People From Around The World Share Real Life Plot Twists That Threw Them For A Loop
Let’s face it: we have all been shocked to our inner cores at one time or another. You think you know what's going on, but then you realize things aren't exactly as they seem. Scenarios such as learning you were adopted, your grandfather had an illegitimate child, or the real reason you were fired from your job would shock just about anyone.
If you’re looking for proof that anyone can experience a shocking turn of events, you’ve come to the right place. You’re not alone. Everyone faces these surprise discoveries. These stories are only some of the most insane plot twists ever experienced. Can you top these?
58. Living on borrowed time.
When I was around 8 I was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy and some severe heart issues, everyone kinda just assumed I would die any day after that. Well come 8 years later I was still here and my doctors pretty much gave up on figuring out what is wrong with me so my parents decided to get a second opinion. We went to mayo clinic and I was easily diagnosed with postural orthostatic tacacardia syndrome, something that is easily treated through exercise (in my case, pots varies a lot and can be much more difficult to fight for others), the opposite of what my doctors told me to do.
After that I was just like wow, now I have to plan my future.
57. Green with envy.
I was a little goth girl in high school and secretly had a mad crush on an upper classman that was a wrestler and did cross country. My cousin, who was Miss Socialite, also had a crush on him and hit on him constantly. He and I were complete opposites. We rode the same bus and I was pretty sure I was invisible to him. So one day his friends start picking on me, he gets up from the front of the bus, moves to where his buddies and I are, sits down next to me, throws his arm around me, and they stop. This ticks off my cousin as he and I become friends and he constantly ignores her advances. She later on goes on to have me expelled by saying I had a bomb and was going to blow up the school because she didn't like this. This ruined every friendship I had, except the one with my/her crush. He and I remained friends even after he moved away and then closer friends when he moved back. Today he and I are going on 4 years together, we bought a house and car, had a daughter, and are working on plans to build our next and probably permanent home. 10 years later the cousin is still greener than a Granny Smith apple.
56. Serves her right.
I was transferred to a division, within a few months my new supervisor and I hated each other. She was incompetent and I spoke up when she screwed up. She made my life difficult and finally decided to give me a job that she thought would make me quit.
I packed up my stuff in a box and asked for help moving to my new desk, she said she didn't have anyone to spare. I was carrying my box and didn't see a spill on the floor, ironically, just outside her office. I slipped, fell, and broke my knee.
I am on permanent disability, very legitimately, received a huge settlement, lifetime healthcare, retired early. She was demoted, then fired, partially due to the way she handled my case.
This all happened a few years ago, recently when my husband and I were grocery shopping, I saw her in the store. I didn't want to see her, but my husband caught her eye and gave her a big "thumbs up". She looked furious.
55. Not a good first impression.
I'll share my grandma's (one of my favorites). As a young woman, she worked at a humble bakery in a small town in Australia. American soldiers were stationed in her town as they readied for deployment in the Pacific War of WWII. One day, a soldier from NYC came in and tried to order something not on the menu. His accent was very thick and she (being a Scottish immigrant) could not understand him. She was very embarrassed, but kept trying to assist him. After a couple minutes like this, the soldier got very impatient and started cussing and insulting my grandmother, the bakery, the town, etc. Well, my grandmother, a proud woman of small stature but surprising strength, came around the counter and punched that man hard in the chest. (I'm told she broke one of his ribs but that seems extreme...) She definitely knocked him over. Fellow soldiers lifted the stunned soldier off the ground and back to the base where they told their CO the story. The CO panicked about ruining relations with the town and pointed to the nearest man. He asked where he was from (Illinois), and hearing no accent, sent him back to the bakery to apologize on behalf of the army. The man did a wonderful job and made a good impression. And he went back to that town after the war. And he married my grandma and they lived happily ever after. They eventually moved back to the states but she refused to ever visit NYC.
54. The real surprise.
For 17 years I thought I had two birthmarks on my torso. That is until my then girlfriend was curious about them and took a very close look at them. Turns out I have an extra set of nipples. Tiny but fully formed with areolas and all.
53. Say Uncle.
My Uncle is actually my Father. I'm not referring to my Mother's brother.
Backstory: My Mom slept with two brothers (at separate times). In the 70's they could only give a blood test for paternity. I didn't find out until I was 14 when we all took a DNA test who my actual a Father was.
