Everybody gets into strange, awkward, even uncomfortable or violent situations. Is it best to stay and take the heat--or "nope right out of there?" When in a bad situation that seems to be only getting worse, "noping out," can be a way to save yourself before things get too hairy. For these people, they saw how things were going and ran out before they got involved and things got to be too much to handle. Content has been edited for clarity.
A Very Close Call In Moscow
“I was standing outside a nightclub with my friends who’d popped out to have a smoke. I should mention this was in Moscow for the full effect. So these two guys walk up, wearing black suits and gold chains, with slicked-back hair; basically Russian gangster clichés. One guy says nothing but insists everyone in our group have some hard candy.
The other guy, who was very wasted, decides he’s feeling chatty and gets into a conversation with my friend. I don’t think much of it and turn to my other friends to talk. A few minutes later, turn back to see what’s going on and the inebriated guy reaches into his pocket and pulls out a Glock. He wasn’t trying to be threatening, he just wanted to impress us.
My fast thinking friend insists he proves it’s not loaded; the guy insists it isn’t, my friend takes the weapon and uncocks it, a bullet falls onto the sidewalk.
I decided it was a good time to call it a night.
It did occur to me that they looked a little too Hollywood-style Russian gang banger. And why would they care about impressing some random people on the street? But hey, they were probably whacked out on something. If the weapon hadn’t turned out to be real, I’d have thought little of it. There are still many questions I’ll never know the answers to.”
Birthday Surprise!
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“I went to a party once during my sophomore year of college, right before the year started. Things were nice, everyone was pretty chill. Around midnight, people were milling about because it was pretty crowded. There was a couple making out pretty intensely in the middle of the room. Suddenly, the girl removed her face from his and, VERY loudly, asks, ‘OH MY GOD, WHAT TIME IS IT?’ Of course, some people pull out their flip phones and tell her it’s 12:07. Her response?
‘OH MY GOD, I’M OFFICIALLY 16!’
The entire party noped away in record time. The poor wasted guy looked so terrified and basically teleported out. I felt gross by proxy.”
Her Chilling Playground Adventures
“I was in high school at the time.
I was hanging out with a female friend of mine in this little playground one night at around 11 pm. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in my town. We were just sitting there talking when a car pulls into the parking lot and two people get out. They proceeded to head up this hill to the far edge of the park which bordered on a little wooded area. We see them using their phones for light and they stop about 40 yards in and stand still for about three or four minutes. Then they walk back. As they get back into the vehicle, which still had the driver in it and was idling, one of them notices us and then all three get out and start advancing toward us.
My friend was just kind of frozen in fear. Now, I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, so my ‘things are about to go down’ sense was tingling. I grabbed her by the arm and yanked her along out of the playground entrance on the opposite side of the park from the creepy crew. They full on sprinted back to their car and peeled out. They came flying down the street in our direction and we ducked into a side street. I heard them slam on the brakes and turn around so we ducked down behind some bushes of the first house on the street. Their headlights passed by two more times looking for us before they left.
That same girl and I also went to see a friend’s band play at some random hotel. It turns out it was at a mass for some weird fringe religious sect. They’re getting to a point in the service where you’d expect them to pass around a collection plate when, no joke, eight dudes in black hooded robes file in. No thank you. I grabbed her and we noped the heck out of there. No one’s sacrificing me, please and thank you.”
Translation Confusion
“I was a community nurse and it was part of my job to teach patients how to manage and treat their rheumatoid arthritis. Most of these patients had been started on an injectable medication, which required at least one visit and an observation period. When I arrived, the patient did not speak much English but he had a daughter who was translating. I was concerned about getting proper consent for the treatment so I was already thinking about rescheduling so I could arrange an interpreter but when I mentioned this, the patient proceeded to lock me in the room with him. He was yelling, saying that I would not be leaving, which his daughter just passively translated for me from the other side of the door. After 10 minutes of me trying to calm him down, I managed to get him to agree to rearrange the day.
I promptly left and the patient was sent back to the hospital for his teaching and management where there is security available so no other nurse would be held captive.
It freaked me out and made me leave that job.”
That’s Why You Don’t Hit Print More Than Once
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“Someone at the office messaged me that something was up with the printer – they sent a task (a few times) and nothing printed out! We’ll call this guy John.
As I’m checking things out, a manager (Alex) is also by the printer waiting on something to print out. If you know printers, you probably know that it’s not super unusual that one might have issues when requests from multiple machines are sent around the same time. John and Alex are chatting, while I power the printer off and on (hey, it works).
After it boots, it’s able to handle the print tasks at hand. It spits something out which John peeks at, and whisks off. Alex and I are chatting now as the next set of things gets printed, and Alex’s face changes. We were having a pretty light conversation, actually, so it was almost jarring, because he looked hurt, upset, not quite annoyed? But not happy.
Apparently, when the first time didn’t work, John tried printing out his letter of resignation a few times. John only waited on one copy and didn’t think that his frantically clicking ‘Print’ would have sent the job multiple times. Instead of presenting this to his boss, Alex, in private, he essentially resigned by leaving his letter in the printer.
