Not everyone gets to have the sweet moment we see all the time in teen movies where the school bully gets a lunch tray slammed in their face and everyone cheers. Luckily for us, we can live vicariously through these people who did get to have sweet revenge on their childhood bully and lived to tell the tale.
Someone on Reddit asked people to share how they got revenge on their childhood bully as an adult and their answers are pretty glorious. While getting revenge as an adult might not feel the same as getting it as a kid, we all have anxiety now, so at least we know it will haunt them longer.
In the end, it seems like a lot of these people realized the best revenge was being kind to their bully. Giving someone who was mean to you a free coffee if you’re working at a coffee shop or tipping the bully way too much if they’re your waitress probably feels better than having a snide remark.
1. Starting them young.
Not me, but my 9-year-old daughter has to deal with this girl in her class that is a bully to everyone, though she is especially mean to my daughter. Luckily most of the time, the kids all have her back (and she theirs). The teachers are aware of her issues and try their best, but she’s sneaky.
My daughter is Type 1 diabetic, and this girl likes to tease her. She does lots of things, but is really mean about it. She told her that her feet will get chopped off (due to the ‘beetus) and other horrible things. One day, she was waving a big chocolate chip cookie in her face, telling her how she can’t eat stuff like that because she’s a freak.
My daughter had enough. She got up and slapped the girl across the face, and the cookie went flying too. She yelled “Leave me alone!” The whole lunch room went silent, the girl ran to tell the teacher, and the kids cheered.
She came home and told us because she felt badly about it. The girl told the teacher, crying of course, but several students also told the whole story. The teacher told my kid matter-of-factly, “don’t do that anymore,” and yelled at the girl and made her stay in from recess.
Since then, this girl gives my daughter a wide berth.
I do not condone this behavior, but damn it was hard to keep a straight face when we were telling her that it was the wrong way to resolve things. – u/Luder714
2. The ultimate slap in the face.
I graduated from high school in the ’80s. I had grown up poor, but when my mom remarried, she married a guy who did well for himself, so when we moved into his house. I was a poor kid suddenly going to a school full of rich kids. One of them in particular was a girl who was really stuck up and such a b*tch. She had a very imperious attitude and generous parents. There was no way [my mom] was going to allow us to behave that way.
About six years after high school graduation, I’d dropped out of college, was living on my own in a tiny apartment, and working as a waitress. [She] of all people to show up at the restaurant and [was] seated in my section. I asked a couple of waitresses to take the table but they were busy. Finally I realized what I would do. I would take on the role of my life. Win an Academy Award. I went to the table and pretended I’d never met her before in my life.
She kept insisting I must remember her, right? She kept saying her name and I nailed the performance. “I’m so sorry, I just don’t…no…I, uh…I’m trying. I believe you, yes, I went to that school but I am SO sorry, I don’t remember you” and so on.
She was flabbergasted. I kept overhearing her say to the people she was with “I can’t believe she doesn’t remember me.”
That day I learned that to be forgotten is, for some, the ultimate slap in the face. –u/loridee
3. Some real character development here.
A few of my childhood bullies have passed away to reckless driving or drugs. So revenge not needed.
After going to a different high school then my middle school bully, I was a year out of high school and going for a bike ride. Saw the bully on his bike, going the opposite way. He yelled something to be a [jerk] to me, so I ignored and kept on my merry way for about a mile. Until I noticed he was following me, fast.
I wasn’t the same pushover I was in middle school, so I pulled over and waited, as he hopped off his bike and violently thrust his hand out…to shake my hand and apologize for ever being a d*ck.
Basically said he used to hang with a bad crowd through middle school until senior year and he regretted a lot of stuff he did as a kid. Asked me how my high school years were, what my after high school plans were and explained after his father passed away he had an epiphany – he was going to the national guard to get a way to help fund college, and wanted to become a psychologist to help kids throughout high school deal with harassment.
I talked with him for a good half hour and we parted on friendly terms. Ran into him a few times over the years and about four years later, he seems to be on his way to achieving what he said and is very active in my hometown community.
Didn’t need to get revenge. Glad to see someone grow up and make something great of themselves. –u/prophetofhelix
4. This is a great way to get back at someone.
After I finished high school, a girl who bullied me relentlessly for years messaged me on Facebook saying a bunch of awful things (Facebook was new at the time – we all added anyone we knew).
I just screenshotted the messages and posted them to her wall. Then a bunch of her friends messaged me asking if I was okay.
