I think everyone has a story about something totally wrong they witnessed at a too-young age. The thing is, we often don’t realize how wrong those things are until we’re older.
These 16 people are looking back and realizing now just how messed-up those things were, and how young they were to witness them.
16. Memories like glue.
When I was probably around 4-6 years old I used walk my grandma up stairs at her house every time we visited. She said she liked holding my hand. When I went to her room she’d always compliment my shirts and be like “what’s this on your shirt here called?”
And I’d say “Oh that’s Winnie the poo” Or whatever I was wearing. And she’d go on to tell me stories about the character or talk a bit about it.
When I was 16 I learned she’d been blind for years. She’d ask me to hold her hand up the stairs so that I could help guide her to her room. She’d ask what was on my shirt bc she could feel a pattern on it.
Idk why but that kind of made me feel both sad and very loved? Like she couldn’t see anymore but she never wanted to let me worry about it and still managed to compliment what I was wearing all the time. She passed away while I was still very young but those memories stuck like glue.
15. I hate that it kept happening.
I was s*xually assaulted at 13 while doing a play at a local theater but looking back there were other moments where I was assaulted by the same person but didn’t understand leading up to the “main event”.
For example he would try to rub my back and I just thought he was being nice or he would play and stroke my hair. I didn’t know any better and I didn’t like him at all so I thought if I ignored it he would just stop eventually.
My mom caught wind of what he was like and tried to make sure that I didn’t dance with him for the dance scene and stuff but it didn’t change anything. He went on to assault multiple minors from 17-3.
The police never did anything stating that they had no evidence even though about 5 girls including myself shared their story. The dude was an ex worker for Disney and had a fiance his age (he was in his 60s).
14. Bad babysitters abound.
My really odd babysitter got fired after she broke her glass table. I was playing with her son in another room when we heard a crash. She actually used to lock us in his room a lot. I don’t recall much but I remember a big commotion soon after. I remember my dad screaming at my mom that night about how I was banned from going over there ever again and how it was my mothers fault for letting me go over there (which I didn’t understand).
Grew up to find out that babysitter was shooting up and fell through that glass table. Neighbors had heard the crash and rushed over and found her high as a kite with 2 kids locked in a room (me and her kid).
13. So many sad stories.
In grade 1 a girl used to finger herself down there and would teach other girls of our class as well. It was an activity that the girls did in secrecy. I knew it was bad because in kindergarten a security guard of my dad’s office building had done the same thing to me.
Years later I realised that not only I was molested but my classmate was also being molested by someone.
12. There almost always is.
When I was little, a girl I met on vacation talked about s*xual stuff a lot. When my parents found out, they didn’t want me to play with her anymore.
Now that I’m an adult it occurs to me that there was probably a reason as to why she talked about that stuff so much…
11. What a confession.
I wasn’t a child but when I was in college I lived with my uncle Tom, who was only 4 years older than me. He used to come home from work with a six pack of beer and would crack one open as he walked in the door and offer me one.
15 years later, just before he died a meth addict, we talked about the good ‘ol days when we lived together. He confessed to me that after work he would but a six pack and a 40 oz beer. He would drink the entire 40 oz bottle and then walk into the house like he was just cracking his first can of beer. That always stuck with me.
10. We all hope she’s ok.
When I was 9, I would go spend time at the house of my preacher and his wife when their son visited with his wife and 4 year old daughter. One time we were playing in the closet and she told me to close my eyes. And when she said to open them, she was completely naked and “posing” like, hip out and hand on her head and said, “My Daddy says I’m beautiful.”
I was 9, I was very uncomfortable and told her she shouldn’t be naked in front of people but I didn’t realize of course what was actually occurring. I also remember always being really uncomfortable around her grandfather (the preacher), especially as a teenager because he would hug me for way too long, but I never put any of it together until much later. It haunts me.
I know I couldn’t have understood what to do then, and I unfortunately learned from my own experience that no one would have believed me. I feel awful thinking about what happened to that little girl, I wish I knew if she’s OK or not.
9. Totally creepy.
I’m fairly certain my sixth grade teacher was a pedophile. I distinctly remember him trying to convince me that I needed to come to his house to try the video game I was talking to him about on the bus on a field trip.
Thinking back on it it just feels so, creepy.
8. Some people shouldn’t be parents.
Finding out that breaking a cup or spilling a drink wasn’t a big deal was quite an eye opener, watching my girlfriend look at me like I’m nuts while I apologise for 20 minutes about dropping a glass of water made me reevaluate a lot of my childhood.
