Screenwriting lesson 101: your story needs a plot twist. It is not the only thing your story needs in order to be outstanding, but it is definitely one of the main requirements. The twist can be as mind-blowing as the ones in Fight Club or Prestige (no spoilers!), or much simpler, as in many romantic comedies, but the point is: without the twist in the plot, your story loses half its charm.
Some people think that plot twists are a product of the screenwriter’s brain, and the only reason we are attracted to them is because nothing like that ever happens in real life. But the saying “Art imitates life” didn’t appear out of nowhere, and the truth is, a lot of good story ideas — including twists — come from life itself. Good writers just know where to look for them.
At the risk of sounding pretentious, life is the best writer of all. The twists and curveballs it throws at us sometimes are beyond the wildest imagination of the boldest writer. So next time you find suspense novels or movies with twisted plots unrealistic, think that the writer might have found their inspiration in real life.
The stories we collected for this article can definitely prove it. Some of them are ready-made plot ideas for a book or a movie, and they definitely all contain a twist none of the participating characters anticipated. Yeah, life sure knows how to surprise you.
Share these stories with your friends. Which ones had the biggest jaw-dropping effect on you? If you have any similar stories with a plot twist that happened to you or someone you know, share them with us in the comments.
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WeirdWolfGuy said:
"Met a guy online, he was cool, found out he lived less than 2 hours from where I live. We meet up. First time seeing each other's actual faces. F***ing doppelgangers. Turns out his father is my bio father's older brother. Both our bio dads bailed before we were born. We both were sexually abused as kids by teachers (him at 15, me at 13). Both us have soy allergies and Lysinuric Protein Intolerance (it's genetic). And both us joined the army and failed out during BCT due to undiagnosed mental health issues. Our lives had run parallel to each other. He's only a year older than me."
TARDISblues_boy replied:
"So are y'all friends now?"
"Yup, we meet every month for drinks (me drinking tea, him drinking gatorade, both of us are recovering alcoholics)."
"We are living in Florida at the time and my Dad goes to the eye doctor because he is seeing double. In all other respects he’s healthy. He explains his symptoms to the doctor. This was the early 2000’s. The doctor picks up a medical book on eye problems. He finds the kind symptoms my Dad is describing. The doctor shows him the book. In the book there is a whole medical page explaining what he is experiencing and a picture of a kid from the 1960’s. My Dad looks at the picture and says “Doc, thats me!” The doctor says “Yes, those are the symptoms you are showing.” My Dad says “no really that’s me in the picture!”
It turns out my Dad had this eye problem when he was a kid and it was so rare that they took his picture in 1960’s Ohio snd slapped him in a book of rare eye problems. He doesn’t remember much about taking the picture but he did manage to get a copy of it to take home."
"One of my good friends in high school started hanging out with this guy from the other public high school in our city & before long they were basically joined at the hip. She had a HUGE crush on him and was pretty sure he liked her too, but she’d never had a boyfriend before & was too shy to make the first move. One night they were hanging out & he told her he had something huge to confess... he was gay. They remained close friends. Then a few months later at a party, the guy introduced all of us to his younger (by one year) brother. The dude and his brother looked similar, had similar personalities and the exact same sense of humor. Fast forward 20 years, and my friend is happily married to the brother, her best friend is her brother in law, and he and his husband are godfathers to her kids. Sometimes the painful crush on the gay dude pays off.
For those who "feel bad for her husband for being 2nd choice" or think she just substituted him for the guy she really wanted, here is the context you are missing: When she met her now-husband, she was already pretty much over his brother. She became friends with her future hubs, and it wasn't until a year or more later that they started dating, after slowly developing feelings over time. Her crush on his brother was brief and adolescent and she 100% loves her husband for who he is. Yes, the qualities the 2 brothers share in common were part of what made her develop feelings for both of them, because those are the qualities she finds attractive. Trust me, folks, there is no victim in this story. Everyone ended up happy and loved."
RockG said:
"A few years ago I got invited to a friend's engagement party. They were throwing a huge bash because they were planning on a very small destination wedding. Later in the evening, my friend's fiancé takes the mic and starts thanking everyone for being there. "Sorry, Jen will be out to thank you guys in a minute, she's just having a wardrobe malfunction". He goes on to tell the story about how they met, how they were best friends and decided to get engaged and finished along the lines of "we wish you could all be there and that we could get married right now. So we're going to". Out walks Jen in her wedding dress. TL;DR: engagement party turned into a surprise wedding."
NotReallyACatPerson replied:
"I think this is my favourite story in this thread! How did the rest of it play out? Did they actually plan it all along or was it spontaneous?"
RockG also replied:
"It was their master plan. The parents of the bride and groom, maid of honor, best man and officiant knew. Everyone else was caught off guard."
"1991, I'm 19, just signed the lease for my first (solo) apartment, just got the first paycheck from my new job, I deposit the paycheck at an ATM (another first! I'd always gone into the bank to do it).
Two weeks later, I get my bank statement in the mail, and see with horror I have only $1.87 in my account. Way wrong, I should have at least $200, I'd been very careful with my spending. I'm freaked, I came within $2 of bouncing my first rent check. I'm literally reaching for the phone to call the bank when the phone rings. It's the police, asking if my ATM card was stolen. I check my wallet and the card is missing (my job at a theater pub came with cash tips so I didn't use the card often), and tell them I was going to call them anyway because I was missing $200 from my account. "
Well, we've got your card, and your $200, so come down to the police station," they tell me. I can't figure out how they have my card AND the cash. Doesn't make sense. I drive down there. Detective says someone (let's call him Bob) pulled in to use an ATM and saw a man acting suspiciously while he was using it, moving back and forth as if trying to dodge the camera. Bob says the man then left the ATM, got into a car, and drove away at high speeds as if fleeing. Bob then went to the ATM and put his card in, which popped out. Bob then withdrew $200, and then another ATM card popped out. My card. Bob's card had popped out because the crook had left my card in the ATM before speeding away. Bob realized he had withdrawn the money from my account and not his, so he brought my card and the cash to the police and reported the attempted theft.