Alex laughed about it later, but I walked backward out of that room to let them process this.”
Not Even Dogs Should Mess With A Cop
“Our next-door neighbors liked to party and our neighbor across the street is a cop. The next door neighbors had a mean pit bull that they kept on a tie line (which is probably why the dog was mean). The dog was always escaping and chasing people around. One weekend, the dog got loose and ran into the cop’s yard. Apparently, the dog scared his wife and daughter so he came over, riding a full-sized farm tractor and waving a weapon around threatening to shoot the dog if it ever came in his yard again. I noped out as soon as I saw an angry off-duty cop with a tractor and a weapon.
They didn’t do anything about the dog, so the cop wound up shooting and killing it in front of all of their kids, his and the other neighbor’s. I watched from the kitchen window. I saw her go into the cop’s yard before he shot her, and I could have gone outside and told the neighbors that their dog was probably about to get shot, but I didn’t because they were all messed up (too much drinking, if nothing else) and because I was scared of the dog. I didn’t know he was actually going to shoot it because he shot her from his backyard which I can’t see from my house. I did hear it and saw her stumble into the front yard before falling over dead. So did the kids who the dog belonged to, and so did the daughter of the cop. They were all under the age of six.
All I can say is that more cops came because a report had to be filed, so they talked to both parties but no one got arrested. At least not for that. I’m not sure if anyone pressed charges, but I don’t think killing a dog when it’s on your property is against the law here.
I still feel bad for the dog. Sometimes she was a good dog, always nice with the neighbor’s kids, but then other times she wasn’t. I think it’s because they left her tied up outside so often when all she wanted was a little bit of attention. I’ve heard that tie lines cause dogs to be aggressive because of how frustrating it is for them.”
Maybe They Didn’t Belong There
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“Several friends and I were sophomores in college, going out to party on a Saturday night as college students do. We arrived at the party and something seemed off, but the drinks were free, so we didn’t look too closely at first.
But over the course of the next hour, things started adding up. The fact that we were the only ones who seemed to have experience playing Boomcup, a common party game. The fact that everybody seemed a little… inexperienced when it came to determining how much Svedka goes in a shot. The fact that someone said this was a graduation party in June, instead of April (when the seniors at our college graduate). The fact that all the people who claimed to be seniors looked younger than 22 or 23.
Then my friend asked somebody their major. She replied that she hadn’t chosen her major yet. He asked how she could be a senior in college with no major. ‘Oh, I’m not in college. I’m a senior in high school.’
Hold up. What’s a high school student doing at a college party, on campus? So we asked a few more people. They were all seniors in high school too.
Cue the, ‘oh, no’ faces. We all looked at each other and said, ‘We have to go, now.’ So we left. As we learned later, the host (a friend of a friend) was a college sophomore who was hosting a house party for his underclassmen friends from high school and didn’t see any problem with inviting us.
We ended up accidentally being those college dudes (and girls) who show up to high school parties and whose mere presence at the said party is creepy. We never wanted that. We never would have gone there had we known that there were high schoolers present.”
Family Drama Gone Too Far
“This was last year, right around this time. My brother-in-law was living with and in a relationship with this absolutely insane woman who drank constantly. This lady would get wasted and start threatening to kill everyone that was in her house. She was a loud pain in the butt and she annoyed my wife with the way she was spewing threats at everyone.
One day, I heard my wife yell, ‘You better shut your stupid mouth before I bash it to pieces, you stupid witch.’
She was making an angry b-line toward her and I intercepted her, spun her around and was like, ‘Nope, we need to get the heck out of here.’
Several hours later, this witch was arrested for trying to beat up my blind mother-in-law. My wife would have killed her had she seen that and I would have been one of those people visiting my spouse in prison.
I have no regrets in marrying her thus far. She’s absolutely terrifying, in a Taraji P. Henson kind of way, and I love it.”
A Creepy Experience On The Way To The Pool
“Many years ago, when I was 16, I lived in a series of apartment complexes that shared a pool. My sister who is 19 and I go to the pool at like 8 pm and it’s getting a little dark, but the pool is only a block away from our apartment and the pool itself is fenced in, well lit, and has cameras.
We get there and realize we forgot the key, so my sister in her laziness makes me go back and get it myself. I grab it and head back toward the pool. By this point, it’s fairly dark and I’m a 16-year-old girl walking down the street in nothing but a bikini, holding a towel. A man who had clearly been drinking steps off his porch with a small child next to him and asks, ‘Where you going?’
At this point, I can see the pool and I’m in a swimsuit and I’m like, ‘I’m going to the pool?’
He burps and approaches me and stammers, ‘Can I come with?’
I say, ‘I don’t know you!’ and just start running as fast as I can because he keeps following me.
Me being the least coordinated person, I trip on my towel and I get back up as fast as I can and book it to my sister. I jam the keys into her hand and tell her to hurry, saying I’ll explain inside. I’m covered in scrapes from my fall and bleeding a good amount. I explain and we decide to call my mom who rushes over and performs first aid on my scrapes and cuts by the pool. She’s scolding me because she doesn’t really understand what happened. The man and his small child appear outside the fence and just circle it once, with him staring at me the entire time. I never got a good look at him because it’s dark. Later, my mom apologized. I hate to think what would have happened if I didn’t nope out of there.”
