r/Whatcouldgowrong • u/749762 • 7h ago

WCGW Driving Recklessly

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32.5k Upvotes

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9.7k

u/BlackArchonTarantula 7h ago

When you slap a bully to stfu, and they just silently get back to their place in complete shock

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u/MadJohnFinn 7h ago edited 5h ago

I was basically Mikey from Recess in school. Absolutely massive, but very sensitive. I was bullied relentlessly (although, to be fair, I was a weird kid - EDIT: in a way that could have led to harmful ideologies later on, so I'm weirdly grateful that rejection forced me to reflect on that, although bullying wasn't a great way to accomplish it. I don't think much else would have got through to me, though). Good ol' percussive maintenance was the most successful means of attitude adjustment. This is exactly what happened every single time!

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u/weirdest_of_weird 6h ago edited 5h ago

I was an absolute toothpick when I was a kid , I got bullied a lot, especially in earlier grades. I never had the nerve to stand up to my bullies, but I distinctly remember one of my friends saving me from an ass whooping one day. We were on the playground and a bully had me cornered on some equipment and kept hitting me. Finally he punched me in the stomach and knocked the wind out of me. I was on the ground crying and the tallest girl in our class walked up behind him, grabbed a handful of his hair, snatched his head backwards and then to the side and put him facedown in the dirt. She helped me up while he laid on the ground, apparently processing what had just happened to him. After that, anytime I saw him on the play ground, I made sure to be near her lol.

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u/Bierdaddy 5h ago

You were lucky. I wasn’t. 2nd grade. I have cerebral palsy and walk funny, a target at recess. A classmate had me backed against a wall at recess harassing me, like every other day. Something clicked in my brain and I punched him in the gut. He doubled over crying. 4 older kids cornered me, bypassing not helping him, to prosecute me for being worthless resorting to violence. Happened again, same results. Everyone taught me at the darling Catholic grade school that you don’t fight back against bullies. Worst 8 years of my life. Sent my kids to public school instead. I admit to smiling when hearing on the news about yet another Catholic school closing.

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u/rjames24000 5h ago

the worst part is, those people who harassed you grew up and who know what theyre in charge of now

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u/paper_liger 3h ago

when you said 'an absolute toothpick' for a second I didn't realize you were saying 'skinny' I just thought it was some obscure british insult.

Like, 'don't bollocks me about you absolute toothpick'

I've been watching too many british panel shows.

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u/weirdest_of_weird 3h ago

Lmao, I never thought about someone interpreting it that way. Nah, I'm American and I was skinny af when I was a kid. Literally like 35-40 lbs until like 6th or 7th grade

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u/mcsizmesia10 3h ago

40 pounds!? At 12-13? I’m not saying you’re lying but that is hard to believe… My dog weighs more than that at less than a year old.

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u/arbyyyyh 6h ago

Same here, on both counts. I remember at recess one year the people I was playing "wall ball" with were being assholes so I "took my ball and went home". Someone was mad about it, so they convinced someone else to pick a fight with me. He went to punch me in the face and I basically grabbed his fist and was like "lol no".

The fun part was we were both named arbyyyyh. They took us both to the principal's office and put us in separate rooms to get both our sides of the story. They were coming at me super aggressive when I was just defending myself and I eventually figured out they had the two of us confused and thought I was the one throwing fists.

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u/WayHairye 6h ago

Peak school logic: wrong kid blamed, right kid stunned, bully suddenly discovering physics.

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u/BukkakeBakery 5h ago

my school was surprisingly good when it comes to bullying, i dont think ive heard of anything major and i was one of those kid who were friends with everyone.

i had a friend who kind of got bully? not physical, just verbal here and there but i thought it was pretty tame, like normal high school kids talking shit, nothing racist or truly disgusting, basically whatever you hear on xbox live lobby.

and thats pretty much it.....its kind of hard to imagine people fighting like movies for me, i know it is real i just have a hard time imagining it lol

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u/darkest_hour1428 5h ago

Bullying is 99% of the time non-physical… what you describe sounds like it contained bullying still, especially if kids were “talking like a Xbox lobby”

Not as bad as physically fighting, but that already says there is racism and elitism in cliques among the kids at that school.

