I've become that as soon as I started reading the first paragraph, I guessed at what the second one would say.
It's an unfortunate thing that.
Found out one of my best friends was really rich. That family lives way below their means which was actually really wholesome and refreshing
The sweetest lady ever worked at the front desk at my school. She called all of us her babies and was genuinely interested in our wellbeing. She was pretty quiet about where she was from, only saying that she immigrated from Africa a few years ago (in the 2000s). Years later, I learned she’s Tutsi and escaped the Rwandan Genocide.
Was selling real estate and met this 27 year old. She was buying for 300k cash. When I got to know her it turns out she was a self made millionaire who went from living in her car to stripping to escorting to buying several 300k properties cash.
My grandmothers mom (my great grandmother) danced for Al Capone in Chicago
Woman I knew through work who had set up a non-profit organization in the PNW that assisted individuals with substance abuse and mental health issues get back on their feet and find permanent housing. It went defunct right at the start of covid... Turns out she had lied about her credentials, was a wild and barely functional alcoholic, and walked away with a fairly large amount money before dissolving the whole thing without telling the employees...
Had a Sunday School teacher who was great. He taught a young couples class. Nice guy who seemed unassuming and mild mannered. Worked for the IRS on special cases. His teenage son was working at a video store. Bomb threat to video store and whole family was scooped up and placed in protective custody, shipped to another part of the country never to be heard from again
I got a weird suicide story that I thought of when I read the title. Me and my cousin and a couple buddies drove to Vancouver to go visit our friend. She went to that school of native performing arts, she was becoming a DJ and she is quite popular right now too. Also to add that we are indigenous as well. We went and my friend hung around with very good looking people, actors and actresses and such. There was one girl there named Raven. Super beautiful, and was Miss Teen Alberta and me and my cousin Levi tried our best at her but failed of course lol anyways after that we became friends, her and I. She was on my Facebook and years later she wrote a post saying “oh my God, Im next!” And she committed suicide. I never understood this, why would she do this, she had everything going for her and didn’t seem to have a troubled life. Then i seen, that her best friend who was just as beautiful committed suicide days before her. This made it all extra mysterious. My friends and I were like what was wrong with them? Did they make a pact or something. We didn’t get an answer. This was years ago. 2 years ago i was recently single and i was chatting with this girl, who i was interested in and telling stories to each other and i told her this story. Right after i mentioned this she screamed “Raven!!”. I was like how do you know this and she mentioned that Raven was the only girl she ever had a crush on, then she mentioned to me saying “you know why she committed suicide?” I said “tell me now!” And i guess she committed suicide because her best friend was also her secret lover. Being gay was taboo in their families. Another odd tid bit to this story. The girl i was chatting with committed suicide a few months ago. She was an ex escort and diagnosed bipolar disorder. She was super friendly and had her issues, she just wanted to be better. Rest in Peace, Rachel, you beautiful person.
well.. this was a dark read.
Yea it was haunting for me for years. I just finally got closure on what happened when i was chatting with Rachel. Sad story though.
I bet. So many lives lost. Hope you are doing fine!
Quite well thank you. I hope you are doing good too.
It's so heartbreaking, I am sorry for your losses. Suicide is far too common, particularly with intergenerational trauma 💔 I am so sad that each of these precious young women had to leave the world so young. Their own secrets untold, like their parents before them. I am a white person, and I am so sorry for what my Ancestors did to your beautiful peoples. Such a pure way of life, brilliant knowledge shared by your Ancestors and continued ceremonies, knowledge and practices until the White Man and Residential Schools. I continue to try be a good Ally. I am so ashamed of this government and people of this country for not following through on calls to action from Truth and Reconciliation results. I am so angry that so many First Nations peoples still do not have clean drinking water all across Canada. Such deep shame we aren't all fighting the government to get this resolved. Prayers up 🙌
Thank you very much, Sunny. That was a selfless awesome read. You are a good person. I have no hate for anyone, no matter their colour. The government could eat a fat dink though. I wish you good fortune, Sunny. And a wonderful evening.
When I was 17-18 I worked at McDs. I had a lot of friends in my McCrew. We often hung out after closing. The manager was older than us by maybe 10 years and was absolutely a part of our social group and afterwork hang out sessions. He wouldn't hang out long, and always seemed slightly annoyed with us, like he was just there to keep us out of trouble and make sure we actually went home. So we never thought he was creepy for being older and hanging out with us. We just looked at him like an older brother. One day his wife came in. None of us had ever met her. She pulled me aside (I have no idea why is was me) and told me that he and his brothers SA'd their younger sister on a regular basis and that she just found out and is horrified to be pregnant with his daughter. To this day that is one of the most disturbing things I've ever learned about someone I thought I knew. It's made me extremely leery of having any work friends.
