Why is it that some memories stick with us and others don't? And why are the memories that stick with us the longest the ones that make us feel angry? This is especially true when the one who made us so upset never owned up to the deed or apologized for it. Even the smallest incidences from the past can stay and haunt us for our entire lives. The anger probably isn't showing up on a daily basis, but when the memory comes to mind, the feelings all come rushing back and our blood starts boiling again. These stories are from people who have not let go of the anger they felt from something that happened long ago. Is it healthy that they're holding onto it? Probably not. These experiences sure do make for good storytelling, though.
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#1 His Cousin Was A Liar
When I was seven, I spent the night at my cousin's house. Before dinner, my uncle led the prayer. When he finished, my cousin blurted out that I had my eyes open while I prayed. So my uncle railed on me about how it's disrespectful to have your eyes open during prayer. I said, "How did he know my eyes were open if his eyes were closed?" My uncle told me I couldn't have dessert. I never had my eyes open during the prayer.
#2 Accidents Happen And This History Teacher Needed To Realize That
#3 This Dad Laughed When His Son Broke Another Kid's Arm
#4 Foul Play Without Consequences Is The Worst
When I was in kindergarten, my school had a Student Olympics where all the kids would participate in physical competitions, like sprinting and jump ropes or other kid-friendly competitions. I was in the lead for the sprinting competition and it was the final lap. I was going win, I was so close. But one of my classmates ran behind me and shoved me down, making my knee bleed profusely. I don’t care that I was injured, I’m just so mad that that jerk won. He didn’t even get in trouble. I’m still mad about that. I despise you, Michael.
#5 If The Kid Admitted It, This Guy Should Have Pressed Charges
#6 The Next Thing She Knew, All Her Sentimental Books Were Gone
When I was at university, my sister's school had a fundraiser thing where they accepted donations for them to sell-off. My mom gave away my entire book collection without letting me know. This included a book that my grandad gave to me when I turned 15, in which he wished me the best. I only found out months later with no way to track them down.
#7 Missing That Concert Still Feels Devastating
In 1998, when I was 13 years old, the Smashing Pumpkins played a free concert in Minneapolis. I had never been to a concert before, but I convinced my mom to let me go. I had plans with my best friend and was super excited. That was until one of the neighbors needed a last-minute babysitter to watch her infant and toddler. Mom decided I was doing that instead.
She paid me $100 for the work but I missed the concert. Hundreds of thousands of people showed up. Yeah, it probably would have been a nightmare situation with that many people and me being so young, but I didn't get to be a part of it—and people are still talking about it. I essentially missed a part of that history and I'm still mad about it.
#8 Break Rooms Should Have Cameras To Catch Lunch Thieves
I was working at a large nationwide retail store a few years back. My girlfriend had brought me half a pizza so I could eat something. I took it to the back, wrote my name really big on the box, and put it in the refrigerator. Two hours later, I went on my lunch break, grabbed the box and it felt a little off. I set it on a table and opened it up. Empty. Some jerk ate all four slices of pizza and put the empty box back in the refrigerator.
I'll never know who it was since the break room doesn't have cameras, and there are so many employees that go in and out within the two-hour window. I don't have the words for what I felt, but it was somewhere between just sobbing on the floor and rage. I was so happy that my girl thought of me enough to bring me food. I was really looking forward to it because I almost never ate at work. Only to get in there and open an empty box.
#9 The Kind Of Punishment That Doesn't Work
I was part of the only second-grade class in the history of my school to miss out on the annual apple-picking trip, all because a group of boys had been consistently acting out for a while. The teachers believed the best way to punish them was to pull the field trip from everyone. Of course, the boys didn’t learn anything from it, and I was left quite bitter.
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#10 Some Things You Just Don't Joke About
#11 Giving Away Someone's Cats Behind Their Back Is Cruel
#12 A Strange Thing To Lie To Your Daughter About
I was talking to my neighbor after school one day. He asked me how my stepmom's pregnancy was doing, but I didn't know what he was talking about. He showed me a picture of a positive pregnancy test my stepmom had sent him two days prior. I told my parents later that day that I was upset that they did not tell me. They denied it. When I confronted my dad in the parking lot about it, he told me he would never lie to me. He denied that my stepmom was pregnant in the first place. About two months later, my stepmom walked up to me and said, "Since you already know I'm pregnant, it's a girl."
#13 Talk About Unfair Parents
When I was 19, my parents bought my sister her first car. They said it wasn’t truly “hers,” but when either of theirs wasn’t working, they always asked her permission to borrow it. That car eventually was passed to me when they gave her a second car. This car was a gift from one of my father’s coworkers. The man told him it was for his daughter since the guy worked with my dad.
