Ever have a no-good, horrible, very bad day and think that nothing more can go wrong…only to find out that it very much can get worse? These Redditors know that feeling. Here are their most jaw-dropping "But wait, it gets worse" stories.
1. A Class of Her Own
There is a girl in my class who is beyond help at this point. Her best moments: “I don’t want to donate my eyes because I don’t want people to see what I’ve seen.” “Gingers can’t be American.” “Yay! I got a D in French.” I just want to clarify the French grade, though. I don’t want to seem like I think I’m better than anyone because of grades.
I wrote this one down because she interrupted other people’s learning and shouted this out in the middle of the lesson. Honestly, as long as anyone tries in their test it’s fine, but she was on her phone most of the time.
2. A Near-Literal Nightmare
I used to work as a bank teller in a really nice neighborhood. We didn’t have any special glass or security because it was in a suburb. One day, I'm looking across the lobby at the glass doors leading to the parking lot when I see a man wearing a mask running towards the building.
My heart immediately drops and I start saying, "Please be a joke, please be a joke, please be a REALLY bad joke!" My worst nightmare had just started. It wasn't a joke. The guy bust in, brandishes his piece, and yells, "Everybody freeze!" He sticks the piece in my face and tells me to give him the money.
But wait, it gets worse. You see, this was my half day, I had just gotten in, and I DIDN'T HAVE ANY MONEY. I tried to stutter out, "You see, I just got here, I don’t have my drawer yet, I don’t hav—" but he wasn't listening and was just yelling and agitated.
There were two other tellers next to me, and they DID have money, so I glance over thinking maybe if they give the guy money he'll be happy. Only…the other tellers were frozen, shaking, and crying.
Can’t say I blame them. The only reason I wasn’t a mess was because I was too focused on that thing in my face. So they were no help at all. Luckily, they had their keys to their drawer and I thought, screw it. Better give this guy SOMETHING!
I started pulling cash out of the other teller’s drawer and stuffing it in the guy’s duffle bag. It worked, he grabbed it and ran out. Everyone was shook up and crying, so the bank had a therapist come in that very afternoon.
She comforted everyone and told us that statistically something like that would never happen to us again. But wait, it gets even worse. Three weeks later, the same guy came running back into the bank with a piece.
Even though he wore a mask, we knew it was the same guy because he yelled, "Let's do it again!" This time I had a cash drawer, so things went a lot smoother. But it messed with my head for a very long time after. They didn’t catch the guy until two years later.
3. The Universe Is Telling You To Stay Home
It was summer of 1994, and we were on a family trip to Colorado. I was 13 at the time. We almost got to the top of Mount Evans (driving), but the final road to the top was closed due to resurfacing. So, my brothers and I decided to climb the rest of it. Bad idea.
We got lost. Two hours later, we found our way back to the car...and got royally yelled at. But that wasn’t the end of it. My little brother and I soon developed altitude sickness. My parents then put us all back in the car and we were driving back down when suddenly a car in front of us drove straight off the cliff.
My mom slams on the brakes, sending my little brother and I into immediate projectile vomit mode. My parents try to call 9-1-1, but can’t get a phone signal. More people arrive and you can see that people are trapped and hurt in the car.
My parents decide they need to get us off the mountain and that us being there was not helping the situation. So we carry on driving down the mountain...When we got to the bottom, there was a lake that we parked by to try and calm our nerves, air the car out, plus ease my brother and I from altitude sickness.
As things were getting better, a man came out of nowhere and started telling me about Jesus... asked me if I wanted to meet him. No big deal to me (I was 13 and clueless as to what he was jabbering about), but my mom freaked out and put us all back in the car.
Still sick, but feeling better, we are back on the road and in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the highway. Suddenly "boom"—a car rams into the back of us. I will always remember that as one of the most what-the-heck family days.
4. Here Comes The Drama
An acquaintance of mine got married in an extravagant $80,000 ceremony and they broke up on their honeymoon. But wait, it gets worse.
They split because the groom was cheating on the bride with a string of one-night stands, meanwhile the bride was having an ongoing affair with...the best man. We’re still not done. They pretended to stay married for six months after out of shame, but it all came tumbling down.
The groom made a huge Facebook rant calling her names and tagging all their friends and family in it with the most dramatic comments section known to humanity. But wait, it gets worse.
The bride and the best man then decided they wanted to have a baby and she immediately ran off with him and got knocked up.
5. The Un-Luck Of The Irish
I went on holiday with my parents to Ireland a few years back, and one of the days of the trip was one of the worst days of my life. The trip as a whole was fantastic but this one day just sucked.
My parents had booked all the hotels through a travel agency and the night that we were in Cork, we were booked to stay in this spa resort because we got a good deal or something. At first when we pull up, it looked super fancy, you know, like a typical resort.
But then we find out then we’re not actually staying in the main building, and they bring us out to these little cottages. Okay, fine. But then we get in and the entire place smells like a sewer and there’s a million stains everywhere. We’re like "whatever" at first, we’re not that picky and it’s only a night.
The next morning, I wake up to find out that my period has started so that’s already a bad start to a day. Then I find out that the shower doesn’t work and we all have to take baths. My parents go first and then it’s my turn and we run out of hot water.
So I have to take a bath in a puddle from what’s left in cold water. But wait...it gets worse. We then decide that we’re going to buy tickets for one of those hop-on, hop-off tour buses. We buy the tickets and we get on the bus and it’s good at first.
We’re seeing the sights, it’s pretty, whatever. But then, the bus suddenly gets on the freaking highway and we’re sitting on the open top as branches are whizzing by over our heads fast enough that it could decapitate you if we weren’t ducking.
We find out from the other passengers that this tour bus wasn’t a tour bus at all, but instead a bus taking people back to their cruise ship 40 minutes away. So we have to sit on the open top of a double decker bus on the highway with branches almost hitting us for 40 minutes, all while I’m terrified that I’m going to leak through my pants because I’m on my period.
We eventually get to the cruise ship and we find out there’s a train station nearby. So we go the train station to get a train back to Cork, but the last one just left. We had to wait an hour or so until the next one came.
Moral of the story is to not let travel agents book your hotels and to double check the bus you’re getting on. I highly recommend Ireland though, beautiful place!
6. Timing Is Everything
A friend of mine just lost her ex-husband and father of her child to a motorcycle accident. The 15-year-old son had a birthday a few days after the accident. A gift arrived in the mail day of the birthday. It was utterly crushing. His father had gotten him motorcycle lessons.
7. Domino Effect
I was a manager at a hotel in Oakland. A valet parker took a guest’s corvette out for a joy ride. He lost control of the car in a residential area and crashed into a parked car in a driveway. The corvette and the parked car smashed through the home’s garage door and caught on fire.
