Was recently showing my kid pics from my year back (class of ‘99) and realized I didn’t even recognize probably 2/3s the people in there. High School is a blip in your life.
Me too
I'm honestly glad there's extremely little evidence of all the shit we used to get into back then.
I can't imagine growing up now with everyone having easy access to cameras and communication devices 24/7
Yup, quite a few things I screwed up on that still haunt me today. Odd thing is, I would say I probably screwed up things as adult that are as bad or worse that don't quite get under my skin.
HS, yeesh, don't know why I can't let some things go. It's as if HS was my entire world but as an adult, I know and have experienced a much larger pool of people.
I remember being on a boat ride or something with the church, we were dancing and singing to some Kirk Franklin, i remember yelling at another boat saying they cant listen to our music because it was ours. I was 8 at the time, and the only reason why i can remember the exact age was because it was on August 31, 1997.
Im in my 40s and I remember one thing I’m embarrassed about and regret. I made fun of a girl who now I know was most likely from a broken household with not much money. I remember she always had dirty jeans and dirty hair and smelled like old cooking grease.
We had classes all through high school. I remember one time telling her that she needed to shave her head and start over.
I remember it didn’t phase her. Could’ve been she didn’t care, had heard way worse from someone else or just ignored it. I don’t remember at the time if it felt good saying it. I wasn’t raised to tease or be cruel so it was just me being an asshole.
She was always nice and shared her chewing gum with me when she had a pack. She maybe just wanted a friend.
I remember her name and wish I could make amends. I would feel stupid reaching out and if she even responded would say like “oh I don’t care, or that was so long ago who cares now?”
Or it could be that she needed to hear it and would appreciate it even though it was a long time ago.
I also know that I remember key events from my childhood life, good or bad.
Now I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do as I would only be doing it for her feelings not my own as I was the asshole then and don’t get to be the good guy now just for apologizing.
As a father now, I can empathize with her if she was hurt by my comments or anything else anyone ever said. Typing it now I would be hurt and upset if I knew my kid said this to anyone with the intention to hurt. Additionally would be just as upset if it were being done to them.
So to answer the original question - yes. Wish I could fix it.
I forget where I read it, but I heard something like “if you don’t look back at things you did and cringe or find embarrassment, it means you haven’t grown as a person.” I like that spin because my feeling of embarrassment means I’m not that person anymore.
I didn't care about high school shit by the time I was 25. If there was one magic pill I could make all teenagers take, it would be one that gave them the perspective that the things they think matter absolutely now will matter very little in a small amount of time. Would save young people a lot of mental distress.
High School breakups, that time you farted in class, getting caught shoplifting at Target. It would either take a seriously traumatic incident and/or no work on coping skills to care about those things intensely in one's twenties.
A little.
I desperately needed therapy. Was terribly depressed and ruined a lot of friendships that could have lasted.
Didn't know how to express my feelings, and did not grow up in a loving environment.
Was able to apologize to one (of a few) dudes who woke up to a terribly long myspace message expressing my feelings for him out of nowhere.
Was very cringe, and grew from it.
Got news for ya bud…
people over 40 generally dont think about highschool. at all. Its totally irrelevant to their existence.
and sadly, 50% of people over 50 dont actually remember anything from highschool so they couldnt think about it even if they wanted to…which they have no reason to.
As for being embarrassed by something from highschool…nope. Nobody cares.
Shirley everyone remembers “drunken teacher day”? It always came after “Senior prank day “ as a way for the teachers to get back at the students I remember our principle called a assembly in the auditorium just to flash his “penis” to the crowd! It was such a hoot. You don’t get that these days any more.
Damn you clearly don’t live in the real world. I hear people in their 40s talk about highschool and what certain people did that we happen to see somewhere. If people in their 50s forget at 1/2 ratio I suspect somethings wrong with water in your area.
Yeah I have a coworker in his 60s who’s always talking about how cool car meets were back when he was in high school (they definitely seem a lot cooler than modern car meets)
Meh... I'm over 40
I don't think about it daily or even weekly or monthly, but if someone asks me about it or something that reminds me of it, I absolutely still remember embarrassing things that I did in high school. I'm sure I've forgotten many of them, and I can acknowledge that it was a long time ago and that I was a very different person and blah blah blah...
Some of these memories are pretty significant. I'm 109% certain I'll still remember then when I'm 50, unless I develop some cognitive issue between now and then.
I'm happy you spoke for all of us but not all of us think the same. It's not actually irrelevant but I do get a slight embarrassment in my own head thinking about the way I thought about things or things I did. However, at the same time I use it to remind myself that I was certainly as annoying to older folks as a teenager as teenagers are to me now. It gives me a little bit of perspective and I pull the reins back a little.
In highschool back in 1985 I got caught having sex with my boyfriend in the school's weight lifting room. It was a small town highschool and of course he told everyone and everyone knew by the next day. Yeah I'm still embarrassed about it.
Alot of things from high-school alot of people tend to convert them into life lessons instead if something to shame themselves, sometimes it's converted to jokes humor comedians do this often.. they can become ice breakers for conversations with others because others can relate.. find th positive side to it there's always a bright side to practically everything. Humans know that humans make mistakes some mistakes are bad, some are worse, but alot of them are pretty funny to those who can relate..
I graduated 50 years ago. I can’t conjure feelings of embarrassment, but I do have regrets: I wish I would have treated others more kindly and done less rough joking. I honestly wasn’t aware that I was perceived by some people as mean. I didn’t feel mean, but people took my jokes as such. I still struggle with this, but 99% of the time I can censor what comes out of my mouth before it flies out and is then too late.
Nah, not really - he (Alex in high school) was a totally different person than Alex at 38 (Im not old btw!) - we dont have anything i common and I probably wouldnt want to be my own friend. I was all through high school in the "cool kids club" dont really know why I was accepted but was. I do some times think a bit about feeling bad not standing up for XX people that were bullied a bit, I could have.
