“I Don't Think She Recognized Me”: 53 People Share What Happened When They Saw Their Bullies Again

Actually, one of the kids who used to pick on me worst in grade school ended up becoming one of my best friends after several years of non-contact.

The first meeting after years, in a bar, went something like this.

Him: "Yeah,... sorry about that. Kind of a [jerk] move on my part."

Me: "Kids are [jerks]. It happens."

Him: "Cool. Let's drink."

Had another bully, incidentally, send a random Facebook message out-of-the-blue one day apologizing for his behaviour, owing to some kind of karmic debt he felt he owed.

Side-note: I don't expect this story to go over particularly well, on account of everyone seems to want to hear a "look who came out ahead in the end" narrative, but I think my own is a nice story, and a reminder that at least some of those kids who picked on you in school were as young and stupid and confused as you were. Truth be told, my youth was pretty miserable. But in retrospect, I wouldn't have changed much, because I think it shaped who I am. And, in the end, I'm pretty happy with who I am.

One of my bullies from grade school (oh, they were numerous) became my step brother. His dad married my mom and I "met" him for the first time at the wedding. Pretty weird to see your bully for the first time in ten year in a church and wearing the same tux as you. We shook hands and didn't say anything about it because we were there for the family.

Then, it was such a good time; and our two families melded together well. I started to get his history: his mother [passed away] when he was very young and he was raised mostly by his father. I started to understand him as the person behind the childhood bully... and it made sense.

Bullies are people, too. And somebody's brother.

I picked on a kid for a while in 8th grade (our middle school was 6-8 so I guess I was finally on the top of the s**t pile for once). I felt terrible about it later on in life.

I ran into that kid about 10 years later at a bar. He was still nerdy and awkward. I bought him a drink, said "Yeah, I was a [jerk] back then", and we had a good evening of it all. Now he's one of my closest friends and he even let me know he was going to ask his GF to marry him before anyone else knew.

TLDR; It's never too late to make things right.

I used to get picked on and beat up by the same kid all the time when I was younger. I was overweight, and he treated me like a punching bag. Years later, I went to college and lost around 50 pounds. I started taking MMA classes to continue my journey towards not being a butterball.

Finally, I moved back home after I graduated. I joined a new MMA gym. My old bully was there to greet me, and hadn't changed a bit. As soon as I walked in he said "Wow, so after all these years you've finally come to learn to defend yourself." He was still a total [jerk]. Fortunately, he didn't know that I'd spent a few years doing Ju Jitsu. At the end of class, when it was time for sparring, the teacher let two people at a time go and he would say what they did right and wrong at the end.

The bully asked if he could take me to the center. The teacher hesitated, but I told him I didn't mind. I then proceeded to take the bully's back and choke him out three times to the point of tapping in ten minutes. He got up quietly, got his gear, and never came back.

The crowning achievement of my post-college life.

I had one funny moment where me and my then GF walked into In N Out to grab a burger and standing behind the cash register was the guy who used to beat me up and steal my pogs in Jr high (i know, right?). First thing out of his mouth was "Heh Heh, remember when I beat you up in class that one time?", I fake laughed and replied "Yeah totally. Remember that one time I walked into IN n Out 10 years later and you were flipping burgers...HILARIOUS!" I'm pretty sure he wanted to hit me again. Granted I only made fun of him because he was behind the register. If he were making my food - no way.

I met my old bully at my 10 year high-school reunion. The early puberty advantage he had on me in 6th grade had clearly run its course as I was a good 6 inches taller than him. He was divorced, sporting a goatee, had a well denied beer belly and spent the night bragging about his boat repair business.

Just seeing his pathetic-ness was reward enough for me.

In middle school there was this kid who used to bully me. At one point I got a call from him asking me for homework help, at 10pm at night or some such hour (bed time for middle school me). I told him no. He calls me back, not 2 minutes later, saying his mom wants to speak to me. She asked me why I wouldn't help him. I told her that she wouldn't have helped him either if he treated her like he treated me in school. She said thanks and hung up the phone. I never had problems with him again.

