High school is a cruel place. One minute, someone is on top of the world: They’re the most popular person in school, beloved by all and with a packed social life. One fatal mistake later, and suddenly no one wants to know them. At least, that’s what happened to these popular kids with swift and brutal downfalls.
1. Rebel Without a Cause
This one guy was popular because he was a rebel who talked back to teachers, and even insulted them openly whenever he felt like it. We all thought he was so cool and anti-establishment...until the one day he took it too far. He made the teacher everyone loved cry for pretty much no reason at all. He was an outcast forever after that.
2. For a Song
The most popular kid in my middle school was this big Samoan dude. Looked like he was 13 going on 25 years old. I remember he gained a lot of popularity when he serenaded this girl in class to ask her to the dance. He had music playing on his iPhone and he started belting out love songs while on bended knee. But we didn’t know the dark truth.
Later on that year, he went from hero to zero when we found out he’d been molesting his sister.
3. Three’s Company
There was a lot of partying and alcohol at our high school, but every so often it would be someone's first time drinking, and it would go very badly. Well, one time the popular kid hooked up with two of his friends’ girlfriends at one of our wild parties. They all ditched him after that, and the girls' boyfriends also dumped them unceremoniously.
4. All in the Family
There was one newish kid who had just entered one of the cool kid's groups when he was caught sleeping with his sister, yes his sister, in a school cupboard. He literally bolted out of the school naked, so everyone saw him running. He and his sister transferred after that. The cool kid's reputation also really suffered.
5. The Green-Eyed Monster
There was a girl who was THE popular girl in school. She had all the friends and even put out an album; she was a total star locally. One day, we were taking standardized tests and she runs out of the room and doesn’t return. We soon found out the horrific reason why. When we left the class, there was green diarrhoea ALL over the floor just down the hall from the classroom.
Poor girl didn’t make it to the bathroom in time. She didn’t return to school that school year and moved to another town and school completely after that. She later married a famous NFL player and is one of these Instagram people now, so she bounced back from that situation pretty well. Still, to this day in our hometown, we remember…
6. Dr. Do-Wrongs
For the senior prank at our high school, some popular guys kidnapped animals from a local petting zoo, where the animals freely roamed, and put them on the football field. The worst part is that they-spray painted them with staff names, and some had to be euthanized because of the harmful effects from the paint.
Now the animals are fenced in and there is a plaque above the enclosure explaining that our high school students are basically a bunch of jerks.
7. All That Glitters…
There was an unpopular boy who set off every girl's “creep” instincts, until he came out as gay a couple years into school. He became funny and stereotypically flamboyant and enjoyed doing girly things, and he quickly became popular among the girls as their “gay best friend.” They felt safe with him. That is, until his lies unraveled.
One girl was sitting on his lap during lunch and he got a raging boner. From then on, it became clear that he'd faked being gay to get close to girls, and he had a major crush on the girl he'd poked on his lap. Girls were all creeped out again and he was dumped from their groups. Then he just dropped his persona. I don't know how he managed such a completely different personality for so long.
8. Payback Time
The popular guy started picking on an autistic kid and wouldn't stop. Everyone would gather round and join in, as they knew he wouldn't do anything to retaliate. Then one day, the kid had enough and punched the guy right in the nose, breaking it and also breaking his jaw. The popular guy ended up crying his eyes out. He never picked on anyone again, and the rest of the school labeled him a wimp. To top it off, that kid who punched him........was me!
9. Privacy, Please
One popular girl got really drunk on a night out and took a poop on some random family’s front lawn, right out in the open and in front of people. The family took pictures of it happening and they ended up on the front page of the local paper with a headline about teens going wild. They blurred her face, but enough people were there that word got around who it was.
Turns out, it’s hard to look someone in the eye once you’ve seen a picture of them pooping.
10. These Bros Aint Loyal
The popular girl at my school tried to ruin the life of a really sweet girl because of boyfriend drama. When she realized people were standing up for the sweet girl instead, she lost her mind. She accused the other girl and her boyfriend of property damage, turning on anyone who didn’t “swear loyalty” (???) to her, screaming at teachers, it was a whole mess. But it didn’t end there.
The nail in the coffin was when she confided to me and two others that she was planning on putting laxatives in the pastries she baked for the class. Obviously I let people know, and she became completely ostracized from that point onward. She left at the end of junior year, and senior year was the most chill year ever.
