Ask Lemmy

I was caught making out with my girlfriend.

I should mention that this was an all-girl Catholic ~~cult~~ school in the early 80s. Not only was I expelled but my parents moved us to a different country because they were so ashamed.

I was in second grade, it was for reading. I don't remember what book anymore, but it was age appropriate. I was just reading the wrong thing during reading time.

Calling my teacher a dog after he called me a horse. This is no joke, my mother was called in.

I don't know how stupid it was but I started taking the bulb out of the overhead projector. The lady teaching put it right next to me everyday and the fan was going bad. The noise it made was driving me crazy and she just ignored me when I asked her to turn it off. I got caught taking one and they went ape shit over it in admin. Finally after one of them went down to the room and listened to the POS running inquired to the teacher how she expected anyone to be able to concentrate with that in their ear everyday they backed off a bit. Still got in trouble but I was smiling the whole time. For years after I was out of school I flipped that old biddy the bird every time I ran into her.

Principal threatened to expel me senior year because I was fidgeting with one of those switchblade-combs because it was a facsimile of a weapon. The only reason I had it was because we used it as a prop in the school play the week before.

We had a music teacher who, without fail, yelled "What's the point of this class? You can just as well leave" during every class.

So one class, all of us left.

We got detention and had to write lines. One of the girls had an entire box of scented pens in different colours and she put them all on a table. Then each of us wrote an entire page of stinky, multicoloured lines. I'm sure he didn't read them all but I bet he had a headache in no time.

During band, I left my trombone on the stand, and went into the instrument room to get something out of my case. When I returned and tried to play my horn, it was badly muffled. I tried to open it up with a blast, and a bunch of paper fell out. While I was gone, my section mates had torn up a piece of paper and stuffed it in my bell.

It wasn't what they were hoping, the paper more fell out than blasted out, but I got the detention anyway, even though I was the innocent victim of a vicious prank.

I survived. It was the trombone section, I was guilty of numerous other infractions I was never punished for.

Being literally a few seconds late to sit down when the bell rang and getting suspended by the racist teacher.

It was in elementary school. We had a multiple choice test and we had to check the circles next to the right answers with an x.

Instead, I put smiley faces in all the right circles and "frowny" faces in the wrong ones and was very proud of the whole sheet. I didn't really get into trouble, but the teacher was mildly upset and I think I had to go over it to do it the "right" way :(

Grade 12. A few of us knucklheads heard there was a golden locker at North Toronto High school, the exact locker of Neil Young. So we rode up there on 3 motorcycles to see for ourselves. Got in trouble with principals at two schools and the local newspaper referred to us as a biker gang.

I got in trouble for doing homework at school. Homework is supposed to be done at Home, not at school, I was told.

Not exactly in trouble but in middle school we got yelled at a lot for staying inside during recess. We were supposed to go outside and leave the hallways empty. For context, in winter the school turned on the heating (at a minimum) for about 2 hours out of the 6 we were there. The rest of the time the building had a similar temperature to outside. So we'd take advantage of those hours and, during recess, we'd just flock around the radiators in the hallways and stand there talking instead of freezing outside. Some teachers really didn't like that and made it their job to shoo us away.

got suspended for calling some kid a dickhead (who deserved it btw). Seems a bit harsh

When I saw in first grade I was held back for pronunciation problems and in my second time through Math at a 1st grade level I completed a lot of the homework because I remembered math pretty well. My teacher caught me doing this in class and she started flipping through the pages, I had finished about 15 pages of upcoming hw. I got written up and my parents had to come in, I don't remember a detention because it was 1st grade but it could have happened.

In third grade I was at recess playing with a friend and I lightly tapped him, like a friend tap, on his cheekbones. I remember it being in jest and good faith. He then reported me to the teacher and then the principal. I received a detention for playing with my friend by my friend.

I usually just received detentions for regular things like not doing homework. I guess I was jaded because i got detention for just existing.

4th grade at a Christian school. My brother was getting into Metallica and so I was also getting into Metallica. Gave a friend a my brother's copy of Kill 'Em All and that he could borrow it for three days.

My folks didn't really care, but his mom raised hell over it. If you don't know the album, look up it's cover. Its got a bloody hammer in the center with Kill 'Em All st the bottom. She raised hell and I get called into a meeting with the principle and my folks.

I don't remember what was said, but my dad wasn't going to take any shit from them. I was there to learn and I was a good kid so they can fuck right off. Frankly, I don't remember having any suspension or detention from it. What I do remember was them throwing out the cassette and knowing how pissed my brother would be. That was the real punishment.

The satanic panic was dumb. And I was lucky enough to not even know it was going on.