I pointed out that my sister already had a car and it made more sense to give it to me. My father explained that since the guy didn’t know I existed, the car HAD to go to my sister. It made no sense to me but I was not about to argue with my dad. So, I asked him to help me out when I was ready to get my own car. He agreed.
The time comes when I’ve been working a while and the hand-me-down car I’d gotten from my sis was on its last legs. I did some shopping around and found something. I asked if they could help as they’d promised. I kid you not, my sister called a family meeting and convinced my parents that they shouldn’t help me out because I had a job. They, of course, agreed with her. I’m in my 50s but I'm still bitter. Thanks, sis!
#14 One Man's Watermelon Is Another Man's Squash
My dad always harassed me for not liking watermelon. He called me picky. I was one of the most open-minded kid eaters ever. I ate everything put in front of me. My dad would not eat squash. THE HYPOCRISY.
#15 When A Friend Turns Into A Lying Thief, It's Time To Let Them Go
I had a friend steal $500 cash from my wallet, and proceed to abuse my kindness to great lengths. The good news is I got all the money back after he realized I was on to his theft. The bad news is he sliced my couch up, then pretended to find $200 instead of the $500 trying to masquerade his theft. He even said I should give him a cut of THAT even though I was still out $300. My couch is still ruined, too, and I sleep on that thing. I'm no longer associated with him, but I will never get over what he did.
#16 His In-Laws Are Using Him And He Knows It
I'm mad about being invited to my in-law's house only when they need something fixed. The invitation is always under the guise of food.
#17 His Comic Book Collection Was His Prized Possession
When I was 21, someone broke into my mom's house when she was away and robbed her blind. The good thing was that her homeowner's insurance replaced everything, so her extremely out of date TV and stereo were all replaced with brand-spanking-new ones. What sucked was that NO ONE NOTICED that my room had been rifled through and my entire comic book collection, which I'd been collecting since I was FIVE-YEARS-OLD, was gone.
Also, all my old tabletop RPG books and boxed sets had been cherry-picked off my bookcase in such a way that no one but me realized there were gaps. Some of those books were gifts, with inscriptions and everything. Because no one noticed my stuff was gone for over a year, I was outside of the window where my mom's homeowners insurance would've paid to replace my things. I'm 46 years old. I wish upon those thieves a lifetime of paper cuts.
#18 Catholic Guilt Is No Joke
I went to a very Catholic school and a teacher I had told everybody who would listen that she "could see the evil" in me. It took me the better part of two decades to realize I wasn't a piece of garbage because of her. I still kind of feel guilty about existing, but I just try to remind myself that no one has the right to judge me like that.
#19 Where's The Respect?
Two years ago, when my mom died, we had a memorial barbecue. Her older sister, who lived less than an hour away, couldn't be bothered to attend. Keep in mind that my impoverished mother had been both loaning her money and lending her the car. Not to mention my family had provided her the land to place her home on. She had no job. There was literally no reason for her not to be there. Two years previous I had taken two days off of work and drove three hours to be with her when her husband died. Dead to me.
#20 To Some, Their Ego Is More Important Than Lifelong Friendship
I had a best friend who did something that let my daughter down. I spoke to her and told her not to promise things to a child that she couldn't deliver on. After that conversation, she cut me out. Deleted me from social media, out of her life—that was it. Twenty years of going through everything together and it’s just gone. I’m so mad and hurt. Still.
#21 This Mom Royally Messed Up Her Daughter
#22 Children Can Be Traumatized By Candy Incidents
I went trick-or-treating in second grade and came home with a bunch of good candy. My parents refused to buy candy for Halloween because "no one comes anyway." A while after I got home, a huge group of kids comes to our house. My mom took my basket of candy and gave it out by the HANDFUL. By the time she was finished, there were only a few measly pieces left. My seven-year-old heart was crushed and I sat on my couch in misery the whole night. I've forgiven her obviously but my blood boils a bit every time I think about it.
#23 Soccer Is More Important Than Church
#24 This Teacher Had No Right
I took a math placement test in 7th grade—my score qualified me to skip 8th-grade math and go straight to algebra. My teacher said she didn't think I could do it because my grades were not great. I told her I really wanted to take algebra, and she pulled out an algebra book, opened it up to random page pointed at it and asked, "Can you do this?" Obviously, I couldn't solve an algebra equation that I hadn't learned, so she said, "See, you're not ready."