11. Forget You
There was a popular cheerleader at my school who was in a bad car wreck and suffered severe brain damage. The day she came back, some of her friends, AKA the popular kids, sat with her at lunch. Every day after that, though, they sat on the other side of the cafeteria in their normal spot and she was with the other special needs students.
Even worse, they would walk past her without saying a word. As far as everyone knew, her entire group of friends completely abandoned her. I don't think she missed them though, so silver lining. She also seemed to be very happy most of the time after the accident. Not so much before. Every teen movie with a bunch of awful preppies pretty much depicts the popular kids in my high school.
12. I Get Older, and They Stay the Same Age
This guy got an 8th-grade girl pregnant while he was a junior in high school. He eventually transferred out because everyone hated him so much.
13. Losing the Breakup
She dated me. That’s how she lost all her popularity. We were in speech and debate together. Both did impromptu, and we would give each other random quotes and stupid cartoons to practice with. Spent a lot of time together because of it. We dated for about two days before people mocked her for it and she bailed on me HARD to keep her social status.
She never socially recovered from the sin of liking one of the nerds. Thing is though, she then lost all her nerd friends too.
14. Pick on Somebody Your Own Size
This kid in middle school used to talk back to everyone and pick on them. He had nice stuff his parents got him and everyone thought he was tough and could fig. Then one day, he started on a special needs kid. At this point, nobody had ever actually seen the popular kid fight, he just was excellent at intimidation.
Now, a lot of the special needs kids in my area weren't just students who were mentally challenged, they had overall learning disabilities. Many of those kids came from very tough homes, and the special needs kid who the popular kid messed with was an absolute savage. He grew up in a pretty tough part of town but was really a gentle giant.
He could play football, he was muscular, he could do everything the regular students could do except speak properly. A minor speech impediment. The popular kid challenged him to a one-on-one fight. He soon found out his mistake. He his butt kicked by the special needs kid. I'm talking blood everywhere, his clothes got ripped, and one of his sneakers landed like 10 feet away.
To top it all off, he even tried running away after the first few punches. The special needs kid grabbed him and pulled him back. It was awful. The popular kid not only lost all of his influence, he also didn't even have the guts to come back to school for like a week. If I ever saw instant karma, it would have had to have been on this day, because he was quiet as a mouse the rest of the years throughout high school.
15. Happy Wife, Loner Life
All popular kids in my school were complete jerks who mistreated others. This guy, King of the Hill, starts dating a girl from another school who was friends with one of the mistreated kids. The kid told the girl what her boyfriend did in his school, so the girl threatened to break up with him if he didn't change his ways.
So he stopped socializing with the "cool" folks and even started getting harassed by them. Meanwhile, none of the other kids wanted to warm up to him. He was a loner at school, but he made his girlfriend happy and he was happy.
16. Loose Lips Sink Friendships
He seduced a quiet girl in school. She was really soft-spoken but super nice to everyone—basically everyone's little sister. She was absolutely beloved by everyone in her year, and he was a year older. He was her first love, and he slept with her once, took her virginity, and then essentially abandoned her right after.
She was devastated by it, and it broke her for the rest of the time she was at school. She went right into her shell and barely spoke to anyone after that. But his response was disturbing. He then started bragging about what he did, and everyone really hated him. He even got beat up a few times because people we so angry at what he did.
17. Daddy’s Little Girl
The known party girl at my school was texting while driving. She hit and killed someone who was just crossing the street. Well, her father was a sergeant in the Police Department. She got off really lightly: She went behind bars for 6 months but then just had to do probation/community service. Still, no one in school forgave her. The worst part? This was two days after graduation.
18. The Odd Couple
This one girl did something that rightfully destroyed her reputation. Basically, this girl who was pretty well-liked asked out this boy who no one ever expected her to ask out. It was unexpected because he was less well-known, but in general everyone liked him. They had a cute relationship for about two months.
He started sitting with her friends at lunch and was becoming closer with them. Well, one of the girl's friends found out she was cheating on him. She told the boy and her friends, and he was really upset about it, as obviously anyone would be. Then when the girl found out people knew the truth, her reply was utterly cruel.
She said she was only dating him for answers on homework and that she never actually liked him. Once that got around, no one really looked at her the same. She tried to badmouth him and the friend who exposed her a few times, but she was either ignored or totally shut down. This year she's not at our school and no one misses her.