The detective gives me the description of the crook. According to Bob, it was a man 5'7", brown hair, round gold-rimmed glasses. I say out loud "So, about my height, my color hair, and glasses like mine," before realizing Bob was describing me. I'd never deposited a check in an ATM before, so I was moving back and forth, following the instructions on the screen, filling out the envelope with my account number, punching the amount in, etc. I then forgot to take my card out and just left because I'm a f***ing idiot. I drove away at high speeds because I was 19 and that's how I drove everywhere. Worried the detective might be annoyed, I didn't tell him I was the crook, I just thanked him and left with the money I stole from myself. Somewhere in a box in my closet I still have the police report where I'm both the victim and the perp."
larriedbutmooking said:
"I graduated law, and got engaged to the girl I had been with through university. We both applied for the same graduate program and ended up working in the same office in Canberra. Three months before our wedding I found out she was cheating on me with our mutual boss, and I broke it off with her. Long story short, it got really, really ugly and the two of us ended up in a very bitter court case over property. Canberra is a pretty small city and the legal world is pretty bloody small there, too, and everywhere I went I bumped into my ex. It was beginning to seriously get me down (her too, as it transpired), and I applied for an Australian government overseas development job in Tuvalu, a pacific island with about 11,000 population. It's quite a prestigious job to get, with only two positions offered for a two year contract on a rotating basis. I was successful in the application and moved on-island to start my posting. To discover that my ex was the other successful applicant. I spent the next two years sharing a tiny office on a tiny island with the person that I quite honestly loathe more than any other in the world."
twobynight replied:
"You left in 2006. I was one of the guys who replaced you on this program. You story was told to me at the bar at the Funafuti about 100 times in the first month I was there. I cannot believe that I am now seeing this on Reddit."
"I dated a girl who lived in a city I had recently moved away from. On my birthday I drove out so that we could be together/go out to dinner. The entire time we were at dinner she was distant and constantly checking her phone/sending texts/etc. There was virtually no conversation and her constant texting was uncharacteristic and started to give me the vibe that she was either cheating on me or just not that into the relationship any more.
When we finish eating she asks if its ok if we stop by a mutual friend's house to pick up some weed. I reluctantly agreed thinking it was a pretty selfish request considering it was my birthday and I don't smoke weed. As we're walking up the steps to our friend's apartment I'm running through different ways for me to break off the relationship up until the door opens and I realize she had planned a big surprise party with a ton of my old friends (many of which she didn't even know.) All of the texts and lack of attention that I had been attributing to a lack of interest in me turned out to be the exact opposite. She's a beautiful person."
"Was working a new position in a new store for a company i had worked many years for. I try to develop very good relations with all my coworkers to help the day go by. I joke, I tease, and we sometimes would hang out after work.
One of my coworkers, we will call him James, would frequently tease me back. One day he wagged his finger, said “uh uh girlfriend!” In what I believed to be a teasing manner. Grabbing the moment to tease back I stated “oh come on, James, only girls can get away with the head bob uh uh statements and we all know you’d make an ugly girl.”
James scraggly bearded face instantly burst into laughter as everyone around him looked terrified. He laughed and laughed and told me I didn’t understand it but I happened to say something reallly funny. Everyone else looked like the color had drained from their faces.
Turns out, James had been born a girl and I had met him 3 years after his full transition. He was good natured about it, I told him to compliment his doctors who helped him because he was obviously living his true life that made him happy. Underneath it all I was mortified and have never made a gendered joke since. You never know."
"When I was a teen some 25 years ago, I played trumpet in the school band. We did a Halloween parade, but I had nothing to dress in costume for. I decided on a large black sheet with a hole in the top for my huge pony tail to stick out from the top in all its glory of crazy frizzy poof of curls, and a hole for my face and arms to stick out. I got a lot of "Dafuq are you supposed to be?" I don't know, a whazit I suppose.
Anyway, after the parade, my mother wanted to see my locker before leaving just to surprise check for anything not allowed. We pass by the auditorium and notice a talent show just beginning. Mom pressured me to enter playing my trumpet. In this weird whazit costume no less.
By the time I was to go on, I still had no clue what to play. I felt silly in my Halloween costume getup when nobody else was in costume unless they were dancing or a magician act.
I walked down the aisle towards the stage with trumpet in hand, contemplating what to do in my nervousness. Heard whispers among the crowd, as I climbed the little three steps of stairs up on the stage, I trip and fall up the remaining two stairs. I'm so clumsy.
So I stand up and play it off like I meant to do that. Began acting silly and tooting my horn like a duck. Did a silly dance to an improv version of the most basic song to play, Hot Cross Buns/Three Blind Mice.
Ripples of of kids are giggling in the audience. I see my mother's face contorted in displeasure that I'm not being serious enough to win this. Too bad Mom, this is my time to shine in all my goofy glorious weirdness.
I wiggle my topknot poof, and play a few jazzy bits of songs some older folks should know.
Then to finish off, I act like I'm swimming a bit and begin playing "Under The Sea" from The Little Mermaid I had learned the year before. End it with pretending to drown as I left back down the stairs without falling.
