I don’t know if this is something people say in other countries, but in my country, there’s this common cliché or “wisdom” where adults will assure you that the people who picked on you in environments like school will universally develop lives of hardship later on, one way or another getting into mayhem.
I asked my mother one day what happened to all those people growing up. I can sense she may have been sugar coating it, but she said something along the lines of “well, I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and became a teacher, and waited some more, and finally watched as my bullies had to go into retirement five years late, yay” (okay, not really like that, but it might as well have been).
Yeah, common theme in my experience that what we hope for is never “that” set in stone. No matter where in the community (or even long-distance communicating) you knew them from, based on life, how much approximate correspondence do you associate with that mindset in the first paragraph?
Why would I spend any effort on keeping tabs on people who made my life miserable?
To preserve one’s childlike belief in a just world, of course.
To see if it backfired on them?
I haven’t met a single person I went to school with, since I left my home town to go to university. So, no idea.
Living the dream, the best revenge is a life well-lived.
There was a kid in grade school growing up that was a bully. He made a kid cry while we were waiting for our class picture to be taken in the 6th grade, and you can see that kid crying in the picture. I still think about it often.
The bully ended up being one of the greatest running backs my county ever knew. He was a game changer.
I randomly decided to look up the crying kid from the school picture a couple years ago. He is now a very successful man. I couldn’t be any happier seeing that. It almost brought me to tears.
The bully was shot and killed in the streets a couple years after graduating high school.
The school must’ve not taken care of the kids well if they just let the photographer do a one-take like that.
I read country instead of county and this hit differently.
I’ve no idea, I haven’t thought about them since I left school and now I can barely remember their names.
The serious psychos are in and out of jail. The ones who were just kinda dicks sometimes (which to be honest probably includes me) are basically okay. And why shouldn’t we be? Being a dick when you’re still learning to be a person shouldn’t carry a life sentence of any kind.
When we were both five years old, I knew one of my classmates would end up in prison.
Most kids can be jerks on occasion, and I can think of a few examples where that applied to me as well as it could to anyone. I haven’t generally kept track of people who bullied me in school; I imagine most of them grew out of it, and a few didn’t. This guy was something else, as if cruelty was the only thing that brought him joy.
At 19, he and two others beat a taxi driver to death. He was convicted of manslaughter and spent more than a decade in prison. A quick web search suggests he’s out of prison and working as a car salesman now.
He must’ve been unbearable if you knew his fate at five years old. I barely had any concept of prison when I was that age, in fact I was one of those kids who thought it would be easy to just slip through the bars if that ever happened.
I certainly didn’t have an adult understanding of what prison is, but I knew people who committed really serious crimes like murder went there. I expected this person to do something like that, and I wasn’t far off.
They’re all very successful now. This whole notion that bullies and assholes would be bagging my groceries and asking me “you want fries with that” in adulthood is BS.
I myself am somewhere in the middle on this. All my classmates were basically this to me because the school allowed it, then when time came to get a job, they were so used to the school environment which disfavored me at their benefit that they ran into a speed bump and ended up feuding with each other. By a rare good stroke of luck, this means I’m my employer’s favorite.
There may be one exception. A kid in the year above me who I didn’t personally know but looked like one of the many people that bullied me was killed on a night out when he tried to break up a fight.
It made national news, but mainly because it led to an underage drinking scandal where it turned out loads of pubs weren’t checking ID. He was only 17.
Definitely thought this was going to be about the other kind of baddies, in which case the answer is generally “they’re married, with kids”.
Wait, what kind were you thinking of?
It’s also slang for hot people
No idea. I don’t pay any attention to them. I hope they’re happy and doing fine.
My bully from grade school is serving up to life in prison for attempted murder (he shot two teenagers while he was an adult, something gang related I think) and also sex with a minor.
Not that he doesn’t deserve it, he absolutely does, but part of me feels bad for him. He never stood a chance. His home life was fucked, he was always on this path and nothing was going to stop it.
How would I know? I left my hometown.
I did see my high school bully occasionally in college. I was in my 5th year of undergrad and he looked like a grad student. But I was usually walking from my fwb’s dorm to class, so i was doing plenty fine myself.
I hope these people are better and happier but I don’t care to find out.
One of my former bullies ended up working for a local carwash, I found out when he had to wash mine.
Omg samsies, I went home and got my second car and came back and had him wash both.
tbh I can’t even remember any of their names, neither of the ones that were being friendly with me.
I can relate, I often can’t remember the names of the ones I work with.
I never saw them again after graduating
I assume that’s the best outcome generally. Just forgetting they existed
A few years ago, my baddie killed himself. No idea what was happening in his life at the time. I hadn’t seen him since high school, which was 25 years ago. I saw the obituary and thought it was surprising and interesting, but didn’t feel bad, or good about it in any way.