19. It’s a Dog’s Life
She was hired to dog-sit for a neighbor when they went out of town. She decided to take advantage of the empty house and throw a party at the neighbor’s house. That party got way out of hand. Neighbor's daughter also went to the school and had to deal with a messed-up house. Pretty big deal, and the popular girl never came back.
20. Snitches Get Stitches
Last year was my freshman year. At school, there was this kid who was literally as dumb as a pile of rocks, but he was popular. He was also selling Juuls and other vapes to the other underclassmen. But this dumby stored ALL of his stock in his locker, so when the school did their locker checks, the vapes and juuls just came POURING out.
We were all kind of laughing. He got called to the office and asked to explain what the fudge just happened. But they offered to lighten his punishment if he could tell them about others who might have vapes. Needless to say, this kid ended up ratting on a good 55 kids, who all got suspended in the "Great Vape Bust of 2k19" at my school.
21. Lovers in a Dangerous Time
I went to school with a dude who was well-liked by just about everyone for the most part, though he did like to party. Well, he ended up trying to "end" a girl who told him she was pregnant after he slept with her at the senior party. He beat her so bad that her own parents couldn’t identify her in the hospital. He got 20 years. Good riddance.
22. Teacher’s Pet
This very popular, good-looking guy lied about having an affair with a female teacher…whose husband was also a teacher at the school. Literally everyone hated him after the truth came out.
23. I Get by With a Little Help From My Friends
Nine popular kids actually, who all cheated constantly for four years to get flawless GPAs, and became the top 10 of our class. They also all got into prestigious universities. The high school I went to was extremely academically competitive, so needless to say when the top 10 were announced, everybody was livid.
Especially the kids who should have been top 10, including my friend who was the 15th ranked. Only the unpopular salutatorian earned her grades honestly, and she got the loudest applause at graduation. You may ask, did they ever get caught? No. We all saw them cheat—there was an underground "test answers" dealer at my school—but nobody took it seriously in all those years.
24. Bon Voyage
He told everyone he was moving to Asia or something: "Oh my god guys, I'm going to miss you all so much." They even gave him good-bye presents and stuff. Turns out, he only went on vacation to Asia, so when he came back two weeks later, everyone was peeved.
25. Gone Girl
I didn't attend school with her, but her fall from grace was reported in the news. Very pretty, popular girl from a very wealthy family. She would drive her dad's Porsche to school. Ended up getting into huffing those Dust Off cans. She would inhale this stuff while driving, and ended up slamming into a mother and child. This 7-year-old girl passed on impact, while the mother lost her arm.
It made the news because, just like that affluence case, charges were most likely going to be dropped. The neighboring town where this little girl was from formed together and marched the route from one town to the other in protest, all the way to the scene of the accident. I think she ended up getting five years, and ballooned to nearly 250 pounds last I saw.
26. Pointing Fingers
This girl was a grade under me, and for the life of me I could never understand why she was so popular, considering she was on that edge of "witchy but funny, but also mostly just rude." Eventually, she let all of the high school games go to her head and she accused a guy in my grade of assaulting her at a party. Sounds fishy, but let me explain.
Not only did this guy have a girlfriend, he was also with people and witnesses all night. Just couldn't have done it. Still, it was a huge deal, and the authorities got involved. Phones were taken. That’s where they found the worst evidence. They discovered text messages from the popular girl to her friends stating she was trying to ruin his life because he didn't want to be her boyfriend.
She moved away in the middle of the year and admitted everything. She's doing well now, but everyone who remembers doesn't like her.
27. The Mile High Flub
This popular couple got REAL intimate in the elevator, but the girl left her panties in it. Don’t know how you forget that, but okay. The guy got kicked off his sports team and lost his scholarship and the girl got suspended, but I’m pretty sure she dropped out after everyone kept teasing her about the color of her underwear.
28. The Plot Thickens
After we went to high school, he leaked one of our old classmate’s naked photos. It ended with him getting expelled, but then they did an investigation—it revealed even more scandal. Turns out, the whole hockey team had a group chat full of over 90 DIFFERENT GIRLS’ PHOTOS. All the dudes got kicked off the team.
29. The Hormone Monster
He was really hot, until the puberty fairy said “I think the heck not.” They all said that he would be a looker in the future when he was younger. Yeah, no.
