50 Sobering Stories That Show How Quickly Everything Can Fall Apart For Good With Just One Wrong Move

Our High School Valedictorian was the smartest kid I knew. He was an introvert, but he had the answer to every question known to man in class. One month before graduation he was bragging about Ivy league schools that accepted him and which one he was going to choose. Three weeks before graduation, someone found a note he wrote that fell out of his bag. It was a "hit list" of students that he hated and he wanted to k**l or hurt. Within 48 hours he was suspended from school, not allowed to attend graduation and we heard the Ivy league schools all dropped him. All I remember was him getting handcuffed in class and him screaming it was a joke. 10 years later and I heard he lives with his mom and works at Best Buy. (nothing wrong with that for some of you!)

Worked a grocery store bakery. New assistant manager for the bakery comes in and immediately "adjusts the work flow to be more efficient", aka dumps all his work on the already enormously busy evening workers. He also complains about the quality of everyone's work and s***s on everyone under him constantly, seemingly just because he can. He especially has a bone to pick with me because I listen to the wrong talk radio station or something, and he goes to extra lengths to insult me openly and leave me tons of extra work.

One day shortly before close, he leaves the bakery with an empty cake box. He comes back with it full and taped up neatly. He leaves it on the counter saying he needs to hit the bathroom, so I pick it up... and it's heavy as hell. No way that's a cake. So I phone the acting manager and report theft. They checked the cameras and sure enough, he had filled the box with expensive steaks.

Company pushed charges and prosecuted him to the fullest extent possible. They were big on making examples at that point to curb the high levels of employee theft. He got absolutely f****d and was unemployable overnight. Sold his house, lost his wife... don't know what happened after that but I bet it wasn't good.

TL;DR assistant bakery manager treats me like s**t, I catch him stealing steaks, company destroys his life.

My brother in the 70's protesting the war in Vietnam. I was in high school at the time, he was a stringer for some antiwar publications.

He got into his head to try home brewing some explosives. Has a successful test and was making another batch in his 3rd (top) floor apartment. His buddy walked in with a lit cigarette and boom.

Lost his left hand at the wrist, finger on right hand, burst both eardrums. Was wearing a heavy leather jacket and years later was still pulling the remains of the motar & pestal out of his chest. Jacket might have saved his life. He recalls seeing the fire start and waking up on the far side of the room, the room the on fire.

Small town. My mom was the ER charge nurse when he came in.

A friend of mine was a very accomplished international business consultant. But, he drank too much and was lonely and divorced. He met a woman with two daughters. They hit it off. Eventually, she loses her job (music teacher) and he asks her to move in with him. Because...he was lonely and generally a nice guy. She starts turning psycho on him. All his friends said kick her out. After several months, he agrees. She gets wind of it. She waits until he’s out drinking one night. Has her daughters call him for a ride “because Mom can’t be found”. He picks the girls up (drunk) and takes them back home to his place. Passes out. Wakes up to police banging on the door. Mom had the girls strip him down and pose with him. By some miracle of technology, the cops had the pics within hours. He was convicted last year. Will d*e in prison. During the trial, it’s discovered she did this twice before in the Eastern EU. Prosecutor successfully kept this out of the trial on some international technicality. He’s f****d for life for being a nice drunk.

Here in Utah a few years ago an immature mother decided to take her daughter's side in a spat her daughter was having with one of her friend's.

Mom decided to photoshop a picture of the friend's head onto a photo of a n**e woman. Then she proceeded to print out 50 copies and hang them up all over the daughter's school.

The police didn't care that the images were fake. They charged her as if she was posting real n**e pictures of the girl — 50 individual felony counts. I wonder if that stupid woman is still in prison.

My sisters boyfriend was dared to rob a gas station with a BB gun. He's now doing 8 years for armed robbery. The kicker is they offered him a plea deal that would have given him 4 years jail and then probation and he said no.

Cheating.

She was unhappy, but wasn't communicating with her husband. Over a couple months, the mood gets tense. One day she doesn't come home and says she needs time to think. A few weeks go by and it all starts to come out that she's living with someone else (who is an ex-con for a*****t with a deadly weapon), smoking weed and drinking all the time, wanting nothing to do with her husband and 2 kids.

A few months ago they were a normal family, but she dumped all of it to go party. People separate all the time, but the way she did it was like a total burn of the bridge. It was unnecessary. She keeps saying her ex-husband is a great guy and she's doing this for the kids, but she's only seen them a couple days in the last 2 months. He might have to pay her child support since he makes more while she does absolutely nothing for them.

Her friends and family have pretty much disowned her. She f****d her life up because she couldn't communicate with her husband and decided to burn it all down instead.

EDIT: For those questioning why he would have to pay her money. This is in Florida, he's trying to get full 100% custody of the kids but that is really difficult in that state (without tons of hard evidence that she's unfit, which he doesn't have yet). If they do something like 60/40 in his favor, he will have to pay her child support since his income is higher. He's got a lawyer, but divorce law is not easy to wade through. He's weighing his options and hoping to get 100%.

It was in the local news, quite a few years ago now. Two young girls get into an altercation at a Party...on a Wednesday...on a school night. Girl A decides that the best way to resolve the conflict is to stab Girl B. All this occurred over a boy.
Girl B d**s.
Girl A sent to jail.
Graduation was literately 2 months away.
Good game...

Dumb girl at my school posted a picture of herself saying "that's 200 less Mexicans trying to cross the border" on her story after the earthquake in Mexico City. She got d***h threats, kids at my school ran around with Mexican flags, and she ruined her families life because they had to move.