#25 Don't Call Your Kid Stupid
When I was a kid, I totally sucked at school. Like, seriously sucked. I didn't finish high-school—I dropped out and got my GED (in the 98th percentile, which was my first inkling that I wasn't stupid). I had been told I was "stupid" nearly daily by my mother. My dad didn't do that, but he would come into my room, take away my novel, turn off my music, take away my doodle-pad, bang his hand on my open textbook and say, "THIS is what you should be concentrating on!"
Finally, I went back to school when I was nearly 30. I was getting A's and B's. I mentioned that this was weird to me to my doctor. She had a weird look on her face and gave me a stack of tests to take. A couple of days after I did so, she called me and said "You have classic ADD. From what you've told me, you're doing well in school now because you've developed coping mechanisms, I see no need to medicate you."
I called my parents to tell them that I finally knew what the problem was... And my mom said, "Yeah, we knew that." I asked why they hadn't done anything about it and she said, "We didn't want you to be reliant on meds." Really?! I spent my entire youth in constant trouble over my grades, being called "stupid," and having all of my attempts at developing coping mechanisms quashed. Apparently, they decided that they could discipline a learning disability out of me. Yeah. I'm 50 and still angry about it.
#26 Teachers Can Be Very Forgetful
#27 Those Poor Cats
Six years ago, I was on vacation and had my oldest cousin pet-sit my cats. We were only on vacation for two weeks. When we came back, she CLEARLY didn't go into the house. The food and water bowls were completely empty, the litterboxes weren't cleaned. etc. When I confronted her about it, her response was, "Oh, I forgot. It's not that big of a deal anyway."
#28 It's Horrible When Parents Steal From Their Kids
I found 500 euros on the street. I was walking back home from school when I found it, and I instantly told my mother about my lucky find. I was so ecstatic that I showed it to her without hesitation. She looked at it, congratulated me, then said she'd take care of it because: "Money is a very serious and important thing that kids can't deal with."
Needless to say, I never saw those 500 euros again. I'm still mad about it 15 years later, especially considering the fact that a 500 euros banknote is not produced anymore (and is consequentially extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find). But most importantly, I'm mad because I have absolutely no idea of what she did with that money. Kids can be absolute fools.
#29 The Neighbor's Reaction Was Uncalled For
I was really sick one day at work. I came home and my parking spot was taken. I parked not even half a foot over someone's garage that had a note saying, "Do not park here." He could definitely still get in and out with ease. I came back out around 20-30 minutes later to move my car down the road, and he had parked his pickup with the towbar touching the front of my car. There was nothing behind me so I reversed and I felt the steering suddenly stall. I got out and the jerk had put two nails under my tire. I couldn't get my daughter from the nursery or my partner from work. This was about a year ago and I'm still debating going back there and doing the same to him now I've moved. To say I'm still mad would be an understatement.
#30 His Anger Is Political
The BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I have not shopped at a gas station that sells BP gas since that day and never will. It just infuriates me that a company that isn’t even based in the US messed up the Gulf and then barely did anything to fix it.
#31 She Deserved That Pizza More Than Anyone
#32 Some Hot Sauces Are Serious About Their Level Of Heat
I bought a bottle of hot sauce in New Hampshire on vacation one year. This hot sauce, somewhere around 750,000 Scovilles, came with a bullet that unscrewed into an exceptionally tiny spoon that was the recommended serving size for a crockpot of chili. Spicy stuff. Not the spiciest, but I was in my nascent spice-hunting years then.
Anyway, I bring this sauce home, having used it once in New Hampshire. I told my dad EXPLICITLY that it was exceptionally spicy hot sauce, that the microscopic spoon was a crockpot serving size, and that he shouldn't use a lot—or any of it—without telling me, as it was mine, and he'd probably use too much anyway. Well, I came home one day to it missing.
He had found it and ignored the NUMEROUS warnings across the labels and cap. He drenched a chip in the sauce before eating it. According to him, he almost died (which I kind of believe), and he threw it away right after, full knowing it was mine and not his to junk. I even said I'd keep it in my room, but no, he didn't trust it in the house. Sure. You owe me a bottle of hot sauce, dad.
#33 Sexism Is Infuriating
I work for an insurance company (I'm not actually allowed to say which one since I work out of a third-party site). A couple of months ago, I had an older gentleman (about 75) call in screaming and cursing because he was auto-assigned a female doctor since he hadn't picked one out and needed one listed on his card. "I don't want no woman doctor, they don't know what they're doing, they don't even go to school as long as real male doctors." I needed a few minutes after that call. Sometimes it still makes me angry. I kind of thought, for the most part, everyone had caught up with the times.