30. How the Mighty Fall
A popular kid from my catholic elementary school often harassed other kids and even teachers. He was the typical mean, rich kid and extremely reckless. A few years back in middle school, I found out he got in an accident in one of those 4-seater ATVs with two of his friends. He was the only one not wearing a seat belt, and of course the one driving recklessly.
The ATV flipped over, ejected him, and crushed his body for several minutes. The friends weren't strong enough to get it off in time nor get neighbors to help fast enough. He ended up having severe brain damage and couldn't even walk. Fast forward to high school, I saw him in the hallway with a special ed assistant. He has no idea who he is, but he looked happy and he's finally able to walk. But all of his old friends don't even look at him.
31. Darned if You Do, Darned if You Don’t
He stopped playing football and started hanging around with all the “weird kids” and cutting off his old friends. He was actually one of the popular kids who would've secretly hung out with some of the weird kids outside of school, and while he didn't ignore them in school he stayed out of our way, and we sort of had an unwritten rule that we didn't approach him in school.
The thing was that a lot of the weird kids didn't trust him, so he was never fully accepted into our group. The fact he was good at football and used to be friends with the popular guys and go out with the popular girls made him a sort of pariah. Someone brought him to a party one time and from the reactions of some people, you'd have thought they'd shown up with Gary Glitter or something.
32. You Did Me a Favor
He pulled out a knife and slashed another student. The kid with the knife went to outcast status, but meanwhile the kid who got slashed became super cool and had a scar. Everyone wanted to see it.
33. Mother Doesn’t Know Best
This one is hard to hear and even harder to live through, I’m sure. This popular guy’s mom slept with the entire high school football team without him knowing. Well, those jerks recorded it and then tried to blackmail her. She wouldn't pay them, so they sent the video to everyone. He and his dad promptly moved. Poor guy.
34. You Get What You Give
This girl harassed everyone. I went to school with her from first grade to third and then later again from 7-9th grade. She was very, very popular in middle school. She was rich, wore designer clothes, and had a big house. In a town full of middle or working class people that made you special, at least if you were a kid anyway.
So this girl, let’s call her Karen, was a rude witch, even as a child. She constantly looked down on the other girls in class for not wearing designer or not owning the latest tamagotchi. I remember Karen having a ring of girls around her, showing off her latest things at recess. I was a bit more tomboy as a child, so I hung with the dudes, mostly so I could watch people worshipping her from afar.
I also thought this might make Karen ignore me, but I was wrong. Me hanging with only guys was weird and me not wanting to look at her new handbag was weird and so on and so on. She loved making comments about me to her group. First it was mostly behind my back. It escalated quickly, though, and soon she said it to my face in that nice but condescending way.
One of the boys I hung out with, let’s call him Skate, was nice but slightly overweight. Well, Karen loved picking on Skate because of his very low self-esteem, mostly about his body. This brat knew how to pick where it hurt. It was so bad that Skate almost cried nearly every week because of something Karen had said to him.
The thing I remember most was when Skate had his birthday, which for kids is almost a holy day. We had PE and were in the woods playing some sort of hide and seek. Suddenly, I hear a loud cry and Skate screaming. Everyone found him very quick because of the noise—lo and behold, there he is with none other than Karen.
She had apparently pushed him over the edge and he had a full-blown melt down. Not hurting her, but crying so hard. I think he even said he wanted to die because of the things Karen said. He went home for the rest of the day and my hate for Karen grew. I know she was mean to everyone, but this is what I remember best.
Again, she was a bratty child. Just mean. She hurt me many times but I can’t list them all, it’s too much. Fourth grade, though, I moved to another school and Karen left my mind. I liked my new school better, I was happier, and best of all, Karen wasn’t there. But my town is small, and there weren’t a lot of middle schools. Which means I encountered Karen again in 7th grade.
At first, it looked like nothing had changed. She hadn’t. Still a witch. But I slowly came to see the dark truth. Fewer people talked to her. More and more people started making mean comments about her. I even joined in because I was angry at that age. But Karen went from being praised for her new shoes to people trying to throw mud on them.
Her mean comments were suddenly answered with 10 more about her. Grade 9 rolled around and she had almost no one. I had French with her, and while I still actively hated her, I remember her coming into class soaking wet. Someone had bombarded her with water balloons. I remember she just looked absolutely defeated.
