“Karma”: 30 People Open Up About What Happened To Their Bullies

Two boys in my eighth grade class made my life a living hell. 20 years later I went to my reunion and one of them them was there. He came up to me and told me he had flown in from California to apologize to me. I was never so happy in my life.

Our class bully, Tim, was a real thug. Once Tim demanded my brother’s lunch money, waited until his hand was deep in his pocket, and then punched him when he couldn’t raise his arm to block the punch. At my 10 year reunion another classmate turned out to be working as a guard at our state’s maximum security prison. He told us, “Tim sends his regards but won’t be able to attend reunions for the next 20 years.”

When I first started High School, I had a guy that rode the bus with me every day, and made my life a living hell. His name was David R-. He was 18 years old and still in the tenth grade. He was bigger than me, and cussed like a sailor. He was mean and vicious, and he absolutely scared me to death. I have vivid memories of him sitting behind me on the bus, slapping me in the back of the head as we rode home from school. It happened almost every day. This was 27 years ago and, back then, bullying was just a "common thing." It was something you had to deal with. You had to learn to stand up for yourself and "be a man". I would complain to the bus driver and the principal. Mr. Dave would get a good scolding, but he was right back at it the next day.

Well, after six months of this B/S, I'd finally had enough. I just snapped one day. I turned around and dove over the seat, and started pounding on him. Everyone went crazy. The driver slammed on the brakes, and brought the bus to a stop.

I was getting my tail kicked by this guy. He was bigger, faster and stronger, and the only thing I had on my side, was rage. We were up against the emergency exit, slugging it out, when, all of a sudden, the door just popped open, and we went tumbling into the street.

When we hit the pavement, Mr. Dave had his arm twisted behind his back. He landed on it, and I heard it snap like a piece of kindling. He pushed me off of him, and got up with a bone jutting out of his wrist. He was screaming his head off, and blood was pouring onto the asphalt.

Maybe I should have backed off at that point, but this guy had made my life hell for several months, and I wanted revenge. I twisted his broken arm behind his back, and took him down on the ground where I proceeded to beat the living daylights out of him. There were several cars that had stopped by this time, and it took two grown men to pull me off of him. It was the worst fight I'd ever had in my life, and it remains so to this day. My nose was busted and I had a black eye. Mr. Dave had a broken arm, a busted lip, two missing teeth, and a huge laceration across his forehead. They actually called an ambulance for him.

Both of us were suspended. Dave's mother contacted my dad a few days later, and threatened to sue us. She wanted us to pay for Dave's medical bills. However, I had a bus full of people, who absolutely hated Dave, and all of them were telling the principal about my six months of hell, and insisting that Dave had started the fight.

I was suspended for two weeks. I also got a month of detention, and couldn't ride the bus for the rest of the year, but that was the end of my punishment. As far as I know, Dave never returned to school at all. I didn't see him again for 15 years.

Then, right around 2005, I moved from Mississippi back to my hometown in Georgia. One day as I was walking out of a convenience store, I spotted my old high school bully picking up aluminum cans along the side of the road.

It totally shocked me, and I wasn't absolutely sure that it was really him. After all, it had been 15 years. Still, I was PRETTY sure. So, I strolled over to the edge of the parking lot for a better look. Just as I walked up, he turned to stare at me, and I recognized him beyond a shadow of doubt. I'm not very good with names, but I rarely forget a face.

He looked terrible. His hair was long. He hadn't shaved in several days. His clothes were torn and ragged, and he smelled like a wet dog. He was very thin and dirty, and half of his teeth appeared to be missing. He also had an old duffle bag slung across his shoulder, and I got the distinct impression that he was homeless.

"I'm sorry, you're David R-, aren't you?" I asked.
His eyes brightened for a moment, and he looked at me long and hard before responding. "Yeah, who are you?"

My first impulse was to tell him. I wanted to remind him of all those days that he had harassed the hell out of me, and then ask him if he remembered our little brawl and his trip to the hospital. Then I wanted to let him know how much money I had made the year before, and tell him all about the new job I had just started down in Atlanta. Instead, I just stood there, staring at him.

"I think we might have gone to school together," I replied.
His eyes narrowed again, and he really studied my face. Still, I don't think he had a clue who I was. Apparently, I had changed a lot in 15 years.

"What's your name?" He finally asked.
I shook my head. "Not important", I replied. I dug in my wallet, and pulled out a ten dollar bill. I held it out to him, and he took it. I said, "God bless", and then slowly walked away.

The only thing I felt for him, was pity.

Well since a lot has happened since then I felt it was best to go anonymous. Also it is long so my apologies.