Mom took me out in the hall to have her fit for about 10 mins while the last contestants finish the show.
She then goes off to look thru my locker while I put away my trumpet and prepare to leave. I wait for her by the auditorium exit. They begin announcing the winners.
I won first place."
"In primary school We had a WWI memorial lesson and we were asked if anyone had any relatives who fought at the time.
My friend brought in a picture of his great great grandfather with his wife.
A girl also brought in a picture of her great great grandfather with his wife.
The teacher said they looked similar. She put them side by side and looked shocked, we gathered around and it was the same man who had kept his two wives a secret. Both had been married privately.
They were cousins and didn’t know."
I can just imagine trying to explain this to 20 or 30 young kids.
sci_lit said:
"Was out with a friend of mine, who ran into her dad... and his OTHER family."
whytho37 replied:
"Damn that has to suck, how did he explain that?"
sci_lit also replied:
"He didn't, she saw him kiss the other woman, and a kid yelled daddy while grabbing his leg. My friend yelled her father's name, he walked over and said, we will discuss this later. He seemingly couldn't have cared less, it was a sobering moment of reality to say the least."
"I’ve told this story before, and I’ll try to keep it short.
I get on the plane after a short layover, but it’s late, and I’m cranky. The guys in the row in front of me are being drunk/obnoxious. Their buddy walks up and taps me on the shoulder. “Scuse me - was wondering if you’d trade seats with me. I wanna be next to my frat brothers.”
My eye roll was so intense.
Dude’s friend says “so my buddy accidentally booked first class”.
Me: Awwwww I’m HAPPY to help y’all. PLEASE have a seat (in 23B).
So I go to take dude’s first class seat and I have to tap seat-mate on the shoulder to let me into our classy, 2-person row.
Seat-mate and I get to talking. Turns out he was a member of THE Jamaican bobsled team that went to the Olympics - the team “Cool Runnings” was based off of!"
Feel the rhythm, feel the ride, give up your seat, it's first class time!
"When I started school, I figured out that being raised by your grandparents wasn't normal.
And then when I was a little older, I found out that the reason why was because my biological parents gave me to them. I was told that my biological mother was 'sick' and assumed that I was maybe a few months old at the youngest. No one talked much about my biological father or his family and I only met his father and stepmom once when I was a toddler. I rarely saw my biological parents while they were together, and only started seeing my biological mother regularly when they divorced and she moved back to the family home and we became roommates. Years later, I found out that my biological father remarried and started a new ginger family right away.
And then, around ten or so, I was helping my mom (aka grandmother) with something and it involved going through her lockbox of important papers. I found a paper pertaining to the custody case and it was dated two months after I was born. I asked questions and it turned out that my biological parents gave up after a week and my biological father wanted to throw me in a dumpster. Lucky for me, my biological mother called her mom and I was not thrown in the trash. My dad had been at work while all this went down, so that day, he came home and found out there was an extra person there for the indefinite future. After my biological father changed his plan to putting me in foster care, my grandparents filed for custody because the thought of not knowing where I was was literally nightmare inducing.
Bio dad popped up a couple times when I was older and the last time we were in contact, which was through email, he tried to claim that I had been kidnapped. Which is stupid for so many reasons. We don't talk anymore, because he's the human equivalent of stepping on a Lego and I have already have a dad, who is like if Shepherd Book and Ron Swanson fused into one being."
moak0 said:
"Studying abroad in England, I planned a weekend trip to Barcelona with this girl. This is pre-cellphones.
I overslept. Got to the airport like three hours late. As soon as I arrive, there's the girl. At the exact same time we both say, "I am SO sorry... Wait, what are you sorry for?"
Turns out she overslept too. British Airways changed our tickets for us, no charge, and we got to Barcelona a few hours late."
PronunciationIsKey replied:
"I think the real plot twist is the fact that the airline didn't charge for switching the flights."
They may have not charged them for the flight swap because it could have been convenient for the airline to swap the tickets for any number of reasons. Tickets can be overbooked and occasionally they will ask passengers to swap flights when the plane is full. Since Barcelona is a frequent tourist destination I'm sure they were packed so it probably was more convenient to switch the early flight to a later flight that probably had more space on the plane. I've run into a similar situation when I had a layover in Toronto and my friend and I's first flight was delayed in our hometown which would cause us to nearly miss our 2nd flight out of Toronto. We were late but lucked out in that they had switched our 1st ticket to a later time before we arrived because the plane was delayed. However the ticket they switch would cause us to miss our second flight so they also swapped the 2nd one for free too.
"I once had a job interview. It was very early in my career and I was trying to move 500 miles to a new place. I built prototypes and brought samples of my work. It was a 9 hour drive, but everyone seemed so enthusiastic that I figured it was a lock.
I did not get the job. I found another job in the area and took it. 6 months later they called and asked me to interview for the job above the one I had applied for. I was given an offer on the spot and worked there almost a decade. In the first few months the people there told me the guy who's job I had (who would have been my boss if he hired me initially) had actually said the samples and work I did was beyond him and he didn't want an employee who knew more than him. Well, I guess he doesn't have that problem since they fired him and replaced him with me."
"My sister's boyfriend decided that he wanted to do more with his architecture skills so he gave his two weeks notice and moved to Haiti to help rebuild after the earthquake. They stayed together. He had bad phone service so they mostly kept in touch through emails. He would send her long emails with photos and stories of what they were doing. This went on for a couple of months
One off-handed tip from a co-worker and a week of sleuthing later and it turns out he never went to Haiti. He moved to Seattle to be with his fiance and partner of 9 years."