This happened to me. In elementary school, this kid punched me in the chest. It was like 2nd grade, but I never forgot it. Apparently, he didn't either.

Around highschool age (16 or so), I ran into him at a local minor league game. As soon as I saw him, I had a flashback to that moment. I said hey to him, asked how he had been, and then HE says "Do you remember that time I punched you in Ms. Woody's class?". I replied "Yeah, actually. I do." Then he blew my mind with "That was a [terrible] thing of me to do, and I want you to punch me back right now. I deserve it."

Now, adult me would have said no and just accepted the apology. But, 16 year old me thought it sounded like an excellent idea. I agreed and punched him square in the chest. It hurt him a bit.

I immediately felt like a huge [jerk]. Like, all of a sudden, I was the bully. I was down to the level he was back in 2nd grade. With that one punch, he became the bigger man. I immediately apologized to him. He accepted and we went on our separate ways.

I really think I learned a couple of life lessons in that one moment. People grow up and revenge isn't always sweet.

I had a "friend' in Jr High who joined the football team in High School and turned into the most smug try-hard jock piece of [work] in the world. Our little high school clique couldn't stand [him], so we stopped hanging out with him. In one of my classes the topic of "regrets" came up, and I jokingly said that my biggest regret from Jr High was befriending Mike. (fake name) Of course the comment made its way back to him and he was furious.

Mike was a complete psycho; in Jr High I witnessed him turn a normal kid into a near-mute after a savage locker-room beating. He was the last guy you wanted on your bad side.

The ensuing 2 weeks were the worst of my life - daily confrontations, rumors being spread about me and my then-girlfriend, and worst of all none of my friends would back me up. (I don't blame them either, as I said before you didn't want to get mixed up with this lunatic) The entire [chaos] ended with him smacking a hamburger in my face in the lunch room in front of 600+ students. School ended a few days later, and the following year he enrolled at another school.

Fast forward 5 years, I see him at a bar and he's drunk, curled up in a ball in the bathroom crying his eyes out. Turns out he had just lost his scholarship and been expelled from university a few days earlier for [attacking] a fellow football player trying-out for the same position as him. After this, his first girlfriend ever dumped him, kicked him out of her apartment and started [sleeping with] some other dude almost immediately. He spent the entire night in the bar crying, trying to call her as she was [sleeping with] some other dude.

...so it's not exactly me getting revenge on the guy, but karma definitely caught up with him.

A kid 2 years older used to pick on me all the time growing up, and was always bigger than me. Went with him to school from Kindergarten through highschool. I guess we got along at times, but for the most part he was a bully.

Years later, in first-year college, we had a house party and he showed up, which I was none to happy about. I knew the [jerk] would steal something. Next day, I couldn't find my jacket, and I knew he'd taken it. The jacket was special to me, because my girlfriend at the time (now wife) had bought it for me.

While I was with a friend, I saw him in the mall a couple weeks later and he was wearing it. I guess he hadn't realized that in the time since elementary school, I had actually become a pretty big guy (around 6'0, and 180lbs or so) while he was hovering around 5'6 and maybe 160lbs. I walked right up to him, and told him bluntly "give me my jacket..." He just stared at me and tried to blow it off by saying something like "this is mine, I bought this" (small town in backwoods Canada, and it was Old Navy brand. There isn't an Old Navy within 300 miles of there). I told him once more, "give it to me, now." He slowly took it off, and handed it over to me. As he did, I said "yeah, that's right", which he uncomfortably chuckled at. Then I just walked away.

Best part, his girlfriend was standing there the entire time just watching.

Let just say I am the product of the Ugly Duckling syndrome. I was awful, but grew up into an attractive woman. A boy in highschool who I had a crush on used to pick on me, tease me, and make me feel awful. Flash forward to present day (7 years later), and I find him applying for a job at my employer. He was shocked to see me, thats for sure. We chatted it up, had a nice conversation and I learned that he was applying for a minimum wage job to make ends meet. He asks to take me out later that afternoon, and I simply said, "No thank you, I am taken. You haven't apologized for bullying me in highschool either, you know." And I smiled sweetly and left. The hiring manager called me later and asked what that was all about, because she was in earshot. I told her, "No hard feelings."