52. Very important information.
Had two cats. Adopted them at different times, and they were the same age or close to.
They both got sick and had to be taken to the vet. He took blood tests on both of them, said he noticed similarities and then ran them against each other. I don't understand what exactly he did but it revealed that they were related. Yep, brother and sister. They were adopted years a part, one as a kitten and one at 2 years old. Barely lookalike either. Honestly couldn't believe it.
51. Didn't see that coming.
Parents split when I was little. Came out to my mum and stepdad when I was 13. Phoned my dad up when I was 16 because it was time I had to let him know. "Dad, I've got something to tell you." "Whatever it is, I love you." "I'm gay." "So am I." "Whaaaaat?"
50. It's a small world.
This is kind of mine, and kind of my mom's: When I was a kid, I moved to a different state, and eventually made friends with a girl at my new school. We eventually ended up having a sleepover at my place one night. In the morning, her mom came over to pick her up and get to know my mom and me. When our moms got to talking, they discovered that not only were they from the same state (that nobody involved had lived in for at least 10 years), but that they had played together as kids at the same church.
49. Time to schedule a checkup.
At 29 years old I was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer which had already spread to my lungs and some ribs. Certainly changed the course of my life! Funny thing is I went to the doctor to have my lungs checked because I was having trouble breathing on my long runs. For 6 years prior to that the lumps in my breast had been passed off as cysts and dense breast tissue. "Nothing to worry about, you're so young!"
48. The ol' switcheroo.
Up until I was 9, I thought my step-dad was my real dad. Parents got a divorce and I was pretty torn up. I wanted to live with my step-dad, but I couldn't, and my mom wouldn't tell me why. One day, I was going through my moms stuff (I was a nosey little bastard) and found a newspaper article for my father's obituary. He died in a car crash when he was 24, and I was barely 18 months old when it happened. I still to this day don't know why she lied to me about it, and I don't even know if I should ask.
47. Got an upgrade.
When the economy crashed in 2008 I lost my house, job, girlfriend, car broke down, and dog died all within a span of 2-3 months. No one would hire me (I didn't complete college) and I didn't have a "trade" or "skill." I was broke, jobless and living at my parents at age 30 and very depressed. I sold off the broken car and used it pay for a one way flight to Australia (where the economy was good and I heard min wage was $15 hr).
I arrived with two duffel bags, no home, no job but confidence to get some job to last me until I could afford to fly home... At the least. Ended up getting a job. And upgrading jobs continually for 6 years. I'm now back in USA as sale director for a software company. I earn nearly 7x more than my wage when I left for Australia. All without a college degree.
Photo by bruce mars from Pexels
46. He clearly wasn’t thinking about his future.
A guy I knew in high school got a full ride to a very prestigious, expensive private university for basketball. The summer before his freshman year at university, he was caught breaking into a car. That car happened to belong to the dean of the university he was going to be attending. The scholarship was pulled, he was expelled from the school and now he works full time at Harris Teeter.
45. Close connection on the job.
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 and 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. The 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.
We're almost to the hospital, which is 30 miles away, and he goes into traumatic cardiac arrest. He was gone by the time we got to the hospital.
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 patient’s husband was a retired officer.
He was on his way to see his wife. Unfortunately, he stopped somewhere else first 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.
44. Who's that man?
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 lets slip that she is seeing someone, the guy from the 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 old grandma mentions that it's their 3rd anniversary.
Grandpa passed away 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.
Grandpa thought he saw someone in his house before he died, and turns out it was grandma's boyfriend.
43. Busy morning on the way to school.
A 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, so 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.
Photo by Raúl Nájera on Unsplash
42. Stealing from himself.
1991—I'm 19, and just signed the lease for my first (solo) apartment. I 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 that 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 out, 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.
The 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.
Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels
41. An unexpected surprise.
I dated a girl who lived in a city I had recently moved away from. On my birthday, I drove out so that we could be together/go out to dinner. The entire time we were at dinner she was distant and constantly checking her phone, sending texts, etc. There was virtually no conversation and her constant texting was uncharacteristic and started to give me the vibe that she was either cheating on me or just not that into the relationship anymore.
When we finish eating she asks if it's ok if we stop by a mutual friend's house to pick up some herbs. I reluctantly agreed, thinking it was a pretty selfish request considering it was my birthday and I don't do that kinda thing. As we're walking up the steps to our friend's apartment, I'm running through different ways for me to break off the relationship up until the door opens and I realize she had planned a big surprise party with a ton of my old friends (many of which she didn't even know). All of the texts and lack of attention that I had been attributing to a lack of interest in me turned out to be the exact opposite. She's a beautiful person.
