Regrets. We all have them. Unfortunately, hindsight is 20/20 (lol, I will never see that phrase the same way again after 2020), and sometimes we look back on stuff we did and go, "what the hell was I thinking???"
Unfortunately, MANY of these examples come from our teenage years. Recently, Reddit user u/gravemind9 asked, "What's something you did as a teenager that you look back on and think holy fuck was fucking stupid?" and people had a lot to say. Read on to discover people's teenage regrets — from ridiculously dangerous things they did casually, to actual life choices they made that affect them to this day.
1. "I thought that, if I acted angsty and pushed people away from me, it'd make people want to know more about me and why I was so distant. For any current teenagers who didn't already know, this doesn't work. People will just let you be alone, and go find someone who's more friendly to them being around."
2. "[I] decided to isolate myself and give the world the middle finger. That was indeed fucking stupid."
3. "[I] stayed at a shitty job for years because of no reason at all. I woke up and went to bed every day hating the job and wishing I didn't have it. This was during a time when part time jobs like mine were not hard to find. I could have moved on to something else anytime I wanted. I know this because once I finally did decide to look for something else, I found it within days. I still look back on it and wonder why I spent the last of my teen years hating life because of a job that I only had for extra pocket money. It taught me that it's really easy to get used to something shitty, and to not let something like that happen again."
4. "Decide to go to school as an engineer. It's not that I'm bad at it, but I loathe the non-creative side of it. I really respect people that take joy in engineering work, it's just not something I can do. It was fucking stupid because I knew already that I had the artistic ability to have a reasonable income, but decided to go with engineering because of the constant reinforcement in the US that artists can't make it and are useless to society."
5. "Listening to my parents and teachers telling me my dream career was bad [and] would leave me broke and homeless. I wanted to be a comic book artist or cartoon animator. Ever since I was a small child, I was always into art in one way or another. I expressed early on the desire to draw comics. I drew and drew. Practiced constantly. During the constant and inevitable, 'What do you wanna be when you grow up?' conversations, I was told by every adult that there was no career in it. So I eventually gave up, and became a 9 to 5er out of high-school. I punch my inner self daily for letting them get to me."
6. "Listening to my parents [telling me] not to go to college as 'I wasn't smart enough for that' unlike my older siblings. I'm in my late twenties finally going, and just got a 103.8 on my last test. I hate them so much for making me think I couldn't do anything substantial."
7. "I would date guys not necessarily because I liked them but because I had this belief that everyone deserves a chance. Because of this, I had a long string of crappy boyfriends who ultimately would dump me, then spread rumors about me leading to slut shaming and me dropping out. No, not everyone deserves a chance. Now I'm extremely picky about who I date."
8. "Getting stoned at school. Not the experience itself, that was great. Moreover I wasn't fucking learning anything at the time. I had emotionally checked out of high school and was already on my way to full time work and just waiting for my drop out papers to go through.The reason I think it was dumb now is I was underaged at the time. The Australian legal system has a term known as duty of care, and in a school that basically means that when a minor is at school, the teachers are essentially a temporary guardian to the child and take full responsibility for anything that happens to them. I'm really oversimplifying it, but that's the dumbed-down, you-get-the-gist-of-it explanation."
If I had been caught, the school would have had a fuckload of explaining to do. I liked the teachers well enough, I certainly didn't want any of their jobs to be at risk. I just didn't have the scope or scale in my head to consider people who didn't deserve it could have been harmed by something I felt I was doing without consequence.
I never got caught. If I had? Posession by a minor, slap on the wrist for me. Absolute hell for the school. They're lucky I never got caught. So Mr. Avery, I know your 1960's ass recognised the smell of weed. I thought you were doing me a favor back then. Now I know you weren't asking questions because you were covering everyone's ass. You're a real hero; enjoy your retirement."
9. "I think I was a bully back in school. Primarily because I have always had friends who I didn't want. So I kinda bullied them. I'm retrospect some were shitty and I knew it and yet had to befriend them for survival in school. And I regret it terribly. I should have just gathered some courage and stayed alone or found new friends, rather than be treated like shit as well as make them feel like shit on purpose."
