It was a couple years ago and I’m not going to post the details to avoid identifying her, but a girl I knew well in high-school and had that sexy big-brain a teen nerd like me falls in love with. Found out by accident that she went crazy as a march hare and got arrested for crazy-ass stalking of associates (so not an ex-bf). I know it’s her because she looks like in high school just older and her arrest paperwork had her birthday. Had no contact with her since graduation so I have no clue how she went off the rails.
Just a weird feeling of “I know her” and not in a good way. Anyone else have similar experiences?
Similar, but not anywhere close to that degree. Had a college freshman GF, who was interesting, in the “I’m away from home for the first time and now I’m an exploring neo-pagan wiccan and totally into having fun.” She was still attractive, brilliant, and fascinated with the world. So she didn’t stay with me long (I am a bit of a pendant, and an excessive rationalist)…
My wife (who know both of us in college oh these many years ago) found her on facebook. She ended up having a severely austistic child, and blames it 110% on vaccinations (this was well prior to COVID of course). So she’s focused on protection and care for autistic kids (no problems there) and rabidly anti-vax and 100% for ‘alternative medicine’.
She apparently was involved in a (non-violent) blockade of a local public vaccination location. She was arrested, but not charged.
So yeah, similar experience, but far less scary crazy.
Well, a few years ago I idly Googled the name of someone from my high school speech and debate team. We weren’t particularly close and I certainly wasn’t romantically attracted to him, but we did share some camaraderie and laughs during the long drives to and from tournaments.
Anyway, he’s in prison for sexually abusing his stepdaughter. Does that count?
More creepy than crazy. The student body president, whom I knew in passing but was good friends with his girlfriend, got busted about 20 years later for taking topless photos of underage girls (15 and 16). Modelling type stuff with their consent and in one case, a parent’s consent. Still, on reading the news my reaction was “Ewww. I knew him.”
Also, “Is he a perv, or just really fucking stupid? He didn’t seem like a perv. On the other hand, when I knew him, he would have been into teenage girls, as was I. But now I’m into women in their 30s. Him???”
Someone I knew pretty casually in high school – 2 or 3 classes together, 1 or 2 years. Seemed nice enough. Taking “college prep” level classes. A while back I noticed on my local “police blotter” someone of the same name and right age in my small home town arrested for making a scene in some store that she had already been banned from and apparently had a history of getting into similar trouble all over town.
Not high school, but I once worked with a guy. A few years later he approached my for a job and we placed him as a contractor at one of our clients.
The day before he was supposed to start, he was arrested as part of the Toronto 18 Terror Plot. He’s served his time and is out on parole. I’ve not spoken to him since before his arrest.
Not crazy exactly, but a little off perhaps. I’ve told this story before.
I’m 23-ish, out of college and into USAF. Thumbing through an ordinary cheapo girlie mag (back when those things existed) at some magazine rack someplace. And there with a big smile cracked at both ends was a chick from my high school class. One I’d admired lusted after from a distance. Back then she was much too cool for the likes of nerdly me. And now here she was, showing her cooter to some sleazy outfit in the Valley for $100 a shoot.
No idea whatever happened to her after that moment of recognition. Makes you wonder though. Is she an addict on the street, a gaunt semi-anorexic tending bar someplace with a smoker’s cough, a 300# mother of 4 successful now 30-something kids, a nun, the ultimate aging cougar of SoCal, or dead from some jealous wife’s baseball bat to the head? Or just another aging former soccer Mom with yoga classes to attend and grandkids to visit? It’d be interesting to know.
THAT’S who knew that guy. I knew there was a Doper who did but couldn’t remember who it was.
Probably my strangest experience was about 20 years ago, when Discovery Health had two programs about people who underwent gender reassignment, and one of them was a year ahead of me in high school! I nearly fell off the couch when he held up his graduation picture; I would never have guessed that this cute girl who always had perfect hair, clothes, and makeup was fighting such a secret inner battle.
Imagine my surprise when I found out my high school freshman typing teacher’s (and he also taught business) name in the news about a decade or so ago. The reason? He was murdered by a couple of sex workers he found on backpage .com when he got into a drunken argument with them about the fees assessed for their services. (One was convicted of second degree murder. Her side of the story was that he asked her for unprotected sex, she refused, he got angry and went into the kitchen for a knife, a struggle ensued, and she stabbed him in self-defense.)
A good friend of mine died a couple of years ago. She was extremely bright and had some kind of masters degree in physics and advanced math. Anyway she became schizophrenic in her twenties. I don’t know if speed caused the illness or she used it to self medicate but she did get badly strung out and her behavior got her arrested quite often.