It’s been said that revenge is a dish best served cold, that is, leaving it for later makes it even more satisfying. But how long should you wait to give the perpetrator their just desserts? A few hours? Days? Months? How about 18 years?
That’s exactly how long Reddit user u/HollywoodAlphie took after spending over a decade of her adult life wondering who anonymously assaulted her with a yogurt the day before graduation. She took to the r/pettyrevenge community to share her story.
More info: Reddit
15 years after woman was anonymously assaulted with a yogurt, she discovered who the culprit was
Image credits: Dan Gold (not the actual photo)
Annoying cousin had secretly pelted her with a yogurt on the day before her graduation
Image credits: master1305 (not the actual photo)
For the last three years, cousin would force woman to retell the story whenever somebody new was around
Image credits: Andrew Pantyukhin (not the actual photo)
Woman bided her time, eagerly plotted her revenge for a whole year
Image credits: HollywoodAlphie
Younger cousin got a yogurt straight to the dome when he least expected it
Just imagine being pelted upside the head with a yogurt the day before your graduation. Now imagine not knowing who did it to you for 15 years. This was the case for one Redditor who recently turned to the community to tell her story.
Apparently, the incident took place in the school cafeteria just as most people were lining up to leave. OP was, as usual, hanging back at her table with her friends waiting for the bell to ring. As she was about to stand up, she recalls, she was pelted on the side of her head with an open Trix yogurt.
Since everyone was filing out at that point, spotting the perpetrator was impossible for OP. She goes on to add that her friends helped her clean most of it off, but that she had to dash to make band practice on the football field.
The band was practicing for graduation, so OP was stuck under the midday sun, leaving the remaining yogurt to bake into her hair. Despite OP’s best attempts to scrape it out, she could only get rid of it properly after a shower.
15 long years later, OP is over at her aunt’s house when her younger cousin starts talking about the immature stuff he got up to in high school. In his tales, he recounted opening Trix yogurts and throwing them over his shoulder. OP couldn’t believe it, and blurted out, “That was you!?”. She went on to explain the ancient cafeteria calamity, but her cousin just bust a gut laughing at her.
For the next three years, says OP, her cousin would round her up at every get-together to tell the infamous story to anyone new. But, OP says, she’d been plotting her revenge for a year of that time.
The perfect opportunity arose when OP’s family was having a seafood boil. As her cousin was unwittingly cracking open crab’s legs, OP snuck up on him and smashed a yogurt right over his head.
To add insult to injury, OP proceeded to rub the yogurt in, down her cousin’s beard and onto his shirt. For the grand finale, OP leaned down and told him, “We’re even now.”
Image credits: Stephen McFadden (not the actual photo)
In her article for the BBC, features correspondent, Melissa Hogenboom, writes that revenge has been part of human behavior for almost as long as we have existed on Earth.
Literature has used it throughout history, from Greek tragedies such as Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy – where Orestes wants to murder his mother to avenge his father – to Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
"It's this very pervasive experience in human lives, people from every society understand the idea of getting angry and wanting to hurt someone who has harmed you," says evolutionary psychologist Michael McCullough, of the University of Miami, who has spent over a decade studying revenge and forgiveness.
David Chester of Virginia Commonwealth University was initially studying aggression but quickly realized that there is often a lot more going on before a violent interaction. He refers to the emotions involved as the "psychological middlemen" – the thoughts and feelings that come between a provocation and an aggressive outcome.
"I was curious, how do you take something like [receiving] an insult and how do you go from that to an aggressive response." The key, Chester believes, lies in the desire to retaliate.
“As you instigate the retaliation, there’s actually an increase in negative emotions, but as a consolation, you also get an increase in positive emotions at the same time,” says Chester. He adds, “You’re feeling upset, but you’re also feeling good, and those feelings are intertwined in this ambivalent kind of state.”
“The research suggests that we’re not too cognitively elaborate about it, so we’re not really thinking through, ‘This feels good because of X or Y,’” says Dr. Chester. “It’s more similar to a [climax] in terms of being a pleasurable, hedonistic experience in the moment.”
That’s because acting with vengeance triggers the reward circuitry in the brain, releasing feel-good chemicals dopamine and endogenous opioids.
He adds, “Whereas the former is about wanting to do something, the latter is tied to feeling good once you’ve achieved the thing,” he says, and when you’re taking revenge, you get both. That's your brain saying, “I want to get this revenge, and I like getting this revenge.”
What do you think about OP’s particular brand of revenge? Do you think justice was served, or would you consider further retribution, if you were in her shoes? Let us know your opinion in the comments!
While many commenters said they enjoyed her story of get-back, some wondered whether or not she could have pushed things even a bit further