#34 The Ring Meant More To Her Than They Realized
My brother proposed to his girlfriend when he was 19 but he couldn’t afford a ring. So my mom let him borrow her old wedding ring until he was able to get a new one. That ring was gifted to me by my parents when they divorced. Well, my brother and his now ex-wife pawned the ring off so they could get ring tattoos. I was so hurt because it was the one thing I had of my parents being together.
#35 Bullies Manifest In Many Different Ways
In fourth grade, I was given a watch for Christmas. It was popular at the time, and it had plastic bands you can trade out. A second grader came up to me and asked if she could have it. I said no. She started crying and this fifth grader, Becky, told me to give it to her. Again, I said no and kept swinging. Becky started offering me things (toys and stuff). I wasn’t interested in any of it.
Finally, she said I could have her camera in exchange for the watch. I really liked photography, and in the ’80s cameras weren’t cheap enough for most kids to have. I agreed and gave Becky my watch. She said she’d bring me the camera the next day. She turned around, gave my watch to the second-grader, and then denied ever promising me her camera.
#36 A Double Heartbreak All At Once
#37 This Mom Left A Lasting Betrayal On Her Son
I begged and begged my mom for a queen-sized mattress in high school because I was still sleeping on a twin bed from elementary school. She finally got me one and told me I could take it with me when I move out. I was so happy!! A few years later when I was officially moving out, she said she was giving my mattress to my nephew and I'd have to go buy a new one.
My nephew did NOT beg as hard as I did, never did homework, never cleaned up after himself, and was only 15 at the time (I was 21, clean, found an apartment and was graduating college early). Literally only a few months later, my nephew somehow contracts BEDBUGS from being so dirty and we had to throw the whole mattress away and steam clean my mom's whole apartment. Still mad about it to this day.
#38 Her Tragic News Was Treated As If It Were Nothing
My gynecologist told me, in the most insensitive way, that I was born without a uterus and my parents refused to acknowledge it for years. The doctor literally walked in with a diagram of a female body (keep in mind, I was 16 at the time, so I wasn't a complete idiot). She sat it down, pointed at the uterus and told me, “You have to have one of these to have a baby and you don’t have one. I’m sorry.”
To be fair, I’m not sure how else she could’ve broken that to me. Anyway, she had no information about my disorder, so she just sent me on my way. With little help from my parents, I went TWO WHOLE FREAKING YEARS without seeing another specialist. I finally found my own gynecologist when I turned 18. It just kind of blows my mind that they ignored this massively important medical info at such a developmental time in my life. Crazy.
#39 The Worst Kind Of Two-Faced
#40 A Short-Sleeved Dress Is Not Vanity
My dad changed his sermon on the way to church because I was wearing a short-sleeved dress. This was in Oklahoma, in July. It went almost to the ground, but the fact that it had short sleeves made it immodest, according to him. There weren’t actual church rules about it, just his. And he didn’t say something at the house so I could change, he just waited for us to get on the road and then told me that since I was dressed so inappropriately that the sermon would be changed to refer to my behavior. He busted out Ecclesiastes and talked about vanity, and told the congregation that it was because of me and my dress. There were about 120 or so people there. I was 11. I’m almost 40 now. He mellowed as he got older, but he never did say he was sorry.
#41 She Graduated At The Wrong Time
I graduated in 2008, in the middle of the recession. There were no jobs available because I was overqualified with my college degree and underqualified with no experience. I got one interview and I was perfect for the job, but the employer seemed off about me. He'd ask me questions and I'd give answers that I thought were solid. But no matter what I replied with, the interviewer just kept shaking his head. Apparently, nothing mattered because he thought I lived too far away from the office to be considered a worthy candidate. The commute would have been an hour and ten minutes, but I was willing to move because I had just finished school and there was nothing keeping me in my college town. The interviewer just kept saying, "That's too far of a drive." It would have been an awesome job.
#42 She Should Not Have Given Away That PlayStation
My mom let her new husband give away our PlayStation to his friend from high school. They hadn't seen each other in years I guess and while he was visiting he made a comment like, "Oh you got the PlayStation! Man, I need to get me one of those!" My stepdad jokingly said, "I would let you have it but my wife would never let me do that," and for some stupid reason my mom said, "Oh it's okay he can have it."
I could see my weekend entertainment washing away down the drain right in front of my eyes. Twenty years later and my mom switches back and forth between not remembering it ever happening and "I honestly don't know why I did it." She was never that generous and this was a guy who we had never seen before and never saw again, so it is still baffling to me.
