An innocent game of dodgeball to unleashing your road rage onto anther driver, can take a turn for the worst when you realize you’ve picked a fight with the wrong person.
Here are 15 sorry people, who share their experiences of regret.
1. Don’t Bring a Squirt Gun to a Fire Hose Fight
When I was younger, my family would go rafting with a couple other families down a very calm river. People would often bring some kind of squirt guns, and people would try and fire at people in other rafts. Everyone on the river did this. Well, one time we were floating by a very large group (at least 40+). They had all their rafts tied together, which were all covered by towels. We thought, “Oh boy, we should get them! Look how many people there are! This will be epic!” Mind you, this is 9-year-old mentality.
Then, we issued the first strike. This is where things went wrong. They shouted, “I wouldn’t do that!” We had heard this before; an opposing raft issuing mild threats to get us to not fire our Tinker Toys squirt guns. Hence, we continued. Another warning, “I really wouldn’t do that!”. The measly firing ensued. Then a loud, ” You’ve really done it now!” And this is when I thought, “I messed with the wrong person”. Suddenly, the sound of a generator came across the river. The group of 40+ unveiled all of the towels, only to display they had a fire hose. The pressure from the fire hose was insurmountable, and could easily reach the other side of the river. Our entire group was heavily doused in a matter of seconds. Needless to say, the squirt gun game ended quickly.
2. Check Mate
At work I had a chess board and would play with various people during lunch. None of us were particularly great or anything, it was just a fun diversion.
One day one of my co-workers came up, an older woman who was always very sweet and quiet, and asked if I wanted to play a game. She destroyed me. Like, it wasn’t even a close game. Towards the end I would make a move and she would just say, in the sweetest tone possible, “Oh, are you sure you want to make that move?” Destroyed. Turned out she had actually competed in some chess tournaments when she was younger, and both of her sons were active competitors.
3. Jiu Jitsu Prodigy
I would like to preface this with the fact that up until this point I was a bully. I was 14 and at a summer camp. There was this Russian kid who attended who had lived here for a year with family to go to school. Since he was a foreigner I immediately singled him out and started picking on him. This went on for about two weeks with me mocking him in Russian accent, making jokes about Russians. One day he had enough. He picked a fight with me and I’d thought I would have easily one since I had almost a foot on the guy. Nope. I go in for a punch and he ducks, grabs my arm and throws me over him onto the ground. Breaking my arm in the process. I started crying. I was then taken to the hospital. I went back to camp and I was forced to apologize to the kid and I did.
We ended up being friends and he tells me that his dad runs a jujitsu gym in St. Petersburg and is a former Spetznaz soldier. He wasn’t the kind to boast so I believed him. He told me his dad trained him in jujitsu for most of his life. That day I learned you probably shouldn’t mess with strangers because you have no idea what they are capable of that every one should get their butt kicked at least once in their life so they know this.
4. Incredible Brains of Mush
In high school I took AP US History from a Vietnam vet. He was a stern man with no patience and a heart of gold. I loved his class. He presented history based on factual documentation and with as little bias as possible. He forced us to critically think and encouraged discussions regularly. His tests were always fifty multiple choice, fifty true or false, and two timed essay questions. You always studied for those because the easiest part was the timed essay. There were no easy multiple choice questions. For example, if it asked you the date of an event, unless you knew the correct answer, all four answers made complete and total sense.
When the class did well, he baked us brownies. I’m not sure if they were delicious on their own merit or because we earned them, but goddamn they tasted like victory. To this day, I’ve never had a more challenging or rewarding class. The only sign of his service was a small banner that read “Army Ranger” he kept posted on his window. From time to time he’d tell us silly stories about his unit, but kept most of his service secret. Some kids did some snooping.
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There was a rumor he had been tapped for Delta and was a sniper in Vietnam starting flying around school. Aside from AP US History, he also taught Psychology as an elective. I signed up because I loved his classes (also brownies).