Wow. Keep it going for that long? And to use an excuse like you're helping people...
"Years ago my company was slowly going under so I was looking for other jobs. I got a job with another company and put in my two weeks with my manager. Me: "I've been offered another job and I'm taking it. I'm putting in my notice." Manager: "Oh, well we hate to lose you. Do you mind me asking where you will be going?" Me: "I'm going to [company]." Manager: "S**t..." Me: "..." Manager: "I applied for that position too." Me: "I'm sorry to tell you that you didn't get it."'
"After searching for years for my birth father, he offered me 3,000 to get lost as he was running for a political office and didn’t want the embarrassment of an illegitimate child."
"There was a cookie exchange at my work. An odd pairing cookie was a Rosemary caramel. It was so delicious I had 5 on my break. During the day I was so inspired(I worked in a bakery) I was just having the best day. All my favorite songs came on. And then I started getting these burps. It tasted like the Rosemary, but something was off. I started feeling weird and tingley before my lunch break. My hands started to feel odd. Now being the mixer for the day I worked with heavy machinery and knives. Soon a manager came by and asked if anyone had some cookies. Short while later I find myself in a room with a handful of other people. All with odd issues, some were confused, others their stomachs felt off. EMTs, poison control, local police, firefighters were all cramming into the room to examine us all.
Turns out that "odd pairing" was weed cookies. We were stoned out of our minds."
I partake daily because of chronic pain, but tricking others into eating edibles is absolutely NOT acceptable.
"I got laid off from a company I had worked for for over 20 years. I went in for my exit interview and the HR lady said "Dwayne, from a site 3 states away, wants to hire you". I said "I'm not moving that far". She said "You can just work from home".
Now where I was working was a 130 mile round trip commute. I got laid off and ended up with a commute that was from my bedroom to my den. Kept doing it for over 4 more years."
mindovermacabre said:
"I was a Starbucks barista before the whole "names on cups" thing was big- or at least, it wasn't really practiced in my tiny store. There was this very cute guy who came in maybe 4-6x a week. A little often, but nothing out of the ordinary. I flirted like mad. He flirted back. It was all great. Then he comes in with his fiance. I was betrayed and treated him coldly from then on. A month later, two of him come in together and I find out that he - uh, they - are twins and I'd shot down any chance I had with the single one."
C_Alan replied:
"It sounds a bit like how my Mother met my Dad. My dad is a twin. Both he and his brother were members of the same fraternity when they were in college. My Uncle was the Social Chair for the fraternity. One day my Dad is going to his car when this girl stops him... and chews him out for not providing rides to a social event for the girls in her sorority. My Dad patiently waited until she was done and then told her she could tell that to my Uncle. The girl was mortified, so much so that my Dad decided to make it up to her by taking her out. And that is how my Dad met my Mother."
"I worked for a bank at their call center as a workforce admin. We had a supervisor with a higher than normal personnel rotation. People would be doing OK, then suddenly their numbers would drop, and quit.
In one of those, the guy quitting made a big f***ing scene, called him out, insulted him, pushed him around and ended up being restrained by other coworkers.
At the HR meeting, supervisor is going off on this guy, bringing up every single thing the guy did wrong. He was boasting a bit too about how he had to fix all of this dudes mistakes.
The entire time, the guy sat silent, said nothing, just stared at whomever asked him something. When the HR rep asked if he had anything to add, he pulled out a tape recorder, and just... played recording after recording. Of what you ask? Of the supervisor literally threatening the guy. Harassing him, belittling him, and overall being a complete a**hole.
Apparently, this guy would target over performing agents and make their working environment hell, to protect his position.
Im told the supervisor simply stared at his feet and nodded when told he was fired. The agent, as I understand it, was also let go, but very well compensated."
achybreakyballs said:
"My grandfather’s funeral. He was always a fairly reserved and distant father as far as I understood. Would fit the stereotype of a northern dockworker who comes home expecting dinner to be in the table and then goes to the pub all evening via the bookies. Anyway, an unsurprising heart attack later, we’re all gathered for his funeral. We’re a big, but close family so we know everyone, including his friends. However, one guy turns up, about the same age as my dad and his siblings who nobody knows. Long story short, turns out it was my grandfather’s son. From another family. From another marriage. That went on for as long as his marriage to my grandmother. My grandfather had maintained two marriages over 40 years, having 7 children with my grandmother and just the one with this other woman. They knew about our family and kept away and apparently my grandmother knew about them but kept quiet. Turns out he wasn’t going to the pub every night."
LaMafiosa replied:
"Your grandmother knew? That must've been difficult on her."
achybreakyballs also replied:
"I think this was just one of many things she put up with during that marriage. She lived for about 20 years after he died. I think she was a lot happier in that period."
"The baby wasn't his. And we could tell because the husband was black, she was white, and the baby was Asian.
Didn't see that one coming."
"Guy I knew in high school English class was talking one winter day about how he was late to school because someone hit his mailbox. His folks made him fix it up before he went to school, he missed his ride & had to walk instead, but the school staff was cool about it & didn't punish him.
A few minutes later, another girl comes into class & she's talking about how her morning sucked, she lost control going down a hill & hit someone's mailbox. She freaked out & drove off before anyone witnessed it & described a few details of the house.
Mailbox guy puts 2 & 2 together & blurts out "you hit MY mailbox!" He wasn't super mad about it & she turned beet red, it was hilarious at the time the way they both reacted."
