You love watching movies and reading books with a great twist that you never see coming, but how about when it happens in real life? These stories all about when the other shoe drops: family secrets, covert affairs, and hidden motives gave these people the shock of their lives. You'll be just as surprised as we were by these real life plot twists that changed everything.
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41. Meet your cousin.
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.
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40. Ford vs. Chevy.
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, fighting 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.
Jen Batler
39. Not the man she married.
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.
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38. Ambushed!
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, and the engagement party turned into a wedding!
37. He got what he deserved.
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.
Photo by Ruthson Zimmerman on Unsplash
36. Love down South.
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, long distance calls and phones were scarce). Turns out her friend been sneaking off nights and seeing the hotel gardener. She loves him and stayed in Mexico.
That's all my mom knows. Hopefully they lived happily ever after.
Image by marcinjozwiak from Pixabay
35. Two for the price of one.
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.
34. Trading up.
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 slept 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.
Photo by Garon Piceli from Pexels
33. On the lookout for lunch money.
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.
32. Careful what you wish for.
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.....
Image by mgeejnr from Pixabay
31. Forced to change.
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 heck out of me.
30. You forgot your bomb.
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.
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29. Haiti's better off without him.
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.
28. Don't mess with edibles.
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.
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27. In this case, the bro code did not apply.
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.
26. He could be anywhere.
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.
25. Finding a secret twin.
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. We're doppelgangers.
Turns out his father is my bio father's older brother. Both our bio dads bailed before we were born. Both us have soy allergies and Lysinuric Protein Intolerance (its 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 before we even met. He's only a year older than me.
Image by modelnikosmith from Pixabay
24. Pretty good excuse.
My wife's uncle is an incredibly nice guy who absolutely adores his wife. We started hearing about marital issues. He was becoming more and more argumentative, and then he hit her. They separated. He harassed her to the point that she got a restraining order. He defied the restraining order and was put in jail.
In jail his issues got him a medical evaluation. Turns out he had a brain tumor. They removed it. He returned to normal, and was released from jail. They're back together with him back to his wife-adoring self.
Photo by Donald Tong from Pexels
23. Ok, but why?
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 clothed 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.
22. Caught in a hit and run.
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.
21. Hate to be the one...
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.
Photo by Oleg Magni from Pexels
20. Yikes, that is harsh.
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.
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19. Two bad calls in one night.
I'm a medic and one morning we had a call for an older woman, 70s if I remember right. She was having cardiac issues, was in compensated shock from a very low heart rate. From the time we got to her home to the time we were in the ambulance she had gotten much worse. We paced her heart, and she was doing good the rest of our hour ride to the hospital.
About 16 hours later we get called for a rollover car accident. Get there and we have one male in the vehicle, unresponsive. Vehicle is upside down off the road. We get him out, he is in very bad shape. Wasn't breathing, so we intubated him and off to the hospital we went.
Almost to the hospital, which is 30 miles away, and he goes into traumatic cardiac arrest. Dead when we get there.
While we were on the way to the hospital we found his wallet, since we didn't know who he was. Saw his badge. Retired police officer and I remember from the morning, our patients husband was a retired officer.
He was on his way to see his wife. Unfortunately he stopped by the bar first.
While it wasn't my job, I went with the nurse to talk to the wife and let her know what happened. She thanked me for being there for her family so much that day.
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18. White river rafting ruse.
Several years ago I went down to the New River Gorge with my wife (then fiancée) and a group of friends to camp and rock climb over memorial day weekend. Over the course of the trip, five of us decided that on the last day, instead of doing another climbing location, we were going to white water rafting. We booked with a guide company and showed up in the morning ready to go. We hopped on the bus to the launch site and when we got there we were told that we were going to have an addition to our group of five. The guy who was introduced to us said he got too plastered the night before and missed the first trip of the day that he and his friends had booked, but he lucked out since there was one open spot in the next trip! Great! We load up and start the trip with our new rafting friend.