On the first day he handed out syllabuses and gave a brief overview of the things we would be covering. When he finished he asked if there were any questions we would like answered. I think part of the reason I loved his AP class was my classmates. We were all there because we wanted to be and took our academic pursuits seriously. Psychology was not the same batch. This moron kid (who I recently found out is incarcerated on multiple DUI counts as well as domestic abuse and possession with intent to distribute) raised his hand. He asked how many men, women, or children he had killed in Vietnam and whether or not he had kept ears as trophies.
Immediately, everyone in the class knew how incredibly messed up this kid was. There are some lines you don’t cross, especially when you’re talking to a guy who had a heart attack and a week later was out running ten miles (a light jog, as he put it). The teacher handled it professionally and said he was only taking questions pertinent to the class. The kid followed up with: “So like twenty or what?”.
You know that moment when you drop a glass and realize there’s nothing you can do to save it? The only thing you can do is brace for the impact. Imagine that moment lasting longer than it takes for a glass to fall. Imagine it felt that way for a full minute. Two minutes. An hour. A lifetime. That’s how it felt in that room. Everyone looked intently at their belly buttons while we waited for the hammer to drop. Well, everyone except for me. My eyes were squarely on my teacher. (continued…)
He used to say that life is defined by the trying moments, the difficult ones; it’s easy to act morally and justly on a full belly. The mark of a man is how he handles himself under duress. His jaw clenched and lips tightened as he placed his hands firmly on the podium he lectured from.
He was a master of the slow blink and now employed it with devastatingly terrible connotations. “Mr. [redacted]. Please collect your belongings and see yourself to the office. I will be along shortly.”
The classroom sat in silence.
We knew how it felt when he was disappointed we didn’t do better on a quiz. We knew how it felt when someone asked a boneheaded question. But this, this feeling here, was new. It was coals of anger restrained only by sheer force of will, it was rage incarnate.
“What?” The kid smiled and looked around at his silent classmates, “Did I say something wrong? Why do I have to go to the office?”
I wish I could say this kid had balls of steel, but all evidence points to the contrary; he had brains of mush.
“Mr. [redacted],” his voice was even and controlled, but radiated power, “you will collect your belongs and see yourself to the office right now…” He repeated again slower and more clear, “…or I will assist you in doing so.”
And then it hit. Like a tsunami wave crashing against the shore, he realized how much trouble he really was in. He wasn’t being sent to the office because the teacher was angry, he was being sent to the office for his own well being.
Finally breaking my sight line, I look at the kid. His face was pale and mouth slightly open, signifying the epiphany currently washing over him. He quickly grabbed his stuff, not even bothering to put them in his bag and left.
My teacher took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then said, “Are there any OTHER questions regarding my class?”
What I should have said was nothing. What I actually said was: “We still get brownies for doing well on tests, right?”
He looked at me with the same cold eyes my classmate had earned. My boisterous confidence shrivelled under the gaze. I had taken the anger from being asked if during a war he had butchered innocents and redirected it unto myself with a dumb question. I would be joining my idiot counterpart soon.
He gave me a slow blink and said, “Everybody but you Mr. Kid, everybody but you.” He gave me a small rare grin as the class sighed and chuckled.
“Please open your textbooks to page [some number] and begin reading. I have other ahem matters to attend to. I will return momentarily.” The kid transferred classes that day. Three weeks later I received my first, last, and only personal pan of brownies for a perfect score on his test.
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5. Humbling Experience
When I was young I was in the Navy. And as you’d expect living amongst a couple hundred aggressive young men, I got into more than a few scraps. I was young, in great shape and had exceptionally fast hands, so I acquitted myself well and had a reputation of someone that you didn’t really want to mess with. Another guy on our ship, a friend of mine, was rumored to have been a top notch collegiate wrestler, almost, but not quite good enough to make the Olympic team that didn’t go to Moscow in 1980 (yes, I’m old).