Edit: My schools near Dallas Texas and she was a junior. The twitter storm about her snap blew up so much that local Mexican news channels reported on it.

Guy I went to school with about 10 years ago, set his house on fire for insurance money with the intention of getting out his stepfather but mercy k*****g his own mother who had terminal cancer. It was idiotic at best and evil at worst. The problem was his stepdad never got out and he died too. And the cops could tell it was him because he had gasoline burns on his hands. So since he was 16 when he did he got double involuntary manslaughter and won’t be released until he’s 35.

Friend of mine got into the same college I did. We were both excited to know someone when we started school. She received a full scholarship for diving. We weren’t super close in high school and didn’t hang out outside of it. So, we said goodbye after graduation and didn’t speak over the summer.

Fast forward to move in day at college. I was walking towards the cafeteria after moving in and gave her a call. I asked where she was and she replied, “I’m pregnant.” I really hope her life turned out well, but I have no clue. That was the last we spoke. I can only imagine throwing away a full ride to college would f**k you up.

I was eating lunch in downtown Athens, GA, on game day. (If you know SEC football, you know how crazy it can get.)

A drunk freshman sorority sister comes in, orders her food, and asks for a water cup. Then she goes over to the soda machine and proceeds to go put soda into the water cup. The manager saw and would have none of her apologies or pleading. He called the cops. Cop comes, girl takes breathalyzer, cop finds her fake ID and flask. On go the cuffs and off she goes in a police car. All within 10 minutes, and all over a $1 soda. Tough break for a dumb 18 year old.

This story still breaks my heart. I have a friend who got a great job in the natural gas industry after graduating from college at 22. He was making loads of money, was smart, charismatic, and overall a good guy.

After working for 2 years and saving thousands, he quit that job to become an entrepreneur. He got into bed with a shady salesman and tried selling a very niche product to large businesses without having any previous business experience. His money started to dwindle and he ended up starting to sell d***s to make up for it. Why not go back to work? Who knows.

This d**g business started to grow and ended up crossing state borders which brought the FBI into play. Before he knew it, he was arrested, his partners stole all his cash, and he's currently in prison for what may end up being a minimum of 10 years. Hes 27 years old. It's awful.

There's a video of this girl in a dance competition in a club. She's twerking upside down in a headstand. She slips and her body falls down over her head, snapping her neck. She died from twerking. That has to be a tough funeral to get through.

Had a cr****y science teacher in highschool. She would always just write s**t on the whiteboard and tell us to spend the rest of the class copying it down while she goes and gets a coffee from Maccas. One time she left the class during a presentation just to change her shoes because her current ones were looking a bit 'worn out'.

Anyways so everyone was fed up with her s**t so much that when she left the classroom again one of the honor kids spat into her coffee cup. Teacher came back and saw a long a*s spit going from her coffee cup to the kids mouth.

As much as we had her back, the other teachers didn't listen to us, took the teachers side, and EXPELLED her.

Really tough since getting expelled was a major upset for her family she ended up moving back to her hometown and is helping out at her parents farm.

NOTE: not sure if she 'f****d up her life' per se, since she looks happy helping out her fam but she had a really bright future ahead of her, and probably still does if she puts her mind to it.

I know this guy who had a really s****y upbringing (growing up in the slums, absentee alcoholic/d**g a****t parents, a ton of brothers and sisters) but despite all of that, was actually brilliant. He wasn’t planning on going to college because he’s in the ghetto, he can’t afford college, he thinks he just needs to go straight to work. Well his gf/fwb fills out all of these college apps behind his back and he gets accepted into MIT! Well he gets there and almost immediately became an alcoholic, got drunk and smashed up a bunch of cars, got arrested and kicked out of school. He went to rehab a few times and he’s clean now working as a dishwasher at a diner that his sister manages. Tragic.

Im sure this will get buried but growing up I was best friends with 2 brothers. They always rough housed and what not no big deal. Both of them are in the bed of a truck and start pushing each other and one pushed the other of the bed of the truck. His brother is pretty much a vegetable now and has no movement from his neck down. It was crazy just messing around caused that. the other brother drank him self to d***h over the next 8 years because he was so messed up on what happened.

My brother and I inherited 20k each after our grandfather passed. He withdrew it all from his bank before going to jail for a DUI. He hid it in the house where he had been staying, and his room mates robbed him of 13k in cash and sold all of the musical equipment he had bought with his inheritance.

In grade school an acquaintance who we'll call Mike loosened a kid's bicycle brakes at recess. The bike had been locked to the rack in the area where we had our outside time. Not really sure if it was malicious or just dumb kid stuff, but the kid whose bike it was was very smart. Probably top 3 smartest in our grade. I think it was 6th or 7th grade. So later that day the kid is riding to the library and flying down a hill on his final couple blocks. There's a stop sign at which a car stops in front of him. Bicyclist hits his brakes and nothing happens. Kid slams into the back of the car. He had a helmet on, but still suffered brain damage. He became very slow and would do weird things in class like blow fart noises with his mouth mid class thinking it was funny. His mom was one of the ladies who would volunteer at the school and monitor lunch and whatnot. She went from being a really tough lady who most of us were kind of scared of, to the sweetest lady ever. She was just happy her son was alive even if he was permanently brain damaged. To this day nobody knows about the brake loosening and I've wanted to tell his family, but that would be just an utterly selfish thing to do only for my own closure. This was over 20 years ago. Kid's life was ruined.

Guy I was in the army with fell asleep in his tank while on overwatch. He was 12 years in. Soon to be E7. Had no life or interest outside of the army. He got chaptered out over falling asleep. Not saying he didn't deserve it. But it f****d up his entire life with a quickness.