Over the course of the ride down, this guy seemed to know his way around a raft, and seemed weirdly familiar with the river. At one point, our guide was pointing out a class 2 or 3 rapids section that he said was safe to swim through - this guy immediately jumps out of the raft, climbs up a rock in the middle of the river, and does a perfect 360 flip into the rapids!
Near the end of the trip our guide hits us with the the plot twist: we're his first ever group, this was his test, and our suspiciously knowledge addition was his supervisor! We were all blown away! We spend the rest of the trip just piecing together the missed clues in the best bamboozle of our lives. Needless to say the trainee guide passed his test and got a great first review (and a nice tip), and we all got a great story.
17. Boys will be girls.
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.
16. Time to go home.
This isn’t my proudest moment either... but whatever.
I was 19 and I had just started a job at a new sushi restaurant. Well the manager that was showing me around my first 5 days was young and pretty cute. She seemed flirtatious, but I wasn’t trying to push or assume anything because I was a new hire. Well after that week, she went on a vacation for a month to the Phillipines so I kind of forgot about her.
Well a month later she returns and she is out drinking. So at 2:30 in the morning I get a random call from her saying that she has been drinking and is now driving (which I hate) and she wanted to talk to someone. Anyway, after a lot of bull from her end, she ends up at my place cause she needed to go to the bathroom (and I wanted her off the road).
She ends up deciding she can’t/shouldn’t drive and she wants to stay the night. So I set up the extra futon for her (cause she is my manager and I ain’t trying to cause no problems). Well she decides that she sobered up when I turn out the lights and she starts getting talkative and flirtatious. Things escalate and I end up stopping it before do the deed. At this point it’s 5 in the morning and I ask her “You good to drive?”
She responds “Yeah, I should probably get going. My husband is at home waiting for me.”
..... WHAT!?!?
15. Can't wait to meet the little nipper.
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 xmas 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.
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.
14. Can't escape her.
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.
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13. Don't fire the messenger.
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: "Ohhhhhhhh..."
Me: "..."
Manager: "I applied for that position too."
Me: "I'm sorry to tell you that you didn't get it."
12. Grandpa knew how to sneak around.
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.
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11. Going to war at work.
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 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 dude's 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 maniac.
Apparently, this guy would target over performing agents and make their working environment hell, to protect his position.
I'm 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.
10. Risking the mile high club.
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.
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9. Dark past gets cleared up.
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.
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8. That's cold, Grandma.
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 let 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.
The man he saw in his house before he died was grandma's boyfriend.
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7. An unromantic revelation.
When I was in college, I worked with a really young guy in a two-person office for 40+ hours a week for just under two years. I was pretty close to 30 at the time and I think he had just barely turned 20, so he sort of saw me as a mentor. Needless to say, we talked about a ton of things and became pretty good friends.
Anyway, a few months into knowing the guy, he got a new girlfriend. I heard about every date, their first kiss, their first fight, their first trip, their first time in bed. Pretty soon, the kid found himself in love. I had been married and divorced, so I shared many of the things I learned during my marriage (and life in general) so that this kid could make better decisions that I had made.
My girlfriend and I double-dated with him and his girlfriend a quite few times and despite being mistaken for parents more than once, both of us thought they made a wonderful couple. Since something had come up last-minute and prevented him from taking her home during Thanksgiving, he was super excited to take her home to meet his folks over Christmas break. Much of his extended family was going to be there.
Within a few days, it all unraveled. He told her about family members that were going to be attending and she started recognizing people. They drew out family trees on paper and learned that they are first cousins - by blood, not by marriage. As neither were from Alabama, they ended their relationship. He had been saving up for an engagement ring.
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6. Leaving on a high note.
When I finished university, I started a job about an hour away from my parents house. The hours were bad and the job ended up being the total opposite of what I interviewed for. I roughed it out for almost a year, slowly getting more depressed by the whole situation, until one night I layed in bed till 4am and had the revelation that I was going to quit.
The next morning I go in and my regional manager tells me that she has a job offer for me for the following year. She wants me to move 3 hours away, for exactly the same as what I'm making now (no moving bonus, no benefits, nothing).
I call my parents on my break and have a melt down, and they're so worried they drive up after my shift to make sure I'm okay.
