Submitted by carrot_man_tifu t3_109fccu in tifu
The names including my own have been modified to false names.
About 29 years ago I was in the third grade. I took one of the carrot packs out of my lunch box, the kind that came with a little cup of ranch dressing. All of the sudden this kid Balthasar said "Hey everyone look, Tim is a Carrot Boy!" Everyone at the whole lunch table started to laugh. I couldn't believe it.
For some reason, that incident really stuck with me. Nobody really brought it up again, but I became self-conscious in elementary school for eating carrots. Later, I lost the self consciousness, but all through school and into adulthood I always thought of that and built it up in my head as this big disrespectful insult to me. Whenever I eat carrots, the memory pops up, basically involuntarily. Whenever I see carrots I remember Balthasar going "Hey everyone look, Tim is a Carrot Boy!" And hear the laughter.
What you should know is that I am from a small town, and although I left a lot of the kids I knew are still there. I saw that over the holidays there was an impromptu high school reunion event scheduled. I decided to show up, I haven't seen these people regularly in a long time.
Well who should be there but Balthasar? All of the sudden the old anger welled up in me. I don't know what I was thinking, it seems so ridiculous now, but I saw a big tray of carrots meant for everyone at the buffet table, and I picked up the entire tray and carried it to Balthie's table. I started eating carrots angrily. Everyone at the table and surrounding tables was staring at me. I then said "Guess I'm still a Carrot Boy, huh??!"
I almost immediately realized my fuck up when everyone looked at me like I was insane and had no idea what I was referencing. So I awkwardly asked Baltho and the other people around if they remembered him calling me a carrot boy in third grade, and nobody did. So I was like "This did happen, you really did call me a carrot boy." And he was like "Uh...okay? Sorry man?" Somebody next to me put their hand on my arm and whispered to me "Are you okay?", as if I was having a mental breakdown or something.
I was so embarrassed that I just got up and left. Multiple people have texted me asking me if I am alright, and why did I do that, and did I really hold a grudge for some "innocuous, silly remark that a third grader made almost thirty years ago?"
When it was put to me like that, I realized maybe I was the one being weird. Balthasar wasn't like a bully or something, aside from that one insult he never did anything else to me and in high school was kind of known as being a do-gooder. I had built it up as this major incident but nobody else even remembered it.
I was horrified to find that several people from the reunion unfriended me on Facebook, and I saw photos of the event and somebody had tagged me in the background as "Carrot Boy", and none other than Balthasar responded to the post asking the poster to remove the tag, even though several other people had replied with laugh emoji's.
Now I feel like I have made a huge fool of myself and can never show myself in this town again. Well, maybe that's okay, I don't like the town anyways. But I am so embarrassed I can hardly sleep and it has been a few weeks since the incident. Oh god.
TL;DR - In third grade this kid called me "Carrot Boy" and I have had a grudge about it ever since and I made a fool of myself at a reunion.