He was hired on.

Yeah, and I was a real [jerk] about it. I don't really feel that good about it. He was the prototypical bully: red hair, freckles, his father was the football coach and he raced cars on weekends. I detested the guy.

I ran into him in a really cool neighborhood bar, our bar, in Austin when I was going to UT; he was in town visiting from A&M. I was there with about 25 friends and he was there alone and seeming very quiet and subdued compared to his previous persona. I went over, said hi and sat down uninvited. I proceeded to buy him drinks and shots getting him drunk and all the while shouting to no one in particular but the entire bar in general," Hey, EVERYBODY!!! THIS IS THE GUY THAT USED TO BE OUR NEIGHBORHOOD BULLY!!! ISN'T THAT GREAT!!! HE USED TO TERRORIZE US AND KICK [US]!!!" Then addressing him,"BOY, YOU SURE WERE A [JERK]! HOW THE HELL ARE YA, MAN? IMAGINE YOU AND ME SITTING HERE DRINKING AFTER ALL THAT BAD BLOOD!!!"

On and on and on I went. Interminably using his childhood dominance as a way to dominate him through humiliation in, by definition only, adulthood (I was 20 years old). My strategy worked. He slunk out of there feeling awful and, though I probably deserved it, not even dreaming of fighting me because I was their with a platoon of mentally deranged friends not unlike me.

Mainly, though, he didn't want to fight because life had taken him down roads I was unaware of until several years later at a Christmas party where I ran into his mother and his sister with whom I used to play "doctor". I found out his father was a very violent man, a hard liquor drinker and a wife beater. We lived in a higher than middle class neighborhood considered pretty nice and nobody knew except the closest neighbors what kind of hell these people lived through. Nobody took more [harassment] from the father than the bully, though. I remember playing catch with a football one time and his father was really impressed by the fact that I had really great hands. He recruited me on the spot for his team of 5th graders all the while ridiculing his own son in MY presence chastising him for not having my ability with catching a ball.

Cal was his name and he didn't go, though he WAS invited, to the neighborhood Christmas party. I was told he was a very kind, gentle man and an extremely devoted father, truly a good person... and he didn't drink anymore at all. I feel so bad that I couldn't see what in retrospect was so plain to see. I feel terrible for his suffering, but I'm glad he's found some peace. I wish him well.

I ran into my shcool's bully a few years after high school. In high school he was a total [jerk]. Spit on me, punched me a few times, definitely not a nice person to be around.

Five or six years later I ran into him working at a 7-11. He said hi, asked me what I was up to these days. I told him I was an artist for LucasArts, working on Star Wars games (which was true). He said

"oh, I ... work here."

I was really popular early on in school until one day when this girl went around to all of my friends telling them that I "hated them". Apparently that was enough to warrant 8 years of being teased and ignored by a class of only 70 something kids. At that point I was pretty badly teased. The worst thing that these kids tried to do to me (with this girl as their leader) was tell their parents that my dad [hurt] me, which created a whirlwind of police drama for my family for no good reason.

Anyway, I go to church once a year for the sake of my grandma and I guess this girl just happened to be there. She came up to me and apologized. She said she drove all of those people against me because at the time, everybody ignored her and she was jealous of my looks and popularity. I was mostly just astounded that anybody would even care at that age!

Anyway, I wish I could say I was vindictive and did something really cool, but I didn't. I never really got my "revenge". We exchanged facebooks and it sounds like she is having a pretty hard life as it is. Despite the fact that I got the brunt of some really bad teasing, I sort of feel bad for ex bullies. I think people underestimate how [bad] it feels knowing you have caused somebody pain.

