Middle school is a rough time for everyone. Friend groups are in flux and it’s an easy time to find yourself left out in the social code.

So, most kids do their best to fit in – most, of course, is not all.

OP had a good and established group of friends. He also had an early kind of cell phone – the sort where every single text and picture cost a fair amount of money.

I went to middle school in the early 2010s, right before smartphones really took off. I got my first phone right before starting sixth grade, it was a slide phone with a pay as you go plan that cost $0.10 per minute for calls and per text message sent or received.

Worse yet, sending or receiving photos cost $0.25 each. It was very expensive, and my parents only gave me $100 a year for this, if I exceeded the amount, I had to cover the rest with my limited birthday and Christmas money I had.

His friends generally respected the fact that he had limited phone access that was paid for by his parents.

Fortunately, most of my friends were good about helping me preserve the balance.

They would call and I’d let the call drop but immediately call back on a landline so it wouldn’t count as a call, and they’d email me or message me on skype for most things.

Then, a new guy came to their school and he was a real piece of work. They included him at first but as he started to show his true colors, things started to get more strained.

Everything was good until Derek joined the group in seventh grade. At first we thought he was funny, but we quickly got fed up with him as he was very unpleasant and exhibited many antisocial behaviors.

He started drama within the friend group and also caused issues between us and other kids outside of the group. He was manipulative and always played the victim when others rightfully called him out on his bull, and he knew how to charm parents, so getting rid of him was easier said than done.

For OP, the final straw was the guy spamming his phone with so many messages he had to change his phone number to set things to right.

He was the one friend who didn’t respect my phone situation. He very frequently texted me dumb memes, even though I told him multiple times to just email or skype them to me instead since picture text messages cost $0.25 each.

Unfortunately, blocking phone numbers was a feature that was unavailable for this pay as you go plan, so there was nothing I could do as he spammed my phone.

One day he got mad at me for some reason and spammed my phone with memes. He must’ve sent me over 100 lolcats over text, he kept sending them until I lost service since my phone balance was depleted. I had lost the $40 remaining in my account as a result.

I was extremely angry and demanded that he pay me the $40 he had cost me, and he refused and said it wasn’t his problem. I got home from school really upset and told my dad about the situation, expecting him to go and tear Derek’s mother a new one and demand the money, but my dad said that it wasn’t worth the battle.

I even asked him about a small claims court but he said that not all battles are worth fighting, and that the effort wasn’t worth $40.

He took me to the carrier’s store and loaded $50 onto the phone. The carrier changed my phone number, and they managed to block Derek’s number. They had initially said that blocking phone numbers wasn’t possible with this plan, but my dad insisted and would not leave the store until they did it.

I was extremely paranoid about my phone number being leaked and other kids spamming it to mess with me.

Fortunately, my parents got iPhones that summer and got me one too, and the new family plan had an unlimited text plan.

Nonetheless, I was mad at the $40 he essentially stole from me out of malice.

Fortunately, not too long after, there was a big blowout between Derek and the rest of the friend group at the end of the school year and we permanently kicked him out of the group. He was an outcast the following year in 8th grade, nobody was tolerating his nonsense anymore, and he changed schools the year after and we never heard from him again.

He was always angry about that $40, so when he stopped at a garage sale at his “friend’s” old house and learned there was a bunch of “old Pokemon stuff” in the attic, he had a feeling he’d hit the jackpot.

Fast forward to a few years ago, I was back home for a few months between graduating college and starting a new job on the other side of the country. I went out to some garage sales one Saturday morning and I ended up at Derek’s house. I recognized his mother, but I don’t think she recognized me, I guess glasses and a beard is all you need.

I noticed some Pokemon napkins out for sale, and when I picked them up to look at them, Derek’s mom said that her son had been obsessed with Pokemon for his whole life and that she was tired of Pokemon stuff occupying her home for so many years.

I said that these napkins were for my younger cousin who is really into Pokemon, and asked if she had any more Pokemon stuff.

She said she didn’t know people were still into that and that there were a few boxes in the attic with her son’s old stuff. She actually took me inside the house (which I never imagined I’d set foot inside ever again), and let me climb up the attic ladder and take down several large boxes to look through.

The first one had Christmas ornaments in it and other junk, but I freaked out inside when she opened a box jam packed with Pokemon video games in the original boxes, though I kept my cool on the outside.

The whole reason I had agreed to go inside in the first place was because I was holding out hope of this exact scenario happening.

See, I knew Derek was obsessed with Pokemon. Our friend group liked Pokemon back in the day even when other kids thought it wasn’t cool, but Derek was on a whole different level. He bragged about his Pokemon collection all the time, at the time he had every single main series game in the original box, and in “mint condition” as he always had to add in.

I went to his house once and he was showing me his collection, he yelled at me for touching one of the games, nobody was allowed to touch them except him. He had many older Nintendo games in excellent condition but Pokemon was his favorite.

He had had a couple of incidents with his mom damaging or throwing away his things, it wasn’t out of malice but just ignorance, as she didn’t think the games or collectibles had any value.

Fast forward into the present day, I was thinking about this when I asked his mother if she had any other Pokemon stuff, she ended up bringing out the motherload.

We opened all of the boxes she had me bring down. Within the boxes there was the beloved collection of Pokemon games, all very well preserved, as well as several Nintendo consoles, hundreds of games, two dozen binders full of Pokemon cards, and there was also a box of many Lego sets with the original boxes and everything, with many old Star Wars sets.

When I saw Jango Fett I knew I struck gold.

OP ended up hauling home tens of thousands of dollars worth of old loot. His uncle sold it for him on eBay and it was enough for him to feel vindicated.

I told her that I liked old Legos as well, and asked her how much for the five boxes of games, cards, and lego sets, and she thought for a second and said $100 a box, or $400 for all five.

I told her I would take it all and hauled it to get to an ATM. I loaded the five boxes into my dad’s truck and immediately drove home.

I knew there was potentially tens of thousands of dollars of goods here, this was the score of a lifetime and I finally felt vindicated for the $40 Derek had taken from me all those years ago.

I ended up giving all the stuff to my uncle, who’s a hobbyist ebay reseller. He offered to sell it all, he was willing to go through the effort and sell everything individually, and despite my insistence he said he wouldn’t take more than a 10% cut of the profits after all fees and taxes.

We went through and logged every single item along with the estimated value, and the total of the whole lot was about $40,000. 40,000 was a poetic number since this was 1000x the value of what Derek stole from me all those years ago.

My uncle sold most of the lot before the end of the summer and ended up writing me a check, though it was considerably less than $40,000, it was still a life changing amount of money for me, I was able to pay off my remaining student loans and put the rest towards a down payment on a new car.

Does Reddit think OP was being petty after so long? Let’s see!

The top comment wonders if Derek re-bought any of his stuff on accident.

Some people had questions about how the kid’s mother was toward them when they were in middle school.

Most people didn’t feel sorry for her, though.

There were a few, though, who realized what a big rift this probably caused.

Revenge always comes to those who wait.

That’s the saying, right?