They end up taking me to dinner at a local casino, and they tell me to swipe my points card to see if I have a coupon for food. I end up losing $100 and we leave for the night. I don't show up for work the next day and hop on a plane to visit my girlfriend who's away at school.
As I'm walking off the plane, I turn it off airplane mode and have a voicemail. The casino has called my phone and left a message that says "hey, give us a call back......congrats." When I call them, I get asked if I'm sitting down, because I won a draw for $10,000. Didn't even know I entered the draw, but it did it automatically when I swiped my points card. Flew back Sunday night and went and picked up the money.
Got to walk in to work on the Monday, and slide a picture of myself holding a giant cheque across my bosses desk. Left shortly after for a better job with a better company.
5. A sinister childhood game.
For a semester in high school, my English teacher set up this game where one student was a secret killer. Every couple of days the killer would sneak a note into a classmates locker, back pack, text book or whatever that says "you've been killed". My best friend and I were trying trying harder than anyone else in the class to play detective on this, especially near the end of the semester. Near the end of school there where about 6 students left alive and it turns out my best friend was the killer the whole time.
They took the last six students who were alive and brought them in front of the class one at a time so we could all debate if he or she was the killer or not and the person could plead their case. The teacher brings my friend up and says "ok, tell us what happened." And my friend starts explaining how he had to be sneaky and so on. So there was a good twenty seconds where I just didn't understand what he was talking about. There wasn't any great reveal or drumroll. He just brought him in front of the class and start explaining how he killed everyone. I lost it pretty good.
The other twist that I forgot to mention is that at week two or three he went to a student that he didn't really talk to much and told him that he was the killer and that he needed him to kill me. So he hands him a few of the notes and from then on he had a guy on the inside helping him kill people. That's why he could kill so many people without being caught because if someone got killed, I was with my friend so I could vouche for him. The teacher said there was nothing in the rule book that said you could get another person to help you kill people. It was a huge gamble because the other kid could have just said I caught the killer and the game would be over.
I forgot to mention that if you guess who the killer is nothing happens. You have to catch them in the act. So when there's only a few people left, everyone is yelling you're the killer!! And pointing fingers back and forth.
Pixabay
4. Getting away with it.
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 an 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.
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3. A hidden talent in plain sight.
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 "What 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.
Suck it, Mom.
Pexels
2. Small town soap opera.
Years ago when I was in college, I drove back to my hometown to spend Valentine's Day with my best friend, as we were both single and lonely. She got a group of people together and made plans for all of us to go ice-skating together on V-Day. A lot of people we knew from high school were going to be there, including this one skanky girl my bestie did NOT like. When I asked ger why she had invited this girl, she started gushing about how much this girl had grown and matured, and how impressed she was by her. Well great, I thought, I love me a good success story, and I was really excited to see her.
Well, ice-skating never happened. That girl had gotten into an argument with her mother and her ex, during which she had threatened to kill herself. Her mom and ex made the mutual decision to call 911 and have her admitted to the hospital. So my best friend and I went to visit her in the hospital.
Now apparently when you are a female and you're admitted to the hospital for mental health concerns, they do a bunch of tests on you, including a pregnancy test, and they for sure pregnancy-tested her. She dropped the bomb on us that she was eight-weeks pregnant. We congratulated her, of course, even though a baby was the absolute last thing she needed. And bless her heart, she seemed to be self- aware enough to realize this, and she kept telling us, "No, this is not a good thing!"
BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE.
Y'all thought the pregnancy was the plot twist, right? Well, little did we know there was much more to come. See, after leaving the hospital, my best friend and I decided to hit up the grocery store for some chocolates and sparkling grape juice to enjoy together. While at the grocery store, we ran into a guy that my best friend knew from elementary school. They made small talk for a few minutes. Now, apparently he knew Skanky Girl too, and I can't remember why, but he brought her up. And here's where it gets good.