Photo by Craig Adderley from Pexels
40. He just couldn’t get away.
I graduated 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 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 an 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.
Photo by Jan Zhukov on Unsplash
39. Can't get rid of her.
When I was a senior in high school, there was freshman girl that “Single White Female”-d me. She would follow me around and tell me how cool and funny I was. She asked what hair product I used, what body spray, where I bought my clothes, etc.
I was not funny or cool, and honestly, it was flattering at first. She styled her hair like mine but it was high school in the '90s and we all pretty much did our hair the same. Then she started dressing like me. Then she got involved in all the activities I was in. Then she started telling people we were cousins. She found my home number in her phone book (again, the '90s) and would call me all the time. It was weird. I just went out of my way to avoid her.
After my graduation ceremony, she found me on the field and hugged me. She was sobbing—big, ugly, snotty sobs—telling me how she was going to miss me and school wouldn’t be the same without me there. I left and then completely forgot about her.
Flash forward nine years and I’m just beginning to date the man that is now my husband. We’re going through old pictures and I see this girl from high school. And I’m like, “Hey! I know this girl! She was this weird chick that stalked me in high school! Why do you have a picture of her?”
It was his ex-wife.
Photo by Jaroslav Devia on Unsplash
38. She was more than his sister.
I used to work with a guy in his early 20s that, at the time of the story, was getting ready to go with his family for his first trip out of the country. He was pretty excited and we were getting the play-by-play of all the things—where they were staying, what they were going to do, how he was preparing...
Specifically, he needed to get a passport, but his birth certificate had been lost. When the replacement one arrived, Mom's name isn't the woman he's called Mom his whole life; it's his sister. Turns out his "sister" had him super young, and his grandparents basically took him on and raised him as their son and no one ever told him the truth. So Sister was actually Mom, and Mom and Dad were actually Grandpa and Grandma. Real dad is unknown.
He took a few days off work to sort himself out, still went on the trip, still apparently had a blast.
37. Two of a kind.
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 4-6 times 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 fiancé. I was betrayed and treated him coldly from then on.
A month later, the two of him come in together and I find out that they are twins and I'd shot down any chance I had with the single one.
Image by modelnikosmith from Pixabay
36. He wasn’t really mad after all.
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 its final stages he very suddenly passed away.
His autopsy showed that he had a massive undiagnosed brain tumor which had been physically altering his personality. His wife felt all kinds of guilty afterward and took it out on everyone she talked to and lost a lot of friends in the process.
35. An unexpected visitor at the funeral.
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 on the table and then goes to hang out with his friends all evening.
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 hang out with friends every night.
34. Connected after all these years.
I was adopted from South America to the US when I was a toddler and have no memory of my birth parents. I had an older friend/mentor I met in college; I knew him as Mike. When I learned that my birth mother passed away, I got a few of her belongings including some pictures. Who was in these pictures? Mike. He was my birth father.
Photo by Derek Thomson on Unsplash
33. Here comes the bride.
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.
Engagement party turned into a surprise wedding.
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32. Unofficial address.
This girl I know was embarrassed by her home, so whenever her boyfriend would go pick her up she'd run to a subdivision like 5 minutes away from her house and wait at the end of the driveway for her boyfriend, and when he would drop her off she'd just walk into the backyard of the house and say that she goes in through the back door. Her excuse was that her roommates were nosy so she didn't want him to come in. She did this for almost a year until he knocked on the door of that house unannounced once and an old lady was confused.
31. Meet your sibling.
A few years ago, my parents kept calling me trying to meet up so we could talk. I’m one of six, to give you an idea. So they kept calling trying to meet up, but I kept avoiding it because I feared the worse. So finally my dad calls and asks if I can come over to his buddy's house after work to help him move something.
I got off work and was walking to my car, and I see my dad standing by my car...he tells me to get in his car and says we need to talk...before he said anything I said, "I think I know what this is about. You and Mom are getting a divorce aren’t you?" He said no and told me that I have another sister who was adopted out when she was born, due to their financial situation at the time. Remember I’m one of six, well, now one of seven. I was about 22 when he told me, and I’m 27 now.