The home partially burned down. The valet was caught by the authorities a block away fleeing on foot with a broken leg.
8. In One Fell Swoop
A co-worker of mine, Andy, had a brother named Mike. Mike's wife passed from cancer, leaving Mike and his two kids, who were around five and seven years old. But wait, it gets worse. Overcome with grief, Mike took his life, leaving behind his two kids.
Andy then had to sue his own parents to get custody of Mike's kids, due to several issues with the grandparents. That was just the beginning, it turned out. Now Andy’s wife passed suddenly, leaving Andy to take care of Mike’s two kids and his two kids around the same age, all alone.
This all happened over a three-year span.
9. Life Needs To Switch It Up
In 2018, my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer in April, my stepdad was diagnosed with terminal cancer in June, my mom was diagnosed with cancer in September (treatable, thankfully), and one of my closest friends was diagnosed with cancer (also treatable) in October.
Then in November, my aunt passed. I was at work when I took the call about my aunt. My reaction stunned even me. I just couldn’t stop laughing because it was so ridiculous that this was happening all one after the other. I was in total shock.
Fast forward to 2020, my stepdad passed at the beginning of May and my dad passed at the beginning of June. The friend who had cancer in 2018 called me the day after my dad’s passing to say her cancer is back and it’s in her bones. The worst thing is, I’m not convinced I’m even at the end of the story yet!
10. Seeing Eye-To-Eye
I went to my eye doctor for my annual check-up, and he says, "Huh, there's a spot there that wasn't there last year, you need to go see this specialist". So I did. Then he said, "Uh yeah, this looks bad, go to this other specialist in Miami".
I go to Miami, they go, "Yeah, it's a mole don't worry about it and call us if you notice any changes". I thought that was it, but I was so wrong. A couple of years later, I go back for another check-up and mention my eyesight got a bit worse.
My eye doctor goes, "Hmm, that thing got bigger...Yeah, you should probably go get that thing looked at again". So, back to Miami. Specialist goes, "OK, well it's cancerous now. I need you in surgery next week, I have to figure out how to save your life".
A week later, they do a biopsy and find out my eyesight got worse because it created a cataract, so they fix that, too. Then the following week, I go and get a freaking radiation patch attached to my eye for three days.
I think I'm past the worst of it…until one morning I wake up and I've gone completely blind in that eye and I'm in searing pain. Another drive to Miami to see the doctor. I could NOT believe the results. The goddarn tumor EXPLODED in my eye. Tumor necrosis is the medical term.
It’s a very rare complication. They sit me down and go, "Hey, that eye may have to go. Sorry, dude". But wait, it didn't get worse after that. Thanks to some intensive therapy, I didn't lose the eye. In fact, they were even able to save my vision a few months later with reconstructive surgery.
11. Some Bathroom Humor
I currently live in a 3-bed, 1-bath house. My roommates were getting married and had a bunch of bridesmaids over at the time. A couple of them stayed the night after drinking. I wake up the next morning with a poop festering in my stomach.
Every move I make, I feel it’s just gonna squeeze out. I heard both girls in the bathroom giggling and getting ready. So, I panic. I grab a roll of toilet paper and head to a remote part of the backyard. When I went out back, I accidentally left the door cracked just enough for our dog to sneak out.
I didn’t see him while I was pooping and ran back inside to grab a plastic bag. The girls had just walked into the living room. I chatted them up, avoiding the fact that I just pooped in the backyard. Finally, they left and I returned to the scene of the offense.
It was half-eaten and my little old dog was face down in it, slurping it up. Disgusting right? I had to clean his face off with rags and water and soap. Before I could muster all of the items up, he jumped on the back patio furniture and ran his little face through everything.
Then he shook as I walked up to him, flinging my own poop every which way. I finally clean him and put him inside. I cleaned up the couch pretty quickly and it being outside furniture, I was able to blast it down with a power hose.
Not bad, right? Quick and easy? Nope! I walked back in to a monstrosity. Poor guy ate the poop so fast, and it didn’t settle well. This isn't an exaggeration when I say that I counted 16 different piles of dog poop-vomit throughout the house. Most of it on the couches.
I, for the next 12 hours, cleaned up my own poop-turned-dog-vomit. Basking in the smell of horrors for what felt like forever.
12. The Devil’s In The Details
I was in a rush because I woke up late. I then stubbed my toe really, really badly on the table.
I had to rush to an embassy to get my passport done, and I almost finished the three-hour drive to get there when I realized I forgot all the documents I needed for my passport.
13. When It Snows, It Storms
I work at an office. The building is owned by my boss, who is too cheap to shell out for actual maintenance service and has employees do handy work around the clock. One day, it started to snow. The snow was sticking to the sidewalk and showed no signs of letting up, so of course me and my co-workers had to go out and clean it.
So while my boss sat in his nice, cushy office, we start shoveling. One of my co-workers, let's call him Steve, is relatively new, and having grown up in an apartment complex, has never shoveled before.
Well, maybe that contributed to what happened next. He starts pushing the shovel in front of him at a crotch level. And eventually, the shovel head gets stuck on a raised brick and it pushes the handle end of the shovel into Steve’s crotch.
There was no shovel handle because he had been given a broken shovel with a rusted end. Steve proceeds to tuck and roll, off the sidewalk and into oncoming traffic. Fortunately for him, somebody grabbed him and pulled him back to safety. Boss drove him to the emergency room and paid for the resulting tetanus shot and 14 stitches on the inner thigh.
Needless to say, he was not allowed to shovel again.
14. Barely Made It Down The Aisle
A woman I know got divorced just days after her wedding because she discovered that her new husband had an affair. She found out because apparently he cheated AT the wedding with his affair partner, who also was invited. Here’s the "best" part. They were busted by the father of the bride.
15. Grandma Was An Attention Hog
My grandmother passed on Thanksgiving day, in front of the whole family. She had gotten diagnosed with brain cancer about six months prior and, knowing that she was in hospice care, much of the family decided to come visit for one last Thanksgiving, even though she was unconscious in the next room.
The entire day, the cooking was going on despite grandma's condition, and teenage me spent many hours salivating over a whole roasted pig being barbecued outside in place of a turkey. I was pretty stoked. Just as the sizzling pig is being taken off the barbecue, the hospice nurse sticks her head outside and announces that it’s time.
My grandmother at this exact moment is passing away. We all go inside, gather around the bed, and for 45 minutes or so, I watch as my grandmother passes, and not prettily either. For some reason after that, we decide we are going to still sit down and eat dinner.