10. "Knocking on people’s doors to talk to them about religion. I just fucking hate that I was raised in a religious household, and I hate that I was emotionally blackmailed into making it my entire life. I wish I had partied, dated and traveled when I was younger. But nope, I was too busy going to church and getting married at 19."
11. "Undyingly devoted to religion. ... Really, my parents were just using it to manipulate me and make me feel bad for having wants and dreams. They still do it even though I routinely remind them I'm extremely anti-Christian and borderline Pagan. They're fake Christians anyways, I at least went to church. They could never be bothered. I learned Bible verses and they didn't even have one on their bookshelf. I owned three."
"Ugh I feel this! Spent the first 22 years of my life as a Jehovah’s Witness. I missed so damn much. I’m about to turn 24 soon and starting to build a nice life for myself. Still, I often wonder where I’d be in life if I didn’t waste so much damn time."
12. "I know a lot of people might've said this, but holy shit it's something I regret: being a recluse in high school. I had a few friends, sure. But I never tried hard enough. I was shy and, frankly, afraid of people. I had a few friends, but I wish I tried harder. I could've had more fun in high school and, shit, even college. ... Basically wish I was more active in my social life. Because now I feel lonely a lot."
13. "I was so narrow minded and unaccepting as a child, that if you did anything 'wrong' (shoplift, try weed, etc) I would take it as a personal attack. Thankfully, I grew out of that one. I lost a lot of friends over my narrow-mindedness."
14. "I would meet with grown ass men to hook up with off the internet. I was just horny and not willing to fuck dudes I knew because I didn’t want anyone talking about it, but my 16-year-old ass was fucking anyone above the age of 20 regularly."
"I would sneak out and meet up with boys from the internet from the ages of 14-16— mind you this was back in the early 2000s, so you just had to trust that they were really who they said they were. The oldest was I think 25? He actually ended up going to prison for statutory rape (not from me). Yeah, I was severely insecure and desperate and I count my lucky stars every day that nothing ever happened to me."
15. "Texting with complete strangers and giving them too much information about myself."
16. "Thinking that liking older men was hot ,and that it was okay because I was mature for my age."
"This. I dated a lot of married men when I was in high school and I thought it made me mature, now I’m the age of some of those men and the idea of having sex with a 15 or 16 year old makes me want to throw up. They weren’t my cool, older boyfriends. They were pedophiles."
17. "At the age of 15/16ish, I traveled to England by myself to meet an internet stranger/lover."
18. "Not pick up on clues from girls."
"When i was 14, the girl i liked invited me to go hang out with her and her friend and she was literally sitting on my lap at one point, resting her head on my shoulder, and I was just like 'wow this is nice, girls are a lot more touchy with their friends, I guess.' I wanna slap me."
"I reckon a bunch of girls in high school were probably legitimately interested in me, and I was too fucking stupid to pick up any of these signals! My current girlfriend and I went to high school together and didn't start dating until well after we graduated — turns out she was crushing on me for the most part, and I was too dumb to pick up the signs! To be fair, I was also crushing on her when we were younger, but I had zero confidence and was terrified of being rejected by girls."
19. "Smoking. I started smoking at 13. I’m 40 now and can’t stop smoking for anything. If I could go back and do things differently, I would never pick up a cigarette."
20. "I shoplifted a lot, like way too much, I didn't even need the stuff. I just did it."
21. "Average of three punk concerts a week with no ear plugs. ... Tinnitus sucks bad."
"Was a roadie for rock bands in the '70s and early '80s. Now it's the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee station on 24/7. And when everyone put on masks during the pandemic, I discovered that I had been reading lips."
22. "Drunk driving. Absolutely stupid."
"Every time I think about the times I drove drunk, I want to go back in time and punch myself in the dick."
23. "I used to drive down the freeway with my friends very fast. Then we'd open all the doors, while driving down the highway at 90. Looking back, that could have gone sideways real quick."