Anyway, being rather full of myself, and never having seen this guy in any kind of dust up, I decided to have a go at him. We were just fooling around, there was no anger involved, just one young tough guy testing another. I goaded him a few times to show me what he had. I was poised, well balanced and ready for him. And then I was on my back looking up at the sky. I wasn’t hurt. I never saw him move. No time had elapsed.
One instant I was standing in front of him ready for whatever he did, and the next I was on my back looking up at the sky. Genius that I was, I figured it had to be a fluke. So I got up and tried him again. Once again… never saw him move, didn’t feel a thing. Just one instant I’m in front of him ready to go, and the next I’m on my back looking up at the sky. And once again, no time had elapsed. Well, I am less stupid than I am stubborn, so I admitted that he was better than I was and stayed where I was to contemplate the clouds floating silently by overhead. Never before, or since have I ever been so utterly and completely over-matched. Let me say this again, so its very clear. I never saw him move. Twice! I’ve gone toe to toe with wrestlers before, but nothing I’d ever done prepared me for this guy. I still don’t know what the hell he did, all I know was that one instant I was ready to fight, the next I was on my back. Not hurt, never felt a thing, never saw a thing, didn’t notice the passage of any time. It was like I had been teleported from a vertical position to a horizontal one.
That was the day I learned the difference between a good athlete and a world class athlete.
6. Don’t Mess With Bouncers
From a friend and one of the bouncers at the club he works at – This bouncer had not long started work and was sent by his security agency to cover a shift in Merthyr Tydfil (I’ve not been but heard it’s quite a rough area) and during the night, the head doorman refused entry to a guy for being too drunk and for being involved in an incident at a different nightclub a few weeks prior. The drunk dude began to get all up in the head doorman’s face threatening to come back with “The boys”. This is usually quite an empty threat – normally a drunk dude gets all angry for a bit and then walks away/moved on by the police. In this instance the guy walked away and the new bouncer who was covering thought the issue had passed. 30 minutes later the drunk guy returns with 15 of his friends, marching down the road “like a scene from green street/football factory”
The new bouncer is watching these guys approach with the head doorman thinking ” We’re going to be in a spot of trouble here”.
He sees the head doorman reach inside his coat pocket. “holy shit, does he have a weapon or something?! Shit is going to hit the fan”.
The head doorman produces a mouthguard from his pocket, puts it in his mouth and limbers up his neck and cracks his knuckles all in complete silence and calm. The lad’s approaching see this and pause before one shouts and they all scatter. The new bouncer asked not to be sent there on cover again.
7. Overconfidence Can Kill
In 7th grade I grew from 5ft 2in to 5ft 9in within a span of 8 months. I went from being of average height to looking over the heads of 85% of my classmates. Never really got picked on, but now I had a sudden confidence that I could take on anyone that messed with me and I was, for the most part, correct. One day my older brother (whom is seven years my senior, but only 5ft 8in) and I got into it and I finally physically stood up to him. I took a full fledged swing with all of my weight in it. Didn’t phase him, he just got mad. He put me in a full Nelson, slammed me into the hallway wall face first, then proceeded to use his chin to dig it into my neck for near a minute. I was crying and almost passed out. Right after my swing I distinctly remember thinking, “He’s going to murder me in our parents basement”.
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8. Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover
My wife and I were at a punk show at a small venue downtown. It was kind of a weird lineup. There was a gutter punk band, a street punk band and an Irish folk/punk band playing. Kind of a strange mix of people. Anyway we’re outside while I was smoking and watched as 4 gutter punk kids step out the door and spit right in the face of this slightly overweight Irish guy who was just minding his own business. He shouts something like and the gutter punks surround him.
People could see this was going to be bad so the crowd starts to step in to intercede when the Irish guy puts his fists up like he’s a boxer from 1900. It looked almost ridiculous and I thought for sure this guy was going to have a bad night. Nope. He lashed out and dropped one of the gutter punks in one hit before they closed on him.
