Kids have an innate sense of what’s fair and what’s right, but for a certain number of years, you just kind of go along with what your parents and the other adults in your life tell you.
Then comes the day when something happens, an adult tries to explain it away, and a little voice in your child brain goes, “nope, that’s a bunch of crap.”
If you don’t remember that moment for you, don’t worry – reading these 16 people’s light bulb moments might jog your memory.
16. A confusing moment for any kid.
My Mom: “You don’t lie to others!”
Also my Mom: *getting caught red handed while telling a lie and I had to call her out on it*
15. I bet the little psycho was always smiling, too.
My little sister pushed me down the stairs and I got in trouble for “antagonizing” her. “She wouldn’t do that for no reason”. You did not know your daughter mom and dad. To my knowledge it was for no reason it was the morning so I hadn’t even gotten the chance to piss her off. Also it wasn’t the first time she had done it just the first time my parents got involved.
14. Why was there no running on the playground?
I was bullied a lot in elementary school. To be fair, I was a pretty easy target for the bullying, r/RoastMe would have a melt down not knowing where to start. So every day at lunch and recess I would get chased and harassed by 4 other boys. One day the teacher assigned to keep order on the playground grabbed me and told me to quit running. But of course, as soon as I did the 4 boys began pushing and taunting me…so I started running again. Next thing I know the teacher grabs me by the arm and starts to paddle me (teachers could do that back then). She missed my ass and caught me in the back again, so I cussed at her. She sent me to the principles office, and when I told him what had happened he just shook his head, then had me stand up to take 3 licks from his paddle. Fifth grade is when I learned the world was utter bullshit.
13. This little girl was pure evil.
I was four years old, in pre-school. We were having “Water Day”, which was this day full of water based fun activities. Little kid me had been looking forward to this for weeks. Before we had free time to enjoy all the water games and kiddie pools, we had to do some mandatory team building games. There was this girl who hated me for no reason, and of course I got put by her. We were doing this game where we had to pass a solo cup full of water down the line of kids as fast as possible. So cup gets to me, I try to hand it to her. She stares at me for like ten seconds while I hold this cup like a jackass, waiting for her to take the damn cup. Our team loses. She grabs the cup and splashes it on herself. She starts screaming/ bawling. Teachers come over and she babbles about how I wouldn’t give her the cup then threw it at her when we lost. I get left alone in the music room all day staring at the grey walls while the rest of the class got to have fun playing in water. It was such bullshit it formed a core memory.
12. As an artist, I couldn’t agree more.
Free work, apparently.
These random people who were staying over at my house just casually expected me to write a computer program for them after I mentioned learning Python. When I asked them how much they were willing to pay, they gawked at the idea. I then had to deal with them whining at me about how much I “didn’t respect them” while they tried to give increasingly nonsensical explanations for why I should work for them for free. Highlights include:
- Explaining how me doing free work for them educated me in computer science (I was already studying on my own)
- Claiming that everybody owed everybody for their “contributions to society” in the vein of “If Alice cut Bob’s hair and he paid ten dollars for it, everybody else also needs to pay Alice” and that I needed to “pay him back for having a job” by doing free work
- Repeatedly asking “Why can’t you do X?” when I raised my objections to their fallacious reasoning and then claiming that I couldn’t reasonably reason through every single objection with the response “Because I have no incentive or obligation to,” therefore I couldn’t refuse their demands
- Arguing that my work wasn’t worth getting paid for
- Arguing their satisfaction at receiving free work was more important than me getting paid for it
After I attempted to explain the obvious to them by using analogies such as having to pay for services (such as a plumber) and pointing out how ridiculous it would be for adults to walk up to random children and begin demanding free work from them, amongst many other counterarguments, they essentially threw a fit for not getting what they wanted. I was left aghast at how entitled some people could be.
11. I’m making a mental note never to do this.
In preschool, my mom gave me a book of math problems and said if I got them all done by the end of the day, I’d get a reward. I did the shit out of those math problems.
My reward was a hug. I felt like Patrick from the Valentine’s episode of SpongeBob.