She’s 26....how did none of us know my mom was pregnant?! I guess we were young, I mean I was around 1 and the oldest of us was maybe around 4-5. And two weren’t born yet.
Thought my parents were splitting, I have a sister one year younger than me, and she knew all along, while none of us kids did...
Image by Adina Voicu from Pixabay
30. Saved by the bell.
I was seeing a guy for a few months and then he told me he didn’t think he was ready for a serious relationship yet—fair enough. Then he posted about his new girlfriend 3 days later, and now they are expecting in November. Plot twist or dodged bullet?
Photo by Ali Yahya on Unsplash
29. A quick engagement.
While driving for Lyft, got two people who had just gotten engaged. They were going back and forth about how much they love and trust each other. On and on. About 20 minutes into the ride, I found out that they met two days ago.
Photo by Jose Martinez on Unsplash
28. Should have known.
My friend was seeing a guy she was crazy about. For years. They traveled together, spent most nights together, and were talking about starting a family. One day he texted to say he and his other girlfriend were engaged so he couldn't see her anymore. He pretended that my friend knew about her all along and told her she was unreasonable for being upset.
Photo by juan pablo rodriguez on Unsplash
27. He wasn’t joking.
My dad joked to my mom and me about having a separate apartment. He also said he was certain I would pick him over my mom to live with (this was days before we moved into our new home). Turns out he really DID have an apartment and ended up leaving us.
Photo by Adrien Olichon on Unsplash
26. No wonder they're so close.
Boy meets girl. Girl and boy fall in love. They are young and impulsive. They elope.
They're related.
Turns out the dad and his family were estranged and the children never met each other...until they were adults and ran into one another. They both thought it amusing they shared the same last name. Imagine the tension and horror when the dad goes "Um...you're the spitting image of my jerk brother, whom I have not spoken to in over 20 years. Y'all related."
Pixabay
25. Evil genius in the making.
Willy and Devin egged each other's houses. Devin also egged Tristan's house.
Events that happened after (in order): Devin egged Willy a second time because Willy did it once. Willy called the cops on Devin but nothing happened. Tristan keyed Devin's car. Devin egged Willy once more in retaliation and even punched him, thinking it was him. Willy called the cops again, and Devin got fined heavily (I heard he got arrested but not sure about that).
None of them actually egged each other the first time. It was me.
Photo by Caroline Attwood on Unsplash
24. Backstabber best friend.
My best friend started talking to me about my ex and my problems with her. I thought he was trying to be sympathetic for the first time in his life and trying to help me overcome my depression!
Turns out he was dating her the entire time! Gasp!
23. You're next.
I found out my friend's parents were getting divorced, and I thought "Oh my goodness, that's crazy. I can't imagine how bad that would be! It would suck to be him!" Then I found out my parents were getting divorced the next day. I was in 4th grade.
Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay
22. Don't joke.
While working in Saudi Arabia, I arrived at work to find one of my Saudi workmates very upset. An Australian mate arrived just then and ask jokingly “What’s happened, your camel die?” The Saudi workmate then burst into tears and said, “Yes, how did you know?”
My Aussie mate nearly died of embarrassment.
21. That escalated quickly.
This is the short version of the story. My grandparents lived across the street from a very lovely couple who had their own successful business. The wife started to get sick. The husband insisted on taking care of his wife and making sure she had her milk every evening. She kept getting sicker and her sister comes to help take care of her. One day the husband up and leaves. It turns out he had been poisoning his wife via the milk, in the garage he had a voodoo doll of her with the eyes scratched out, he had another family, had forged her signature on multiple documents for the house and had taken all the clients from their shared business. No one would have guessed the guy was capable of anything like this.
20. He had a good upbringing.
I once saw a guy being really polite to a girl—pulled her chair out, held the door for her and offered her a drink…me and my friend were rooting for him to kiss her and when he didn’t, she left. We were like “Dude, why didn’t you kiss her?!” He goes, “THAT'S MY MOM.”
19. Went on to better things.
A super smart girl in my high school—got straight A's, scholarships, cute boyfriend. When it comes time for high school graduation, she's doing speeches. She had made so many paths available for college. And then she ghosted.
No one has heard from her for a year. Then, at a local fair, we find her. She used some of her college fund to start a circus. She does fire spinning, acrobatics, hoops, everything. She got herself a group to travel with her. She's been doing good. It's been about seven years since she graduated and she's honestly more happy now.