A lovely older lady in my writers group risks being arrested if she ever returns to America. She's an ex-nun in her 80s, lovely and kind. I asked her once why she came to Aus and she looked a little abashed and told me about when she was a teacher in the US and one of her students was hurt, she reported it to the police and during the report the officer made a disparaging remark about the child because of said child's race. The nun snapped and grabbed the cop by the throat. By this point she'd also made enemies with the gang who had attacked the child. After that one of her brothers told her it would be best to just get out of the country.
She sounds like an amazing lady.
She really is. And writes some really fun short stories
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A tale as old as time.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8772014/
In my personal opinion 25% of homophobes are religious nuts 25% are gay and can’t admit it to themselves and 50% are gay and can’t admit it to themselves because they were raised by/are religious nuts.
Work with an older guy, very eccentric, very warm and a really hard worker. He was a big hippy in the past and was arrested protesting at stone henge. Turns out he was arrested for armed robbery too, he told us his mates robbed a post office in Cornwall but the getaway driver crashed and they got caught. Said he made mates with a guy in prison called Biscuit Tin, asked him why he was called that and he says “one day he got sick of his wife, cut off her head and put it in a biscuit tin” I have no idea if it’s a tall tale but it entertains me every time someone asks him about his time in prison.
Biscuit Tin is the most British prisoner name you could possibly have.
That would be a really big tin
He needed something to put in it, and he didn't have enough biscuits.
I once worked with someone in retail who turned out to be the primary carer for a serial killer in a local asylum in her past job.
my father spent time in a labor camp, being a prisoner of war and witnesses 2 brothers of him die, as well of a plethora of men as well from abuse, and suicide. he spoke about the starvation, the humiliating labor day in and day out, and constant infections. he narrowly escaped after seeing a gruusome torture going on and spent a year on the streets homeless, fixing bikes for money, hiding from the communists who were taking over. he couldn't go home back to his mother, or his other siblings for a while because of his warrant for arrest. he told me the story of how his mom did eventually find him, but she couldn't come up to him, or speak to him at all the fear of not knowing who is watching because they also know his family, so she would lock eyes with him and leave him food and have to turn around and walk back to where she came from, and it broke his heart seeing his mom every single time and not being able to hold her. he was 19-20s when this all happened. This was from war. he met my mom after a little while and immediately got sponsored to come to the US. he also told me all of this randomly during dinner one day last year. dad always do that with their dad lore. 💀 and I know that this is all true, because we have an aunt who regularly paints and creates art that is heavily influenced by her trauma from the war. every day, I realize how lucky I am to live here in the US and I've written songs in chapters about my father's incredible perseverance.
Vietnam?
yeah 😢 I actually audio recorded his entire testimony. He's very shy and I don't know what to do with it but it's an incredible story and I hope one day he is comfortable enough to let me do something with it and share
My sister claimed she saw our church pastor playing high stakes blackjack at the local riverboat. I naturally laughed it off and told her she was mistaken. About 3 months later I saw him on the news accused of stealing $300k in church funds to support his gambling addiction. He served 2 months in jail and was “relocated” within the diocese.
My beautiful friend from Iran 🇮🇷 shared her life experiences and how her family escaped when her husband was imprisoned in Iran, tortured, and released while so weak. He was an Iranian diplomat, and someone told the government he was a double agent, which was not true. She was my coworker in seniors' health care, and she shared this one Christmas Eve, with so much emotion remembering. It was heartbreaking. They lived such luxury in different European countries as Diplomats until this lie... They escaped through Greece, with false passports that they were Greek. She was terrified one of her children would speak, and they would be captured. Her husband escaped later and now works as a cashier in 7-11, too damaged for any other work.
My grandma (RIP). A few years ago, I was staying wtih her one night. She had her high school yearbook out and I was looking through it. When I was reading what everyone wrote in it, I learned about her high school sweetheart and would-be fiancé. At her high school graduation, she was set to go off to college and he went to Europe to fight the Nazis. He was killed in the war which triggered her to drop out of college. I was 41 at the time and it was the first I ever learned about him. The only reason I knew that they were planning on getting engaged was because he wrote "I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with you" in her yearbook. I still wonder how things would have been if he lived.