I’m watching the barbecue pig be chopped up and as I’m thinking I can probably still get myself to eat some of it, they douse it all in vinegar and chili flakes. Ruining it. So as I try to choke down this enormous disappointment, after watching my grandmother pass, the morticians come and wheel her body out through the living room. At that point, I was pretty much done.
16. A Different Kind Of Flamethrower
When I was six years old, the natural gas detector alarm kept going off, so my mom had to call the fire department to check if there was any dangerous natural gasses. The answer was epic. The fire department came and basically scientifically told my mom that her constant farting kept setting it off.
17. It’s Bedlam In Here
In April 2017, on my birthday, my family came over for dinner and cake. It was my sister, her husband, my niece, my parents, my brother, his then fiancée (now wife), and my girlfriend. So we're having a nice time, eating hoagies, and my newly two-year-old niece decided to jump on the couch.
While my sister headed over to stop her, my niece slipped and with a loud bang hit her head on the coffee table. My sister yelped and quickly scooped up her daughter. My niece was crying and my sister was trying to calm her. Everything was quiet for a moment; then my sister screamed.
She rushed into the kitchen and I looked at my niece's head. There was blood. A lot of blood. We spin into a panic as my sister is hyperventilating. I quickly soak up the blood with a paper towel and notice only a very tiny cut, she didn't even need stiches.
My father grabbed some ice and a rag and put pressure on the cut. My brother-in-law took my sister and niece to the hospital as the rest of us cleaned up a bit before heading over. But it was far from over. As we're cleaning, my then 14-year-old deaf cocker spaniel decided he wanted a hoagie.
I glance over to the table, only to see his face slowly reaching for one. We all notice and run over to stop him. But that hoagie was no more; only scraps remained. So as we were cleaning said scraps, my dog walks back into the kitchen, looks at us...and poops on the floor.
What the heck.
18. Screw This
I messed up a trick skateboarding, and I landed with the toes of my back foot off the board. They caught on the ground and my foot twisted, dislocating my ankle. As my foot continued to turn, the bones in my ankle got jammed against the bones in my leg. So I broke off the end of one of my leg bones too.
Three days in a hospital, a metal plate, and nine screws. One of the screws broke later.
19. Family Ties
Back in 2016, my five-year-old daughter came to me saying my stepfather had been inappropriate with her. This caused an enormous rift in my family and ended with me cutting ties with everyone but my actual father.
But wait, it gets worse. My fiancée at the time said that my "family drama" was too much for her and left me. As if that wasn't bad enough, my actual father, who employed me at the time, used this opportunity to tell me he had to cut me from full-time to very limited part-time.
So I went from making a $36k salary to making about $12k per year. All three of those events happened in the span of one week. But wait, it gets worse. My mother (who sided with my stepfather) worked at my daughter’s school and continued to antagonize her and my son to the point where I had to pull my kids out of school and transfer them to a school in my ex-wife’s district.
They didn’t even have time to say goodbye to their friends. Worse yet, my stepfather and mother secretly visited my kids at their new school on grandparents day without telling anyone, which prompted a restraining order from me and my ex-wife. That was a dark time in my life.
20. DMV Blues
I was in a trade school about two years ago. One Friday, I lost my wallet. I didn't find it for the whole weekend, and I concluded that it had been stolen. Because I now didn't have a wallet, I didn't have my driver's license, my permit, or my medical card, all of which were required to operate an 18-wheeler owned by the school.
The following Monday, my driving teacher told me to go to the DMV to get a new copy of my license and permit. Unfortunately, the only DMV open was in downtown Pittsburgh. I got down to the DMV and I waited in line for a solid two hours. The next part made me see red.
Once I was called up, the guy told me that they only accept money orders or debit cards, and all I had was some cash. I then had to get another number and walk three blocks away to the local Rite Aid to get money orders. Another two hours later, I'm next in line to be called, and everyone sort of stopped working.
All of the counters were empty for about 45 minutes, and no explanation was given. I admit I may have lost my cool on the security lady working there when she told me that the computer system crashed, and that I needed to leave.
I left the DMV as angry as I've ever been, and walked back to my car to find I got a $50 parking ticket. The next day, I went to my local DMV and got my new license and permit and was able to start driving again...But later that night, I found my wallet under my bed.
21. The Family Who Pukes Together…
This January, my family and I went on summer vacation—I live in Argentina—with my dad's car. Mid-trip, my little brother starts to puke on the entire van. We stop and get out to clean ourselves and everything else. The sun is high in the sky, and it’s so hot that my other brother gets dizzy, as well as my mom.
We continue the trip. For a few hours, everything is ok, but then my mom asks for some fresh air, and she starts to puke next to the road. We keep going as we have another 13 hours of road trip to cover.
When the sun is setting, my brother has to puke again, but we can't stop, so he simply throws up through the window—though not without vomiting on the entire side of the truck. My dad has to throw up now, and he is driving, so there's puke again through the window...
We end up at an on-road motel, in the middle of nowhere, and now I have to throw up, too—for the whole night. The 17-hour trip became a three-day long trip.
22. Rain On Me
I went hiking with my parents along the beach to a nature preserve. It was lightly drizzling, so kind of fun. Then my mom had the wonderful idea to walk back to the hotel next to the highway, saying it would continue to only lightly drizzle.
The clouds opened up, and unleashed a downpour on us.
23. Some Days It’s Best Not To Get Up
I was 16 years old. I woke up in the morning and was stepping over some junk on my bedroom floor. I was near the dresser and caught my toe on the drawer handle. Ripped off my toenail on my pinky toe.
Cut to PE at school. I was waiting in line to hit during softball and the kid at bat swings for the fences....and let’s go of the bat. It catches me right in the chest and basically takes me off my feet. But fate was just getting started with me.
Walking home from school, a friend jokingly flicks his cig at me, and the ashes go in my right eye. I then stumble into a hole by the sidewalk and roll my ankle. Go home to explain to my mom what happened and she yelled at me.
I went to bed by 7:30 pm.
24. Getting Territorial
Once upon a time, some neighbors and I were in a dispute over where the property line was. I had wanted to plant a garden right on the property line, but the neighbors pitched a fit about it for some strange reason.
Screaming, throwing stuff at us, having their kids come over and stomp down all my plants. These guys were just flat-out evil. So we call up a surveyor to come out and find the property lines. The revenge was glorious. The neighbors ended up losing 30 feet of their yard because they were still using the old property lines from when the subdivision was made back in the 1980s.
Unfortunately for them, the previous owners of my house bought the 30 feet of land from the previous owners of their house back in 2003. I let them know about this, and provided evidence. I even gave them a phone number to call to see that this is legit.