Photo by Joe Green on Unsplash
18. They used to share everything.
One of my best friends in college got engaged and married at the same time as me. We helped each other plan our weddings, look at houses, constantly talked about when we would both have kids, the four of us got together all the time and were really close. After my wedding (a few months after hers) she told me she was pregnant. We had lost touch for a couple months and I was thrilled and hoped this would bring us closer together again. Then she goes completely no contact for months, won’t return my phone calls, messages, nothing. I was heartbroken and felt I had lost a family member. I tracked her down years later and around the time her baby was born she divorced her husband and moved in with her girlfriend. They now raise her baby together. We were close friends for years, still did not see it coming.
17. She was a ghost.
My mom worked with this woman Debbie. She was nice and had no family herself, so she hung out with us a lot—she was with us on Thanksgiving. One day, Debbie disappears. Turns out, Debbie isn't even her real name, and everything she ever said was a lie, and she had done this several times, pretending to be different people and scamming them. She took my mom's boss for about a half million dollars, embezzling from his company. They found her months later, after she had passed away. It was the craziest thing I've ever seen in real life.
16. Close enough.
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.
15. A fake philanthropist.
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 fiancé and partner of 9 years.
14. All for show.
There is an engineering professional at my workplace that likes to wear pricey articles of clothing - he even sports a Brietling wristwatch (priced from $3000 to over $17000!) as his work timepiece. Turns out that he and his wife are buried beneath a mountain of credit card debt, and while I do not look down my nose at him, I definitely view his attire and accessories differently knowing that fact.
13. Not all bad.
My wife, a defense attorney, has a work colleague who is the biggest jerk you will ever meet. A blowhard who revels in winning at any cost and brags about the snarky things he does to really twist the knife. He's known as a sharp legal mind, but I get the sense that he likes to try to screw weaker ADAs or other counselors and loves it when he catches them in some technicality. He makes all those stereotypes about lawyers seem valid.
My church had a sort of habitat for humanity-esque service weekend where we were rehabbing an old warehouse into a new space as a temporary women's shelter for battered women. The offices were already up, but the individual rooms needed to be refloored, the bathrooms re-tiled, sheetrock needed to be hung and primed. To my surprise, I saw the asshole there with a toolbelt helping to install a sink.
Long story short, he donates his legal services to that one shelter-- helping to set up restraining orders, divorces, custody, etc. for abused women trying to get away from their abusive partners/family.
At first, I wondered if this was some sort of court-ordered community service. It wouldn't surprise me if he had done something to deserve it and then pissed off a judge somewhere. But no, the coordinator for the shelter who was working with my church says that he had been doing that for the past few years. Apparently, his wife's previous husband was an abuser and he has a real heart for people in that situation.
Photo by Hunters Race on Unsplash
12. In shambles.
I just found out yesterday that my wife (29), a teacher, started an affair with a student (18) of hers about 2 months ago. We have been together for 10 years and married for 4. We have a 4 month old daughter and she threw it all away, career, marriage, and family. I had no idea anything was wrong until 6 days ago when I found her crying in bed and she told me she was depressed, no longer in love with me, and suicidal mostly because of my drinking habits. I took sole responsibility, swore off drinking, and had us signed up for marriage counseling the same day plus got her in contact with a postpartum depression group. 6 days later she is sent to a crisis center by her school and I find out everything after the psychiatrist there makes her tell me the truth when I show up to bring her home. My life is so messed up right now that I can’t even sleep and I’m holding a 4 month old baby trying not to cry while her cheating mother is 5 miles away in a hospital room. Safe to say I will never see my wife the same way again.
Photo by Caroline Hernandez on Unsplash
11. Oops, our bad.
Early this school year, one of my fellow classmates went into brain surgery and didn't make it due to complications. An email was sent out to parents, people were posting on social media, there were flowers placed in front of the sign to the school, etc.
Well, today I learned from a friend that he's alive. I have no idea how this mistake was made but he fell into a coma after complications but made it out okay. I’m baffled and can't believe I went almost a year thinking he wasn't alive.