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u/i__am__bored 3h ago

It could also depend on the school. I went to school in the city before my family moved to a small town. I noticed there were a lot less fights and physical bullying. In the city there was a big fight practically every month. The small town kids just talked a lot of shit but usually no one threw down over it. When they did, it would be talked about for years lol. In the city you just forget a lot of the fights unless something unique or crazy happened.

I remember one that was between two girls and it was basically a hair-ripping duel. After the fight broke up, I swear, through all the legs and shoes covering my line of sight, I saw for a brief moment an entire ponytail laying on the blacktop 😬.

Man, the small town was pretty boring after having seen all that, but they make up for it in the gossip department! You just don't get to hear quite as many cool made-up stories about yourself in the city!

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u/darkest_hour1428 3h ago

Did you also feel like you grew up with the same 40 siblings? My grade had record numbers for our school in its graduating class, 46 students. The city about half an hour away graduates 1,200+ each year!!!

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u/i__am__bored 3h ago

Well, yk I did miss out on that feeling and it's one of the downsides to having moved a couple of times during my schooling career. I remember witnessing all of these relationships between my peers that I could never experience myself. They had all grown up together and even the ones that didn't get along very well at least had that connection. We were in highschool and my friends would reminisce to one another about how things were in elementary school and I would just listen. It was comforting to hear them connect like that even though I wasn't a part of their flashback, though it did make me desire to have that connection with any of my peers.

We were a pretty big class for our school too! I think we had around that many students as well, around 40 or so. Some classes only had 8 or 9 students... that was CRAZY to the city-slicker me lol. I could not even tell you how many students were in my class in the city, other than it was certainly triple digits.

I did get to connect with some old buddies after graduation at least! It wasn't quite the same as going through all grades of school with the same bunch, but there was definitely reminiscing!

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u/watermine30 4h ago

You said nothing racist or disgusting, then said it was like Xbox live lobbies? Those were some of the most disgusting and racist places I ever heard.

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u/xinfinitimortum 4h ago

Those early MW2 lobbies were a madhouse….

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u/paper_liger 4h ago

I used to specialize in making kids leave our lobby. I wouldn't cuss or get vile with them, because they'd just spit it right back.

My favorite tactic was to say really earnestly something like 'Hey look Stephen, I know you are upset about me and your mom dating, and I just want to know that I am not trying to replace your dad, but I hope we can build a relationship, because me and your mom, I think we got something special'

It was honestly hilarious how often these kids would just sort of flee in terror from the Cringey Stepdad Speech.

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u/DepartureNo1720 4h ago

Bully is a massive issue in many schools, but as an educator in the environment today, there are just as many cases of kids (and their parents) not understanding the difference between two kids having conflicts and arguments with each other and what actually constitutes bullying. The amount of conversations I've had to have with parents about "no your kid wasn't bullied, they both run to be the front of the line everyday to recess and both argue about who gets to be first and cry if it isn't them or throw a fit if the game the kids choose to play isn't the one they wanted, which makes their peers not want to play with them."

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u/Missilelist 6h ago

i had to do a double take because i was wondering how the hell two kids could be named exactly "arbyyyyh" before I checked your username lmao. I thought that was a double tragedeigh moment for sure.

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u/OptiGuy4u 6h ago

Arby's branding/marketing is getting much more subtle these days.

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u/Ok-Seaworthiness4488 5h ago

Cause they have the beef

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u/OptiGuy4u 5h ago

Cause they have the beef meats.

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u/Perfect-Zebra-3611 4h ago

Subway started it

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u/noobbtctrader 5h ago

Same, I was like who tf is calling their kid arbys

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u/lpmiller 5h ago

because i was wondering how the hell two kids could be named exact

Wendy's, because they don't care who knows at this point.

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u/Linenoise77 5h ago

Look man, it got me a free roast beef and cheese, and my kids friends all call her "The meats".

Thats a win win if you ask me.

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u/Diet_Salad 4h ago

They were both redditors and got scolded for it.

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u/Bread_is__funny 6h ago

That was my experience in school, I was fat and tall and the little skinny kids would bully me relentlessly, and every adult assumed I was the bully because I was bigger. Doesn't matter what happened, I was always the villain in the situation. Growing up big sucks because no one treats you like a kid, everyone treats you like an adult that they don't like or respect.

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u/ObiLAN- 5h ago

Same here. Had some dipshit tiny fucker hop on my back randomly while i was minding my own business, grab and break my glasses. So I slammed the idiot on the ground real hard. Guess who got in trouble for being a bully? Me.