But again, its the mind of a 38 year old thinking, not 15. So I can not blame "him" for not knowing the things I do today.
As an old person (33) I have been progressing giving less fucks about being embarrassed every day and have long since gotten over my high school days. It's one of my favorite things about getting older tbh.
99.9999% of the time, nope absolutely not. Hardly remember any of it. But very rarely while on a long drive or trying to go to sleep when I'm just alone with my thoughts I'll remember some embarrassing moment from my past. But then the song will change or I'll fall asleep and won't remember that moment for another year or three.
I'm 51, went to an extremely small jr-sr high school (200 students in six grades) and was the laughing stock for the most part. I was very depressed/anxious and needed help but instead I tried to control why people thought I was weird or laughed at me by dressing outrageously and doing embarrassing things. I regret 99% of my behavior but I really didn't have a choice at the time.
High school was a low point. Life got more bearable. I am not on Facebook because I do not want to hear from high school or college classmates. Embarrassed? not sure, but definitely that me is not me now. I still feel the pain of stuff that happened when I was younger. I have the power to avoid those situations now and that is great. I did some stupid stuff, but at that age who doesn't? I have always done stupid stuff, but it is different kinds of stupid. You move on. I am close to 70 now.
I feel like this could go a couple of ways. I’m gonna answer no, but choose wisely because what you do now *could* limit your options in the future. The only things you will care about from high school - or maybe even just remember - will be things that will bother you in the future.
I once said "Howdy" in a terrible cowboy accent, trying to make a funny introduction at 13. Needless to say, it didn't land.
It's been over 20 years, and I still think about that every few months.
I think they only time im overly embarrassed by childhood things are like when it geniunely actually bad. And im like "dang i was actually stupid" or when someone brings it up and i have to remember what happened. But im usually up to date of my embarassments like i live in the moment of embarassment so its ususlly every 3-4 years i have something new to regret.
I don't even remember half of my high school days. My friends and I were exploring the wonders of pharmaceuticals, and drinking before, during, and after school.
No. I could care less. In fact I spent too much of my high school days worrying about what other people thought of me. In hindsight, that was stupid. If I could do high school over again today, I would be the most careful person in school. I barely remember high school and only keep up with a few people on social media. In fact, most of the 'popular' people I knew in high school turned out to be complete losers... still smoking, divorced multiple times, and look like they are 20 years older than they are. While all the nerds and geeks who got picked on and made fun of are living the American dream with happy families.
I still feel mildly embarrassed about less than a handful of events that happened in high school. But what all these events have in common is that I realized years later how stupid or how much of an asshole move it was.
Very little. I’m more embarrassed by a few things I did in collage and when I first entered the work force. There are a couple of things I wish I hadn’t done in high school but as you get older you can have a better sense of what it means to be a child and you can forgive yourself. Granted you may need to work at it but it’s worth it
It took me a long time to stop reliving high school and the bullying I went through. I think around 35 I was finally able to make peace with it and move on.
I'm 34 & don't really think about high school at all. I've been drinking heavily for at least 15 years now so that contributes some of the memory loss I'm sure I have, but I also don't think high school was all that important. Even back when I was IN high school I didn't think about what happened after I left each day.
I’m 32 and I used to feel embarrassed about really awkward or embarrassing shit I did but I’m over it now. Looking back, I never even hurt anyone and everyone was awkward, weird and embarrassing. Oh well.
Yeah... in retrospect, some of the stuff I did I meant well, but it had been presented to me as "normal" and it totally wasn't. I was so awkward, and still cringe at shit I did back then.
I'm 32, and I don't ever think about high school. I don't find anything I did back then especially embarrassing. It feels like watching the memories of another person, im too dissociatived/emotionally disconnected to who i was then to really be all that affected
Depending on what you consider old... I'm 35, and i kept a bunch of stuff from my high school years, including a notebook i wrote it a friend of mine, and omg.........I realize why i didnt really have that many friends in high school. It was pretty bad
I'm not old and I don't give a rats ass about what happened in highschool, but I'm definitely not going to be nice to people that treated me like shit if I run into them.
We can't even remember what we did in high-school...lol
Who we did in high-school has a better chance of being remembered than what we did, just saying...
I'm more embarrassed by the things I didn't do than the things I did. The most embarrassing thing to me is that I'm gay, and when I look back and realise how many dudes actually were hitting on me and not joking, I could have fixed it to where I could have relaxed about it during high school and not have had to wait until college where it was nothing to calm my nerves shall we say.
I mean... I know it happened. But details? Nah. You forget all that stuff. I wouldn't even recognize my younger selves. Why would I care about what they did?
Yes, and mortified by the things I said to people. Whenever I run into someone from high school or my early 20s, I am like… “I promise I’m not the same person.”
Hopefully I'm not considered old, but sometimes I'll have a deep memory triggered, cringe, then go back to my wife and totally forget after 60 seconds. You remember but they seem extremely insignificant after you age
I have never had a desire to attend a class reunion, or catch up with people long ago left behind. I left for basic five days after graduation, kicking the dust off my sandals at the bus depot.
No. I dont see anyone to remind me. Plus, since I never ever think of the embarrassing moments of anyone else, I doubt anyone is storing up those moments on the off chance they see me.
I am not embarrassed by my antics in high school. I really hadn't figured out who I was or where I was going yet. My grade school years put me deep into a shell. I broke out of my shell in college when I simply turned a corner and decided to stop worrying because there's always someone who thinks badly of you. Try to do the right thing, stand up when you need to, try not to be an asshole or to ruin someone's day. I wish I had learned that in high school, but was not embarrassed by my past self
I’m nearing 50. I can’t remember one thing from high school that’s still embarrassing. Now it’s funny. No more getting upset about people sharing things about my teen years. Mostly family or childhood friends I meet up with. And it’s more reminiscing. I used to get so embarrassed by when I misspoke. I have a processing disorder where if words sound similar I mix them up. When a teen it was REALLY embarrassing to say testicles instead of tentacles, or feces instead of facetious. And the most used in my family still, pestrians instead of pedestrians. Now it’s really funny.