It started in kindergarten. My bully, every single school day he saw me, would do something to me. It continued everyday until one day in the 6th grade. What happened? Well the week before school started my appendix burst. I was in the hospital that week and the week after I stayed home from school. So on the second day back during “recess” I asked if it was ok to go outside. I explained that I was tired of being inside all the time and I just wanted some fresh air.

The principal gave me permission, so after lunch I went outside with everybody else. I decided to stay out of the way and stay near one of the teachers. Well some of the students caused a bit of a problem and the teacher walked over to take care of it. Well I decided to wait where I was because I had spotted the bully in that group. What I didn't know was that he had them start the distraction to get to me. Apparently the entire summer plus the extra week I was home put him in a mood to get me.

Well he thought it would be funny to hit me in the gut. What he didn't realize was that unlike most appendectomies my incision wasn't on the right side. It was a few inches below my belly button.

So he hit me and I went down hard and in extreme pain. Now one thing that I had to do was before lunch, I had to change the bandage. I would go to the nurse’s office and do this myself, but the nurse knew where the incision was.

Well the hit caused that area to start bleeding, pretty badly. The nurse felt it best to call an ambulance and I was off to the hospital for a second time in as many weeks.

They were able to stop the bleeding and patch me up again but for me it was the last straw with this guy. My parents finally said screw it and pressed charges. So on the date he was being tried I went to court. The judge was going to go easy on him until he saw the bandage. Then the bully decided he wanted to have his say.

The bully blamed me for everything and he was just “goofing around” and that he didn't know I had a surgery. Everybody else knew but not him. The judge found him guilty and then asked me if I wanted to make a statement before he was sentenced. I nodded and stood. I found the statement that I had written not too long ago so I figure I will put down what I said.

“Since the first week we met in kindergarten, he has made my life a living hell. Imagine being 11 years old, laying in a hospital bed for a week. You get to come home to another bed, for one more week. Then you get to go to school but you are indoors in the office while your classmates go outside. You ask to go outside for some fresh air. You get that chance. Then your bully sends you back to the hospital for another week. You come back and you get punished for getting hit. He gets away with it. When will this horror stop for me? Is it when I am dead? I ask that his punishment is long enough that I can finally be left alone for a bit.”

The judge decided to sentence him to 2 years in juvenile hall. So I see him again when we are in the eighth grade. He left me alone. Fast forward a few years later and my sister calls me. Apparently he was trying to find me. Well he didn't know I came out as transgender. So I ask my sister what he wanted and she replied that he wanted to apologize.

So I decided to meet him at our local coffee shop one afternoon. I saw him but he didn't recognize me. I walked over to him and said his name. He looked at me for a second and then some recognition came. We sat and talked and he did apologize. Then he shocked me by thanking me. He thanked me for standing up in court and telling the judge how I felt. It made him feel guilty and he decided while he was in juvie to change his ways.

I did not realize that after he came back he stopped other people from bullying me. He did this all the way through high school. Now we are actually friends and he is one of my biggest supporter

I had a school bully who used to bully and intimidate me in front of girls, he was much taller and stronger than me. Complaining to the teachers did not help.

I planned to take him on my own, and once when he was unaware, I pushed him down the stairs. He went rolling down like 15 stairs, and I followed behind him and kicked him in his stomach and on his face. One teacher broke up the fight, and separated me from him. The teachers scolded me, but I was too angry to hear her rant , I was totally unaffected by what the teacher was saying. Ultimately, the teachers punished me and called me a shameless fellow.

Next day, our parents were called in school in the principal's office. The principal was out somewhere, and both the fathers started discussing what had happened. I had already told my father everything.

To my and my father's surprise, the bulleys father apologized to my dad for his sons behavior, my father was surprised and said that they are kids fights happen, you don't need to apologize. The bullet's father then went down on one knee and apologized to me for his son's behavior. He also made his son apologize to me.

Just then the principal came and started complaining to my father about my behavior. The bulleys father intervened, said his son deserved worse and he has no complaints. Basically everyone left the principal's office things sorted out.

But from the next day, the behavior of the bully changed, not only towards me but towards everyone in the class. He became more humble, more studious. He also used to break up fights, but never raised his hands on anyone except to defend. Basically later he got a lot of friends. We both also became friends and are still friends 25 years later.

I later learned that his father is a very rich industrialist's owning 5 factories. He easily had the clout to teach me a lesson, he admonished and disciplined his son instead. Today my friend looks after his father's business and has clients in many countries, he is a successful industrialist.

In my case it wasn't the school bully but the mean girls. There's nothing nastier than an entitled teenager.