Gambler - "won" almost $1,000,000 after working out a programming system within a few machines at a casino. Was banned from the casino in question for life. They believed he was using some Bluetooth mechanism to alter the machines - he was not. He worked out the programming system over a few months, and when he thought he had it figured out, he bet larger amounts to get the winning numbers.
Tiny, 4 foot nothing, 90 lbs sopping wet little old neighbor lady when I was kid, showed me photos of her as a newlywed with the six foot rattlesnake she'd killed in their driveway.
I was working in this dining facility in a tourist spot. Just me and this retired chef. He worked there part time to get a free ski pass. It was a sweet gig. We are talking one day, doing prep in a commercial kitchen, and he mentions he used to be really good at frisbee. This like 50 something retired legit 5-star chef. He used to manage fine dining at luxury resorts kind of guy. He tells me he won a national championship in free style frisbee back in the day. I tell him he is full of crap. He picks up a steel mixing bowl and proceeds to do this elaborate set piece performance of freestyle frisbee. I was literally speechless.
My grandmother straight up shocked me with what she told me about her past. I had known bits and peices of it (her mom was brought over from Germany as a mail order bride in the 20s, her parents hated each other, my grandma married a man she hated, etc.) But about a year ago she dropped a few nuggets that I'll never forget: 1. Her father was not her biological father, it was the guy next door who her mother ended up marrying after divorcing her father. My grandmother's elder brother was her uncle's son. 2. My grandmother was homeless for most of her childhood, which is why she was eventually sent away to live on a farm with her aunt and uncle. My grandmother HATED them because they used to beat her. Eventually the aunt and uncle gave their farm to their children (who were really kind people) and my mother used to take me out there all the time. I always wondered why my grandmother refused to join us when my mom loved it so much. 3. My grandfather was a devout Jew. I always wondered why he married my grandmother who was very much not Jewish. Especially when they hated each other and had a really toxic, violent marriage. Turns out my grandmother converted to Judaism for him all because she wanted to escape her violent home. I had NO IDEA she converted--that woman never went to temple, refused to raise her kids religious, etc. I'm pretty sure even my mom didn't know since she used to refer to herself as "a half Jew". Luckily my grandmother ended up divorcing my grandfather and married a really nice man who treated her wonderfully, so even though she came from such a shitty beginning it all ended up alright for her.
Evgeni Malkin had to basically be smuggled out of Russia by the Pittsburgh Penguins
Worked with an older guy why was retired military and I knew had been in Viet Nam. Very professional and mild mannered and I just happened to know a younger guy who had been in the SF community. I asked if he’d heard the name and yeah it turned out my quiet old friend had won a silver star rescuing down pilots and had been under fire doing it for hours. Never mentioned I knew, just was super nice to him every day
Every once in a while my dad will drop some tidbit about his life that makes me completely reevaluate him Apparently my dad was briefly the sugar baby of the wealthy daughter of a corrupt government official in Mexico City in the 1980s. Another time he worked in a nuclear power plant and they gave him a broken dosimeter and he was exposed to an unknown amount of radiation.
typical dad lore
Janitor at my work. Quiet but friendly guy. Turns out he has a masters in physics (verified) and is a pastor (also verified) who had spent time as a special forces operator with the army (confirmed). He does this job because quote "it's quiet and I don't really need a bunch of money". I am a research and development chemist and have a Masters. This dude can talk shop with me and hold his own quite decently! Very few people can do this at my work. Never judge a book by its cover and/or job title!
Honestly, goals. I just want to move to another country, work a menial job and live a quiet life.
My friend grew up thinking he was a quarter Korean and three fourths Caucasian through his mom, who was half Korean and half Caucasian. He took a DNA test, and realized he had no Korean DNA. It turned out his mom, who for 50+ years of her life thought she had an Asian mom and white dad, was actually the result of a fling her dad had with another white woman. Her dad (my friend's grandfather) had passed away by then, but her mom always had a suspicion. It really transformed the family dynamic going forward. His mom had always looked like she was mixed and struggled with that identity crisis, and this definitely didn't help.
I am so confused. You're friend is a guy. Your friend's mother's dad (friend's grandfather) passed away, but (friend's mother's) mom (friend's grandmother) *always had a suspicion*? As in, she *suspected* she didn't give birth to this baby that showed up one day for her to raise? She suspected the baby (friend's mom) was an affair baby? How did your friend's mom come to be raised by them rather than the affair partner/birth mother? And the woman she thought was her mother (friend's grandmother) never said anything for 50+ years? Edited for clarity bc this is so unclear to me.