A Dog Fight Gone Too Far
“Two dogs got into a vicious fight at the dog park. One of the owners wasn’t trying to break it up at all. The other owner kicked the aggressor dog, who had his dog’s JAW IN ITS MOUTH until it let go. Then the first owner got mad at the second guy for kicking his dog. The second guy was mad because his dog was bleeding from the mouth and because the first guy brought a dog who required a shock collar to the dog park, then didn’t even seem to care that his dog had attacked another dog.
They got in a verbal altercation and then the owner of the dog with the shock collar said he was going to his car to get his weapon.
And that’s when my husband, and our two dogs, and I noped right out.”
Korean BBQ Birthday Disaster
“A friend of the family invited my son and me to a Korean BBQ restaurant for his 30th birthday. His wife had arranged everything but wanted me to show up early and set everything up for them. Anyway, they brought two of their kids (they have six in total) and all of their friends, co-workers, and my brother. They had me look over the menu and after half an hour passed, we finally got seated and it dawned on me.
They wanted me to pitch in for them and all of their friends to eat, meanwhile they would order as much food and drinks as they wanted. To top it off, they had us seated at a table with a couple that was arguing before we even ate. I started to get anxiety and I noped the heck out and they still haven’t forgiven me since. I shouldn’t have to pitch in for 15 people eating out when I only have my son there. They’re notorious for being cheap.”
Not An Ideal Situation For 15 Year Olds
“When I was 14 or 15, I had these two friends from a neighboring town. We all had just gotten into drinking and smoking, so it was a lot of sneaking out of the house to smoke in the park or telling our parents we were staying at each other’s houses when we’d go to a party nearby.
We had a lot of intermingling friendships and acquaintances through each other and people we’d introduce to each other etc. So, at some point, my one friend had connected with this literal barnacle a few years older than us (18-20). I knew he was bad news from hearing about him around town. He had been in and out of jail his whole life and there were rumors about a few assaults between him and his ex-girlfriend. He was the kid you always got illegal substances from. He was actually gentlemanly enough to my friend from the little I heard and saw from their conversations but I KNEW he was way too serious and hardcore for me who to be hanging around. Even my friends from my town who had been partying a lot longer than I had didn’t mess with this guy. My two friends were totally awed over the whole bad boy from another town look and they’re both the type of girl to want to ‘fix’ a guy, for reference. And then they were smitten with a barnacle.
I told both my friends I didn’t want to hang around him and that they could be around him without me. This ended up being a problem because they wanted to hang out with this guy each time they came to town but the only reason they had to come to town was to hang out with me. So pretty much to not look like they were just using my house to sleep at when they wanted to see him, they had to convince me to see him.
One night they’re visiting and we’re all hanging out and we got really high. Totally normal, okay. But we kept smoking. We’re three really normal-sized 15-year-olds and we went through two good sized blunts. So then they want to take a ‘walk.’ Again, pretty normal because I live in a really nice town. So we’re walking around for twenty minutes and I’m still baked. We found ourselves at the other side of town. When I turned to head back, we walk right next to a house and on the porch is this stupid guy. And he acts all surprised to see us and invites us in.
I knew immediately they set it up and got me super high on purpose so I wouldn’t pitch a fit. I went inside and it was exactly what you’d expect. There were people coming and going every ten minutes. It smelled super chemically, like the only thing anyone ever cleaned with was bleach. There were holes in the walls everywhere. The carpet was molded and ripping. There was a girl in the corner smoking crack or crank – I’ll never know. Some kid sleeping on the ground in the hallway. Just everything I didn’t want to be involved with. I sat there for maybe twenty minutes with the deadest face. No one is talking. The three of us and this guy are sitting in this room with no furniture watching this tiny TV as if there was anything super interesting on. My friends were panicking and all worried about how they were going to wiggle out of whatever hang out they had organized with this guy now that we were here. Texting each other – the whole nine. They were pretty much acting as if this were a Tinder date and the guy didn’t match his picture.
Maybe about twenty-five minutes in, a car pulls up and a few guys get out and walked into the house and are full-blown carrying weapons. Not trying to hide it at all. Like, three or four big guys – much bigger than the kid we’re here to see even – have two pieces each. AND THEN – My 5’1″ friend -15 years old – looks at the guy and goes, ‘You said you stopped carrying weapons for me.’
I NOPED THEN. I stood up – didn’t care who it made uncomfortable- and told everyone I was leaving. I walked a few blocks towards to my best friend’s house. She and I had been friends for my whole life and she didn’t like the two girls I’d been hanging out with. She opened the door and I told her she was right, they blew.
I felt bad for leaving them but I let them sneak back into my house and sleep in my room while I spent the night at my other friend’s house. I literally never hung out with them again. They’re both actually in really dysfunctional relationships with ‘fix me’ guys. The barnacle guy was arrested and sentenced for attempted murder a few years later. The friend whose house I stayed at is still my best friend 10 years later and she still tells me she told me so.”