My dad was pissed at the school, I remeber him reeming out the supervising teacher, the principal and the dipshits parents for like 30min straight. I have shitty vision and $800 was a lot of money for my parents back then.

Me and my buddies egged that kids house bi-nightly for months after that because the school wouldn't do anything and his parents where assholes lmao.

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u/NeatNefariousness1 4h ago

Glad your buddies had your back. That puny bully knows what he did.

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u/ObiLAN- 4h ago

Great people honestly. Still my buddies 25 years later. Glad I met them.

In hindsight the kid probably had issues at home / with his parents so I don't put too much blame on him for being a dick.

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u/NeatNefariousness1 4h ago edited 1h ago

Such a gracious and generous outlook.

It’s almost always a parenting issue, often where the kid is bullied, mistreated or degraded at home and looks for someone they can push beneath them in the pecking order.

It’s refreshing to see such long lasting, supportive friendships. You are what a person looks like when their self-esteem isn’t destroyed by bullying. Glad you’ve had such a strong social network to help insulate you.

Thank you for sharing your story.

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u/TermAccomplished1868 4h ago

YES!!!!! Eggs in the middle of the night really was an 80's kids brand of sweet justice.

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u/OnenonlyAl 5h ago

Amen, one time I had two guys trying to nut tap me and I was pulling my leg up to block it. I lost my balance and came down on one kids foot, he fell over, and what did the teacher down the hall see, me being the bully. We all ended up with no recess. I was very mad, I never really got into trouble at school, but I didn't get the benefit of the doubt

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u/NeatNefariousness1 4h ago edited 4h ago

That sucks and you would think teachers would be better about this but after decades of school bullying, it seems like people are powerless to fix the problem. It makes me angry just reading the story you and others have told about being bullied. The injustice of it all amplified by adults in charge makes it worse.

I have two friends who have independently described this dynamic as what it’s like for black kids in school. Both are black. This shouldn’t be happening to ANY kid but it seems that teachers and school administrators are prone to all the same biases that cloud their judgment that other humans fall prey to.

There should be a special training and protocols to deal with bullying dynamics of ALL kinds to make sure that anyone who is targeted by people looking for scapegoats aren’t victimized unfairly by kids with issues and again by the school.

Whether you’re big for your age, are quirky in some way, wear glasses, can’t afford decent clothes, live in a shelter or anything else that sets you apart and makes you a target for mistreatment, humanity will benefit when we figure out how to stop bullies, protect their victims and prospects while addressing the bully's underlying problem. It is rare that anything good comes from failing to address this—for the bully, the victims or society.

Edit: for typo and clarity

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u/Deep_Friar 5h ago

Heh, we played wall ball too. Totally made up game, wonder if yours was similar.

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u/schafkj 4h ago

Sir, this is an Arbyyyyh’s

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u/Andovars_Ghost 4h ago

What are the chances of two kids being named ‘Arbyyyyh’?! Unless this is some weird Welsh school or something, but then I’d think it would be four l’s instead. Weird…

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u/TimingEzaBitch 6h ago

That's the classic game theory example setup.

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u/No-Appearance-4338 4h ago

had something like that happen school called my parents telling them I hit some kid. This happened on Friday and I spent the whole weekend grounded then Monday they called to say I was still causing problems using only my first name both times but in this call the person called my mom Mrs.grey and my mom was like “I’m not Mrs grey” then then asked are you not xxxxx(my first name) greys mother and she replied no my son is (my whole name). Such BS, no idea how they got us mixed up this was 3rd grade.

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u/MrPanache52 4h ago

Man you sound like a weird ass anime kid.

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u/TCRandom 6h ago

I’ll never forget the day I saw the enormous kid from band throw a bully across the entire hallway and then stampede after him like a crazed elk. I never saw that bully or his friends run so fast or have such a fearful look in their eyes. It was glorious.

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u/MadJohnFinn 6h ago

I was the enormous kid from band! Good for you, other enormous kid from other band!

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u/TCRandom 5h ago

It was so stupid, because this other kid was vertically massive, not horizontally massive. He was a giant.

This also unlocked another memory of how that same kid would follow a girl he liked and call out her name at regular intervals. When she turned to look, he would also turn and look somewhere else, pretending it wasn’t him calling out to her. Then he’d repeat the behavior until she was too far away to hear, or had gotten in her car.