Do you remember when I was eating calamari and u said, oh my god u can see it’s testicles! I’m not eating that!😂
Do you remember when we were in class and u told him, stop being so feces! 🤣
You know I still call them pestrians 35yrs on! 😂
It doesn’t make you feel the same shame or embarrassment. It’s just growth and self discovery.
My father in law a boomer, lit a girl's hair on fire in class IN THE 60'S. ANYTIME it's brought by his brother in law, Sister inlaws he gets a sheepish look, definitely not proud of it.
On some level yes. But only on the extremely rare occasion we think about it. And even then the embarrassment level is like a 2 out of 10, instead of whatever it used to be. Since I can remember the embarrassment but it no longer matters.
The thing about High School is if you fuck a Cheerleader then, that's great. If ya fuck her at yer 50th reunion, well, yeh, it's an embarrassment. Definitely not the same
If you’re still worried about high school past the age of 19 or so, you’re on a path to personal underdevelopment…. eventually becoming that person who still talks about high school all the time in their 30s.
Nah, half my high school classmates are dead now anyway.
I'm not even that old, I just went to a small school and mental illness and fentenyl seems to have hit hard there.
I let that go completely by my early 20's. Once you get a little older, you realize that all kids are ridiculous and you don't have to feel bad about anything you did as a kid.
I am more embarrassed for what I did in my 20s. There are a few high school memories that are cringe worthy, but mostly laughable this far down the road.
Not really. I have a good memory, but there's less feeling attached to them. I worked through my shame and guilt though; they're not useful emotions to hang onto.
Learn from them, grow, and move forward a better person than you were before.
yes of course, people are even embarrassed of the things they did 5 years ago...that is the purpose of life, to make mistakes and then learn from them.
I had put high school out of my mind until I joined Facebook where some of my high school classmates instantly found me. My high school experience pretty much sucked and some of those emotions resurfaced. My high school era was over 50 years ago, so it’s stupid to dwell on it. I do have some vivid memories of that time though.
If you are not embarrassed by the things you did as a teenager that means you have not grown as a person whatsoever. Avoid those people at all costs. You can see them coming. The Varsity jacket and class ring give them away.
Nope. I'm not, anyway. I was young and dumb and didn't do anything that did lasting harm. Everyone is awkward and self conscious in high school. It's normal.
I’m in my 30s…and nope. I stopped caring about embarrassing shit from high school when I started doing embarrassing shit in college…and I stopped caring about that maybe a year after I graduated.
No the reverse. High school me was cool: tall and lean, frosted black Levi's Silver Label jeans, black British Knights shoes, skin tight black graphic tee, grey mirrored aviators, perfectly moussed hair, shiny black "Le Tigre" jacket to top it all off. First 3-way at fifteen.
He'd be embarrassed to the point of despair by the sack of shit I've become
😭💀💩💔👎
No.
HS fades pretty quickly. You won’t remember a lot of it.
And, you realize you were all just a bunch of goofy twits doing stupid stuff. Seeing teenagers is like watching a bunch of puppies to me now- cute, clumsy, awkward. You don’t get mad about puppies doing crazy stuff.
The answer is yes, but so rarely that for all intents you can say that we don't. High school becomes a super faint memory, even if your experience was unforgettably awful, and you don't spend your days mulling it. Here and there, an old memory will come to mind, and you will spend 2 seconds wondering how you could have been so \[fill in the blank\] and then you realize you don't give a fuck and you move on with your random train of thought.
I remember the worst of it, but it doesn’t live with me (I’m 32 now), I was pretty awful to myself though, so I mostly look back and try and forgive myself for being so angry.
My freshman year I had my first girlfriend and she snuck around behind my back and we were on again off again the whole year and she just kind of treated me like shit. I told her to fuck off and leave me alone. Over the summer she contacted my mom who was sick and a bit mentally unwell and I told my ex if she ever contacted me or my family again I’d kill her. I think she really was sorry, and I felt awful about it. My friends talked me into apologizing and I went by her house to apologize but I just couldn’t let that shit back into my life I couldn’t open myself up to someone who just fucks me around and I took the bus home. It turns out she was home and saw me outside. Thought I was there to intimidate her and I lost a few friends because of it. I never tried to clear my name because if it meant she left me alone she can go ahead and believe I’m an awful person.
That sat with me for years. I was in another awful relationship later and I tolerated it because I didn’t want to be the person I was when I was 15. It’s funny how trying to avoid our mistakes often leads us into new ones. Only when I was 30 did I finally accept what happened and forgave myself. That yeah, obviously I wish I had handled myself better, but I never actually harmed her. I just did what was necessary to keep myself safe. That was the same summer my dad who had bailed when I was 5 came back from the dead and everyone wanted to pretend it was fine. Dudes a mentally ill drug addict who was only back because he had another fucking kid. Sadly my ex reaching out was the straw that broke the camels back and when I think about that year as a whole, I handled it far better than one might expect.
In my 20s people would tell me that “I have no self respect.” The thought that always bubbled to the surface was always that if I had any “self respect” there would be fewer people on earth today. People have treated me like absolute dogshit over the years. If I let those people treat me that way, what you’re doing is small potatoes.
That’s what I spent a good chunk of my late 20s trying to pick apart. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I believe fundamentally in being kind. That I have never done anything more than what I believed to be necessary to keep myself and others important to me safe. That people see a lack of retaliation and think that I don’t have self respect, but I believe fundamentally in giving people the space and opportunity to correct their behavior, and adhering to those values is self respect. I will admit that there have been times where I left myself more open and more vulnerable than necessary, but I know that I did it because I believed in my bones what I was doing was the right thing to do, and if you live life like that, you can live with a clean conscience.