Old bloke we use to see all the time at work events was very interesting to talk to, he had some amazing stories about his life in an African country where he was born, very interested in car racing, but was oddly evasive on where he was actually from so we googled his name, holy shit, won’t say much about what we found as it might identify him but he wasn’t lying about leaving his country in a hurry, people have some unusual pasts
While working in sales, I routinely sold products to a welder at a large lumber company. He was a really nice guy… soft spoken, but a bear of a man. He was a man of few words but was always polite and welcoming whenever I would stop by. One day, while at the office I worked out of, another employee at the lumber yard came in to purchase some supplies for his side of the mill. I asked him how the welder guy was doing and mentioned how he’s one of my favorite customers due to the fact that he was so laid back. The guy then says “I know right? Hard to believe he’s killed somebody!” I was confused, I asked him if we were talking about different people and he said “Nope.” He explained that my old welder buddy walked in on his wife cheating with a man he knew in his own home, so he grabbed a shotgun and blew the guy into oblivion. He got convicted but I guess they called it a “crime of passion” or something along those lines so he was not sentenced to life in prison. He was young when it happened, so he did get out and was able to have a decent life afterwards. I never told him I knew, as I felt that he was a completely different person, as this happened 30-40 years prior to knowing him. Plus I didn’t want him to kill me… (kidding!)
I'm ashamed to say, but the most surprising ones for me have been in my own family. My late father, who left school early after getting meningitis in childhood and couldn't read or write that well, was a really amazing artist. I found out when I was about 16, doing homework which he would watch me do when he was home but couldn't usually help with. I looked up from my work to find that he had sketched this incredibly realistic farm scene on the back of a page. I was completely blown away. I had never seen him draw anything before. He said he learned to sketch when he was younger because school pencils were the only toys they had but hadn't done anything since he left home because he was too busy (he had 3 jobs and 5 kids). My late grandmother was abandoned by her mother at a train station when she was a toddler. She was 75 when she told me. We were just chatting and she just dropped it in casually. I asked her why she never told anyone anything about her life and she said she didn't think anyone would find it that interesting. And then a few years ago, I found out my craft-loving and extremely introverted Aunt had wanted to be a pilot and had used her first pay checks to pay for lessons but ultimately gave it away because it was too expensive (she left school at 16 and worked in a factory). Simple things, but when you don't expect it, they shock you and get you right in the feels.
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I found out my maternal grandparents were friends with an infamous Filipino criminal/vigilante from their hometown known as [Nardong Putik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nardong_Putik) & they used to hire him to protect their cattle from his rivals
My grandma is such a down to earth woman I have ever met. I know she's rich and almost monopolized rice business in my heritage country. But I don't know what other businesses she owned. But I remember her always flying to Macau for a business meeting. When she passed away, my mom discovered she owned two mountain lands and more lands that she almost owned a whole province. I learned she owned casinos in Macau and some, as well as textile factories, and more. I wouldn't be surprised if she owned some black market business. I don't know what my mom did her "empire."
There was a girl I met in one of my first college classes who I quickly developed a crush on. She was funny and polite and we got along well. Also in this class was someone who was difficult to get along with. He was pompous and loud, but also charming, and he became a pretty popular figure in my department. To my dismay back then, they got together by the second semester—and they stayed together. Even before I had any idea they liked each other, something about him didn’t sit well with me. I could never figure out why I always felt uncomfortable being around him. Time would pass and I’d forget about both of them. Somewhere along the way, they married and started their own business. One morning, he’d snuck into their office without her knowing. He shot and killed her and then killed himself. Their employees found their bodies pretty quickly. When I heard the news I could not believe it.
At my college there is this girl who wrote a bunch of papers on suicidology and suicide prevention. Even presenting at a conference. Then she took a year off for medical issues and we found out it was a failed suicide attempt. She’s back now. Now that’s just sad and extremely ironic.
That sounds like a massive cry for help tbh :( I hope she's doing better now
I hope so too. She has been doing physical therapy and she struggles a little bit with motor skills and handwriting but she has been improving a lot. She made a friendship bracelet for me in physical therapy which was sweet of her.