What would have made this even more epic is if this was one of those "and that's how my mom started dating my dad" situations...
"My buddy and his girlfriend took a train to London to see a band play. It was a long journey (almost an hour) with a few stops, and once they were one stop away from London they realized they didn't have the concert tickets.
They got off the train, checked their bags, searched every pocket, checked their bags again and decided to go back home to look there. They got back and found the tickets on the table in the hall of their house, and headed back out again.
When they were arriving at the station for a second time, they had to wait because there was a potential bomb threat. It turned out there was an unattended bag which was being checked over by the bomb squad.
Whose bag? My buddy's girlfriend bag. She'd left it at the station after looking for the tickets."
"I used to work with a guy in his early 20s that at the time of the story was getting ready to go with his family for his first out of the country. He was pretty damn excited and we were getting the play-by-play of all the things - where they were staying, what they were going to do, he was preparing...
Specifically he would need to get a passport, but his birth certificate had been lost. When the replacement one arrived, 'mom's' name isn't the woman he's called mom his whole life, it's his 'sister.' Turns out his 'sister' had him super young, and his grandparents basically took him on and raised them as their son and no one ever told him the truth. So Sister was actually Mom and Mom and Dad was actually Grandpa and Grandma. Real dad is unknown.
He took a few days off work to sort himself out, still went on the trip, still apparently had a blast."
That sounds like the sister was in bad situation… I hope everyone was ok
"I work at a prison and a lady flew all the way from Nigeria to visit her brother who was supposed to be incarcerated at my unit. She speaks little english but we tried to explain to her that the inmate was not in the system anymore. He must have been released. We call a supervisor and it turns out he was released over 5 months before. She walks away confused and come back in with her husband who speaks english much better. We tell him the scenario and he asks, “well where did he go? He doesn’t have any friends or family in the US.” We told him we don’t know where he went, he was released he could be anywhere. The guy, obviously confused, says “Well... he couldn’t have gone anywhere... because he doesn’t have any legs.” So a legless Nigerian ex-felon with no ties is scooting around the US and no one knows where he is."
"During the last year of my grandfather's life he had dementia and was having trouble keeping track of reality. Before he was placed into hospice he kept complaining about a man that was in his house, he would say that he would come around at night and that he was taking his things and using his stuff. Grandma of course kept reassuring him that she was the only one there. His doctor increased his medications because he was losing touch with reality so badly.
Fast forward to my grandfather's funeral and a man showed up that wasn't known by more than a few people in the family. Turns out he was an old friend of my grandmother's who showed up to give his support. In a small town like that it wasn't exactly an unusual thing to have random people show up to the funeral home who knew the person at some point.
Well about a year later my grandmother lets slip that she is seeing someone, the guy from funeral. At this point nothing too odd, they got to talking at church and we thought it was sweet.
Then a bit later sweet innocent ol' grandma mentions that it's their 3rd anniversary.
Grandpa died two years prior. This man was the person that grandpa saw in his house every night. He was the reason that everyone thought grandpa was going crazy, he was the reason that my grandfather was medicated to the point of being a vegetable for the last horrible year of his life.
TL;DR Grandpa thought he saw someone in his house before he died, turns out it was grandma's boyfriend."
ronearc said:
"Little town I grew up in had these two car dealerships on opposite sides of town - one Chevy, one Ford. They were bitter rivals. Attack ads, s**t talking salesman, billboard wars, you name it. When the owner of the Chevy dealership died, it came out he'd also owned the Ford dealership by way of a shell company. No one saw that coming, including a lot of the higher ups who worked at the dealerships."
DisurStric32 replied:
"That sounds like the ultimate bored rich guy... buy 2 car dealerships... have the managers s**t talk each other and watch the fight."
"A friend of mine, apparently he was sneaking out for a trip outside the city with his friends since his parents didn’t let him go. They were on motorbikes, already on their way outside of the city suddenly he got into an accident with another bike. It was his dad he crashed into."
"Was on a flight from Paris to Boston. I had the aisle seat across from a little hall of bathrooms in the middle of the plane. At one point a man from a few rows up goes into a bathroom and after a couple of minutes comes out and is just standing in the aisle so it gets my attention. He keeps going in and coming back out looking up towards where he is sitting. I see a woman who is sitting next to his empty seat shake her head at him but he doesn’t give up. Finally after like 5 times of coming in and out he finally gets the woman to come back there. The lights are out and most of the plane is sleeping and once she comes back to him they start making out in the bathroom hallway before he goes into one and pulls her in with him.
They are in there for quite awhile and then he comes out and goes back to his seat and a few minutes later she comes out and does the same. They are really flirty in their seats and about an hour later repeat it. The man goes in and then she joins him. They end up doing this three times throughout the flight. My husband who is sitting next to me has caught on to what they are doing as well and we made a joke about how they must be newlyweds on their honeymoon.
We get off the plane and the woman is standing at the gate waiting and the man is nowhere in sight. As the people from the back of the plane get off a completely different man goes up to her and gives her a kiss on the lips and asks her if she was able to get any sleep on the flight and calls her dear. Then they walk off towards the luggage area with their arms around each other. So apparently what we thought was an adventurous newlywed couple was actually a woman hooking up with her seat mate while her husband was sitting in the back of the plane."
"I went to college in Milwaukee but I took some initial credits at a two year campus in Waukesha, a suburb just outside the city to save money.
The university of Wisconsin has a series of two-year campuses across the state. They did some classes remotely including German. The professor was on my campus, however, so he did one in-person session and then another section for the remote students at the other campuses all over the state.