Image by StockSnap from Pixabay
10. Riches to riches.
Bill was a self-made millionaire by the time he was 18 yrs old. That was in the mid-eighties. He has been one of my best and certainly most influential friends. 25 yrs ago he married a girl that I did not like or trust. I told him as much but he married her weird ass anyways. A few years ago she ran off with a guy she met at a ROLLER-SKATING rink. He apparently wooed her with his zooming around or whatever and Bill was single again. He met a girl and insisted I meet her. Bill remembered that I had not approved of his ex. We met for lunch at one of those awful buffets. This girl was BEAUtiful. She used English like a scalpel. Working on a PhD. She was awesome. But I noticed little things about her. She had obviously been to finishing school. Then why did she have fingernail polish on her cuticles and a dress from a 1985 resale rack. There was just a lot of details that didn't add up and Bill was getting ready to marry her. I told Bill that I thought she was hiding something but I didn't care. This gal was high class and high bred. I told him she was great. Bill hadn't met her parents till the wedding. It was at their beach house in Destin. It turns out that she was richer than he was, and kept it quiet until the wedding because she didn't want anyone marrying her for her money. Ironic.
Image by PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay
9. Vacation takes a serious turn.
Was visiting my long distance boyfriend, having a great time. He got the flu and I thought that really sucked, our last week together being spent with him being too sick to get out of bed. Then two days before I was supposed to go back to America (he lives in England) he had to be admitted to the ICU and the doctors told his dad and I that he might not make it. They said we should call any family or friends in case they needed to say goodbye. I had a flight home planned, it was the end of winter break and I was supposed to be at college the next week, but I had always said I'd be there for him and I meant I was going to be there for him. I canceled my flight, took leave from school, his wonderful dad let me stay at the house. I visited my partner everyday, it was like a full time job. I doubt he knew I was there, but the doctors said that sometimes patients can hear you so I had to try. I went in and held his hand and read to him until the nurses kicked me out (I usually was able to stay for an extra hour of visiting time if they had nothing they needed to do immediately). After 7 weeks he was moved to the HDU, two days later to the general ward, and two weeks later he was home. When I saw him without a ventilator connected to him I felt like I was going to explode, I was so relieved. He said he was surprised that I didn't go back to school. I'm going to graduate a year late, but there is no way graduating on time would have been worth not being by his side. He's my partner and I'm going to be there when he needs me. That's how it works.
8. Immigration improvisation.
I was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. when I was three. I never knew the actual reason why until I was much older. Not only was it a plot twist when I found out, but it's a pretty big plot twist considering how my life could've been if it had not happened.
My parents got involved in a pyramid scheme, which ruined them and many others financially. There was this one woman who got involved because of my mom and she blamed my mom for everything. She became obsessed, to the point where she was stalking my parents and leaving very threatening notes to them. The police didn't do anything about it and it got to the point where my parents were so scared for my safety that they decided to move to a different country.
They figured that they could not only start over, since they sort of had to anyway because they lost all their money, but could also provide a better life for me or at least a safe one away from that lady.
I often wonder how my life would have turned out if we never left, but I find it hard to imagine. So much of my life here, the experiences I've had have helped shaped me so much that I really cannot picture the type of person I would be if things were different.
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7. Some people should not be parents.
I never really knew my father growing up. Sadly, he lived right next door for most of my adolescent life. There is exactly one time I remember him acknowledging me. I was standing on my front porch and he was going up the steps and into is. I was a kid. I waved. He waved back. That is the only contact I remember with my father as a child.
Still though, I've always wondered about him. It hasn't really ever been about anger or anything, but more so why he chose not to want me. I've wondered about him for over 15 years.
Way back in the day they released a bike called the Sonic 6. It was a glorified Huffy w/ a big blue shield on the front and a gear stick in the dead center to change gears. I got it for my birthday and of course I was ecstatic. That thing was so bad ass. As luck would have it, as I was riding w/ a friend a guy walking past me the opposite way cold cocked me and knocked me straight off the bike. I got sucker punched like you wouldn't believe. The dude was huge. Like obese huge. I was a kid, how powerful was I? The guy simply jumped on my brand new bike, told me to stay down and peddled off. I chased him, but I didn't get very far. He was gone in a flash.
15 years late I learned that my real father had paid that guy to beat me up and steal my bike as a revenge tactic against my mother. I mean, what kind of person does that? What kind of father does that?
Sad, really.
6. A benevolent gesture.
I will try to keep this as short as possible...
My grandfather left my grandmother for another man after 35 years of marriage (and the raising of two kids, a daughter (mom) and a slightly mentally disabled son. It messed my grandmother up pretty bad.