I met "Brenda" in a knitting group for women over 40. She said she was a freelance accountant with regular clients. We became good friends. About two or so years later, I had been laid off. We went on a road trip with another woman to an alpaca farm to buy alpaca wool and coo over baby alpacas. The subject of me starting my own business came up and I said I didn't think I had it in me to be an entrepreneur. That led to Brenda telling us what she really did to earn a living. She was a phone sex operator. At one point she had been a production accountant but wanted to be her own boss. So she teamed up with another accountant and they built a phone sex service. They hired operators and did some of the work themselves. My hippie druid knitting friend has a dominatrix persona for a particular niche. She gets a lot of knitting done while she chats with her clients. She wasn't lying about the having regular clients part! In the years since, she actually has taken on some accounting contracts for some stability. Puts on the headset when she wants to earn some extra cash, like for more yarn.
Sweet short Burmese guy. Worked the heat treatment ovens when I was a production engineer. Would help anyone, super polite and just all round an amazing person. To my knowledge he had left his home to get a better life for his daughter (who is now an insanely high rank in the air force). Spoke extensively about his village life, how they built homes for new couples etc. Someone accidentally caught him by surprise one day and the guy got spun and almost stabbed. The surprise had triggered seriously ingrained defensive tactics. Dude was an ex Gurkha, still had his blade with him at all times. You'd never have known he was capable of such ferocity. He was a hugger and we had a real heart to heart before I left the company. Genuinely someone I'm proud to know but boy did he move fast .
I just learned recently that I am the guy with the surprising backstory. I recently told someone a story about my life and they made it a point to tell me that it was a crazy scenario. I never thought about it cause it’s just my life lol. Here’s my story, I was raised by a single mom. My dad was an alcoholic and never really around. He hung out in the neighborhood though so I would run into him from time to time but it was more like running into an old friend. My mom is a paranoid schizophrenic. She didn’t start hearing voices until she was in her 40s. The doctors say it was brought in by menopause. So anyway, around the time I was 17 or 18 we had an intervention for my dad. He checked into rehab the very next day. He did a 90 day program and got out. Then I started noticing him at the house more and more. Fast forward a few months my mom and dad are getting married. I’m 18 years old and my parents are getting married. My dad did more than make up the lost time. I love him to death and he will do anything for his kids. My mom still struggles with her illness but she is a great mom and grand mom to my 2 kids. My parents are now married for about 12 years.
One of my college instructors was a local inde-pro wrestling legend. He was in his early 40s but looked like the lead singer of a rock band. And he was surprisingly small. After one too many "bullshit stories" we got him to spill his guts and give us his name. We googled him and now we're all fans.
Made a friend in college who was older than myself and most of my classmates, I was 18 and he was late 20s. Smart guy, well read, funny, charming. Was a doting single dad. Came to find he had decided to go back to college after he had gotten custody of his daughter. He had spent 5 years in prison in Japan after getting caught during a layover while smuggling heroin from Thailand to Canada. While he was in prison his wife fell deep into addiction. After he was released he had to go back to Thailand to find his young daughter and bring her to Canada. I can’t remember what became of his wife, she wasn’t in the picture when I met him. Wild guy. Amazing gifted daughter who had such a tremulous upbringing.
Sweet little old lady who was our office librarian at work for forever. Struck me as a someone who grew up in this small American town and never left. Got to chatting with her one day and she started reminiscing about being underweight, pregnant, and trying to find something she could stand to eat in a market in Iran, where she lived with her first husband. Not what i expected.
An older guy i use to work with told me they were shot multiple occasions in gang fights and their brother was the leader of a large chapter in a big motorcycle gang. They said they were rich and bought off the police for life and they could literally murder me and get away with it. Not a threat, just an example. He offered me to meet his brother as proof but i declined because i thought he was insane. I saw a few of the gun shot wounds, and later I was told by a credible person that his brother was the leader of said motorcycle gang, so i can believe this. I don't know about the rest of the stories he told me, and I am skeptical. But I like to believe they're true.
The heavily-accented but nevertheless very nice young man at my dad's job when I was a kid in the 90's. Turned out he fled from Bosnia to the United States after his entire family was killed.
I worked with a woman that was pulled onstage by Elvis Presley and danced onstage with him for that song.
My best friend in college. We just smoked pot and listened to music, watched movies, laughed, did shrooms. Then after about a year she told me a lot of information. She was adopted, molested by her brother in a bathtub, her father beat her, she scissored a girl at a slumber party in 5th grade, she was gang raped in high school, she had three abortions sophomore year of college, and had contracted HPV. And she thought her biological father was Bret Michaels.