Not me, but I witnessed it. ~7th grade 2 boys were playing a game between the rows of desks where they interlock the fingers of one of each of their hands. Then, they smack the back of their interlocked hands with their free hand until one of them quits and let's go. The teacher was walking up and down the rows... apparently okay with this. I'm not sure of the exact sequence of events, but somehow, the planets aligned. One of them quit while the other was mid swing and he slapped the teacher's ass. Hard. Hard enough that it made a loud clap. The look on that kid's face... blushing red and turning pale at the same time.

I got detention multiple times for reading in class before they basically gave up. I was getting good grades and paying just enough attention to the classes I read through that if called on I could participate, but it was boring and slow, and books kept me from being disruptively bored. I barely stopped reading all day and would burn through 1,000 page books in under 2 days (the public library gave me a second card to use for inter library loan to not use my normal checkout slots on shipping days :). Thing is, detention didn’t have a no reading rule, because in a school that would be silly, so I’d just… keep reading. So they called my mom who was like yep, they just read all day here too, so they stopped trying to punish me for it. My English teacher had the right idea and didn’t care if I read the assigned books or paid attention in class as long as I did the vocab tests and wrote up a one-page report on every single book I finished. Far more work, but much better suited to what I was going to do anyway.

I also got in trouble multiple times for wearing absolutely nothing other than pj pants (like yea shirts and stuff too but never jeans). I contested them giving me detention for it, and got off because it wasn’t an official rule in the handbook, something I’d explicitly checked prior to my wardrobe shift to comfort and giving no fucks. They changed the handbook the next year and I switched to solid color athletic pants in obnoxiously bright colors, and I again got in trouble, and contested, and same thing got off because it wasn’t explicitly mentioned.

4th grade, i drew handcuffs on my wrist with a pen during class. I thought it looked cool, the teacher apparently did not. The punishment was that i had to skip the next recess, and i still dont understand why i was punished, since the teacher didn't explain and i was too shy to ask.

I still have the pink slip somewhere around here, pressed into an old textbook...

But it was for "placing dog dropping shaped powerbars around the classroom"

Classroom = his desk

This isn't my story it was a friend, but I think about it often and it still makes me laugh. It was high school English class and the teacher asked "does anybody know the famous quote from 'The Elephant Man'?" and without missing a beat my friend put his arm in front of his face like and elephant trunk and made a loud and accurate elephant noise while slowly waving his arm up. Everybody thought it was hilarious except for the teacher who sent him to sit in the hall for the rest of the period. So he's sitting out there and 5 minutes later the door opens and another kid comes out and my friend is like "what did you do wrong?" and the other kid goes "I couldn't stop laughing"

Which is fucking great. Gets me every time.

I 'won' both my disciplinary hearings.

Freshman year, I beat a bully so bad his family had to move somewhere he could get PT for his crippled hands.

I showed up to that one with a PD detective, whos sone was also a bullying victim. He threatened charges against the Vice principal for aiding and abetting the assault of a minor/ potential attempted murder which i had successfully defended my friend from. (Bully had said he was going to choke out my friend until he was retarded- and was in the process of doing so when jumped him) i had told the VP himself the timing and specificity of the threat, hence the possible charge.

This turned the meeting pretty quickly into one about school negligence and culpability, and triggered policy changes that included mandatory dismissal of staff for failure to intervene. We also got a SRO, whos first statement was that he was a resource for students, especially if staff was failing in their duty to them, and that he was not another disciplinarian. (To his credit, and before the ACAB crew, who i agree with, he did live up to that- guy was genuinely a good guy got a bunch of certs in child counciling and advocacy. In his 20 year tenure, according to his recent obituary, he arrested 1 student- for a rape on school premises that he stopped. )

That Vps carreer ended a couple months after, partially at the hands of the SRO. He punched a student who wouldnt give up his hat. Unfortunately, it was a football player, who knocked him out with his helmet. The SRO watched the whole thing, told the players to get to the field. VP left the school handcuffed to a stretcher.

Junior year I had a sillier one. My GF and I were in AP calc. The teacher gave me a blank copy of the midterm, to copy her near perfect exam as a study guide for the upcoming final. I was doing so in study hall, when the english teacher grabbed both off my desk, accusing me of cheating. This led to another disciplinary hearing, scheduled for Friday afternoon. On Thursday I talked with the math teacher, who told me she had been told she was not allowed to attend, and her 'input was not nescessary'.

At the time, I had a job filming for public access TV, mostly school sports, but also the school committee meetings. So, after the meeting that evening, I spoke with the superintendent of the school system, and expressed my concerns.