Fast forward 16 years. My mom dies from liver failure. Me and my kid sister are young and broke. Grandmother is old and broke. Grandfather pays for EVERYTHING. Nobody says anything to him. No thanks, no condolences, nothing. I want to go see him and talk to him, thank him, and see how he's doing.
I ask my grandmother where he lives, on the grounds that "he told me he had something important he needed to tell me." A lie, obviously, but Grandmother bursts into tears and confesses that Grandfather is not my mom's real father. She had a whirlwind romance with some traveling conman who left her as soon as he could. Grandfather offered to marry Grandmother and raise my mom as his own. Mom never knew. I was stunned...
My grandmother was always really judgmental of other people, and looked down on anyone else in this exact situation. She was sobbing at this point, and I snapped at her to stop because blood never really played all that heavily into what me and my sister considered family, and that she shouldn't consider it, either.
Anyway, that's how I found out one of my family's biggest secrets on accident.
PIxabay
5. Like a punch to the gut.
My mom and I haven't really had any relationship for the past five years for a lot of reasons; a couple of huge parts of that being my having left the religion that I was raised in and her having severe bipolar disorder that made her nearly impossible to deal with, which she refused to maintain treatment for. We have only spoken once in the last 5 years, and it was awful. It was about a year and a half ago. I drove down to CA to visit her (450 miles from me) and tried to patch things up. It ended up in a huge blowout fight and generally went as poorly as it possibly could. We never spoke again.
One morning in May of this year my dad showed up at my door randomly (he and my mom had been divorced for many years) and said we needed to talk. The apartment building my mom was living in had been set on fire and she didn't make it out. I still can't believe how hard it hit me. It changed me, maybe forever.
The worst part was about 3 weeks ago, when I was trying to remember the password to an old PayPal account. I had to have it reset and it was sent to an old email address that I haven't used in years. When I logged in I found an email from her, sent just shortly before she died, apologizing and trying to reconnect and make amends. We had been out of contact for so long it was the last email address she had for me, but since I hadn't been using it for years I didn't get her message until months after her death.
4. The family secret.
I found my adoption papers in the family strong box when I was 19, despite having been told my whole life that my parents were my biological parents.
Turns out my parents planted it for me to find. Specifically, I found the certificate stating that my Dad was my adoptive legal guardian. My mom was my real mum, which is why I had pictures of her with me at the hospital when I was born, which is also why I never suspected a thing. They had me via sperm donor.
I always wondered why I didn't look at ALL like my Dad, but I look like a carbon copy of my mom. Apparently this was a huge relief to her as I grew up because the ENTIRE FAMILY knew except me and the fear of having a huge, loud, Irish family letting something like that slip was pretty serious. I'm honestly shocked they managed.
They were never going to tell me but they decided that for an accurate medical history, I should know that I don't have my Dad's predisposition to heart disease.
My Dad cried when he told me because he was so worried that I suddenly wouldn't love him anymore...as if my entire childhood was a lie or something. I laughed and told him of course he was my Dad and always would be. It brought us closer. But it also explained a lot of things in my childhood, like why I didn't look anything like him, why I didn't need glasses but my parents were both blind, etc.
Image by White77 from Pixabay
3. Meeting the challenge.
Earlier this year I went to the doctor to get some medication for my acne as my skin had been really bad. For the medication I was going to go on I had to take a pregnancy test. No worries there, as I was on birth control, or so I thought.
The pregnancy test came back positive but I was so convinced it was wrong I honestly didn't care too much at that point. After a few blood tests to try and see how far along I was it looked like I was miscarrying, the hormone levels were all over the show and now where they should be for early pregnancy. The doctor ordered a scan and I went along fully prepared to see an empty uterus and be told I had miscarried. At the scan they found that I wasn't miscarrying, and that I was actually 27 weeks and 5 days. That's like 6 months pregnant.
Obviously I was pretty shocked, honestly I almost passed out and vomited. I just didn't know how to process that information. Luckily my boyfriend was with me and somehow managed to calm me down. We talked about it and decided that neither of us were ready to be parents. Obviously at that late stage in pregnancy their wasn't a choice of terminating but we decided we'd adopt.
A week or two later I woke up with cramps so went down to the ER just to check things out. Sitting in the waiting room I felt a sensation like my waters breaking, but when I looked down it was all blood. After being rushed in to surgery and multiple blood transfusions later I woke up to the doctors telling me that I had a little girl and that she was fine.