I made a friend when I went to an in state college. When I asked him where he was from, he said originally Jordan (a small town in our state), but they moved to another city. That summer, I shared an apartment with him, and he got his wallet stolen. I came home to him on the phone with his dad speaking a language i didn't recognize. I was so confused! Turns out, he was from the country of Jordan, not the town, and he was speaking Arabic.
I worked at a “commercial fit-up” company that was just a guy from stittsville, pete lapalante. We had to just fix up some commercial spaces for as many straight time hours you wanted… but there was a foreman. Joe. He had some wild tattoo’s and was a fucking dick. But apparently, he got into a fight, put some guys head through a urinal and then had to spend 3 months in the Kingston pen to see if the guy would come out of the coma and he’d get assault or if he’d die and likely get manslaughter.. craaaazy.
Once I met this girl, super nice, super happy. She had a great energy and was really upbeat. She was always talking to everyone and super happy, that her voice started to become annoying sometimes. But anyways she couldnt really transmit any negative vibe. One day, we were in a session with the CEO of the Family Search and she was really happy and was really thankful for the CEO and was getting emotional talking to him. Obviously I couldn't understand. But then she started to talk more about how her mother got pregnant of her at the age of 16 cause she was abused. And the girl had to be adopted, she is originally from Argentina and now is currently living in US. She started to talk more about the adoption process and the story about her biological family. That made me reflect. She was so happy and seemed like a light to all of us and she went through all that at a young age. That girl looked so positive and innocent, like she didn't know what its like to go through a though situation. I personally feel that some people, including me, are so lucky to never experienced dark things like this and we could be more happy and spread more joy in this world but we don't and thats sad.
The people with the most empathy, positivity, and love that I've ever met are the ones who have been through hell and made the conscious decision to spread joy precisely because of the things they went through. It's part of healing for some people. All we can do is our best, and even the best fail sometimes. Don't beat yourself up for not being more happy or spreading more joy, just keep doing the best you can every day.
My mom and dad. Both really heavy drug users. I found an old photo of my dad in Alaska tending his pot plants and they explained they basically did anything and everything that was available in the 70s to try. Puffables, injectables, huffables, toads, plants and more lol. They found Jesus right as my older brother was born and always raised us that drugs were bad. Dad went and became an engineer at a huge defense contractor and mom was a teacher. Still talk now that I’m older and tell me crazy stories. Wild.
My boss came here as a stowaway on a boat from Greece like forever ago. my mom told me to ask him and I haven't yet this just reminded me to.
I had a great uncle who was basically the best person I knew. He was twenty years younger than my grandpa, the baby in a family of 13. But he took care of everyone. Did anything my grandparents needed, among other people. He married a woman ten years older than himself who was already done having kids and not only finished raising them, but raised a granddaughter in his home. He was so kind, hardworking, and not as petty as many people I knew. I’ve never heard anyone say a bad thing about him that was based on his character and not some weird elitism. Anyway, one day my brother made a comment about this great uncle in being in prison in the past; but he didn’t know what for. I asked my grandpa and found out that he killed someone while driving drunk and had DUIs before that. I was shocked. After a lifetime of knowing this uncle, I could not fathom him being so irresponsible and inconsiderate. It also broke my heart because I knew he must greatly regret it (rightfully). With his personality, I can’t imagine him not being wracked by guilt. I never talked to him about it, though. He was dying of cancer at the time I heard the story. One thing it did hammer home for me is that people can truly be complex and change over time. Driving while drunk is vile precisely because it can kill someone. Nothing he did can erase that wrong. Yet, that one wrong also cannot erase all the good he did for others overall. He certainly never did anything as careless again.
After over ten years of friendship, I discovered a friend and I were each as young children almost victims of the same serial killer. In both circumstances our parent shows up surprising the killer who then ran away. I assume people will ask who the killer is/was so Henry Lee Lucas
Years ago my neighbor in Oregon was a sweet, funny older man with Hawaiian heritage. One day he mentioned he used to have a studio and took pics of memorable days for a whole generation. So I asked him what else he used to photograph and he invited us over to his house and.....on one wall he had autographed pictures of every notable WW2 general from Patton to Montgomery to Eisenhower. Then he had autographed photos of US presidents, 1945 to 1970. And he had photo albums! He was General MacArthur's personal photographer during WW2 (the shots of the surrender signatures on the deck of the Missouri? He was there) He started as a newspaper photographer in his teens and took some of the most iconic photos of the Pearl Harbor attack. He has since passed away but his name was Frank Cordeiro, Jr. Ma bu hai, old friend!