I got my revenge and didn’t have to stoop to her level. –u/Solsed
5. I hope they took it poorly.
I married my bully’s high school crush. –u/WhistlinGooch
6. Next level revenge.
I worked as a newscast director for my local TV station a few years back. Part of the job was making show graphics (maps, full screens, OTS [over the shoulders], etc.) for each newscast, including for the local “Crime Stoppers” segment. I prepped the mugshots of no less than three people who gave me sh*t in school for air during my tenure there. That always managed to put a smile on my face. –u/UncleSaltine
7. It’s okay to be immature sometimes.
There was a popular boy in middle school who was a total d**che to awkward, nerdy me. He’d call me names, talk to people within earshot of me about how ugly I was, and would try to physically hurt me during our P.E. class all the time. We went to the same high school, but I had no classes with him, so I pretty much forgot about him.
Well, a couple years after high school I ran into him at a bar. I’m a lot prettier and less awkward than I once was. He hadn’t grown more than a couple inches since middle school, and the face that was cute when he was 12 did not handle the testosterone surge of puberty well.
He was acting like a nervous teenager and kept saying “Wow, you really look different,” while we chatted a little. He would also not shut up about how he was in the Navy and how awesome he was because he was “serving our country” and “protecting [me] from terrorists.” He finally asked me for my number and I gave it to him. He texted me the next day asking me on a date and I replied “LOL, nah.”
It wasn’t my most shining moment of maturity, but it felt good to look down on that little b*stard, both literally and figuratively. –u/PhinnaeousMaximus
8. Wholesome ending here.
A kid that bullied me in high school (he actually gave me a black eye once and got suspended for it) messaged me on Facebook apologizing for everything he did to me back then. I told him it’s OK, you were just young and didn’t know better.
I eventually got a drink with him one day to see what he was up to and he broke down on me. Started talking to me about his alcohol problems and how he was self destructive. He was getting kicked out of his mom’s place and had no job. Me being the sap, I am offered him a job at the restaurant I was managing at the time. This was about two years ago
Fast forward to three months ago: he is now a kitchen manager at the same restaurant and he asks me if I’d like to get a drink with him.
Dude bought me and my girlfriend a ticket to Colorado and told me he will never be able to pay me back for how much I helped him, but he is at least in the position where he can try.
Colorado was fun. Got really really high. –u/SkeithxEpitaph
9. Revenge can be just being kind to someone.
A kid that bullied me in high school ended up addicted to crack or meth, not sure which. I saw him 10 years later as I was leaving a drive-thru and yelled his last name. He turned and I saw the scratch marks on his face and a big burn type gash in the middle of his lip. I asked him what had happened and he told me he got kicked out of his home.
Instead of laughing at him or belittling him, I handed him the bag of food I just bought for myself, as well as my cigarettes. He almost cried because according to him “never in a million years would I have thought that after all the sh*t I put you through, that you’d help.”
I told him we were stupid kids and sh*t happens. I visited him once a week and just talked with him and kept telling him to get off the drugs. I moved away a short time after, that so I didn’t know what had happened to him.
One day, I got a friend request from him on Facebook, he kicked the drug habit and was working as a barista for one of those corner coffee shops. He is now married and living a life worth living.
At the end of the day, no matter how much grief he put me through, he was his own worst enemy and anything I could’ve done to him or said to him was nothing compared to what he did to himself. I’m glad he’s better and living a better life. u/joblo619
10. The ultimate high school dream.
We ended up fighting in front of a crowd. I beat him and he stopped being a jack*ss bully to everyone after that. –u/-917-
11. Is this a teen movie?
Telling him he missed a spot when drying my car. –u/jeremyRockit
12. Look who is jealous now!
She got fat. I got fit. –u/ohhsuzyq
13. Just being happy is enough.
I have not taken revenge at all, I have moved away and left it behind as much as I could. Now I just watch him waste his life from afar with a content smile and see how not having education is kicking his a**, he is losing friends and eventually will end up alone.
Not that my life is so amazing, but I am doing better than him. – u/BuachEtiveMor
14. We’re all faking it.
Being a confident, successful adult.
Just kidding, I’m faking it like the rest of you. –u/chumothy
15. It’s nice to know it was always about them.
My best revenge was to just keep on being myself. This girl in high school would criticize me on everything, call me names and pick up fights with me for no reason. She eventually got kicked out of school.
We met when we were in our early 20s. She started off nicely with the usual “How are you? What’s been happening?”
Turns out she hadn’t even changed a little bit “Oh yeah? Want to be a teacher? You’ll probably make a miserable one! I wouldn’t send my kids to your school! Ever!”
That’s when I realized that I was just so over her and her bullying and that there was just no hope for her to realize what she did was wrong. It gave me some sort of satisfaction… –u/carlinha1289