He mentioned that the last time he had seen her was a couple of months ago while hanging out with a mutual friend. My best friend told him that Skanky Girl was in the hospital because she had threatened to commit suicide, and that we had just visited her in there. And get this, she's eight weeks pregnant. Upon hearing this news, the poor guy's face went as white as a sheet. He told us that the last time he saw her, which was about eight weeks ago, he had hooked up with her sans condom. A few weeks later, she had called him to tell him that she was pregnant and the baby was his. She didn't have enough money to pay to have it taken care of, so he had borrowed $500 from various friends and family members so she could. So what he (and we) wanted to know was this: if she was still pregnant, then where did the money go?
It's been almost a decade and we still don't know the answer.
Photo by Tess Emily Seymour from Pexels
1. From rags to royalty.
My mom is friends with Sarah. She's an 85 year old woman, the widow of a hero soldier in WWII, neglected by her friends and her children, having to sell her house that she could not afford and move to a much smaller one, but always helping people and looking after others, unfailingly polite and kind...
...Suddenly announced to the sensation of the the entire village in Scotland where she lived, that the new tenant of the castle on the fringes of which was her small cottage, had asked her to marry him. He too was an elderly man but he was - and indeed is - a brilliant geneticist (the man who cloned 'Dolly the Sheep'), he's a knight, a professor at Edinburgh University and a multi-millionaire many times over because of all his patents.
They were married last year. And all her rich, grand friends who neglected her and only invited her round to their nice manor houses because she would pour tea and act like a maid, must now defer to... Lady Wilmut.
The story of her first husband, who was called David Haddon, also has a kind of twist:
Every year, long after his death in the 1980s, strange little trinkets and sweets would be sent to his house, from of all places, the Himalayas in envelopes covered in hundreds of anna stamps or just unstamped envelopes, envelopes with non-european writing and symbols. My mother, asked Sarah what this was all about.
Apparently, when the second World War, he immediately signed up as a 2nd Lieutenant and went to France with a regular regiment. There was only one problem, whenever he or his platoon got into any form of danger, he would immediately faint. Literally, fall to the floor in a swoon. He got the reputation for being 'windy', which was humiliating to him. They were going to cashier him, which would have been terribly shaming in a war when everyone else was fighting, so instead they sent him out to India to join the Indian Army. Some doctors there diagnosed his problem: severe narcolepsy bought on by adrenaline stimulus. He was classified as the British army equivalent of '4F' which is the worst health categorisation you can get. And they put him in charge of some gurkhas who had all themselves been seriously wounded and could not fight. They were all sent off to some hill station where they could do no harm.
Anyway... he somehow shared a plane up to this remote camp with Orde Wingate who, if you don't know, was a general and really the father of guerilla warfare. Wingate was complaining that he wasn't being given any proper troops to conduct his 'chindit' raids deep behind enemy lines, into the goddam jungle infested with bloodthirsty Japanese. Haddon immediately volunteered himself and his crocks and off they went, conducting some real 'First Blood' attacks three hundred miles deep into Burma with no other support than air drops. Attacking supply lines, ambushing staff cars, blowing up rear bases. The only problem was, whenever they were conducting attacks, he could conk out, keel over. Nothing daunted, his men would prop him up and carry him with them in a litter whenever they were storming a machine gun nest or whatever.
Lord Mountbatten who was head of South East Asiac Command, heard about one river crossing conducted under machine gun fire with Haddon - by now Major Haddon - being carried on a bed of palm leaves on the heads of his men as they waded forward, fast asleep. He mentioned Haddon in despatches - 'a mention in despatches' is a very big thing - and he was flown to Delhi for a personal meeting with the Viceroy. His Excellency came out of the meeting with a very puzzled look: 'Very odd man. I told him: 'Many congrats. Credit to the Britain and all that'. He stood up, saluted and... fainted'.
The little gifts and cards he was sent every year from the mountains of the Himalayas after the war were from his men, the old Gurkhas, who always liked him very much and who, themselves extraordinary brave fighters, liked him very much and were under the impression that the reason he kept on falling asleep in the face of imminent danger was because he was too brave.
Anyway, that is the yarn Lady Wilmut told my mother and then my mother told me. How much of it is true, I am not sure, I hope most of it.