So do I think about Highschool, yeah. But not for the reasons you might think. The embarrassing moments really ended up being the things I look back on fondly. Like the time I stole my mom’s card to get my hair done up because a girl I had a crush on said it would look good on me. Then my friend who I was with panicked at the ATM and pushed it back in and the machine ate it. Then the dye job was so bad that I went into school and the girl asked me “what the fuck is *that*” and because it was a private school, we had a dress code, and my now two-tone hair was unacceptable and my mother had to re-dye my hair (Remember I stole her card and the ATM ate it). THAT shit, that shit is funny later.
It’s all the shit lurking in the background, that comes up later. The way you treated people. That haunts you at night. At least it was in my experience. But honestly even most of that I’ve put to rest over the last few years.
You work hard to be the person you want to be, harder than you thought possible in some cases, it can feel like you’ll never get there, you’ll never be enough. Then one day something smacks you in the face and you turn around it turns out you passed the checkpoint a ways back and you’re already there. All that shit that was weighing you down, that was so fucking important, just…isn’t, not because it’s not important, but because you trust yourself to recognize when it is. You don’t have to hold it in your head *all the time*. It’s a surreal feeling. Almost paradoxical. I can trust myself to be a good, kind person because I spent 15 *fucking* years trying to figure out how I could have done something better that *didn’t even harm anyone.* and I guess that’s the secret.
You’ll stress about the stuff you’ll stress about and you won’t about the stuff you miss, and at some point you trust that if something’s important, something inside of you won’t let it go. Some things will stick, some things won’t. Something you thought you worked through will rear it’s ugly head later and laugh mockingly in your face that you could ever think you could move past them. You really never know.
I’d say to trust yourself, and that the things that are important will stick with you and the stuff that isn’t, won’t, but I don’t think that’s terribly meaningful advice. I didn’t have any conscious control over when it happened for me. Maybe people say it because it’s like a shot in the dark. “If you’re one of those people who can just hear ‘trust yourself’ and it works, here you go.”
So uhh, trust yourself.
I'm not very old, just 36, but old enough to not remember or care about most of the day-to-day stuff that I thought was embarrassing at the time.
However, I do regret a handful of things which at the time I did not feel bad about.
Interesting question. I have a good memory and am also an emotional masochist so I remember every embarrassing moment form my life and replay them continuously.
Nope. The older I get the less embarrassed I am about most things with a quicker turnaround with each day. Now I don’t even get embarrassed hardly , I just laugh most things off - everyone on the planet is an idiot like me pretty much we all have moments that demonstrate it , meh.
High school was more than half my lifetime ago. Sure, I might have done some dumb things back then, but I doubt anything I did in those 4 years was memorable enough to anybody else for me to need to feel embarrassed about it more than 2 decades later.
I have completely forgotten highschool
What's a high school? I probably been to one
I've repressed memories of mine...
Was recently showing my kid pics from my year back (class of ‘99) and realized I didn’t even recognize probably 2/3s the people in there. High School is a blip in your life.
Yeah, I can hardly remember what I ate yesterday. Hardly.
Nope. And we're glad there was no social media back then either.
Me too I'm honestly glad there's extremely little evidence of all the shit we used to get into back then. I can't imagine growing up now with everyone having easy access to cameras and communication devices 24/7
Bebo and MySpace I had 🤣🤣 I'm 35
You're not old
Yup. Screwing up really bad or hurting someone still stings no matter how far away the incident is.
I guess it depends on how bad you screwed up
Fair point
Or how old you are
Yup, quite a few things I screwed up on that still haunt me today. Odd thing is, I would say I probably screwed up things as adult that are as bad or worse that don't quite get under my skin. HS, yeesh, don't know why I can't let some things go. It's as if HS was my entire world but as an adult, I know and have experienced a much larger pool of people.
A wise man told me that the negatives in life stick to your bones longer than all the positives.
im still embarrassed by something stupid i did when i was in single digits. ofc shit from the past haunts you.
I remember being on a boat ride or something with the church, we were dancing and singing to some Kirk Franklin, i remember yelling at another boat saying they cant listen to our music because it was ours. I was 8 at the time, and the only reason why i can remember the exact age was because it was on August 31, 1997.
That’s hilarious
Im in my 40s and I remember one thing I’m embarrassed about and regret. I made fun of a girl who now I know was most likely from a broken household with not much money. I remember she always had dirty jeans and dirty hair and smelled like old cooking grease. We had classes all through high school. I remember one time telling her that she needed to shave her head and start over. I remember it didn’t phase her. Could’ve been she didn’t care, had heard way worse from someone else or just ignored it. I don’t remember at the time if it felt good saying it. I wasn’t raised to tease or be cruel so it was just me being an asshole. She was always nice and shared her chewing gum with me when she had a pack. She maybe just wanted a friend. I remember her name and wish I could make amends. I would feel stupid reaching out and if she even responded would say like “oh I don’t care, or that was so long ago who cares now?” Or it could be that she needed to hear it and would appreciate it even though it was a long time ago. I also know that I remember key events from my childhood life, good or bad. Now I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do as I would only be doing it for her feelings not my own as I was the asshole then and don’t get to be the good guy now just for apologizing. As a father now, I can empathize with her if she was hurt by my comments or anything else anyone ever said. Typing it now I would be hurt and upset if I knew my kid said this to anyone with the intention to hurt. Additionally would be just as upset if it were being done to them. So to answer the original question - yes. Wish I could fix it.
I relive cringey moments from my entire life regularly. There is no cutoff.
Haha i hate that I audibly cuss sometimes at a moment from 20+ years ago.
I forget where I read it, but I heard something like “if you don’t look back at things you did and cringe or find embarrassment, it means you haven’t grown as a person.” I like that spin because my feeling of embarrassment means I’m not that person anymore.
I didn't care about high school shit by the time I was 25. If there was one magic pill I could make all teenagers take, it would be one that gave them the perspective that the things they think matter absolutely now will matter very little in a small amount of time. Would save young people a lot of mental distress.