Many years later I'm on my way back to the office after lunch. I had lost a lot of weight and my hair is still mostly black despite my age. I've been told many times that I look much younger than my years.

There was a woman getting out of her car in the parking lot across from my office. She was one of the mean girls at my high school. She hadn't aged well and had become very large. Despite this, I recognised her and I could tell by the look on her face that she also recognised me.

I was having a good hair day and enjoying the weather. I smiled, waved and continued on my way.

Keep in mind that all this happened in the early 1970’s in rural Georgia, where a valid excuse for vehicular homicide was, “Well, yeah, I ran over him, but you see, Your Honor, I was drunk at the time.” That is, assuming you knew the judge.

While in high school, there was a guy in the grade ahead of mine who wasn’t ONLY a bully on campus. He was one of the terrors of the county. (His father - in prison at the time - had been of the same mindset a generation earlier, and the apple fell pretty damn close to the tree.) He picked on me, but he was an equal-opportunity bully. We all gave him a wide berth. He had a small posse of hangers-on who would aid in identifying victims, or in the actual beatings.

This kid was huge. Around 6′2″, and a WALL of muscle; he worked out constantly and had some training in karate (as if he needed it). He put two guys I knew in the hospital and got three girls pregnant. Basically a badass tornado who delighted in the pain of others. How he stayed out of jail has always been a mystery to me.

He always had money. The rumor (one of them) was that his father had robbed a bank, and the kid had access to the loot. I have no hard evidence either way, but he had lots of cash, and didn’t have a job. I could do the math.

In any case, he drove a nice Mustang. He drove it really, really fast, around twisting rural roads.

One day a friend of mine came up to me in school. He had this incredulous grin on his face as he asked me, “Did you hear about [bully]?”

As usual when his name came up, I hunched and got a chill. “No. What about him?”

“He wrapped his car around a tree last night.”

“… And?”

“He’s dead.”

The incredulous grin came to rest on my face as well. The thought of not being forced to watch my back all the time … the thought of being able to dress out for PE without picking up a new bruise … the thought of never, ever seeing his smug smirk looming over me, ever again, ever …

Word spread quickly. It was as if the entire school drew a relieved breath.

None of us went to the funeral. Not a single classmate. I regret nothing.

My elementary bully was one of those girls who insisted she was cute, popular, and the best at everything, so everyone else should go to hell. I mean, she would try to suck me into all these sorts of contests that were so pointless and meaningless because it would be me against her and her two best friends. Singing contest? Her friends vote for her. Beauty contest? Her friends vote for her. In other words, stupid stuff that people like me should never be subjected to. It was humiliating for me, especially since I didn’t want any part of it, and on top of that it hurt my feelings all the time because they had zero respect for me whatsoever.

Fast forward ten years.

I received a call just a couple months ago from her. I had no clue who she was (I still don’t quite remember her or all the atrocities she forced on me), but she knew me. She even introduced herself as the girl who bullied me constantly. Turns out, she has no friends, she dropped out of high school, and has no future to look forward to. She said she needed a friend because her friends had ditched her, and she was so ruthless to everyone else in school that no one wanted to even be around her. So, without even apologizing for anything she did as a child, she asked if we could get together sometime for coffee or lunch and we could chat and catch up. I told her I’d think about it, and hung up. I have not, and will not, call her back.

I might be rude for doing so, but she really f**ked things up as a kid. She’s learning now just what kind of hellish fury she unleashed on everyone, as what goes around comes back around.

He wasn’t a bully, but I knew this dude in 7th grade who was a homophobe and would make snarky remarks about gay people and frequently use the f-slur to describe people/things he didn’t like. Other than that, he was a pretty cool guy, but I wasn’t trying to hate-crimed in my homophobic school, so I definitely wasn’t going to tell him about my sexuality. Me and him were in the gifted program together so we were bound to become friends at least.

A year passes and I’m no longer at that school, and I lose contact with him.

I get into contact with this girl from the gifted program that I was really close with before I had to move schools/states. I DMed her on Instagram and we had a lovely conversation and I brought up the question, “Hey, do you know what happened to the other people in the gifted program/GT?”

She began listing off all the people and how they’re doing since I hadn’t seen them in over a year.

“What about Liam (fake name of the homophobic dude)?”

“Liam? Oh, he has a boyfriend now!”

“HE WHA-”

I couldn’t believe it, this dude who made homophobic jokes about gay people was actually gay? I mean, was anyone really surprised? The outwardly homophobic people have always been a bit sus to me. I mean, why do they care so much about what other guys are doing with each other in their free time? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I had a couple of those.