Anyway, we took a field trip one day to a REALLY GOOD old world authentic German restaurant to try some different foods. It was great. He invited all the remote students to come down but didn't expect anyone to make the trip.
The day we went the prof told us one person was coming down from Wausau, almost three hours to the north and also my home town. Some of my classmates knew I was from up there and have this perception of it being this small up north town. It kinda is but the whole metro area is probably around 100,000. Small but not true small town living.
I explained to them that Wausau isn't that small and I don't know everyone there. It's not like that. Sure enough this guy shows up, we look at each other for a moment and he asks, "Hey, aren't you married to [insert my wife's name here]?" Goddamnit.
Note: Yes, I was married in college. I was still in my 20s. I was a non-trad. We got married when my wife finished college and then she supported us while I went back to finish my degree. She's a f***ing saint."
Tbh other than the cost I have nothing against getting married in college. High school is a bit weird, but my parents married and had me in grad school.
LizzbaWest said:
"I was seeing a guy from tinder for a couple of months but it fizzled out and we stopped talking. I was on tinder again shortly after and matched with a girl (I’m bi) who told me to follow her on instagram. I noticed the tinder guy also followed her so I ask how she knows him, she hits me with 'he was dating my best friend for ages but they broke up a couple weeks ago because he was fu***ng some girl from tinder.'"
FawxCloud replied:
"Did you end up telling her you were the random girl from tinder?"
LizzbaWest also replied:
"My response was “oh s**t” and she managed to guess from that! I messaged the best friend as well to apologize and she seemed really nice about it."
"Willy and Devin egged each other's houses. Devin also egged Tristan's house.
Events that happened after (in order): Devin egged Willy a second time because Willy did it once. Willy called the cops on Devin but nothing happened. Tristan keyed Devin's car. Devin egged Willy once more in retaliation and even punched him, thinking it was him. Willy called the cops again, and Devin got fined heavily (I heard he got arrested but not sure about that).
None of them actually egged each other the first time. It was me."
KingGorilla said:
"My friend in college was such a jock. Worked out constantly, total womanizer, had posters of women in swimsuits. Also pretty conservative politically. Few years later he's in a relationship with a black guy and also converted to Judaism. They adopted a baby girl from Korea."
Mrbrionman replied:
"Probably felt the need to amplify his masculinity in order to try and oppress his own sexuality. The religion change is a strange combination though."
Yep. People over compensate massively. We see it a lot in politicians from the US who are vehemently anti gay. They pretty much always turn out to be secretly gay.
"My mother's friend was married to a man for many years. They struggled to have kids because he had fertility issues and then later on she developed ovarian cancer and had a hysterectomy. Years later he cheats and leaves her blaming it on them having no children because of the hysterectomy. He and the woman he leaves her for proceed to conceive twins via IVF. Once those twins are born his mistress finds out he doesn't have as much money as she thought so she leaves him AND the twins. So I mean at least he got those kids he wanted so badly..."
My mom worked with a nice guy. Shy, didn't date much. He met a woman with 4 kids and fell in love. They got married. She was a truck driver, so he became insta-dad to the kids - a 4yo and 3 teens - while she was on the road. He ended up adopting the youngest kid. As soon as the adoption was final, she divorced him and sued for child support.
"This girl I know was embarrassed of her home so whenever her boyfriend would go pick her up she'd run to a subdivision like 5 minutes away from her house and waiting at the end of the driveway for her boyfriend and when he would drop her off she'd just walk into the backyard of the house and say that she goes in through the back door. Her excuse was that her roommates were nosy so she didn't want him to come in. She did this for almost a year until he knocked on the door of that house unannounced once and an old lady was confused as f***."
DaggerMind said:
"When I was a sophomore in high school, we had a rash of thefts occurring during classes. It was a small school and we had no hall monitor or cameras in the halls. It went on for months until the gym teacher happened to catch the kid in the act of stealing from someone's backpack. There was a ruckus out in the halls and my class ran out to see what was going on. The thief was the principal's son. The gym teacher was holding him by his wrist and was telling everyone he just caught him stealing. The kid then pretended to pass out and he just fell to the floor while everyone rolled their eyes and went back to class. He was known for trying to get attention however he could. So cringy."
manualsquid replied:
"Double plot twist: he pretended to be the thief, to get caught on purpose for attention. The actual theif used the copycat to end his spree. The perfect crime."
"The one guy I worked with was having a baby. He told me about his girlfriend, "yeah she's pretty big but she's amazing, she's the one for me." I didn't know him very well but as he talked about the pregnancy and so forth and I gave him encouraging words and how his life was going to change so much we bonded a bit. His baby was going to be born right before Christmas, he missed our work Christmas party because his baby was being born! We expect him to be gone for paternity leave, but he shows up a few days later. I feared the worst, that the baby had died. It turned out his girlfriend was lying about being pregnant to spend more time with him. I didn't think much of it at the time, but the fact that he brought up she was fat for no reason must have meant she was so fat you couldn't tell whether she was pregnant or not. She showed him someone else's ultrasounds, they talked about what they would name their baby, how they'd handle taking care of it, all that s**t. I don't know what she thought was gonna happen when nine months passed and no baby. I guess it's good she came clean though, a more diabolical person would have faked a miscarriage or something. But that was seriously messed up. Shortly after the dude left so I don't really know how he handled it."
yoohoovoodoo said:
"Trying to figure out where the toilet paper was as it kept “disappearing”. It was the babysitter."
Alybank replied:
"Not defending her, but like if she's stealing toilet paper she's probably really struggling."