One of the remaining 3 got a solid punch into his face, bloodying his nose. The Irish guy returned the favor with a wicked punch to the stomach that dropped the kid to his knees. The remaining two tried to grapple with the guy and one of them got thrown through the plate glass window to the venue.
Police showed up and after questioning people in the crowd they arrested the 4 punks who started it and let the Irish guy go. Venue even let him back in despite the broken window. The whole fight lasted maybe 5 or 10 seconds. This kind of short slightly overweight guy showed me what a bad idea it can be to judge a book by its cover.
9. Lucky
It was my sophomore year of HS. I was walking across the parking lot after school, on the way to my friends car, when another students car comes hauling ass down one of the aisles and almost hits me. They start honking at me, like its my fault, so I flip them off and keep walking. They chased me down three or four aisles as I just keep casually walking across the lot. When they finally catch up to me, this guy jumps out, ready to kill me. This is the guy in school who has been transferred like ten times because he gets kicked out of every school, deals drugs, gets suspended every other day for beating someone up, etc. So, I bitch out, start apologizing, I don’t want any part of this dude. I know the type of people you can and can’t start sh_t with, and this guy is crazy. Somehow, I talk myself out of the ass beating I had coming and take off with my friends. What I didn’t know was that this guy had been expelled that day, and that night, he shot a guy in the face and killed him at a party. Glad I didn’t decide to be my usual self that day.
10. Basketball Badass
I think I may have told this one on here somewhere, but here it goes. Senior year of high school, sitting in a pep rally. This guy starts making lewd remarks about one of the cheerleaders. Her boyfriend is sitting a couple rows in front of him and overhears. He turns around and tells the guy to knock it off. Guy tells him to mind his own business and keeps talking smack. A quick note about the boyfriend. We grew up going to the same school on the rough side of town. He wad a tall lanky guy, played basketball, and had been in a fair number of fights when we were kids.
Anyway, after the pep rally ends we’re all filing out and as soon as we get outside the guy jumps the boyfriend from behind and starts wailing on him. The boyfriend turns around and lays the guy out quick, the guy’s cousin jumps in and the boyfriend meets him and they start trading blows. Another of the guy’s friends jumps in and the boyfriend is fighting off both of them. He lays the second guy out and is about to handle the third when one of the coaches grabs him from behind. Thinking it’s just someone else attacking him, he spins around and decks the coach. After that, everything just stopped. The boyfriend was a little bruised up, but the others were way worse off. The first one was still unconscious, the second one looked like he didn’t know where he was and the third was still standing, but had blood pouring out of his nose and one eye was swelled shut. They definitely picked the wrong guy to mess with.
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11. Humble Fries at McDicks
I’m coming in late to this thread but I have a good story for it. I was pretty young (14-16 ish) and I had a bit of a reputation for fighting. But I was out late one night being a hooligan with some buddies who worked at McDonalds, and we got hungry. So we head that way to cash in on their employee discounts, and there’s this little asian man standing out front, sweeping I think. He looked about 40 and pretty haggard, I’m talking thin, hunched over, wispy moustache, glasses, about a foot shorter than me. My friend says “This is Moon Su” (something like that, definitely had Moon in it) “and he could kick all of our asses.” Now he said this directly at me, intentionally because he knew I was the kind of hothead who would want proof of this. I loudly proclaimed “No chance.” Sweeper Moon wasn’t too far away and heard the whole exchange, because he threw his broom down and his hands up to square off with a cocky teenage kid at that mild of a provocation. I wasn’t scared of him, at all. I had already beaten a few “black belts” at high school, and I had a huge size advantage.
So, I was laughing when I obliged him and put up my hands as well. What happened next was so fast and wild that I still don’t really understand it, but I was hit with an incredibly large amount of open palm strikes in the span of about 5 seconds. They were so fast that I had no time to even think about blocking or clinching with the guy. All I could think was “God damnit, I have messed with the wrong guy. This is like a real life Mortal Kombat combo.” After a few shots to the face I went down onto a knee and cupped my head in submission. Moon just picked up his broom and resumed sweeping, and I went in for some humble fries with a side of shame.