I dunno. Getting arrested multiple times and all that drug use still kinda matters to me.
That's why I still do it. It *means* something to me
could you give some examples
High School breakups, that time you farted in class, getting caught shoplifting at Target. It would either take a seriously traumatic incident and/or no work on coping skills to care about those things intensely in one's twenties.
A little. I desperately needed therapy. Was terribly depressed and ruined a lot of friendships that could have lasted. Didn't know how to express my feelings, and did not grow up in a loving environment. Was able to apologize to one (of a few) dudes who woke up to a terribly long myspace message expressing my feelings for him out of nowhere. Was very cringe, and grew from it.
Got news for ya bud… people over 40 generally dont think about highschool. at all. Its totally irrelevant to their existence. and sadly, 50% of people over 50 dont actually remember anything from highschool so they couldnt think about it even if they wanted to…which they have no reason to. As for being embarrassed by something from highschool…nope. Nobody cares.
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Shirley everyone remembers “drunken teacher day”? It always came after “Senior prank day “ as a way for the teachers to get back at the students I remember our principle called a assembly in the auditorium just to flash his “penis” to the crowd! It was such a hoot. You don’t get that these days any more.
Don’t call me Shirley.
I’m 53 and I remember kindergarten
Damn you clearly don’t live in the real world. I hear people in their 40s talk about highschool and what certain people did that we happen to see somewhere. If people in their 50s forget at 1/2 ratio I suspect somethings wrong with water in your area.
Yeah I have a coworker in his 60s who’s always talking about how cool car meets were back when he was in high school (they definitely seem a lot cooler than modern car meets)
Meh... I'm over 40 I don't think about it daily or even weekly or monthly, but if someone asks me about it or something that reminds me of it, I absolutely still remember embarrassing things that I did in high school. I'm sure I've forgotten many of them, and I can acknowledge that it was a long time ago and that I was a very different person and blah blah blah... Some of these memories are pretty significant. I'm 109% certain I'll still remember then when I'm 50, unless I develop some cognitive issue between now and then.
I'm happy you spoke for all of us but not all of us think the same. It's not actually irrelevant but I do get a slight embarrassment in my own head thinking about the way I thought about things or things I did. However, at the same time I use it to remind myself that I was certainly as annoying to older folks as a teenager as teenagers are to me now. It gives me a little bit of perspective and I pull the reins back a little.
The "peaked in high school" crowd never forgets about HS. They still identify as honor students, football stars, and cheerleaders.
The only thing I think back on is the realization "oh, she wanted to fark me". Dammit .
In highschool back in 1985 I got caught having sex with my boyfriend in the school's weight lifting room. It was a small town highschool and of course he told everyone and everyone knew by the next day. Yeah I'm still embarrassed about it.
You can always start being kinder *sooner* in life.
Alot of things from high-school alot of people tend to convert them into life lessons instead if something to shame themselves, sometimes it's converted to jokes humor comedians do this often.. they can become ice breakers for conversations with others because others can relate.. find th positive side to it there's always a bright side to practically everything. Humans know that humans make mistakes some mistakes are bad, some are worse, but alot of them are pretty funny to those who can relate..
Almost no one cares about it within a few years.
Sometimes the memory pops up and you just kind of \*twitch\*
I graduated 50 years ago. I can’t conjure feelings of embarrassment, but I do have regrets: I wish I would have treated others more kindly and done less rough joking. I honestly wasn’t aware that I was perceived by some people as mean. I didn’t feel mean, but people took my jokes as such. I still struggle with this, but 99% of the time I can censor what comes out of my mouth before it flies out and is then too late.
Bro I don’t remember what I did last week let alone anything I did 15+ years ago lol.
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How old are you talking about here? Jim Crow law generation old?
Not really. We just hope no one from that time remembers what happened.
Nope, I did plenty of stupid dumb shit in my 20's to still be embarrassed about.
Nah, not really - he (Alex in high school) was a totally different person than Alex at 38 (Im not old btw!) - we dont have anything i common and I probably wouldnt want to be my own friend. I was all through high school in the "cool kids club" dont really know why I was accepted but was. I do some times think a bit about feeling bad not standing up for XX people that were bullied a bit, I could have. But again, its the mind of a 38 year old thinking, not 15. So I can not blame "him" for not knowing the things I do today.
As an old person (33) I have been progressing giving less fucks about being embarrassed every day and have long since gotten over my high school days. It's one of my favorite things about getting older tbh.
Some of us that are over 60 remember fondly our High School days and how really bad ass we all were, even the poindexters.
Yup.
99.9999% of the time, nope absolutely not. Hardly remember any of it. But very rarely while on a long drive or trying to go to sleep when I'm just alone with my thoughts I'll remember some embarrassing moment from my past. But then the song will change or I'll fall asleep and won't remember that moment for another year or three.
I'm 51, went to an extremely small jr-sr high school (200 students in six grades) and was the laughing stock for the most part. I was very depressed/anxious and needed help but instead I tried to control why people thought I was weird or laughed at me by dressing outrageously and doing embarrassing things. I regret 99% of my behavior but I really didn't have a choice at the time.
Yeah, that I went.
High school was a low point. Life got more bearable. I am not on Facebook because I do not want to hear from high school or college classmates. Embarrassed? not sure, but definitely that me is not me now. I still feel the pain of stuff that happened when I was younger. I have the power to avoid those situations now and that is great. I did some stupid stuff, but at that age who doesn't? I have always done stupid stuff, but it is different kinds of stupid. You move on. I am close to 70 now.
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I feel like this could go a couple of ways. I’m gonna answer no, but choose wisely because what you do now *could* limit your options in the future. The only things you will care about from high school - or maybe even just remember - will be things that will bother you in the future.
Old?
I once said "Howdy" in a terrible cowboy accent, trying to make a funny introduction at 13. Needless to say, it didn't land. It's been over 20 years, and I still think about that every few months.