Next day, I go into the meeting alone, and sit down, facing the principal, flanked by the VP and the english teacher, feeling pretty screwed. The VP (not the original one from last story, but his replacement is the same disciplinarian role ) starts things off yelling about how bad cheating is, how ive ruined my academic career, and can kiss college goodbye.

He has just hit his stride when the door opens. The Superintendent walks in, along with one of my favorite teachers.

First words out of the Superintendents mouth are "what the fuck is wrong with you? go take a walk, before you have an aneurism!" And he sends the VP out.

They then take a seat on either side of me, clearly marking his side in the adversarial meeting, and asks the english teacher exactly what she saw. he the asks the principal to pass the tests in question over. He then asks her mockingly, "do you know what a midterm is? They were 4 months ago! and these papers clearly say midterm in very large letters. Look, this one (holding up my GFs) even has a grade on top, a 98%, end a unicorn sticker, well done Lauren! (my gfs name, also the math teacher was a total geek, and famous for putting cutesy stickers on good grades)

He the continues on, "still, cheating is a serious accusation." Switching his attention the principal, "I suppose you did a thorough investigation before this meeting. Have you discussed this with the math teacher? Did she say there was any credit to be gained from this assignment?, by the way where is she?
At this point the principal knows hes in a bit of trouble and is looking down at the table and barely responding. The superintendent goes on for a minute about how its wasnt very sporting of them to have 3 people gaming up on me and not to even have the math teacher there to defend my side.

At that point, he turns to me, and asks how I felt about the ambush. And I start off with "well, I dont really get how we got here in the first place- you have to be incredibly fucking myopic..." (I was going to say to assume copying the answers from one page that says exam to another must always be cheating ) but i was interrupted by the principal who seeing an out, had jumped to his feet, knocking his chair over, and was pointing at me, yelling

"HE SWORE! HE SWORE! HE FUCKING SWORE" he looked like a giant toddler, and the superintendent and my teacher burst out laughing at him. They laughed for an uncomfortably long time. Until he calmed down and sheepishly returned to his seat.

Finally, it was the art teacher who spoke up. He goes "well, rules are rules, you did swear. The maximum penalty for a first time for that is a 1 day suspension, do you have anything important tomorrow?" I shake my head no, and he says "good, why dont you take a three day weekend while we all consider what to do about this whole debacle." He looks over at the superintendent, who nods, and we leave the room.

On monday i found out the decision had been made to remove me from the english class, with the art teacher allowing me to hang in his room. I was offered my 95 grade average to be entered in as my score for all future assignments, getting me out of both a final exam and a 10 page paper, which suited me fine.

Later I found out the english teacher got demoted back to teaching middle school. The principal was apparently put on their version of double secret probation, with a caution that one more complaint and he was out, and the VPs contract was up already not renewed (i can only assume both of those were final straw descisiond, although the school system generally tried to stagger each schools leadership turnovers, and the principal only had a year left before he was leaving )

Due to the way my school issued punishments, I got the same punishment for getting into a fight as I did for being a few minutes late to class. 2 days in school suspension.

The first thing that came to mind wasn't actually in school, it was at home, but it was when I had just got home from school so I hope it's okay.

I was eating nutella from the jar, with a spoon. Like a goblin. I had a huge amount on my spoon. Suddenly, the front door opens and in my embarrassment for eating this large quantity of hazelnut sugar, I quickly shoved the jar away in the cupboard, and snuck by my parents with the spoon behind my back.

Uh oh. I was planning on eating the nutella in my room, off the spoon, but I realised it was far too much nutella. Maybe I lost my appetite. Either way, the only recourse in my mind was to dump the contents of the spoon down the toilet, and stash the spoon to be returned at a later date.

Not only did the nutella not flush, but I also didn't notice that it hadn't flushed, leaving a sight that I'm sure we can all imagine. My parents were furious, we actually had guests so they were livid that they could have seen this. They pulled me to one side, were basically yelling at me: "We're not mad you did it, we're mad you're lying to us about it."

I didn't know what to do. I just kept telling the truth. I was eating nutella and didn't want to get into trouble for the gigantic spoonful so I tried to hide it. Resulting in a stalemate.

Anyway, I'm not sure they actually remember this happening, but it was quite traumatic for me because I was otherwise quite a good boy.

I already knew how to read when going to the first year of school. My parents were worried I'd be bored during classes, so they convinced the teacher to allow me to bring a book to read for myself when I'm done with any reading work. She probably thought I'd bring some fairy tales, and agreed.

