17.
“I was taking a lifeguarding course at a local pool with a friend of mine. The age range in the class varied, and we probably had a mix of people between 12 and 18, but most were in the middle. There was this one kid, probably 16-17 that really stood out to my friend and me. He had a very solemn look on his face at all times, was socially awkward, and extremely quiet. We both got really strong serial killer vibes from him. It’s just one of those instincts you feel that tells you ‘something isn’t right.'”
“We made a few jokes between ourselves about it, as we both noticed it almost immediately and were fairly uncomfortable being around him. This lasted for probably the first two hours of the four-hour class. At that point, we were asked to switch from pool instruction to a classroom, and we had about 20 minutes to change and get there.
As we are all changing, this guy kept looking over at my friend and me. We tried not to make eye contact with him and just ignored him, but we were getting extremely uncomfortable with how intensely the guy was staring. We were the only ones in the changeroom and were intent on leaving as fast as possible. Eventually, my friend makes eye contact with the guy, who screams something along the lines of ‘STOP LOOKING AT ME,’ pulling a switchblade out of his swim bag and lunging at my friend. I stood there, somewhat frozen as this was happening, and didn’t really know what to do — whether to try and help or run. My friend ended up blocking the initial lunge with the locker door, and he sprinted towards the front exit of the changeroom, with this enraged knife-wielding teenager chasing him. When my friend had made it out of the changeroom, the maniac turned around and started chasing me down. Pool deck floors are extremely slippery and almost impossible to run on, but 12-year-old me wasn’t exactly worried about that at this point.
I had to run from the changeroom/locker area, through the bathrooms, through a shower room, and then onto the pool deck (the only other exit). I remember turning around once I made it on the pool deck, and the guy was gone. I was half-dressed and basically still sprinting towards the lifeguard office.
Once there, I found our instructor and told him what happened, but he didn’t believe me. He said I was lying and was just picking on the kid; nothing happened. So I told him to try and find my friend with me (I was panicking, hyperventilating, but apparently not believable). My friend was still out in the lobby now, with a ton of concerned parents around, trying to figure out what was going on. Turns out, when he blocked the knife with the locker door, the knife got his forearm, and he was bleeding pretty badly. My instructor immediately ushered us away and called the police. The building went into lockdown.
To this day, I have no idea what happened to that kid — he never came back to the class, and the police didn’t find him that night. I’m assuming he got arrested, but I never heard about it.”