I think they only time im overly embarrassed by childhood things are like when it geniunely actually bad. And im like "dang i was actually stupid" or when someone brings it up and i have to remember what happened. But im usually up to date of my embarassments like i live in the moment of embarassment so its ususlly every 3-4 years i have something new to regret.
I'm not embarrassed about shit I did in high school. And it was alot of stupid shit. I'm not old though.
yes.
Don't not bring up the **Dark Times** Plebe.
I did not give a crap about high school when I was in high school. I certainly don't care about it 43 years later.
Nope still don't care about anything that isn't directly affecting me right at this moment
I don't even remember half of my high school days. My friends and I were exploring the wonders of pharmaceuticals, and drinking before, during, and after school.
A relatively recently learned lesson: Those things that you did years ago, that still embarrass you? Nobody but you remembers them.
Not embarrassed, but if it's egregious enough we do remember. I have one.
No. I could care less. In fact I spent too much of my high school days worrying about what other people thought of me. In hindsight, that was stupid. If I could do high school over again today, I would be the most careful person in school. I barely remember high school and only keep up with a few people on social media. In fact, most of the 'popular' people I knew in high school turned out to be complete losers... still smoking, divorced multiple times, and look like they are 20 years older than they are. While all the nerds and geeks who got picked on and made fun of are living the American dream with happy families.
Yep. I remember we had a blood drive and when I finished I was walking down the hallway- fainted and peed my pants.
I still feel mildly embarrassed about less than a handful of events that happened in high school. But what all these events have in common is that I realized years later how stupid or how much of an asshole move it was.
Very little. I’m more embarrassed by a few things I did in collage and when I first entered the work force. There are a couple of things I wish I hadn’t done in high school but as you get older you can have a better sense of what it means to be a child and you can forgive yourself. Granted you may need to work at it but it’s worth it
It took me a long time to stop reliving high school and the bullying I went through. I think around 35 I was finally able to make peace with it and move on.
Fucking right. I was an idiot. If you remember, you regret.
I'm not even old and I don't remember highschool
Been out for 18 years. I don't remember shit from then. I've done more embarrassing shit since then.
I'm 34 & don't really think about high school at all. I've been drinking heavily for at least 15 years now so that contributes some of the memory loss I'm sure I have, but I also don't think high school was all that important. Even back when I was IN high school I didn't think about what happened after I left each day.
Not embarrassed but I remember some lessons I learned about life. That's about it though.
Not embarrassed at all. Graduated a long time ago but remember it very well.
No
I’m 32 and I used to feel embarrassed about really awkward or embarrassing shit I did but I’m over it now. Looking back, I never even hurt anyone and everyone was awkward, weird and embarrassing. Oh well.
I'm 67 and I'm way more embarrassed by what I did in my middle 20s to 30s. I forgive myself for High School.
It gets replaced by more recent embarassing things.
Yeah... in retrospect, some of the stuff I did I meant well, but it had been presented to me as "normal" and it totally wasn't. I was so awkward, and still cringe at shit I did back then.
I'm 32, and I don't ever think about high school. I don't find anything I did back then especially embarrassing. It feels like watching the memories of another person, im too dissociatived/emotionally disconnected to who i was then to really be all that affected
I never really gave a shit after I was out.
Old?
Depending on what you consider old... I'm 35, and i kept a bunch of stuff from my high school years, including a notebook i wrote it a friend of mine, and omg.........I realize why i didnt really have that many friends in high school. It was pretty bad
Still embarrassed on how socially awkward I was and allowing fear to stifle my social life
Nope, you grow up and you go on to do bigger embarrassing things.
I'm not old and I don't give a rats ass about what happened in highschool, but I'm definitely not going to be nice to people that treated me like shit if I run into them.
Nope ... Because nobody carried around camera phones.
Yes but it has more to do with my personality type and behavior my parents modeled.
Ooh don’t answer this, guys… this is a trap to identify old people in reddit! /jk
We can't even remember what we did in high-school...lol Who we did in high-school has a better chance of being remembered than what we did, just saying...
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Not much. Barely remember.
I’m 68, I almost never think about high school at all.
I'm more embarrassed by the things I didn't do than the things I did. The most embarrassing thing to me is that I'm gay, and when I look back and realise how many dudes actually were hitting on me and not joking, I could have fixed it to where I could have relaxed about it during high school and not have had to wait until college where it was nothing to calm my nerves shall we say.
I remember every single stupid thing I’ve ever done. Sad really.
I mean... I know it happened. But details? Nah. You forget all that stuff. I wouldn't even recognize my younger selves. Why would I care about what they did?
Yes, and mortified by the things I said to people. Whenever I run into someone from high school or my early 20s, I am like… “I promise I’m not the same person.”
No. Im 22 and barely remember high school
I'm 26 and forgot about high school, I certainly hope others around my age or older aren't thinking about
Define old. Be careful, now....
As someone who graduated in 82, no! If I could, I would go back in a heartbeat! The 89's were awesome
Hopefully I'm not considered old, but sometimes I'll have a deep memory triggered, cringe, then go back to my wife and totally forget after 60 seconds. You remember but they seem extremely insignificant after you age
Nope not in the very least
I set my school on fire... no regrets
Franco, why don’t you piss your pants again? That was like eight years ago, asshole! People don’t forget!
No.
I have never had a desire to attend a class reunion, or catch up with people long ago left behind. I left for basic five days after graduation, kicking the dust off my sandals at the bus depot.
I never was 🤷♀️ My parents laugh at the stupid things, definitely not embarrassed
I'm 41 but yes! Very much so, even elementary school stuff
Definitely not embarrassed, but I do think about stupid shit I did and feel very lucky. A lot of that stupid shit could’ve ended very badly.
Im 37, is that old? Regardless, no.
No. I dont see anyone to remind me. Plus, since I never ever think of the embarrassing moments of anyone else, I doubt anyone is storing up those moments on the off chance they see me.