I then gave them the required 24-hour notice to let them know that someone was going to come out to start digging post holes for a new 8-foot privacy fence. But it wasn’t over. These dum-dums decided to get their own revenge by slashing all four tires on both vehicles in my driveway. Still, joke was on them: I ended up getting it on camera.
I took them to court, however…the dum-dums were dumb again. They ended up slashing all four tires of the vehicle I was loaned by a friend while it was sitting in the courthouse parking lot. Which has cameras. But wait, it gets worse for them.
Because it wasn't my car, these dum-dums are now getting sued by two separate people for the same reason, and the same judge is presiding over both cases. And here’s the best part. Because the vehicle I was loaned was my friend’s dog grooming van, it was loaded down with stuff that made it a bit too heavy for the rims to support the weight without the support of the tires.
Now she needs to replace all four tires and all four rims. So not only am I suing these idiots for damages, court costs, and repairs, so is my friend. Altogether, they are now going to be out of pocket a little over $4,200 and some change to cover everything that they've damaged, plus her lost wages since that van is how she makes money.
All of this because they thought we were using six inches of their property.
25. A Family Affair
This is my time to shine. When hearing this story for the first time, I didn't think my jaw could hit the floor any harder until it eventually ended up under the ground. Some background: One of my kids has a degenerative condition that attacks the muscles.
It doesn't affect the mind at all, but it gets worse with age and is fatal in your 20s. One day, I was talking to a physio we've come to know very well who has over 30 years' experience in the field, and we were discussing the way families are affected by conditions like this.
We told her a couple of parents-walking-out-after-diagnosis stories and she says, "I've got a story…" It goes something like this: There was a family she knew with three boys who all ended up diagnosed with the same syndrome (and the same syndrome as my son). The mom couldn't handle the guilt because she passed it on from her genes. So she walks out on the family.
The dad is raising the three boys with his mother, the paternal grandma, who is resentful of being roped into this situation and mistreats the boys. The seven-year-old, who's the youngest, is still in diapers because no one has bothered trying to teach him how to go to the toilet.
Keep in mind that beyond the physical aspect, these boys are mentally sound. But it gets worse! One day, the dad meets a woman and she's amazing. She takes these boys under her wing, they really begin to flourish and thrive with her care. She and the dad go on to have two more boys who don't have the syndrome because their mother doesn't carry the gene.
One day, they miss a hospital appointment, which is unusual because the new lady was always very diligent about appointments. So the physio calls her up to check that everything is ok. The answer was ridiculous. The new mom was stuck at home with all five boys, because the father HAD MET ANOTHER WOMAN AND WALKED OUT ON ALL OF THEM!
But wait, dear friends. Dig a little ditch under your jaws because it gets worse. Not only had he walked out on them, he was intimidating to take the kids he'd had with the new mom away from her, and as a result she was too scared to leave the house.
So now this angel of a woman had five boys to care for on her own, three of whom had severe disabilities. But wait, because yes, oh yes, it gets worse. The idiot dad fought her for custody and took her to court, not for all five boys. Only for the two they'd had together who had no disability, as if the other three were garbage kids.
By this time those three boys were in their teens and fully aware of the fact that their own father was actively working on getting their "normal" half siblings but not them. By this point, I think me and my jaw were several feet underground so I forgot to ask how the story turned out.
But given that the dad was such a dirtbag and neglectful of his kids before meeting the new mom, I doubt any court in their right minds would give him custody. I just hope the angel mom got support to raise them. As for the birth mother of the three boys, I hope she got support too. She must have been in a very dark place.
26. Nothing To Say But "Ew"
When I was 15, I worked at a tanning salon. Among other things, one of the people who came in tanning was a 21-year-old man who would hang around to try to talk to me for hours and ask if he could buy me donuts. My co-workers gave him my number.
For Christmas he got me a copy of the movie Labyrinth, you know, the one where the Goblin King/adult David Bowie tries to romance a teen girl by kidnapping her younger brother. It gets worse. When the salon closed down and this guy couldn't get in touch with me anymore, he texted me around New Year’s telling me he would have treated me like a princess and doesn't know why I was so stuck up and not interested in him.
I was still 15 years old. I remembered this recently after like 15 years and googled him. He's now a middle school teacher.
27. It’s Not Working Out
My boyfriend dumped me in May after we hadn't seen another since March. While trying to process this loss, I'm told the person below me at work has been furloughed and I need to take on additional work while half-crazy with break-up grief.
We get to late June, the person below me is brought off furlough, but, cool news! I'm being evicted now. At least I have my job so although it will be stressful, I can afford the move. Oh wait, it's two weeks later and I've been made redundant.
28. A House Of Cads
I got married at 21. At 30, I was nine months pregnant with our second child when officers showed up at the door to take away my husband. I wish that were the worst part. It’s not. They nabbed him for sleeping with a student; he was a high school teacher.
Only, he convinced me he was innocent. I asked my parents to pay for his lawyer, to the tune of $20k. One year later, he pleaded out for probation. Plea deal was done on a Friday before a three-day weekend. The paperwork was supposed to be sealed by the court.
I logged in Monday to make sure it was, and it wasn't. The paperwork included notes from his interview showing that not only was he guilty of sleeping with the student, but also with another teacher at the time.
I confronted him, and it turns out that he was cheating on me for the last 12 years, with a variety of women.
29. A Long Trip For A Short Day At The Beach
This happened when I was 15 and my sister was 16. We were going on a three-day canoe trip with short portages between lakes/rivers. The first paddle is against the wind. My sister keeps splashing me as she paddles. I get annoyed and splash her back.
We are then maliciously splashing each other in fury, making too little progress and exhausting ourselves. We get across. Between the wind and our nonsense, it took at least 45 minutes longer than it should have. This ended up being a near-fatal mistake.
We then have to get all our supplies and canoes about six kilometers (four miles) to the next lake. My dad mtakes two trips because my mom is seasick and feeling…off. My sister and I just leave our stuff in the canoe and carry it, bickering frequently. It sucked. But it was about to get worse.
We set up camp at the other edge. It's now getting late. The mosquitoes are so bad that they are biting us through our clothes. I swear to you, I was bit through my socks and sneakers. They do not care about the fire we made.
They are oblivious to bug spray. It is hot. We stay zipped in our tents and eat. At least my sister and I are getting along now. My mom is...weird. We sleep. It's itchy. It's hot. It sucks. It got worse.
Just before dawn, I wake up to hear my mother sobbing. My dad comes to tell us she's sick. He and my sister are going to canoe to the next point, which is closer to a road, and try to get a ride back to the car, then drive down a logging road that ran through where we had just hiked the portage.
