Thomas Edison. Always thought he was this cool inventor growing up. Nope. He was just a rich jerk who stole other people's inventions and profited off of them. He used a team to help him invent things, but took sole credit for them. He also actively tried to suppress other inventors to try and corner the market. The man was a giant jerk.

I'm gonna date myself for saying this...but Steve Jobs. I was an absolute Apple fanboy growing up in the 90s; I even asked my dad to gift me shares in Apple as birthday presents (back when they were a much more reasonable $20-ish a share). I thought he was the tech equivalent of the second coming of Christ for how he returned to Apple to bring it back from the brink of extinction to the world's most valuable company.

Only near the time of his passing in the late 2000s did I find out about his bad side. Things like how he decided to forsake his own daughter, how he used to park in the handicap spaces at Apple buildings (plus how he always bought a new car every 6 months so that he could take advantage of a legal loophole where he didn't have to put license plates on his car), and how he went around espousing lies that eating lots of nuts and doing cleanses could cure people of cancer. (That latter one eventually did him in.) I know that "visionaries" are complicated people like the rest of us, but boy was he a special kind of jerk.

My grandparents. For putting the church above caring for their own children.

I had a law professor who really believed in me and supported me when I was having a hard time. He helped me get a really good job. After our graduation ball he sent me an email saying he had a crush on me and it shattered everything. I thought he supported me for my brain not because he had feelings for me. This still affects my professional confidence.

The pronunciation of my own name .

Not my story but a friend's. They worked at a book store and a teenager walks up to him and asks him to help find a book that he needs for school.

Asks if they know the title. --Nope.
Ask if they know the author. --Nope.
Do you know I'd it is fiction or non fiction. --What's that mean? 🥴

Kid thinks really hard to remember something... anything....and says..I think it's a sports book.

Okay do you k iw what sport it's about? -- Baseball...I think.

.....is it Catcher in the Rye?... --Yeah that sounds familiar.

Come this way. It's neither a sports book nor about baseball.

The education system, his parents, SOMEONE has failed this poor young man.