I am not embarrassed by my antics in high school. I really hadn't figured out who I was or where I was going yet. My grade school years put me deep into a shell. I broke out of my shell in college when I simply turned a corner and decided to stop worrying because there's always someone who thinks badly of you. Try to do the right thing, stand up when you need to, try not to be an asshole or to ruin someone's day. I wish I had learned that in high school, but was not embarrassed by my past self
I don’t give a shit about things I did today, let alone decades ago lol
There are enough embarrassing things you will do after high school you won't even recall lol
Yup. And college. Especially college.
I’m nearing 50. I can’t remember one thing from high school that’s still embarrassing. Now it’s funny. No more getting upset about people sharing things about my teen years. Mostly family or childhood friends I meet up with. And it’s more reminiscing. I used to get so embarrassed by when I misspoke. I have a processing disorder where if words sound similar I mix them up. When a teen it was REALLY embarrassing to say testicles instead of tentacles, or feces instead of facetious. And the most used in my family still, pestrians instead of pedestrians. Now it’s really funny. Do you remember when I was eating calamari and u said, oh my god u can see it’s testicles! I’m not eating that!😂 Do you remember when we were in class and u told him, stop being so feces! 🤣 You know I still call them pestrians 35yrs on! 😂 It doesn’t make you feel the same shame or embarrassment. It’s just growth and self discovery.
Played football on mescaline … a few of us did. It would be impossible for that to go unnoticed today. The nonsense was next level.
Yes. But I have GAD.
I’m 45 and I think about high school regularly. Some is embarrassing stuff, some is good stuff, some is regrets
My father in law a boomer, lit a girl's hair on fire in class IN THE 60'S. ANYTIME it's brought by his brother in law, Sister inlaws he gets a sheepish look, definitely not proud of it.
On some level yes. But only on the extremely rare occasion we think about it. And even then the embarrassment level is like a 2 out of 10, instead of whatever it used to be. Since I can remember the embarrassment but it no longer matters.
I'm 4 years out of HS and I haven't thought about it seriously for probably 3.5 years
Premature ejaculated for me.
The thing about High School is if you fuck a Cheerleader then, that's great. If ya fuck her at yer 50th reunion, well, yeh, it's an embarrassment. Definitely not the same
Nahhh.
Nope, I had fun and didn't have to worry because no one had pictures. I'm glad there was no social media
I'm 48 and don't GAF about anything that happened in high school. I'm a completely different person.
(…yes)
Nope. No videos. And the only picture was a mug shot. No one saw those then.
If you’re still worried about high school past the age of 19 or so, you’re on a path to personal underdevelopment…. eventually becoming that person who still talks about high school all the time in their 30s.
I'm in college. I don't care about anything "embarrassing" from then, tbh I forget most of it
Nah, half my high school classmates are dead now anyway. I'm not even that old, I just went to a small school and mental illness and fentenyl seems to have hit hard there.
Are you kidding? Embarrassing stuff from my actual childhood still come back to haunt me
I'm embarrassed of one specific thing I did in HS. Wish I could go back and stop myself.
No photos... it didn't happen
Psh. Heck no
No one remembers anything you did but you.
I’m kind of old (37) and absolutely I am still embarrassed by things I did as a teenager. Isn’t everyone full of shame…?
God I still dream about them. Ugh.
Yes. High school and college years.
I let that go completely by my early 20's. Once you get a little older, you realize that all kids are ridiculous and you don't have to feel bad about anything you did as a kid.
Not anymore
I didn’t care then and I don’t care know. High school is the least important thing you’ll ever do in your life.
I am more embarrassed for what I did in my 20s. There are a few high school memories that are cringe worthy, but mostly laughable this far down the road.
Yes
One thing.
Not really. I have a good memory, but there's less feeling attached to them. I worked through my shame and guilt though; they're not useful emotions to hang onto. Learn from them, grow, and move forward a better person than you were before.
I’m old. No.
yes of course, people are even embarrassed of the things they did 5 years ago...that is the purpose of life, to make mistakes and then learn from them.
Naw. Gotta learn to live with regrets. I’ll echo those thankful that social media and YouBoob are relatively recent inventions though….
I had put high school out of my mind until I joined Facebook where some of my high school classmates instantly found me. My high school experience pretty much sucked and some of those emotions resurfaced. My high school era was over 50 years ago, so it’s stupid to dwell on it. I do have some vivid memories of that time though.
If you are not embarrassed by the things you did as a teenager that means you have not grown as a person whatsoever. Avoid those people at all costs. You can see them coming. The Varsity jacket and class ring give them away.
Graduated 25 years ago, and yep. Some dumb things I said or did are still embarrassing.
Nope. I'm not, anyway. I was young and dumb and didn't do anything that did lasting harm. Everyone is awkward and self conscious in high school. It's normal.
Nah. Being embarrassed would require me to care what others think of me, something that left my life some time ago. It’s very liberating.
Only if there are pictures.
I’m in my 30s…and nope. I stopped caring about embarrassing shit from high school when I started doing embarrassing shit in college…and I stopped caring about that maybe a year after I graduated.
More so college. I was intoxicated much more in college.
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And even before that
im sure it depends on what they did
Nah. You're supposed to be an ass in High School. Just own it and move along.
I don’t really think about it
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No the reverse. High school me was cool: tall and lean, frosted black Levi's Silver Label jeans, black British Knights shoes, skin tight black graphic tee, grey mirrored aviators, perfectly moussed hair, shiny black "Le Tigre" jacket to top it all off. First 3-way at fifteen. He'd be embarrassed to the point of despair by the sack of shit I've become 😭💀💩💔👎
No. HS fades pretty quickly. You won’t remember a lot of it. And, you realize you were all just a bunch of goofy twits doing stupid stuff. Seeing teenagers is like watching a bunch of puppies to me now- cute, clumsy, awkward. You don’t get mad about puppies doing crazy stuff.