I have to pack up camp and lug it to that road, about a kilometer (a mile) back. They set off at dawn. My mom is pale and says her head really hurts. It took me three trips to bring everything to the logging road. On the last trip, my mom, dizzy and weepy, trails along behind me.
I'm pretty worried. We eat raspberries as we wait an hour or two. It's the only thing I had eaten all day so far. It's still hot. There are still mosquitoes, but better than it had been. I still had no idea what was coming. A logging truck comes through.
The guy tells me my dad can't get down the road. I have to bring everything back to the place we camped and they'll meet us there. My mom looks even worse. I drag everything back. I set up a tent for her first and she tries to sleep.
Another three trips. My dad and my sister come back. We load up the canoes. My mom is now throwing up. I have a clear memory of her leaning over the side of the canoe, weeping and puking, in the twilight.
My sister is just exhausted, so I do most of the paddling and she steers (we did work well together when we weren't being jerks). We finally reach the car and pack everything up and head to the nearest hospital, like an hour away.
My sister and dad sit up front and manage to eat some of the food we didn't need to cook. I'm in the back with my mom, who looks at my food and starts retching pink foam that smells like raspberries. I sigh and hand my sandwich to my sister.
After testing, it turned out to be a neurological condition that usually gives no signs until stroke or worse. She needed a few surgeries and treatment, but there was no lasting damage. We never went on a long canoe trip again.
30. Stranger Than Fiction
I met a girl in 6th grade and befriended her. I was pretty awkward and weird in 6th grade and thought it was okay to be mean and make fun of friends, so I could have been nicer to her. I admit this.
One day, she invited me over to her house to play video games. She punches her little brother on the arm until he cries. Her mom comes in, and I couldn’t believe the words out of my friend’s mouth. This girl says that I punched him.
The brother and I look at each other with gaping mouths. I am too shocked to deny it. I then decide to stay away from her. At the end of 6th grade, I get an anonymous letter in my locker that calls me fat and ugly. During that time, I don’t know who sent it.
I don’t mention it to anyone. She moves away at the end of 6th grade. She even gave me a goodbye present, which I threw in the trash. Two years later, we reconnect on AIM. She asks me if I ever found out who sent me that hate letter in 6th grade.
I mention that I never told anyone about it…so how did she know about it? She blocks me. It gets weirder. Then, she sends me a snail mail letter telling me how much she hated me and that it was her who sent the letter. Okay, bye.
Fast-forward five years. I am about to head off to college and make my plans Facebook official. I get a friend request from this girl, who I see is going to go to the same college as me. I delete her request. No hard feelings, just ready to move on with my life.
I get a Myspace message from this girl. It is a message asking me who the heck do I think I am when she was nice enough to send me a friend request. She says I’m still as ugly and fat as she remembered and that she’s sure I haven’t changed.
She says that she knows we are going to the same college and to stay away from her, or else she will beat me up. She calls me a bunch of other names and says that she’s blocking me, "so, ha". I write back just to say that it’s no hard feelings.
I explain that I’ve grown up and that I’m sorry for any pain I caused in 6th grade, and that I’m a Christian now and just want peace. No response. One year later, I have an open slot in my schedule, so I take a fun elective class. When I walked in, I wanted to scream. She’s in my class.
I remember her threats, so I take inventory of how she reacts when she sees me. She cowers and avoids eye contact and hides from me. I have a feeling she’s not going to beat me up, so I stay in the class and just avoid her. One year later, I work as a front desk agent in the college dorms.
I help people who need change for the laundry machines, get a new key card, etc. A line starts while my co-worker and I are helping people. I call for the next person to come up. No movement. I look up and it’s her. She is just staring at the ground.
I say a little louder and as pleasantly-sounding as possible, "I’m ready to help the next person!" I can set aside personal issues and work. Ain’t no thing. She doesn’t budge. My co-worker finishes up just then and she rushes over to him.
I shrug and call the next person. I don’t see or hear about her until 4th year of college. That’s when the final bizarre twist comes. Suddenly, I see her picture all over Facebook. People are asking for bone marrow donors for her because she has leukemia.
Holy cow. My friends are all talking about her and how she’s the smartest and kindest person they know. I just nod blankly. Three years later, she is on my Facebook feed again. She lost her fight to leukemia. Y’all, I can’t tell you how strange it felt.
This girl antagonized me during my formative years. That hate letter she sent me had propelled me into bad habits. And here were all these people talking about how kind and sweet she was. Maybe she was to them.
Maybe I was so dumb in 6th grade that I deserved all that she did to me. Whatever it may be, this was one of the longest "are you kidding me" experiences of my life. Even the ending left me (still leaves me) with disbelief.
31. Well, There Goes That
I bought a new phone. The guy at the store asked me if I wanted a case, but I didn't have the 50 dollars, so I said no and that I would get it online. I go to the grocery store and drop the brand-new phone in the parking lot. To try to break its fall, I put my foot out.
Instead, I kicked it across the parking lot, right in the way of a car that proceeded to run it over.
32. Safety First
I was crossing a busy street at a crosswalk at night with a green walk sign, but waited a second because a speeding guy was standing on his brakes to stop in time for his red light. I made (non-intimidating) eye contact to ensure he saw me and that it was safe to cross.
As I was nearly across the street, he rolls down his window and shouts, "What are you looking at?!" Unfortunately, I was walking home from the theater with a little vino in my system. My response was cutting. I replied, giggling, "A loser".
He shouted something and drove off when the light changed. About five minutes later, I turn onto my street and am almost home when he suddenly screeches to a halt directly behind me, storms out of his BMW SUV, and charges at me!
But he was so eager to use his martial arts skills, he forgot to set his parking brake, and as we're both rolling around, trying to pummel each other, his SUV starts rolling backward down the hill of the same busy street.
I see this and start laughing maniacally, and the guy gets a scared look in his eye at this. He's still unaware that his SUV is rolling backward down the hill. I'm not letting him go and he's still intent on getting a fist free to punch me.
I'm laughing so hard I can't breathe. He finally breaks free, notices his SUV is no longer there. We both got a couple of head shots on each other, and he runs down the hill after his BMW. I was 38 years old, and despite a US public education and 7+ years living in the Army enlisted barracks, that was the first time I'd ever punched anyone in the face before.
I realized later that while we were wrestling around on the asphalt and I was laughing, I yelled, "This is the greatest night of my life". Ha! Fortunately, his SUV didn't hit anyone else and came to a rest against the busy road's center divide.
33. Justice Is Served?
My best friend fell in love with an Indian guy during college. They dated for two years and graduated together. Planned on a future and everything. Then she found out the mind-numbing truth.