In the second grade, while in the bathroom, I was pinned down onto the bathroom floor by the school bully and told to kiss the floor. I did, and he immediately let go of me. Once he had left, I ran to my teacher -- this massive, mean woman who had a wart on her nose like a witch -- and told her what happened. She went and got him from his class, took him into her room, spoke to him a very long time, and then had him come out and apologize to me.

I didn't see him again until the 5th grade, when he was suddenly *very* nice to me and acted as if nothing had happened at all. I'm forgiving to a fault, so I let his obnoxious behavior from three years previous slide.

It wasn't until later that I learned that Mrs. Wartnose had basically just pointed out to him that I was way bigger than him (not sure how tall I was then but I'm 6' 10" and 325 lbs now) and that if he kept messing with me, I'd eventually figure out that I had a significant height/bulk/reach advantage and beat the s**t out of him. Scared him off well enough. No idea what he's doing nowadays but I think I remember hearing that he kept getting into trouble all throughout high school.

In middle school I had a kid a grade older than me harass me all the time in one of my classes. He made me dread going to that class, and I was still young enough to keep going. My senior year of high school I get a job at the local dinner theatre, and it just happened that he worked as a waiter there as well. All of my memories of him trying to grab my junk and demean me in front of the other kids in our class came welling up. I avoided him the first two weeks until finally he confronts me and says "Hi, I'm Jerimiah, I don't think we've met yet". I tell him are you kidding me? You made my life a living hell for a full year. He gets this look of sincere pain on his face and says "I am so sorry man. I was a total jerk at that age and I fully apologize, what can I do to make it better?" We worked together for about a year and got along great, we still see each other from time to time to. So I'd say it went pretty well!

When I was a teenager, someone stole a camp stove and lantern from our garage. For various reasons, I knew it pretty well had to have been one of my 'friends'. We used to secretly hang out there and drink. I later overheard a comment from someone that confirmed that it was him who was the thief, but because he was a bit of a bully, I was afraid to confront him.

Fast forward... post college, I had a very good job at a desirable employer. I ran into the thief at the wedding of a mutual acquaintance. In the course of small talk I mentioned where I was working and he said that he was interviewing for a job there the next week. I told him that he should be sure to mention that he knew me in the interview. I already knew that he was under-qualified for the job and would not get hired. When I next saw him at a tailgate party about a month later, he told me that he was not hired. I put on an evil smirk and said.. "I guess you regret stealing my camp stove now" and walked away.

In reality, I did nothing to interfere with his job application, but he doesn't know that. Revenge is just as sweet even when you don't actually do anything.

In middle school, I was the quiet fat kid. This taught me that middle-school kids are evil in every way. Anyways, so this one stuck-up cheerleader did the whole mean girl routine almost daily, embarrassing me and my few friends at every chance she got. This built up so much that I HATED her. She was #1 on my hit-list that I'd never actually go through with, obviously.

Anyways, fast forward 10 years later. I've totally grown out of it. I'm at an average weight, look, etc. Not bad looking at all, but not a model either. I also got over every bit of my shyness in HS/college. I'm walking out of my dentist appointment and guess who is sitting there at the reception desk.

I don't think she recognized me because I looked so different, but I recognized her... even though she had put on at least 100 pounds. I'm not kidding, she was HUGE, just sitting there eating a large bag of Doritos's (while working no less). After I paid and was leaving, I said "I love karma, don't you?" She looked at me all puzzled. She may or may not have figured it out later, but all I know is that at the time she didn't seem to recognize me or my name, or at least didn't show it.

I was an elementary school bully.. I was the biggest kid in class and a complete jerk up til the 6th grade;

my jr-high years sucked, for some reason i was now the smallest kid and paid dearly for my years of [harassment]. i got beat up several times, and was once hooked to the flagpole by my UNDERWEAR and dragged up approximately 15 feet before the principal came out and ran the other kids off. lesson learned, i bled. i deserved it. changed me.

I was the bully, and the guy I bullied is one of the strongest, most self-confident guys I know, and holds no ill will towards me. In fact, he's one of my best friends now. He is an amazing dude, and I am a [jerk].