I did feel a tiny bit sad for her, but again I was still angry so I didn’t care. We graduated grade 9 and she had no friends at that point. It was a long way down, but she crashed hard enough in her own time. Last I heard, she has anorexia, which really sucks and I hope she gets better, but I don’t think anyone from our school will ever forgive her.
35. Puberty Hits Hard
In 7th grade, we had a group of girls primed to be the hot and popular girls, as much as 12- to 13-year-olds can be. They were confident, made their group of friends early and got into makeup and boys. They were all popular…until puberty really hit. You see, they all blossomed except one. She became blocky, stumpy, and manly, but desperately clung to her hot girl group and tried her best.
She still acted like them and was a complete witch to everyone, but she quickly became bottom tier popular compared to her friends, who barely kept talking to her...
37. Close Shave
He got a bad haircut, was teased for it, and then threw a temper tantrum. He literally stormed out in the middle of class. He lost his spot as king after that.
36. Not So Cheerful
It's a sad story. She was a cheerleader. She was beautiful, but she hid it beneath heavy makeup and platinum-dyed hair. She was smart, but she pretended to be vapid. She could be the nicest person on Earth as long as no one was around. If people were around and you were one of the "uncool kids," she'd harass the heck out of you.
Then her mom got cancer. This girl started to self-destruct and started doing and selling pills and sleeping with any guy who would show her attention. Then her mom passed and this poor girl entered depression. Also because her mom was gone, her pill supply dried up. Yeah, she was taking and selling her mom's chemo pain meds.
She stopped sleeping with everyone, and she didn't have a supply, and suddenly none of her friends wanted to be friends with her anymore. And, because she'd mistreated everyone else, no one wanted to be her friend. She managed to last through the end of sophomore year before she just left. We're not sure if she dropped out, got expelled, started home school, or whatever.
I wish I had extended some goodwill towards her, but I was one of the people she hurt, and 16-year-olds are known for making bad choices and acting out of anger instead of empathy. I can't find her on social media or I'd send a message to check up on her.
38. You Could Have Had It All
Young, pretty girl, let's call her Ashley. Ashley is a cheerleader and cross-country runner, and a really popular junior. Then you have Chad, who is pretty much stereotypical of a guy named Chad. Tall, baby blue eyes, star quarterback, good grades, nice to everyone. He’s a senior. Both were at a party and decided to sleep together. But there was one problem.
Ashley never mentioned she had a boyfriend who was in college. After the fact, Ashley didn’t want to lose her boyfriend, so she said it was assault. The authorities get involved and they investigate. Found out she was lying—really hard proof. Texting and conversations just before made it clear. Eventually, her boyfriend even broke up with her.
39. Golden Girl
So this kid was dating the by far smartest and most intelligent girl at our school. She was in multiple AP classes every year, was extremely kind and friendly and actually seemed to understand how the world worked. She cared about everything, and because of this she was known by the smart kids, the popular kids, the shy kids, the new kids... everyone thought she was wonderful.
Mr. Almost-popular decided to break up with her and made it very well-known that his reasoning was that he "Just wanted to mess around with lots of girls. He didn’t want her nagging him all the time." Meaning he was tired of her caring about him getting Ds in easy classes...Well, he got what was coming to him.
This was his junior year, and he went from one of the “big name juniors” in the hallway to the senior who rarely left his friend group but still thought he was super popular. Kind of a sad thing to see, honestly. The girl was hurt for a bit, but got quite the senior glow-up and honestly it wouldn't surprise me if our first female president ends up being a Kaitlyn.
40. Unholy Error
High school quarterback at my southern state high school. Popular, handsome, well-liked. Meanwhile, our sociology teacher was beloved and known for how kind, accepting, and funny he was. People who weren’t even interested in sociology took his class just for him. One day, the teacher was doing a lesson on religion and said something about Christianity.
Well, the aforementioned quarterback didn’t agree with it, so he reported the teacher and got him suspended. The entire school jumped to defend the teacher. Kids in the same class said the teacher didn’t even say anything offensive or a personal opinion, just talking about different religions and people who don’t follow a religion.
The popular kid played in the first football game following the incident, and he got booed off the field and didn’t play again. The entire incident was so dramatic, the hashtag #Free”Teachers name” was trending on Twitter.