He had a wife back in India. Only on top of that, he had two graduation parties, one to be attended by each of his significant others and a completely different set of family and friends. But wait, there’s more!
He decides he wants to break up with his wife and try to make it in America. So the wife flies to his city to stalk him. She ends up drinking a lot one night and breaking into his apartment to pee on his living room floor while ranting about how perfect they would be for each other.
34. A Locked Room Mystery
One Thursday night, I fell down some stairs. I had huge black-and-blue bruises up and down my leg. Friday morning in school, I'm in the band instrument storage closet. This guy decides it would be funny to turn off the light and close the door.
I took one step toward the door and hit my bruised leg on something. I fell and landed on a guitar. I couldn't get up because my good leg was stuck in the guitar and my bad leg couldn't get past whatever it was I fell over.
Somebody heard me yelling and tried to help. The door was locked (as always). Who had the key? I had the key in my pocket.
35. In This Case, Bad Is Good
My uncle and his wife were married for 20 years. He cheated on her pretty much from the beginning, but she didn’t know about any of them until two women showed up with his two children after he stopped paying them child support. But there’s more.
He stopped paying child support because he bought a boat that he couldn’t afford and didn’t know how to drive because it was wrecked with a few weeks of him getting it. His wife left him, and he begged until she took him back despite constant harassment by his other baby mamas.
They were only back together for maybe a year when another woman showed up on their doorstep with a child older than the previous two extramarital kids. His wife left him again. Oh, I forgot to mention that he and his wife only have one child.
This time, his wife dated some guy during the separation, but my uncle weaseled his way back in and she went back to him again. Some months later, he finds out that she dated someone while they were separated, and he went ballistic.
He called her every name you could think of because she "cheated" on him. He left her, filed for divorce, and sought spousal support from her...he was denied because she got custody of their kid. Everyone in our family loves his wife (super sweet and will do anything for you) and their son. So we got our own kind of revenge.
We kept inviting her to family gatherings where my uncle would show up and act a straight fool, to the point where my other uncles had to carry him away. She stopped coming because she didn’t want to cause trouble, but even then he would, unprovoked, talk about her like she was a dog.
Two years later, my uncle’s now ex-wife got remarried, and most of us went despite my uncle intimidating not to speak to us again if we did. He made good on his warning and didn’t talk to any of us for three years, including the son he had with his ex-wife. And then came the true karma.
Last year, he was beaten up by the spouse of a woman he was having an affair with. And that’s when he finally talked to the family again—but only because he wanted someone to help him get back at the spouse who beat him. When everyone refused, he stopped talking to us again.
Last I heard, he was going to be a dad again.
36. Great Things Come From Small Sources
My parents owned a grocery store, and one day my mom built a bonfire to get rid of some boxes. The bonfire set fire to the shed, which had gas bottles in it that set fire to the hedge, that set fire to a rat nest, that set fire to the rats, that were then burning and screaming until the fire brigade cut them in half with axes.
My dad had to come home from work and clean all that up.
37. A Minute Too Late
A few years ago, in college, me and my buddy decided to go up to my apartment during summer break. Out of boredom, we drank and ate a bunch of pizzas. My roommate had a foreign exchange student sublease his room at the time, but we hung out with him, too (remember this for later).
I'm lactose intolerant and gluten intolerant, so I knew my stomach was about to be absolutely screwed. We woke up and went to get some breakfast. I had eggs and a ton of coffee. Not my greatest idea after the previous night's consumption.
As we're getting into the car on the way home, it hit me. HARD. I had to poop, and I had to poop ASAP. Like, immediately. So I asked him to drive faster. But my friend is a jerk. He took the long way home. I pooped myself not even two minutes into the car ride, but was able to hold most of it in for the sake of my friend's car seat.
But it gets worse. We had just gotten back to my apartment, and I RAN inside to find my roommate's subleaser in the shower. We only had one bathroom, and this poop was not waiting a single second more for anyone or anything.
I grabbed the trash can (that the community office provides for us for free) that DIDN'T HAVE A TRASH BAG IN IT and let it rip in the middle of my kitchen, in front of my friend and everything. I had ZERO time to worry about the angle that I was pooping into the trash can, and this is not your average poop.
This is straight up violent, dairy- and coffee-induced diarrhea. I MISSED THE TRASH CAN AND POOPED ALL OVER THE KITCHEN WALL. We’re still not done. I had NOTHING at my apartment because I had already moved all of my things home. No towels, no paper towel. NOTHING.
Fight or Flight kicked in, and I had to act. My friend literally just said screw it and walked out because of the smell. So I grabbed one of the foreign exchange student's shirts and cleaned it up to the best of my abilities. THEN I HEAR THE SHOWER TURN OFF AND HE'S ABOUT TO WALK OUT OF THE BATHROOM.
The bathroom door opens the second I get the last smudge off of the wall. I BOLT out of my apartment with a trash can filled with my poop, which is also running down the side of the trash can. And of course the beautiful neighbor girl who I had a crush on had to walk out of her apartment that second, too. I KNOW she saw.
I threw the trash can in the dumpster, went behind the dumpster, threw my underwear away, and just got in my car and drove home with soiled shorts.
38. Lights Out
I woke up to pee in the middle of the night. I didn’t turn on the lights so no one would wake up. Then, I slipped and fell in dog pee, and landed on my knees so hard that I passed out from the sudden onset pain. The thud of my fall woke up my husband. He found me passed out, laying halfway in the toilet bowl.
39. Flight Risk
I was newly enlisted and I was flying home cross-country in an Army plane to be in my brother's wedding the next day. We had just left our first stop in Denver and were 10-15 minutes out, flying over the Rocky Mountains, when one of our engines started to smoke.
It was light at first but within minutes got very heavy. The pilot announced that we had a serious emergency and we are going to turn around and "TRY to make it back to Denver". Now, that engine is right next to my seat, so I get to watch it smoke, praying that it doesn't catch fire when...it starts to show fire.
Then, the pilot announces that we should prepare for an emergency landing within minutes. The fire builds when all of a sudden, I can see the airport below and all of the emergency vehicles lining the runway and other aircraft getting the heck out of the way.
By the time we landed, the second engine started to smoke as well. Upon a very hard landing, our plane bounced and the stewardess told us to just jump out of the emergency doors when the plane stopped, and run.
They let all our families know we were okay because it was on the news. I finally got home at three the next morning and my whole family and my uncle were all up waiting for me to arrive. Except for the brother, who was getting married.
That was only my second flight ever and I've flown all over the world since.
40. Getting Swole
I recently went to the ER due to what turned out to be my appendix trying to ruin me. By the time I was admitted and settled in a room, I was in pretty serious pain, and all I wanted was pain medication.