When the class came, I finished the reading exercise and pulled out the book I was allowed to. It wasn't fairy tales though - it was a dinosaur encyclopedia. The teacher got very angry and took the book away, as "it's not an appropriate reading material for a first grader".

I refused to speak with the teacher for the rest of the semester.

Guilt by association. Or rather, actually, proximity.

One day, when I was in middle school, there was a food fight. Nothing climactic like you'd see in the movies, just a few boys sitting at the same table throwing French fries at each other, escalating to M&Ms. Someone's half-pint of milk got knocked over. Faculty was quick to shut it down and issue punishment.

Rather than considering who started the fight or who escalated it, the teacher decided to simply drop the hammer on everyone seated at the table, equally. Including myself and three other kids, who weren't in the fight at all.

Eating chips in a class we were allowed to eat in. Other kids were eating when I got sent to the office and I got in more trouble for pointing that out. Painting my nails. I was told to stop, asked to go to the bathroom, and got in trouble when I came back with my nails fully painted. And in a situation where the whole class was told to be silent, but the teacher refused to look at any of us, I noticed someone (who was the type that never got in trouble) was pretty impatiently waving her hand around, so I told the teacher she needs something and was sent to the office. OH now that I'm writing I'm thinking of more. Some kid groped me in the middle of the cafeteria and I was scolded for pushing the issue because "he's a good kid who was just "being silly" and these kinds of things can really follow someone ya know." He later spent time in prison. And there was a girl who was a huge bully that I told to stop picking on someone who was afraid of getting hurt (I truly had a death wish, the girl was 3x my size) and she threatened to jump me in the bathroom. She harrassed me for weeks and I definitely aggravated the situation because I refused to be intimidated. I'd announce when I was going to the bathroom, tell her nows your chance etc. I was asked to leave her alone bc if she were to get into another fight she would be sent to juvie. She is currently in prison. Really backwards logic in that school

Forced to go to a private catholic HS. Dress code for boys included collared shirts. Regularly didn't wear one. Regularly "caught" and issued detention. By the time I left and for a couple of decades later, as I understand it, I held the record for most hours of detention (~183). Jokes on them as the detention monitor helped me with school work and gave me my first (of many) handjobs. She was a pro.

Wanting to learn.

I was apart of a very orthodox religious school who's main appeal is their dual curriculum setup. They start with judaics at 7 am with secular studies from 12:40 pm to 5 pm and then more judaics from 7 - 9 pm. I never had a proper education and when I went to the secular education principle to be put back into arithmetic, she got quite pissed at me and mocked me for even wanting this. I went on a complete and utter fucking tangent not going to school until they fucking put me in arithmetic.

After I somehow graduated in 2022 (with absolutely fucking nothing -- no diploma or anything) i went to community college and finished multivariate calculus from arithmetic within 2 years span. Shit I even graduated with a degree in mathematics.

I recently went back and started substituting there during my winter break off of university, and it has effectively become so fucking shitty that while I was subbing, the entire day was spent drawing... fucking drawing.

These aren't kindergartners, these are 6th, 7th, and 8th graders, they should be learning algebra at this point, and they're just familiarizing themselves with exponents. The 8th grade doesn't even have a teacher to teach fucking math.

With all that said, I sent an email to the principle implying a dillema, "either you can bring the secular program up to standard, or I will cut it" the principle never responded and I may have no choice but to send a cease and desist letter as a more formal course of action and an additional warning if they don't cooperate.

I got detention once for being sleepy, I didn't know until recently that I had been dealing with chronic low blood pressure problems as a result of a diet thst didn't sustain my body properly, the load on my body was from school mostly so I couldn't just reduce it and I couldn't really eat more because school lunches weren't enough and snacking wasn't allowed.

2 things.

I would get my hand hit with a ruler so I would not write with my left hand. My over 60 yr old spinster teacher said it was a sign of the devil.

Second time also involved the same batshit crazy teacher. I was outside the classroom by the windows and there was this big sheet of steel on the ground. I being a dumb kid thought it would be fun to jump up and down on it making a very large racket whilst happily jumping. Teacher comes out and starts boxing my ears screaming why did you not stop, I kept telling you from the window. All I said was it was loud.

Got caught skiving off an afternoon class with a friend. Unfortunately his absence was noticed and he had very strict parents who would ground him at the drop of a hat. When we were pulled up on it he said the first lie that came into his head, which was that he'd shat himself. I had to play along. Ultimately he avoided being grounded but had to get an unnecessary prostate exam and take stool hardeners for a year.

In 6th grade, I got in trouble for putting gum in my mouth before the bell rang. It was maybe 15 seconds before the bell. The idiot teacher called my mom in to discuss it.

ate shit once