No lie. My first real job, I literally couldn't afford TP, I was already using the local food bank to get by. On two occasions, I stole TP from the office. No regrets.
somebadmeme said:
"A girl I know pretend to be lesbian for a year so a guy would stop asking her out."
SpidersMcGee replied:
"I'm a girl who just got a job at a shipyard. When asked I tell the guys I'm a lesbian just to get some peace."
"I was getting late to catch a flight and hadn't checked in. Discovered when I reached the airport that I actually came to the wrong airport. Had to travel about 30 minutes to reach the other airport. Went to check-in about 20 minutes before my flight. They didn't have any seats so updated me to business class. Best flight of my life, so far."
"I had my four wheeler stolen years ago, and the thief tried to sell it to my father, because he didn't know we were related."
"This guy I use to work with told us his girlfriend was pregnant. If I recall, she was about 7 months along before I left the job. I got pregnant around the same time that she was "7 months" and saw them multiple times throughout, then again after my son was born. She was still "pregnant". Worst part is he never questioned it, he believed her. Even after being told a pregnancy that long isn't possible. Wonder if she actually had a baby at some point.
I'm not sure why he continued to believe her or stay with her. He was a very sweet guy, came from Jamaica not long before starting work at the company. I know he was excited to be a dad. Every time I discussed it with him privately, he'd brush it off or laugh. After I had my son, he took my heart to hearts a bit more seriously. Like he realized I knew what I was talking about cause my pregnancy didn't take a year and a half. He looked almost defeated by the realization. I haven't seen him since but I hope he got out before she trapped him for real. And no, she wasn't huge. Larger but not an elephant."
"My father had one. He and my mom were never exactly happy. They divorce and my dad immediately marries another woman: she's WAY younger, blonde, loves doing housework and just wants to dote on her man. TOTALLY the opposite of my headstrong mother.
My dad was even thinking how great this was because now his life is set and he doesn't never had to clean house or cook or ANYTHING. And his second wife gets cancer and is gone in less than two years.
But, the plot twist is this: my dad starts asking how do you cook, how do you clean and bank and pay bills... and taught himself and now takes care of his own self which shocked the s**t out of me."
"Finding out my girlfriend was cheating on me.
She and I were going to go to the same college, but she started a semester before I did. Went up to visit her one weekend and had a great time on the campus and met a lot of cool people. Then I get a Facebook message from a guy I met there that was, "Hey listen, I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but think you're a really great guy so I think you deserve to know the truth. She's been cheating on you." I decided to call her and ask her about it and she admitted it. It was very painful because it was the first long term relationship I had and it was especially hard knowing I would have to see her on campus in a few months when I started. Funny thing is that pretty much all her friends that I hung out with when I was there visiting sided with me and ended up becoming some of my closest friends throughout my college years."
Exact same thing happened to me back in the 70s. He went to uni and I was going to join him in the next intake. He came home Christmas Eve and told me he'd found someone else (we'd been together for 4 years by this time). Naturally I was devastated and decided to ditch uni and train to be a nurse. I found out several years later that he'd married the girl soon after we split but it didn't work out and they divorced. So yes, Karma.
"My mom and a gal pal went to Mexico for break during college. They had a great time. While boarding the return flight her friend says, "sorry, I'm staying" and runs off.
My mom hears from her a few weeks later after not being able to contact her at all (this was the 70s, IG long distance calls and phones were scarce) Turns out her friend been sneaking off nights and f***ing the hotel gardener. She loves him and stayed in Mexico. That's all my mom knows. Hopefully they lived happily ever after.
UPDATE: I found out the woman's name and believe I have found the correct one on social media. She got married in 1979 which lines up with the story but she lives in Green Bay WI now."
"Friends parents were always so nice and welcoming. House was clean and boring, pretty normal quite life and then they were caught making a large amount of meth and are still in prison now."
The_Terminatah said:
"When I found out my crush liked me back."
bumjiggy replied:
"This happened to me recently. Luckily I was able to sabotage it in record time!"
"I thought this was going down a completely different path.
This girl I went to school with was the same: smart, really nice to everyone, good looking, traditional family, does charity work. Her grandfather and her dad own the biggest transportation company in our area, and her mom runs a successfull clothes shop for other rich women. She got a psychology degree and opened her own practice. Then she married a distant cousin, equally rich, smart, nice, good looking.
A few years into the marriage they get divorced for apparently no reason, and both delete all social media accounts. Turns out she had been working as a prostitute ever since she started college (it’s legal here). Her family confronted her and she confessed, said she does it for fun, sort of a hobby."
Nothing wrong with sex work. But yeah that’s s****y of her.
UnPhayzable said:
"I used to call my tutor Mr. for the first 8 months of tutoring just to find out she was a woman."
haribo71 replied:
"I was working for a summer camp some years ago - one Sunday I was helping check campers in. One kid turns up with their dad, I look up, see this little boy, ask their name. “Skyler ____”. I find their name but it says ‘Junior Girls Village’. Hmm, I’m fairly sure that was a boy. I look up and can’t decide. Unfortunately the name doesn’t help. I show my boss, the camp director, and she says, “So, do you know where you’re going? Junior girls... junior boys...?” The dad promptly says “Junior Boys”. As if the one kid who had a unisex name, with long blonde hair, who was actually a boy was somehow down as a girl in the system. I also checked in a kid who’s surname was Dyson... and upon confirming it, found out his mom’s maiden name was Broom. She upgraded."
I had a friend in highschool who had an ambiguous name like TJ (It wasn't, but just as an example). Was friends with them for three years and never found out if they were a boy or girl. Didn't care, they were a good person and that's what matters most.