10. That’s how you learn to hold it.
When our teacher would yell at us if we asked to go to the bathroom at the beginning of class because we should’ve gone earlier, and then yell at us if we asked to go in the middle of class because we were interrupting, and then yell at us if we wanted to go at the end because we were trying to ditch since the class was almost over.
9. It’s even worse if she didn’t believe you.
My mom finding a cigarette in the backyard, accusing me of having stolen a friend’s mom’s cigarettes to secretly smoke there and grounding me for it despite me not having done any such thing. I was like 9 at that time
8. Spoiler alert: They were definitely wrong.
..the first time I was followed by a couple of guys in a car. I was 12.
I ran to the nearest house for help. And I asked them if we should call the police.. and they said no. Looking back, I think they were wrong.
7. Talk about being punished for being smart!
When I was in kindergarten we had to that thing where you had a grid of boxes, and in each box was a word. You would have to cut out each box individually, then arrange the words in some order. After a few months of cutting out each box like we had been shown, I figured that cutting out the rows and putting them on top of each other so the boxes lined up, and cutting them out like that, would take a lot less time. My teacher saw me do this. I had to stay in at recess to cut them out the ‘right’ way.
6. Sounds like someone’s mommy had issues.
My mom would ask my opinion on things constantly. I would say it didn’t matter to me, or whatever she thought was best, but she would force the issue until I finally answered. Then she would scream at me about how I didn’t understand or I was an idiot or I never thought of her needs. I still panic a little when people ask for my opinion on something.
5. Not all teachers are good teachers.
I had a similar thing. In first or second grade, we were making pop-up Mother’s Day cards or something, where you had to trace hearts with a pencil on cardstock, cut it out, fold it, whatever (you get the gist)
When I turned mine in, I was the third or fourth kid in a row that put the hearts with the pencil marks facing forward instead of “hiding” them by turning them around. She lost it on me, telling me I was horrible at following instructions, couldn’t believe anyone was so oblivious not to see the stencil tracing was the wrong way, etc. Tossed the card right in the trash, and gave me my first ever zero (and as a goody two-shoes who idolized my teachers, also my first ever anxiety attack.)
Fortunately, other incidents with this teacher taught me I got in less trouble for not doing homework at all, rather than getting it done and risk making mistakes. Set me up for success real good later on.
4. I’m angry on his/her behalf.
This was back before classrooms were super tech savvy. One afternoon, the teacher was trying a new system and wanted the class to participate. She couldn’t get it to work and called the tech support guy. Well, this took a long time. We were just sitting there quietly,’waiting impatiently and the time for recess came.
The teacher didn’t let us go to recess because she couldn’t figure out the computer program.‘
This happened 11 years go and I am still angry.
3. I kind of hope they were lying.
Was asked to “watch the rectory” on Friday nights so the priests could have a night off. I was 12 years old. My job basically was to accept food that was brought by parishoners for the priests and find a place for it in their jammed packed double glass door refrigerator that was as wide as two refrigerators (there were 4 priests at our tiny parish). I accepted fully cooked roasts, hams, casseroles and cakes. I was told NOT to eat anything! A few months later I was made to clean the convent with a couple of the nuns as a punishment for talking too much in class (there were 23 nuns who lived on site and taght school). Their kitchen had a tiny refrigerator and when it was lunch time they opened a cupboard of expired canned goods. We had very old tomato soup for lunch with stale bread and milk made from powder. I asked them if they knew about the food over at the rectory and they said no…..
2. The second person always gets caught.
In second grade a friend said the b-word, and didn’t realize that it was a curse word. I tried to explain to him it was a bad word and he shouldn’t say it. The teacher heard me spell it (because I didn’t want to say it out loud) during my explaination, wrote a note to my parents saying I used this word and sent me home for the day.
1. Trying your hardest should always be the bar.
I was around 7-8. It was sports day in my school and i participated in pass the baton. I was enjoying myself and trying my hardest, but at the end of it my class teacher told my mum (in front of me) that i was too slow. Not sure why i took it to heart but i just felt disappointed and it made me lose confidence in sports.
These are a bunch of bullsh*t, you guys – why are siblings so awful?
If you can remember this moment for you, please share it with us in the comments!