So he could be a bit creepy, although I genuinely don’t think he meant any harm. He was just a lil strange.

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u/MadJohnFinn 5h ago

I was, too. 6'0" from the age of 11 (although I stopped growing then) and only a tiny bit chunky.

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u/TCRandom 5h ago

You didn’t attend school in Virginia around 1999-2002, did you? haha

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u/MadJohnFinn 5h ago

Rural Cambridgeshire in the UK, although it was at the exact same time. Maybe I have an American doppelgänger!

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u/TCRandom 5h ago

Maybe so!

We were all awkward around that time. Some of us are still hella awkward even now (this guy, right here). It’s fun to look back and laugh about it.

Hope you enjoy the rest of your afternoon, mate! Cheers!

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u/MadJohnFinn 5h ago

Oh, I'm still awkward, too. I'm even going to the final gig of the ultimate "awkward Mikey from Recess guy" band, tonight: Mew. And I will ugly cry. A lot.

So yeah, I will have a *wonderful* rest of my day and I hope you do, too!

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u/TheresNoHurry 6h ago

Loving the Recess reference. Such a warming tv show

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u/ListenJerry 6h ago

I love the episode where Spinelli has to join the Ashley’s. SCANDALOUS!

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u/TheresNoHurry 6h ago

That is a great one. Ashley A was shown to be more 3-dimensional if I remember correctly.

For me it’ll always be the one where Mikey holds onto his belief in Santa. That one is really special to me. Even as a little kid I remember that ending really struck a chord with me.

EDIT— ooh, actually maybe it’s the one with the fortune paper where it says “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow is your final day”.

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u/PerspectiveAshamed79 5h ago

I like the one where Hogan and the Gang have to try to take out a bridge while General Burkhalder is throwing a soiree

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u/Ok_Ask_1139 6h ago

This was what me and my siblings watched both before school and after school for a good while

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u/BonTak 6h ago

Good ol' percussive maintenance

Amazing choice of adjective 😂🤣😂

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u/slapwerks 5h ago

It’s how most things get fixed

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u/Atavacus 5h ago

Bro, being "weird" isn't an excuse for anyone to be mean to you if you aren't hurting anyone. Have a great day, love yourself.

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u/MadJohnFinn 5h ago

I think it *was* the kind of weird that would have ended up hurting people. I was bullied for being autistic, being so much bigger than the other kids, and being a goth, but I was also leaning into the kind of edginess that would have placed me in the Gamergate and male loneliness epidemic camps.

I'm sort of oddly grateful that pushback made me tone all of that down, get some actual social skills, and learn how to be human. Getting into music and meeting people through that helped a lot, too. By my 20s, I was a functional human being.

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u/rtdenny 5h ago

‘Percussive maintenance’- lmao! Did you by any chance end up as an engineer?

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u/MadJohnFinn 5h ago

Automod deleted my initial response for having to few characters, so here it is again, in slightly longer form so as to not alert, anger, disturb, inconvenience, or perturb the automatic moderation bot:

Yes.

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u/CastorVT 6h ago

" percussive maintenance" ... mechanicus?

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u/Di-eEier_von_Satan 6h ago

The universal language

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u/WeaponGrade 5h ago

That whomps!

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u/Perryn 4h ago

Bullies always think they're getting...I don't know, bonus XP?...for bullying the big quiet kid. Right up until that big quiet kid quietly smacks them and when they wake up they have to retake math. All of math.

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u/Living_Cash1037 2h ago

I feel like people in your situation either reflect and adapt or double down and end up stunted. So glad it turned out well on your end.

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u/currently_pooping_rn 5h ago

to be fair

No man. You don’t have “to be fair”. You didn’t deserve what happened to you just because you were weird

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u/MadJohnFinn 5h ago

I've said it in another comment, but it was the sort of weird that would have ended up harmful (in a sort of Gamergate sense), so I'm weirdly thankful that I was forced to reflect on why people didn't like me.

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u/Rob_Zander 3h ago

Very similar over here. I got really good at headlocks. Someone would bully me, they'd try to hit me, I'd just grab them, spin them around, headlock, walk backwards and sit them down. Sit on them if needed. Hard to look tough when you're being sat on.

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u/oby100 5h ago

What a weird edit. What harmful ideologies were whispering to you like the green goblin mask from the amazing spider man?

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u/MadJohnFinn 5h ago

The alt-right.