41. The Girl Who Cried Wolf
We sadly found out about her double life. She is a friend of mine, school sweetheart, boys fawning over her. Also a heartbreaker, since she seemed to always turn boys down. She had that good-girl-next-door persona, the type boys would love to introduce to their family. However, she also had money-spending issues. And that was just the start.
She borrowed money and never paid them back, became a habitual liar. The first and last time she conned me was for my tuition fees. She hitched a ride with me and saw the cash I was carrying to pay for the semester. It was my parents’ money and any change should have been given back to them. She BEGGED me to loan her an amount to pay off her tuition.
I kept saying no, and she gave me a sob story. This is my dear friend, but my red flag alarms were going off. I gave her some large amount but not all. She then IMMEDIATELY hopped out of the car, even though at that very moment we were heading to the enrollment building to pay our tuitions. Made some lame excuse about why she couldn’t do it right then.
She then dodged me for two years to pay off the loan, made excuses yet again. I paid back my mom and lied for her sake, as my mom would have raised heck about the girl. Eventually, I only got a fraction of the loan back. From there on, I saw signs of her double persona, sweet and charming yet conniving as all get out.
She borrowed money to buy things to live up to whatever fashion hype was cool at the time. She also bailed on major class project, almost causing her classmates to fail. I heard through the rumor mill that she also slept around in weird ways. Like, one of my family members told me that during one of our sleepovers, she tried to sleep with my cousin.
Around the time this all came to light, people politely kept their distance from her, being "That Girl." She then got pregnant, became a single mom, and used her daughter a few times to borrow money again. The sad part was, a few years ago, she legitimately got diagnosed with a type of cancer, and her treatments were expensive.
She got nearly zero financial help from friends and former classmates because we were all just so done with her and wouldn’t believe it. The good news: Her cancer was caught early and she is doing fairly well now. She is working and earning a decent living and seems to have turned over a new leaf since then. I’m happy for her, but still keep my distance.
42. Sweet Justice
Big football star jock on his way to a college scholarship. He got his girlfriend pregnant, then beat the daylights out of her to make her miscarry. She miscarried. Lost his scholarship program and soon developed a massive infection from steroids. He had that infection when the authorities eventually picked him up.
43. Double Standards
When I was a kid, my best friend had a popular older sister who was a junior in high school on the varsity cheerleading team. A party got busted that the whole team was at. When it came out, the school kicked every girl off the squad and banned them from extracurriculars, but took no action against the boys from the football team.
Well, the cheerleader’s dad was a lawyer and sued the school over it on behalf of all the girls. They didn't even win, but the rest of the school hated her for trying to get the football team in trouble. It was a small community and there was a lot of bad blood over it. Her dad ended up moving so that she and her brother could go to another school.
By the time I got to high school, it had blown over, but the separation was hard on her family and her parents got divorced. My high school sucked.
44. Self-Imposed Exile
I was best friends with the most popular guy in school for a couple years back in middle school. He was great. But the rest of the popular kids...Meh. They were all "cooler" than me in my opinion, but he saved me a seat at lunch everyday and we had our own lame handshake and all that. But that whole group never felt like it really fit me, aside from him obviously.
So one day at lunch, I decided to sit with the nerdy kids who played Magic. I never expected the consequences of that small act. I was never popular again after that one moment. I think I hurt my friend's feelings, too, because he was never the same to me after that, either. Never got a chance to reconnect with him, unfortunately...
Cancer is evil and it took him a few years later. We left him an open chair at high school graduation. On the plus side, I'm still friends with some of the nerdy kids, and we're in our 30s now. Magic isn't my thing, turns out, but those nerdy kids were great. They taught me that it doesn't matter what others think of you if you love yourself.
45. Born This Way
Robbie was a big huge antagonizer. I used to play football with him. One day, Robbie spit on a player, and the coach got so angry at him, he kicked his butt all the way across the field. The entire time, Robbie just mocked him, didn’t care at all about what he was saying or doing. When that kid hit you, it was like a freight train.
He was always very dumb, and angry, and rabid. He teased everyone for everything. Yet somehow remained pretty popular in the upper echelon because he hit like a beast and won football games. Then one day, something really weird happened. He came to school in a sweater with an un-ironed button-down underneath. He usually came to school in torn t-shirts.
He had an older brother, Ronnie, who never looked like any of that, so we knew he wasn't poor, he was just being Robbie. So this was a big deal, and it was bizarre, and when people asked him what was up with it, he would just say "I'M GAY NOW." It was so strange, he did not lose any intensity. But he kept saying "I'M GAY NOW. I LIKE BOYS OK?"