24. "Playing chicken with my friend driving his car at me. I ended up with a broken leg."
"At least I won, though."
25. "When I was 15 years old, I thought it would be a great idea to ride on the hood of a friend's car. I woke up 3 weeks later in the hospital with 27 fractures in my skull. I have no memory of the day it happened and most of my memory's of life before then went with it."
26. "Driving 60+ mph with no headlights at 3 a.m. on back roads."
"Many years ago a kid doing this same exact thing out in the country blew through a stop sign and hit a newlywed couple. They were dear friends of mine. The bride died the next day. The groom is still alive and cared for full time. It was hard to hate the kid who did it even though he was 100% responsible and could have avoided the whole thing by not being stupid…but I remember being stupid too and so many things could have killed me or someone else. It’s just a sad tragedy. Youth blinds you to risk and sometimes other people have to pay that price."
27. "Age 16 — I was cruising around smoking and drinking with some friends. I had my feet up on the dashboard right where the airbag is. We came around a curve at about 60mph and impacted with an elk in the road. I don't remember anything other than seeing the elk, a quick flash of being cut out of the car, and a split second of the EMT asking me to open my eyes in the ambulance. Several days later I woke up in the hospital and was informed by the doctor that I would most likely never walk again due to the condition of my legs and that they were honestly surprised I had survived."
"I had coded twice on the way to the hospital, and the EMT asking me to open my eyes was after reviving me the first time. I had crushed all the bones in both of my feet, broken both ankles, both tibia, both fibula, hyper extended both knees, fractured pelvis, fractured sternum, broken clavicle, dislocated shoulder, elbow and wrist all on the right side, three broken fingers, broken jaw and fractured cheek bone. Along with a collapsed lung, swelling on the brain, bruises, lacerations and a blown ear drum and pupil....eight surgeries, a lot of metal, a lot of pain medication and two years of physical therapy later, I took my second set of first steps two days before my 18th birthday. By the time I got to go home, I was completely dependent on pain medication and my depression from having to be taken care of was spiraling out of control. I attempted suicide thinking I would relieve the burdens I was causing...Today, I'm 17 years sober, a mother of two (plus a bonus kid), work with recovering addicts and have gained almost all mobility in my legs back."
28. "Rode standing up in the back of my friend’s pickup truck, traveling probably about 65 mph in a school zone."
29. "[I] used to be really into urban exploring - a lot of it was fine and safe, just messing around in abandoned buildings. However, we also used to climb cranes, run across roof tops, run from police across roof tops jumping between them. All the while smoking joints and drinking beers. In hindsight it's a miracle no one suffered ay injuries during that period of time."
"I’m totally with you on that one. Grew up in a dying rust belt town, and being young, there was nothing to do but drink and explore abandoned buildings. We had no bad intentions, we were just bored kids lol, but I’m surprised we never had a roof top collapse beneath us."
30. "Walking from Virginia to Maryland over the frozen Potomac River on my Sophomore year in high school. I got about half way out and laid down in the ice so that I could see along the bottom of the river. It wasn't until several years later that I heard on the news that the Potomac never freezes over enough for people to walk on it."
31. "We used to jump off a train trestle bridge that was near my high school. We could only do it while the river was high and there was only one small area you could jump into. I don't know who was the first one to do it or how we found out about it. As soon as you hit the water you had to instantly swim towards the shore, if you didn't you would be swept down river a good half mile past the water reclamation plant where then you could get out and walk the shore back. I go there sometimes now and shake my head and wonder at how no one died."
32. "There used to be a tree that had grown out of a cliff. When we were teens, we would go and hang by our knees out on the one branch. The drop was just over 200 feet. We were talking about it one day and come to find out my father had done the same thing as a kid. He then went and cut that tree. I am scared of heights now, but back then I guess we were bulletproof."
33. And finally..."Deciding to not wear sunscreen."
"I wish I'd listened to my mum and worn sun hats when I was younger. I can see the aging it had caused on my forehead and now I'm in my forties, I wish I'd taken better care of my skin."