7. Why on earth…
I was waiting for my mom to get home and it felt like it was taking an extra long time.
I asked my father where she was.
His response? “Probably out getting raped.”
He was abusive and turned into a drug abusing narcissist who still refuses to acknowledge his wrongdoings.
Pretty f**ked up and its weird to remember these things as a kid.
6. They barely escaped.
I was circa 9 years old and my 40+ year old sports coach was one of my best friends. He took me on trips (e,g. swimming, crazy golf), bought me presents and made me captain of the team (even though I was probably the worst player!). He always treated me really well.
All of a sudden he just left town. No word of goodbye. I was always really sad and felt like I lost a real mentor. Even when I became an adult I didn’t even think anything of it and wondered where/why he vanished. People would whisper rumours about him but I knew that he was a great guy.
A couple of years ago, a friend showed me a website. My sports coaches face was on it and it said that he had been charged for historical s*x crimes against children. The charges dated back to the couple of years where he spent lots of time with me.
It was only then that I accepted that our ‘friendship’ would have probably ‘evolved’ at some stage. I was so oblivious.
5. Blissful ignorance.
I was around 8 years old and we lived in this mountain town about 5 miles from the border of Mexico.
One night my friends’ dad came in and told us he wanted to take us night driving so we can see the stars and do some off-roading.
As I got older I realized the timing was weird. It was like 2 or 3 in the morning. I mean, a lot of it was weird.
Well, we get in their awesome 66 mustang and drive for about 30 minutes. Then his dad turns off the headlights and slows to a crawl. He said we wouldn’t be able to see the stars with the lights on. We could.
All of a sudden we hear what kind of sounded like a plane, but we couldn’t see anything. He started driving through this field a little faster. Off-road time! Well, weird off road time. We would slide around, then stop, his dad would pick something up, and then back to sliding around. This happened about 10 times.
Years later I looked my friend up online and found his sister. I sent her an email and she called me. We caught up and she told me my friend and their dad had been killed in a drug raid a couple years after we had moved. They were collecting packages of drugs in a field and border patrol had been waiting to catch them. His dad tried to get away and drove off of a cliff.
After that I started remembering things like running through their house and stumbling across them trying to heat up a vase. I remember cut up straws (cut in four?) all over the place when we would clean up. It broke my heart to hear about what happened. Because there were so many things I just didn’t understand.
4. A bad situation.
Went to a friend’s house on the weekend to play video games at the age of about 10. We had a good time and played a lot of games on the ps2. His mom came upstairs from the basement to ask if we wanted food.
I turned around and said yes please and before I could finish saying please I noticed she had a black eye. I asked my friend what happened to his mom’s face and he said “I can’t say.”
10 year old me just said oh okay and we preceded to play video games. I didn’t realize until I was about 19 this happened.
3. The best possible outcome.
When I was 5 or 6, my mom used to never want to get out of bed and just kept saying she was sick. Finally, my stepdad took her to a hospital, where she stayed for nearly a month.
I thought it was so cool that her hospital let her do arts and crafts all the time, plus she got better and started doing arts and crafts with me too when she got home. I remember telling her that I wished I could go to the hospital and draw all day.
She sat me down and told me that she hoped I would never get sick like she did, but if I do, there’s nothing wrong with needing help to get better, even if you have to go somewhere for a little while to do it.
It wasn’t until I was probably 12 or 13 and didn’t want to get out of bed myself that it clicked that the hospital she had gone to was a mental health hospital. But because of her, I’ve never felt shame about needing therapy when things are getting bad, or even just to maintain a healthy mindset.
2. How do things get like this?
My mom used to let me watch cartoons late at night in her room as long as I didn’t turn around or be too loud. I would always hear her flicking a lighter but didn’t think too much about it.
Years later I found out she was smoking meth right behind me and blowing it out the window, she would use me as a excuse as to why she was awake if my step dad woke up and caught her.
1. Not a funny joke.
I didn’t see it, but my gf tells me a story of when she went to Arkansas with a friend and her friends family for a small trip, and they refused to return her home.
While she was there she was forced to role-play as their daughter and they gave her a new name and the dad would like to pick her scabs and they force fed her.
She talks about it like it’s just a funny joke from her past but when she told me my mouth dropped and she kinda laughed cuz she didn’t know why I was so flabbergasted by this story.
Some of these are shocking, sure, but surprising? Not so much.
Do you have a story like this? If so, lay it on us in the comments!