Either enough to relieve the pain or just knock me out. Either was OK with me. Well, first they needed to put an IV in. OK. But my veins are small and wormy, so it takes some skill to get an IV in me. The nurse jabs me five times in the right arm and gives up.
Then, she proceeds to stick me five times in the left arm and gives up again. She says she needs to get someone else to do it. After about 20 more minutes of agony, another nurse shows up and gets an IV in me. And they finally give me blessed medication.
The next day, after my traitorous appendix is in a jar, I'm in my hospital bed and notice that the IV is now sticking straight up out of my arm. I think, "I don't believe that's right". I get a nurse and point out the offending IV needle, and she says something like, "Wow, that's really swollen!"
The angle of the needle had distracted me from realizing that my bicep now looked like it belonged to a weightlifter. I was swole! The needle had apparently punctured through the vein and the saline and antibiotics I was supposed to be getting had been going into my bicep muscle for hours.
But wait, it doesn't get any worse! They fixed it and all was well. They finally found someone who could properly put an IV into me. And honestly, even with those minor issues, I really appreciated how the staff took care of me. They were a great bunch.
41. It’s Electrifying
I used to work with developmentally disabled adults in a group home. One of them, this otherwise super cool guy, who was very sweet, nonverbal but you could tell he liked you, would sometimes just poop his bed. So we’d clean it, clean him up, he’d go about his day and wouldn’t do it again for a couple of weeks.
Except this one day, when he did the unthinkable. He pooped EVERYWHERE. It was ON THE CEILING because he smeared and clapped his hands together while stimming. I go in his room, and I can’t even breathe. It’s awful. And he’s just chilling, in a pile of his own poop.
Another staff person brings him to the shower and I’m doing my best to clean up the room. It was all over his light-switch because he liked to flick it on and off. So I’m cleaning that and I START AN ELECTRICAL FIRE. Too much cleaner on the rag. The entire house had to evacuate.
42. The Cat Came Back
My friend's cat passed right before she was supposed to go on vacation. Because she hadn't figured out what she wanted to do with his body, she just put it in the freezer. About a year later, she decided she'd like to have him skinned and keep his fur.
Her reasoning? He had such beautiful fur, and it would be a waste. So, she took him to a place that does this and picked up the fur and the skinned body (now a year old) a few weeks later. The fur went on to serve as decoration on a cat tree she still had for the deceased cat’s brother (who slept on it a few times). Story over? Nope.
The skinned body went back into the freezer. Fast forward another year and she finally decides she wants to have the body cremated (as most normal people would decide to do right after their pet passes away). She puts the body in a plastic bag and drives to the cremation place.
I went with her, and I will never forget that poor employee's face while listening to the story and getting handed a two-year-old, frozen, skinned cat in a plastic bag. The cat is now at rest but the memory of his long way to the afterlife will forever haunt my dreams.
43. Point A To Point B Is Hard Sometimes
I crashed my car on the way to the airport for vacation. I had a nice vacation, sure, but the whole time, I was dreading dealing with the situation when we got back. But then, I lost my phone in between booking the (replacement) rental car and picking it up.
I have a tracker on my phone, so I took my husband's phone and was watching my phone bounce all around the rental car place. It's a massive concrete structure so the signal was all wonky. My heart absolutely sank when I saw it driving.
Thankfully, someone turned it in eventually.
44. Professor Google Isn’t Always Right
I was a TA for the undergraduate physics labs at my university for the past three years, and eventually I basically became pseudo-primary instructor of my lab group. The students had 28 lab problems over the semester (two a week) that they would do with their lab partners in lab.
These are very similar to the test questions, so it’s important that they do them but it’s not the end of the world if they screw one or two of them up; we drop the lowest two anyways. But then quarantine hit, and they had to do these solo.
We expected some grades to drop because group work is vital, but we were going to be a bit more lenient on them about it. But that’s where it all goes downhill. About three or four weeks into it, the second problem solving for the week involved finding the magnetic field generated by a custom solenoid.
They were to build a custom solenoid by using some length of copper wire, and they would then wrap it around a soda can. They were all given the SAME data to work with. Obviously, there would be some disparity because some students may choose a skinny Red Bull can over a thicker Coke can for instance, but we had a range of values we would accept.
But there was a problem. About a third of the 400-student class had numbers that were totally out of left field and didn’t make any sense, yet they were all very, very close to one another. This was suspicious to the graders and primary instructors, so we looked into it.
For these students, instead of using one meter (three feet) of wire and a six-centimeter (2.5 inch) diameter soda can, they instead used about half a meter (1.5 feet) of wire and a 20-centimeter (eight inch) diameter can instead. One could argue that using an entire meter of wire is excessive but they all used half a meter (1.5 feet) instead, which made it even more suspicious.
One of the graders was savvy in the ways of the youth, and decided to plug the problem prompt into Google and see what popped up. The first result? The problem prompt was on Chegg. And word for word, the same numbers were used in the problem itself.
Now for the uninitiated, Chegg is a textbook and solution website that’s pay to access for the most part. If the textbook is on the website, with a pretty high certainty you can find answers and solutions to problems that are in the textbook. There’s also some tutoring services as well.
You can even submit custom questions and sometimes people will answer. I should stress that the website claims to be a homework helping site rather than a website for cheating, but that doesn’t fly well with professors.
Further examination showed that most of these students copied the solution on Chegg word for word and didn’t put much thought into it, including the odd 20-centimter (eight inch) diameter can. For this, they immediately received zeros on the assignment if their work was identical.
That’s just over 100 students on one assignment that should take maybe 30 minutes to an hour. But it gets worse. Worse for them but better for comedy, of course. Chegg has a policy where they will provide logs of the URL if asked by the university.
When the primary instructors and director of labs discovered the mischievous deeds of the students, they immediately emailed reps at Chegg to ask for data logs. Within an hour, they responded. Another thing with Chegg: You need a university-affiliated email to be able to login.
So now, the faculty has a list of about 95% of the 100-odd students’ university-affiliated emails to confirm exactly who cheated. For this, they are given a mark on their permanent academic records.
That’s the end of the legality of the situation. However. It. Gets. Worse. I personally checked the solution posted before Chegg took it down, and there were glaring mathematical and logical errors in the solution.
Not only did they use wrong lengths, but some of the basic algebra was completely wrong. Numbers coming out of nowhere with no context, multiplication instead of division to cancel out variables, the lot.
In the end, the students were marked down but they weren’t recommended for academic dishonesty council as it was only one assignment that was admittedly more difficult. Still, it was hilarious to witness all this unravel.
45. Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop
Last December 26th, my phone rang early in the morning. It was horrible news. My dad had passed unexpectedly in the night sometime. One day after Christmas and the day before his birthday. I tried to help my mom get through all the paperwork and things that comes after a spouse passes.
I made sure she had groceries and company multiple times a week. I lived in a different town from my mom, so I was traveling a lot between towns. Six weeks after my father passed, my mom fell ill. I brought her to the hospital early one Wednesday morning, had her flown out to a bigger hospital later that afternoon.
She passed that Saturday. Apparently, she had an aggressive form of cancer and any symptoms she must have been feeling, we attributed to grief. But wait, there’s more. The night of my mom’s funeral, which I planned and made arrangements for, my horrible sister drank too much and went bananas.
She kept me up all night when I was already physically and emotionally exhausted. The few days that her and her husband were in town, they basically just took what they wanted and accused me of stealing things. Not to my face but to family friends.
I was left to clear, clean, and get the house ready for sale by myself. My mother had so many things from deceased family members that she hadn’t had time to go through, sort, and donate yet, so I did by myself. But it doesn't end there...
Six weeks after my mother passed, while I was working on her house, I miscarried. In the last few weeks, I found out that I have fibroids and potential cancer in my uterus/cervix, so I have a whole other path of uncertainty to walk down in the coming months.
46. But…How?
I was widowed. 30 days later, my sister was also widowed, and I lost my brother-in-law of 30 years. Three weeks later, my dad went missing, as he had diagnosed dementia, and we didn't find him for two days. When we did, he was almost 1,000 miles away in another state.
47. Grin And Bear It
Friends of mine were getting married. There were planning a huge, fancy wedding in the major city where they lived. They both had large families and many friends. About a month before the wedding, the groom's mother has a massive heart attack.
Miraculously, she somehow survives, but it seems unlikely she'll be able to attend the wedding because it was being held about 1000 miles away from Mom's home. However, she continues to improve and her doctor determines that she will be healthy enough to travel to the wedding by car.
So, the groom's parents start heading out about three days before the wedding so they can take the trip slowly and get to the major city the day before the wedding. Mom's tired, but doing ok. She decides to skip out on the rehearsal dinner so that she can conserve her energy for the wedding and reception.
Mom wakes up the next day, gets dressed, gets her hair and nails done, looks gorgeous. Her husband drives her to the church and gets her settled in the front pew. The wedding is to start in about 15 minutes. Just as the bride is getting ready to walk down the aisle, Mom collapses in the church.
An ambulance is called. Groom helps get Mom into the ambulance, Dad goes with Mom to the hospital with the groom's blessing. The wedding goes on as scheduled about 30 minutes after the initial start time because there are two other weddings scheduled at the church that particular day.
The wedding ceremony is beautiful. Then, there was a gorgeous reception nearby just afterward. Reception is beautiful, and then there was an afterparty that evening, also a ton of fun. But the whole time, there was something horrific we didn’t know. We find out the next day that the groom's mother had passed in the church and was a goner by the time the ambulance arrived.
They made a show of trying to revive her, but she was gone. The groom KNEW THIS but didn't want to ruin his bride's wedding day, so, though he had just watched his mother PASS, he plastered a smile on his face and got through the day.
He just told the bride they were taking his mom to the hospital to stabilize her. He didn't tell her what actually happened until the next day. The whole thing was so crazy, but, despite all of it, they're still married 25 years later and have three gorgeous kids, so while the wedding was kind of a disaster, the marriage most definitely worked.
48. Done And Dusted
This happened about ten years ago. My boyfriend called me in the morning and dumped me over the phone. I was really upset and forgot to finish the laundry I’d started, so I had to go into work out of dress code.
Of course, that would be the day our district manager was visiting and I got written up on the spot even though it was the first time I’d ever been out of dress code. I spent my break crying because the universe was just taking a dump on me. I never could have expected what was coming.
When I got home that evening, I had a notice of eviction taped to my door because we had apparently been illegally sub-letting the apartment and had no clue. I didn’t even cry because at that point, it was just, "Yup. That seems about right for today".
49. You Get What You Pay For
I had to remove my wisdom tooth in a really cheap dental clinic. It was the worst mistake of my life. The dentist had an eye problem, and she removed the tooth beside the one she was supposed to. She also did it with manual equipment, so removing one tooth took almost an hour.
As soon as she realized her mistake, she then began on my real wisdom tooth. But as soon as she started working on it, the anesthesia began to wear off.
50. Man Versus Beasts
I was stationed in Japan for three out of the six years I was in the Navy. During that time, I leased a Japanese house, and the shower was its own room—full walk-in with a tub, bench, etc. It was amazing. So, I stumble into the shower one morning, still half asleep.
Out of my peripherals, I see a black flash from behind me and hear a thud. I look into the tub and there is a huntsman spider the size of my hand staring back at me. Oh, my God. My best guess is it was on the wall behind me and got scared when I walked in.
I go into attack mode immediately. I grab the shower head, which was on a hose, and take aim, looking to drown this thing in the tub drain. But as soon as I turned the water on, it jumped out of the tub onto the wall and ran into the window sill.
My tactic then became opening the window fast and pinching it in the sill. As soon as I touched the glass, it jumped out onto the wall again and ran out the shower door. Now I'm cornered in the shower peering out into the "powder room" to see the huntsman on the cabinet door, waiting for me.
I run to the front door of the house and grab a flip flop, come back to the powder room and wing the flip flop at the spider. I smacked it. It runs out of the bathroom and underneath the stairs, but much slower than it was moving prior.
I’m feeling confident that spider is cornered under the stairs. I grab a can of bug spray and move in to finish it. Looking closely under the stairs (it was a hollow staircase where you could see through the gaps between steps) I see a black "tail" curled over the back lip of one of the stairs and assume it's the spider hiding on the back of the step.
I hit it with the spray…and find out this is a freaking enormous centipede. It dropped off the back of the stair and started charging at me. I immediately peed a little. The front half of its body was up off the floor and its mouth was visibly biting.
It backed me up all the way to the front door as I emptied the entire can of bug spray on it. By the time we got to the door, it was obviously overcome by the chemicals and just writhing around, so I grabbed the other flip flop and smashed it.
Didn't work. I hit it a few times and it would not go, so I turned the flip flop on its edge and used it like a saw to cut the thing in half. Then I remembered the spider. It was still under the stairs, so I blew under there and it ran out, wounded, and I smashed it with the flip flop.
Then I screamed at the top of my lungs for 30 seconds. The whole battle took probably three minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. When I got to work, I was frazzled enough for my co-workers to notice. I can't tell if it was the worst morning of my life or my biggest triumph, but man won that day.
Sources: Reddit,