She was kept in NICU for 8 weeks which gave us enough time to get our heads around everything and decide that we couldn't give her up. Now she's a little happy 6 month old and my life is completely different!
2. Living the bro code.
I met a girl through POF and dated her for a year. She lived six minutes up the street from me, so we saw each other quite often. Both of us were quite introverted, so we mainly only hung out with each other. We both considered the relationship to be serious and exclusive.
Anyway, right from the start of the relationship, I noticed that she would text this one guy pretty frequently. I asked her about him, and she told me that he was her tattoo artist. Just to be snoopy, I checked out the website of the place she gets her tattoos done. Sure enough, there was a tattoo artist there with the same first name as the guy in her phone, but the last name was different. I asked her about it, and she quickly called me out on being paranoid, and how it was ridiculous to think that she would lie to me. I agreed, it was pretty paranoid of me.
Maybe five months later into the relationship, I'm on facebook and I decide to search the name of the guy in her phone. A profile comes up in the same small city we both live in, but there is no profile picture or anything. I decide to bring it up with her again, because now there is two facebook profiles: one who is actually a tattoo artist, and one who has the same name that is in her phone. She freaks out on me for bringing it up again, and tells me that I'm crazy. I agreed, but just wanted a straight answer. She told me that I had nothing to be worried about. I apologized, and we got over it.
About a year into the relationship, I found her on POF. I would periodically go on there to see if she recreated her profile (we both deleted our profiles). I found a profile that I thought might be hers, but obviously no pictures. I catfished it, and it turned out to be her. She was back on POF and looking for guys. I had all the evidence I needed, and I was going to confront her with it the next day and break up with her...however, I thought that if I was going to break up with her, I was going to message this facebook profile I had found that matched the name in her phone, just out of curiosity...
PLOT TWIST: I message the guy. He gets back to me immediately. We converse, and it turns out that he is her boyfriend. I had been her second boyfriend the entire time. She met him two months before she met me. She bounced back between me and him for an entire year, neither me or him knew about each other. He saw my name in her phone once, and she said that I was her tattoo artist. Every time I ever called her out, I was right. Every time she was gone mysteriously at night, she was with him. Every time she said she was hanging out with a friend of hers, she was with him. She doesn't actually have any friends. It was always him. Anyway, we both broke up with her the next morning and met the next day to have a beer. Haven't spoken with him since.
Photo by Inzmam Khan from Pexels
1. We're ready for the daytime TV version.
I have one that is straight out of a soap opera. I was very good friends with a guy in high school named John, who was dating a lovely guy named Janni (Polish or something. I can't recall, but that's sort of irrelevant.) and was madly in love with him. He carried Janni's picture around in his wallet and every time they were together they were super sweet. Really adorable couple. Then, one day, Janni starts acting really strange and distant, doesn't answer John's phone calls. Doesn't spend time with us, the whole works. He flat out broke up with John and broke the poor guy's heart. I brought a spare t-shirt for a few days because my shoulder would be soaked from him crying on it. And then it got even worse.
John called me one afternoon after school and begged me to come over because he needed a friend. When I got there he told me that Janni had been killed in a car accident and he was absolutely devastated all over again. I went with him to the funeral a few days later for moral support and he was just broken. Spent a couple of weeks just moping and being depressed. And here comes the plot twist.
Then, he gets a call from Janni. He had a twin brother that we never knew about who was apparently a big trouble maker and had been sent off to boarding school. When he'd been home to visit last they'd swapped places for some reason that I never found out. Either simply for a laugh or for some other reason I never knew, but they did. His twin was the one that had been avoiding John and "broke up" with him, and he had been drinking before he got into the accident that killed him. Janni had been off at boarding school so he wasn't able to make it back for the funeral, and when he did get home he had to work up his nerve for a few days to tell his parents what they had done, which led to them realizing that the child they thought was dead is actually alive and vice versa, which led to some fun family complications, not the least of which being obituary retractions, headstone replacement and lots of screaming apparently.
Meanwhile, John and him had a whirlwind romance afterwards in a giddy fit of reunited bliss, but it fizzled out after a month or so because John was furious after the reality sank in at what Janni had done without telling him and letting him be so miserable all that time, not to mention letting him think that he'd died.
I was the third party observer in all this but to this day it's probably the most unbelievable thing that's ever happened in my life.
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