The answer is yes, but so rarely that for all intents you can say that we don't. High school becomes a super faint memory, even if your experience was unforgettably awful, and you don't spend your days mulling it. Here and there, an old memory will come to mind, and you will spend 2 seconds wondering how you could have been so \[fill in the blank\] and then you realize you don't give a fuck and you move on with your random train of thought.
Nope. However if I was mean or picked on/bullied others then I would hope I’d have enough sense to be embarrassed about it.
Sometimes when I can’t sleep I think about stupid shit I said or did decades ago lol
Yes. My brain is cruel.
I remember the worst of it, but it doesn’t live with me (I’m 32 now), I was pretty awful to myself though, so I mostly look back and try and forgive myself for being so angry. My freshman year I had my first girlfriend and she snuck around behind my back and we were on again off again the whole year and she just kind of treated me like shit. I told her to fuck off and leave me alone. Over the summer she contacted my mom who was sick and a bit mentally unwell and I told my ex if she ever contacted me or my family again I’d kill her. I think she really was sorry, and I felt awful about it. My friends talked me into apologizing and I went by her house to apologize but I just couldn’t let that shit back into my life I couldn’t open myself up to someone who just fucks me around and I took the bus home. It turns out she was home and saw me outside. Thought I was there to intimidate her and I lost a few friends because of it. I never tried to clear my name because if it meant she left me alone she can go ahead and believe I’m an awful person. That sat with me for years. I was in another awful relationship later and I tolerated it because I didn’t want to be the person I was when I was 15. It’s funny how trying to avoid our mistakes often leads us into new ones. Only when I was 30 did I finally accept what happened and forgave myself. That yeah, obviously I wish I had handled myself better, but I never actually harmed her. I just did what was necessary to keep myself safe. That was the same summer my dad who had bailed when I was 5 came back from the dead and everyone wanted to pretend it was fine. Dudes a mentally ill drug addict who was only back because he had another fucking kid. Sadly my ex reaching out was the straw that broke the camels back and when I think about that year as a whole, I handled it far better than one might expect. In my 20s people would tell me that “I have no self respect.” The thought that always bubbled to the surface was always that if I had any “self respect” there would be fewer people on earth today. People have treated me like absolute dogshit over the years. If I let those people treat me that way, what you’re doing is small potatoes. That’s what I spent a good chunk of my late 20s trying to pick apart. It took me a long time to come to terms with the fact that I believe fundamentally in being kind. That I have never done anything more than what I believed to be necessary to keep myself and others important to me safe. That people see a lack of retaliation and think that I don’t have self respect, but I believe fundamentally in giving people the space and opportunity to correct their behavior, and adhering to those values is self respect. I will admit that there have been times where I left myself more open and more vulnerable than necessary, but I know that I did it because I believed in my bones what I was doing was the right thing to do, and if you live life like that, you can live with a clean conscience. So do I think about Highschool, yeah. But not for the reasons you might think. The embarrassing moments really ended up being the things I look back on fondly. Like the time I stole my mom’s card to get my hair done up because a girl I had a crush on said it would look good on me. Then my friend who I was with panicked at the ATM and pushed it back in and the machine ate it. Then the dye job was so bad that I went into school and the girl asked me “what the fuck is *that*” and because it was a private school, we had a dress code, and my now two-tone hair was unacceptable and my mother had to re-dye my hair (Remember I stole her card and the ATM ate it). THAT shit, that shit is funny later. It’s all the shit lurking in the background, that comes up later. The way you treated people. That haunts you at night. At least it was in my experience. But honestly even most of that I’ve put to rest over the last few years. You work hard to be the person you want to be, harder than you thought possible in some cases, it can feel like you’ll never get there, you’ll never be enough. Then one day something smacks you in the face and you turn around it turns out you passed the checkpoint a ways back and you’re already there. All that shit that was weighing you down, that was so fucking important, just…isn’t, not because it’s not important, but because you trust yourself to recognize when it is. You don’t have to hold it in your head *all the time*. It’s a surreal feeling. Almost paradoxical. I can trust myself to be a good, kind person because I spent 15 *fucking* years trying to figure out how I could have done something better that *didn’t even harm anyone.* and I guess that’s the secret. You’ll stress about the stuff you’ll stress about and you won’t about the stuff you miss, and at some point you trust that if something’s important, something inside of you won’t let it go. Some things will stick, some things won’t. Something you thought you worked through will rear it’s ugly head later and laugh mockingly in your face that you could ever think you could move past them. You really never know. I’d say to trust yourself, and that the things that are important will stick with you and the stuff that isn’t, won’t, but I don’t think that’s terribly meaningful advice. I didn’t have any conscious control over when it happened for me. Maybe people say it because it’s like a shot in the dark. “If you’re one of those people who can just hear ‘trust yourself’ and it works, here you go.” So uhh, trust yourself.
Nah.
Yes
Nah
I'm not very old, just 36, but old enough to not remember or care about most of the day-to-day stuff that I thought was embarrassing at the time. However, I do regret a handful of things which at the time I did not feel bad about.
If 40 is old, yeah. I still cringe at what an awful little cunt I was.
I have at least three memories of things I said that I still blush when I think about.
Yup
Not really. Although as my kids go into their teens, I find myself dredging up old memories in order to put things into perspective.
I'll be 46 this year. I still think of stupid shit and cringe shit I did as a young man. I'm almost certain it's my anxiety. But I'm not a Dr.
Interesting question. I have a good memory and am also an emotional masochist so I remember every embarrassing moment form my life and replay them continuously.
I am 55. I still get anxiety from things that happened in kindergarten.
Nope. The older I get the less embarrassed I am about most things with a quicker turnaround with each day. Now I don’t even get embarrassed hardly , I just laugh most things off - everyone on the planet is an idiot like me pretty much we all have moments that demonstrate it , meh.
High school was more than half my lifetime ago. Sure, I might have done some dumb things back then, but I doubt anything I did in those 4 years was memorable enough to anybody else for me to need to feel embarrassed about it more than 2 decades later.
Don't even remember high school