It's weird — when you're an adult, you have some control over the people you have to interact with. If you don't like your coworkers, you can change jobs (not always easy, of course), and if you don't like your neighbors, you can move. But when you're a kid, you have no choice but to go to the school you're sent to...and sadly, you often must do it with some very troubled young people.
With that in mind, Reddit user Damned-scoundrel recently asked "Who was the worst student in your high school, and what did they do that was so bad?" Here are 15 very troubled students former classmates remember, and what happened to them:
Warning: This post includes mentions of bullying, violence, sexual abuse, and murder.
1. "There was a kid who walked up to the pencil sharpener and set the substitute teacher's hair on fire from behind with a cigarette lighter — and then claimed sparks had flown out of the light switch. He's in prison for other stuff now."
2. "A boy I went to middle school with was constantly in trouble. He’d sit in every class just thinking of ways to disrupt it. The teacher sat him by me because supposedly I kept him in line. He was so young but already doing drugs and drinking. His final straw was he broke a girl's tailbone by giving her a 'corndog' which is where you come up behind someone and knee them in the butt. He was expelled but came back late in high school. He was clean and sober and an angel. We actually talked it out and had a class together that I thoroughly enjoyed having him in. Today, he is an advocate for addicts and in general spends his life helping others get better. I’m very proud of him!"
3. "This kid got caught using a keylogger to steal teacher's grade book logins to sell grade changes. He was also stealing credit card info. Kid got expelled and sent a revenge PowerPoint to every student, teacher, and alumni from a random kid's email address that had photoshopped pictures of all the teachers and administrators in gang bangs and onto bestiality porn. Ran into him a few years ago, and he actually graduated Harvard and is in real estate now."
4. "Junior high in the '90s. A guy was obsessed with a cheerleader. Ends up he had written detailed notes on an underground bunker and how he was going to kidnap that girl and a number of others on his 'list' and keep them in this bunker. He was kicked out of the junior high when the notes were found. I’ve seen on Facebook that he’s now seemingly normal and married with a child."
5. "He was your standard bully, but took special joy in harassing and bullying the special ed kids. I think his greatest personal victory was when he got two kids with Down syndrome to fight each other. He’s a cop now."
6. "I went to middle school with this kid named Eric. He lit the inside of his desk on fire for the LULs. He would scream during a test for 50 cents. He farted as loud as he could during class just for attention. He brought a gun to school before it was a thing. He just walked out of school one day, and the sheriff's department looked for him for two days. He constantly stole stuff from teachers/classmates. Not sure what happened to him. We ended the school year, and I never saw him again. His family may have moved."
7. "The guy who dropped a whole desk out of a third story window onto some kid qualifies as the worst, purely because I think that qualifies as an attempted murder. I don't know the exact specifics, but I know that the kid had multiple broken bones and had to spend quite a while in a hospital. I think his legs suffered the most; he had to walk with crutches when he came back to school. Fortunately, as far as I know, he recovered without any major long-term issues."
8. "He violently murdered his mother's client the summer before our senior year. His mother was a home health aide, and her client was 87 years old. He did it so he could steal her car. Now, he's serving 25 to life."
9. "He wasn't a bad kid because our school was pretty privileged, but he was universally disliked because he was generally arrogant and rude to everyone he spoke to. He was convinced he was some kind of genius and better than everyone, and was blissfully unaware of the contempt everyone had for him. He thought he was popular even though every interaction resulted in some kind of rejection. In some ways, I kind of envied him, having that level of blind confidence and not caring that people didn't like you. Today he works in a call center."
10. "There was a guy who bullied pretty much every other male student who wasn't an athlete or hyper masculine douche bro like him. He got all the girls, was good at all sports he tried, dealt drugs, was caught multiple times with drugs at school but skated by because his parents were rich and close with all the teachers (they would take teachers out to dinner/weekend trips, etc., probably to pad his grades/résumé/recommendation letters). He flunked out of college his freshman year and died of a fentanyl overdose when he was 19. We all had to pretend we were sad about it."