12. Hidden Talents
It’s a story about my brother. We’re from Ireland, but now my brother lives in Boston with his fiance. I flew to Boston to visit for a couple of weeks, and we decided to go downtown one night to hit the bar scene. It was me, my brother and his fiance. Anyways, we’re standing in line when all of a sudden a guy pushes through us and takes a spot right in front of us. He was wearing a military uniform – Navy I think? Although I’m not 100% sure. My brother’s fiance fell to the floor because of this guy, and all he did was look over his shoulder and snicker after he did it. Naturally, my brother confronted him but was met with various insults that was ended with something like “You see this uniform, guy?”
So yeah, it’s an understatement to say that my brother has a sharp temper. After a few seconds, my brother stuck his boot into the side of the guys knee, which caused him to fall towards the floor. As he was falling, he was caught with a serious right hook which in turn, knocked him unconscious. I don’t know what happened after that as we had to leave the area sharpish.
13. Trampoline Dodgeball Is a Thing
As an arrogant 14 year old, I was at skyzone, a recreational place with a lot of trampolines. I was in the dodgeball section and I told a twenty something man that was “the number one person on my people to get out list”. This man was put on the other team and he was a very athletic man. He proceeded to hurl these rubber dodgeballs at what seemed like the speed of sound as he eliminated my entire team three games in a row, saving me for last each game. Every time he got me alone he hit me in the dick in front of all my friends. I should not have messed with him.
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14. Benevolent Biker
Not me, but a friend I was traveling with. When I was 20, we were in a DCA drum corps for the summer, on our way to a show in PA or something. We had stopped at a Wendy’s to eat. While we were there, a group of bikers (obviously part of a club) came in the same Wendy’s to eat. They sat behind us. My friend decided to try to hit me with his straw paper. His attempt went right past me and hit a biker in the back of the head. We go dead silent, waiting for a reaction. Nothing. We let out a deep sigh of relief and continue eating. As we are heading out the door, my friend decides to use the bathroom. I wait for him on the bus. A few minutes later he comes flying out of the Wendy’s, red faced and looking terrified.
Apparently, a biker had met him in the bathroom, cornered him and explained “I’m the nice kind of biker, so I’m going to let you off with a warning, but be aware that many bikers would be kicking your ass right now. Get out of here” That was the end of shooting straw paper.
15. It’s the Quiet Ones
Didn’t happen to me but involved a friend, Brian. Brian is pretty quiet, 5’7″, average build, nice guy, not anything that anyone would expect to do much in a fight. Another friend, Jen, was dating a guy that none of us liked, Jeff, and we (five of us) had sat down to tell her this the week prior.
We were out at a movie and about ten minutes before it ends Jen leaves without warning and one of the girls follows her to see what’s up. Turns out Jeff was waiting outside to confront ALL of us. There’s only the one exit so we have no choice but to go past him. He’s not a really big guy (about 6′ and that kind of build where you’re not sure if it’s muscle or fat), but big enough that no one wanted to deal with him. So we leave after the movie and Jeff spots us and begins yelling at us. Everyone basically ignores him and keeps walking.
Not getting the reaction he wants he grabs the closest person (Brian) by the arm and won’t let go. Jeff is starting to lose it, he’s yelling so much he’s red in the face. Brian doesn’t say or do anything, Jen is begging Jeff to stop, and everyone else (myself included) is standing there watching this all go down. Jeff finally stops yelling, and Brian calmly tells him to leave it alone and go cool off. This, apparently, was not the best course of action and Jeff socked him in the ribs as hard as he could. Brian didn’t move. He just let it happen and repeated himself “Leave it alone, go cool off.” Jeff didn’t like that and went to push him. I’m not sure what Brian did, but it ended with Jeff on the ground with a broken nose. We got out of there pretty quickly and Brian told Jen she isn’t allowed to date Jeff. And that’s the story of how I learned my quiet friend takes Krav Maga and is Alpha.