I don’t know if this is something people say in other countries, but in my country, there’s this common cliché or “wisdom” where adults will assure you that the people who picked on you in environments like school will universally develop lives of hardship later on, one way or another getting into mayhem.
I asked my mother one day what happened to all those people growing up. I can sense she may have been sugar coating it, but she said something along the lines of “well, I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and became a teacher, and waited some more, and finally watched as my bullies had to go into retirement five years late, yay” (okay, not really like that, but it might as well have been).
Yeah, common theme in my experience that what we hope for is never “that” set in stone. No matter where in the community (or even long-distance communicating) you knew them from, based on life, how much approximate correspondence do you associate with that mindset in the first paragraph?
You graduated on a Sunday? My school always did graduations on weekdays. I graduated about a week earlier than you did. Juuuust about to turn 40 myself.
And yes, I’ve either befriended my old bullies (a lot of them were just lashing out because they had a shitty home life/no one to listen to them), or they’ve gone off to live their lives and I never heard from them again.
My class is finally at the age where they’re keeping tabs on who has died since the last reunion, and the list is very short with none of my former bullies on it.
Might have been a few days off with the date, it’s been a minute lol.
Did you look that up or are you one of those people that knows days from dates ?
I looked it up, because my high school graduation date was right about that time. I was curious if I graduated on the same date.