Then it was: "I WANNA BOYFRIEND. YOU WANNA GO OUT?" I saw him get genuinely upset with people laughing at him. He'd just scream "IT'S NOT A JOKE. I'M GAY YOU JERKS." Nobody knew what to do with it. We were a country school. We had a gay kid. A kid Robbie had picked on. Now Robbie was trying to hang out with him. Nobody wanted to touch that weirdness with a 10 foot pole.
The first time, we figured best case scenario, the dude had lost a bet. But then he did it the next day. And the next. For months he kept dressing like a Robbie version of "preppy" and proclaiming his gayness. Pretty sure he got an earring at some point. Then he later recanted all of this and screamed down anyone who brought it up. Maybe it was a legitimate attempt to come out, but he just Robbie'd the whole thing up until it was unpalatable.
46. Party Pooper
There was a guy who was pretty popular. He got really smashed at a party and totally didn't know where he was. So he pulled down his pants, squatted, and totally started to poop. He then moved away immediately after. He was a senior and I was in 8th grade, and that was well over 25 years ago. But there was recently a twist.
He friended me on Facebook a couple months ago and I kind of recognized him...I racked my brain and it came to me...the guy who pooped at the party. Poor guy.
47. The Sporting Life
He gave up an interception for a touchdown that led to a loss in the big game. The entire school hated him. His football career never recovered, as he was so shell-shocked by that moment, he couldn’t throw right anymore. He wasn’t like a top prospect or anything, but he did get the attention of some state colleges.
He ended up with a scholarship to a school that hadn’t won a football game in at least a decade at that point. He stayed there for a year before leaving college and coming home.
48. Joy Ride Gone Wrong
This girl had a huge clique of friends. They would harass people they didn't like or wanted to "remove," as in they’d make them change schools. This girl would do things like find out information about you, send you fake love letters, or find out where you live and whenever the cool kids would drive by, they’d throw stuff at you. But her worst act ruined her.
One day, she convinced this freshman that they should film a fun prank-style video for YouTube. He was supposed to do a "Ghost riding the whip" thing where he was on the roof of the car while no one appeared to be at the wheel. She was driving it, and while the kid was surfing on the roof, she accelerated as fast as she could down the street, just to be mean. Meanwhile, the kid tumbled off...and fell into a coma.
She later said, "It was his fault. I mean, it was his idea after all!" No one was buying it. She was hated and only a few of her friends remained with her. I have no idea where she is now or how she is doing, and I'd like to keep it that way.
49. Fast Friends
In middle school, our quarterback had brain swelling and got brain damage. There were donation events held for him and his "friends" were very supportive…for about two weeks. Then his girlfriend broke it off with him while he was in the hospital and he pretty much disappeared. The guy was the "coolest": an absolute jerk, and had personally picked on me, but I don't think he deserved what happened to him.
After taking a year off of school, he comes back a completely different person. None of his old football or cheerleader friends talked to him or visited him anymore. He needed a special education teacher to accompany him in many classes and got genuinely depressed and angry in class because his brain wasn't what it used to be.
One day, he approached me and said “Hi” like we were old friends, knew my name and everything. I was a little thrown off by this because he used to call me names, push me around to impress girls, and physically threaten me. The guy standing in front of me wasn't that guy anymore though, and I could tell that.
It turns out he couldn't remember me well, but had the feeling we were friends. I lied to him and said of course we are. We chatted sometimes during school and I genuinely enjoyed his company. Soon after his return, however, he just stopped coming to school and I never heard what happened to him. I'm honestly afraid to look him up. I hope he's doing well.
50. Post-Secondary Disappearance
A little over 10 years ago, a popular kid from my school went missing, they've never found him. Apparently, he was at a party just before graduation, got into a fight with his girlfriend, and left to walk home. They've extensively checked all the nearby woods, dredged the rivers and lakes, it even caught the attention of some TV "psychic." They found his car, abandoned, but no other sign of him.
The creepiest part is how everyone in my hometown still talks about it; My psych teacher in high school used his disappearance as an example when we discussed dissociative fugue states; the town is still plastered in MISSING signs; every year they go out and search again. I always wonder if it was suicide, an accident, foul play, or if he just took off across the country.