One “popular girl” used to call me dyke geek (I’m not homosexual, but have many gay friends) because I played basketball and volleyball and a lot of the guys she liked were my friends through sports. However, she thought that I liked those guys too (I did, a little bit). She saw me as a threat because they used to talk to me at lunch. To get back at me, she started telling everyone I went to Oakland to sleep with black men on the weekends. It kinda backfired, because all those guys asked me if it was true. My answer was, “I wish”. Those guys all laughed at the rumor along with me. She never got to date any of those guys that she liked.

Today, she is an unwed single mother with 3 kids from different baby daddies. In a way, I’m glad she had fun sleeping around, but she is 30 with the oldest one at 12 years old.

I’m praying for her sort of.

The school bully, I’ll call him Mike. He wasn’t big or strong, he dressed smart and he had his little gang of enforcers – three of them. They weren’t out to bully me specifically, but they were a pain. My best pal they decided was gay – which isn’t such a big deal these days, but in the 70s it was a real slur, and they kept banging on about it all through High School. Relentlessly. He wasn’t gay of course, he left school got married and had 4 kids!

Anyway, Mike was the ‘leader’ of our school year, the most important guy. He wasn’t clever, wasn’t great at sports but he was ‘the man’. I remember one time where he wanted me to play piano in a music lesson before the teacher showed up, he grabbed my lapels and dragged me over to the instrument just as the teacher came in. Felt pretty humiliating in front of the class.

I endured high school then left. Roll on many years and we were 50 years old. I got a friend request from him on Facebook. I thought whaaaa?!??!? That annoying jerk from school! I accepted, but sent a rude sweary reply telling him that he and his friends were a right bunch of *********’s back then. He didn’t reply, so we were ‘friends’ on facebook. A while later, a woman from school who was also on Facebook suggested that the three of us should meet up down the pub. A first I thought no, but then I thought what the hell, I can always walk out.

So, the three of us met up and ended having a lovely 5 hours of reminiscing about school days! Mike, was unrecognisable. He was very thin, very humble, and very embarrassed about the person he was back then. He seemed kind now, he met and married a woman who had three young daughters and he was a good father to them. He spent his life in a fairly dead end job, where he was basically nobody. His ‘days in the sun’ were all at school where he was important.

So, he turned out to be a lovely person, but sadly 8 months later he was gone. He got pneumonia and it finished him off. It was sad, but I was glad that I could remember him as a lovely person in later life rather than the bully at school.

He was one of the most violent bullies I ever had, and I had plenty. He stabbed me in the shoulder with a pencil when we were six; made the entire school hate me because I was wearing glassess. He was constantly telling me that I was ugly and that nobody would ever love me. This continued all through high school, too. He would go behind me and call me names in a mocking way. He made other classes do the same. Completely shattered my self esteem. I badly function in society because of that.

When we got out of school, he had a terrible motorbike crash and was in a coma for a long time. Despite him being the main reason I have social anxiety, I didn’t want him to die. I never wanted to see him again, but he didn’t have to die.

He survived. And kept saying hello and asking for my well being whenever we met. It was awkward and I was cold, but not impolite. I will never give him a second chance. I know that this near death experience had made him repent and want to make amends. Something I’ll never allow.

In 6th grade, this one kid tried bullying me. He made fun of me in the locker room and shoved me around on the bus rides home. I was pretty unfazed though, so he must’ve gotten bored and just stopped.

I’m a second year in college now. I looked him up on Facebook out of the blue just to see how people from my childhood are doing. I didn’t even see the “Remembering…” on his profile until my girlfriend pointed it out. Turns out he was driving home at around 3am, wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, and hit a tree.

I have no fond memories of him, but I also have no hard feelings. At the end of the day, he was someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s friend and it’s tragic what happened.

Rest in peace.

B., my high school ‘friend’, was also somewhat of a bully. In her case, it was about taking opportunities to put me down, by constantly mentioning the wealth and status of her parents, to denigrate my chaotic blended family, to point out all the nice shiny new things she had. She would also laugh at my shabby wardrobe.

I suppose I remained ‘friends’ with her because I am not much of a mixer.

One day, when I proudly donned a brand new two-piece swimming costume - bright yellow with navy blue and white trim, she sniffed and said” You should give that to me. I am used to having new things and you aren’t. I’ll give you one of my old bathing suits.”

Something died in me that day, but I stuck to my guns and kept my new bathing suit. I suppose that my ‘revenge’ at the time was to do better than her in exams…..

We never stayed in touch after high school.

I did see her a couple of times at our alma mater - the last time, in 2012 when I attended a reunion of our class. I found the experience to be dull, and realised that I had nothing in common with her or anyone else who had been in my class, any longer.