11. "He bullied other kids mercilessly. Stole cigarettes and alcohol from shops to sell to other kids for cash he'd use to buy weed. A few years after high school, he and two of his closest mates were hooning (Australian slang for dangerous driving) in their shitbox on the highway, playing Chicken. It was nighttime, and they had their lights turned off, driving on the wrong side of the road with the intent to make other people flinch and dodge before they had to. One driver didn't even know they were there and just drove a straight path. So, because the other driver didn't dodge or deviate, it forced them to flinch, and they dodged off the side of a road, right into a huge gum tree. All three were killed instantly, 140+ kilometers per hour impact on a hardwood tree."
12. "This kid moved up from Texas and thought he was badass because he was from Texas, but got his ass handed to him constantly. He liked to start fights, but they never went his way. Pretty sure he moved back right after high school."
13. "A girl at my school took the ashes of her recently deceased grandfather, baked them into cookies, and handed the cookies out amongst her classmates. Nine students had eaten them before she revealed the urn and told them what she did."
14. "He was a complete asshole all through middle and high school. He was one year ahead of me, so I got to witness all his stupid stunts for several years. He beat up on smaller, weaker, or less fortunate kids. Brought alcohol to school on a daily basis and made no secret about sneaking a nip between classes at his locker. For some reason, he was never caught, and I'll never understand that. Was considered the 'town bad boy' and had a string of girlfriends on rotation, despite being an absolute jerk to them — pretty sure he physically abused several of them. The girls would be his 'girl of the week,' and a few days later, show up with fresh bruises, split lips, or black eyes — and it was 'Oh, I fell down' or 'I walked into a door' — and suddenly, he had moved on to a new girl. He's in prison now for three separate charges of Criminal Sexual Conduct, 1st Deg (Relationship)."
15. "Let me tell you about my brother's friend Fonzie. Yes, Fonzie, it wasn't short for anything. Fonzie was one of the best long-distance runners the school had ever seen, we're talking about potential Olympics qualifier level if things had gone in a different direction. My Dad coached track and cross country for about 30 years, and Fonzie was the best he ever saw. Unfortunately, he was ineligible after his freshman year due to a combination of grades and behavior. If there was a way to make a situation worse, Fonzie would always find it. I'll give you a few examples:"
"A neighbor left the keys in his riding lawnmower while he went inside to get a drink. Fonzie decided to go for a joyride. When the neighbor saw him and chased him down, Fonzie realized that that he couldn't escape so he turned the lawnmower off, took out the keys, and threw them in a lake. He told the neighbor (and police) that there was no proof he was on the lawnmower, and if they find the keys, they won't have his fingerprints on them.
At about 13, he 'borrowed' his Mom's car because he wanted to go rent some videos. Apparently, he got lost on the way, and flagged down a police officer to ask for directions.
In the 11th grade, he asked a girl out, and she told him no. Fonzie decided that the best way to get her attention was to steal the Christmas lights from her parents' yard. Everyone immediately knew it was him, and the School Resource Officer pulled him out of class. To his credit, he immediately admitted it, and they went out to his car to get them out of his trunk. As Fonzie was opening the trunk, he asked, 'Is there going to be a problem with the case of beer I have in here?'
He got caught having sex in the back of the school bus. Not by the driver, but by the police officer who happened to be behind the bus in traffic. When Fonzie saw the police officer, he gave him the bird and started going harder.
I have literally dozens of these stories; among other things, he also got in trouble at school for theft, assault, destruction of property, and assault on a teacher (that one finally got him expelled).
The last I heard about him was 10-15 years ago, when he was about 30 and got caught having sex with a 15-year-old girl. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for that one (might have been more, he had a lot of priors). I don't know where he is now, but I doubt he's making better decisions."
Who was the worst kid from your school days, and what are they doing today?
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