"I knew a woman who was going through divorce proceedings with her husband. He was always argumentative and borderline abusive towards her, certainly always shouting and demeaning. Then, just as the divorce was entering it's final stages he very suddenly died. His autopsy showed that he had a massive undiagnosed brain tumour which had been physically altering his personality. His wife felt all kinds of guilty afterwards and took it out on everyone she talked to and lost a lot of friends in the process."
"Worked at a small company summers during college. Two dudes that work there (Mike and John) are best friends since high school, and Mike is getting married to his high school sweetheart. Nine months after the wedding, the girl has a baby. And it looks nothing like Mike but a lot like John. And she reveals that she had sex with John on her wedding day before she actually got married. She divorces Mike, marries John the next day, and Mike and John are not friends any more.
To be clear, the divorce took some time, but as soon as the divorce was finalized, she and John went straight to the courthouse and had a civil wedding. And to be clear, "Mike" and "John" are not their real names. I have lost touch so I don't know of any further plot twists, but the last I saw them John was raising his child."
"One of my friends was convinced that they were straight for ages, used to laugh about lesbians hitting on them (not at the lesbians, mind you, they just didn't get why it happened so much).
Flash forward a few years, whoops, they were gay all along."
NTXhomebaker said:
"After my Dad passed away my brother did our Ancestry line for fun. Come to find out we have a half brother that my father didn’t acknowledge. He was married before my mom which we also didn’t know. We started a relationship with him and his family and all was well for a while... now we realize he’s a complete tool who constantly borrows money, cusses everyone out when things don’t go his way, threatens suicide just to f**k with our heads, and just makes our life miserable in general. Truly wish I had never met him."
chhgfvbjurdcvbjuu replied:
"Wait, how does ancestry.com work? Did your half brother also do ancestry.com and it linked y’all?"
crazycatalchemist also replied:
"I think ancestry also has access to some legal documents. I only had a free trial but I found census documents from my great grandparents and things like that. So maybe marriage certificates and birth records?"
applepwnz also replied:
"Yup, I have a paid membership, it's pretty cool because it gleans family information from previous legwork other people have done as well as official government documents. The weird part is that because the further back you go, the more descendants there are, it seems to actually be easier to find information once you get back to the 1800s and 1700s as it's much more likely that descendents have already done the work."
"This girl in my high school class got into a top univerisity for Political Sciences, super smart, friendly, daughter of one of the most powerful politicians in my country. Her mom was investigated for some illegal money stuff, and turns out her tuition money was coming from that. She had to drop off because they lost most of their money.
I am from a South American country. I know the girl did not deserve it, but she was also too proud to apply for student loans."
"One of my high school friends has a very strange brother who likes to pretend he's a girl on online games to get free stuff from people or something like that. After I graduated, I moved to Boston for college (They live in Texas) and last winter I went back to visit my friend and I was hanging out in her house when I saw her brother's laptop in the game room open with pictures of this girl on the desktop. He said they were random pictures he found of some girl who posted on reddit (they were sfw pics) but her account was inactive for years now so he was using those pics to "prove" to someone he was a girl in the game he was playing.
It blew my mind because that girl went to my school and was in my econ class."
"When I was fourteen through sixteen, I had gay and bi friends who seemed a bit. Close. They thought I was queer and I politely told them no. Turns out they smelled the bi on me."
"I was at Bank of America during the banking crisis. Our CEO’s lifelong ambition had been to see the Wall Street banks humbled, which he achieved when all were forced to reincorporate as regular banks.
24 hours later he was ousted.
He had literally one day to enjoy his victory before the rug was pulled from under him by the board. I was so moved I e-mailed him (I’d never met him), he responded graciously to thank me for his support.
If they made a movie of that moment, folks would think it was made up."
"My highschool sweetheart's best friend let me know that my girlfriend cheated on me with multiple guys at a party. I broke things off with her that same day. It was a very nasty breakup.
Years and years later I got a message on facebook from her best friend. She explained to me that my highschool sweetheart never cheated on me, she just wanted to break us up so that she could have me for herself because I seemed like the "perfect boyfriend."
Her plan backfired because I thought she was ugly inside and out, and as soon as I broke things off with my girlfriend, I wanted nothing to do with her. Between her plan failing, and the guilt of ruining an otherwise great relationship, she decided to keep her mouth shut.
I don't know is she told her best friend, but I know that I never will."
"My formerly hippy-ish father now watches Fox News."
He was never an actual hippie then, he was a follower. Some people follow whatever lifestyle is most popular among their age group in their community/area. Real hippies are still hippies, trust me.
"Had a manager at my high school job in fast food. She was overbearing, micro manager, suck up to the GM, pain the a**! She always walked around like hot s**t because she was the youngest manager... like I give a s**t. Happily married for 9 years in December, she is a stay at home mom with our two sons now."
"When I thought I was using wifi to watch YouTube, but was actually using data, which I have a limited amount of on my phone."
I fed the feral cats in my neighborhood over this past winter. One kitty had a ragged collar, and was hungry enough to let me read his tag. His people thought it was a cruel prank at first, because he had disappeared 5 years earlier from 10 miles away. He is now happily back with his people, all beacuse his collar apparently has 9 lives.
I fed the feral cats in my neighborhood over this past winter. One kitty had a ragged collar, and was hungry enough to let me read his tag. His people thought it was a cruel prank at first, because he had disappeared 5 years earlier from 10 miles away. He is now happily back with his people, all beacuse his collar apparently has 9 lives.