Her life has been turbulent, with two nasty divorces and troubles with her children. Mine? Interesting, varied, married for many years to my husband, from our partner boys’ school, and our two children are adventurous, accomplished, kind and loving.

My bully followed me from elementary school to high school. She had her moments where she could act nice then others where she was extremely rude made my life hell. She had a lot of health issues- she was obese and had asthma due to it too. I graduated high school and moved on to college and I received an invitation to her funeral on Facebook. She had passed away from health complications.

Got the email inviting me to the reunion, and declined it. Then received a series of emails from people I'd known, trying to encourage me to attend with them. Turned them all down, politely, with one excuse or another.

Couldn't tell them the truth, which was that I was afraid. Oh, not afraid of the guy who made my life hell, just for his own amusement, and because I was so small for my age. No, I was afraid that--now that I'm 6′1 and 220 pounds--I might wind up in jail at the end of the evening for breaking a certain someone's nose. And possibly both arms.

A followup email arrived from the organizers with more details about the event, and this time included a list of those classmates who had sadly passed. His name was on it.

Had a great time at the reunion.

In fourth grade (he was in fifth), on the first day of class, our bully told me I had to give him $5.00 by the last day of school or he’d beat me up (this was a lot of money back then). It turns out he forgot about it, but I didn’t.

Fast forward to a few years ago. I Googled him and found out that he was sentenced to ten years in prison in Texas for selling a house that didn’t belong to him.

I just checked again, having seen this question, and apparently he’s defrauding folks via a home remodeling business (a dissatisfied customer had doxed him). So, I’m guessing he’ll end up broke, in jail, or both.

I just Googled him and immediately found his mug shot. Looks like he was busted for possession of drugs.

Probably m*th, like most of the other people who never left my hometown.

There was this one jerk in seventh grade that made my life rather miserable that year and as result I developed a sort of superstition about the number 7 - when staying at hotels I requested that any room is fine, just as long as it wasn’t on the 7th floor, tried to avoid selecting a seat in the seventh row on airplane flights (usually not a problem because the 7th row is usually in first class anyway), avoided walking on any “7th” street if it was in a city that had one, etc. Silly I suppose but it’s how I dealt with the problem. I no longer have that superstition I’m happy to say.

Anyway, this guy harassed and picked on me in music and gym class probably because I had no friends in those classes and was an easy target, calling me a “faggot”, pushing me so I bumped into a girl and then alleged I wanted to have sex with her, made fun of my shoes and clothes, called me every nasty name he could come up with and a lot more I’ve just chosen to forget. Fighting back was pretty hopeless given his size and friends, reporting him to the teachers or principal stopped him only temporarily given his lack of respect for any authority and already being on a first-name basis with the detention room monitors. He was one of those “tough” kids who frequently skipped class and was always in the lower level academic classes, so I didn’t see too much of him after 7th grade.

Many years later and a few years after graduating college, I’m in my hometown visiting my parents and reading the local paper, seeing the crime blotter and read about him being arrested in a domestic incident with some woman he apparently had a child with but was not married to. Curious, I do a few Google searches and find out he’s served stints in prison for armed robbery in both New York and Pennsylvania, has fathered five children from three different women and has frequently been on the county’s child support delinquency list. I know this sounds all too stereotypical of a story but I’m not making it up. I take no pleasure in any of this and feel bad for the children he’s fathered but it all comes as no real surprise to me. The strange thing is, from what I could tell he didn’t come from a “broken” home - I later learned both his parents were college graduates (he of course never went at all) and his father had a good job as a city planner.

I also found him on Facebook where he’s posted a few pictures of himself smoking weed as well as cigarettes and stating that he used to work at McDonald’s and is now a stay-at-home parent (can only hope he has the sense not to smoke in front of his kids but given his track record I doubt it).

Well call him John

John no longer has a great future.

In the UK, we get what we call Chavs. Chavs are the equivalent to delinquents and overall dont care about society. Now lets travel back a few years (2007–2011)

Now little john here was a grade A chav and had no care for others. He bullied me for 5 years in primary school. I have suffered psychological torment from him and I still have not recovered fully from those years. Today, I fully believe that my childhood was ruined by this low life thug who couldn't care less about anything in life.

Now fast forward to the present

John has been arrested for vandalism and for drinking. Even today he still doesn't care about anything. He remains the in the past and everyone who he interacted with has moved on. With his current direction, he will not have a bright future.

What do I think of this?

He deserves to have no future. I couldn't care less if he was in trouble or if needed help. He caused it on himself and will reap from what he planted. Usually, I will never harbour any hostile feelings for anyone in the past, but this guy deserves everything he gets.