Non-prep school kids typically don't like prep school kids because they have more fun. Because they're rich. Anyway, enjoy some tall tales from private school students.
HarbingerOfYeet asked people who studied in boarding schools: What are your craziest stories from your school life?
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
Can we top this today?
I went to boarding School from age 9-16.
In my country, parents usually wait until you are at least 12-13 but there was a big war in my town. On the day that the war started, we were all at school. Every car on he road was stoned, overturned and set alight. The riot police came and flung all us little kids into a walled compound adjacent from the school to keep us from the mob. I remember being cold and holding onto my little brother. My classmates were all with me as well. It was pitch dark by the time we heard our parents calling out our names. The next day, it was revealed that 11 children from my primary school had been killed in the riot. Some parents moved, some- like mine- sent their kids to boarding school. I went to the same school as 6 of my classmates. We all had some form of PTSD by the time we arrived at school.
In boarding school, our dorms were connected but there was a distinct boys side and girls side, chaperoned 24/7 by Matron- Comber Of Hair.
Anyway, our new boarding school was right on the edge of a national park and one night we heard a thundering and a trumpeting. Apparently, a rogue elephant had decided to break the fence and go on rampage in our school. We were mostly safe in the dorm, but villagers were screaming, and firing Ak's and trying to distract the elephant. Then a helicopter came and a guy shot a tranquilizer dart at the elephant. It didn't fall right away but teetered dangerously towards our dorms. I mean he could have kicked the door down but mercifully fell like 2 meters from the door. We were terrified!!! the 7 of us were freaking the f*ck out and freaking out the other kids too.
Anyway, a large truck and crane came and they lifted the elephant onto the truck and took him back to the preserve. That night there was no boys side or girls side. all the boys came over to our side and brought their mattresses and slept in the hallway. Eventually the teachers decided to move the boys beds in (all our parents were Okay with this as we needed each other so much) and we had the first co-ed dorm. This carried on for 4 years until we went to the high school section! We remained as a cohort throughout and while other kids got separated, the 7 of us always slept in the same dorm no matter what. Oh and we always said good night to each other, ritualistically.
Suffice to say, none of us has any remnants of PTSD.
Miraculously, none of us even grew up to date each other. We still keep in touch and everyone once in while, someone from across the world will text me goodnight.
Edit: WOW!!! this blew up and my first gold too! Idk what gold is but I daresay I think its good:)The country was Kenya in East Africa. I can't say the school name (idk why but something about not providing identifying details) but it was near Lake Nakuru National Park South Western Mau National reserve, and bunch of other parks. The town where the war was was Kisumu. Dr. Robert Ouko had been killed (allegedly by the president, Daniel T. Arap Moi) and burned, and when his body was found, it sparked a massive riot and for months the town was on lock down.
EDIT#2: Matron- Comber of hair was in charge of combing our hair. I am African but my mother is Indian and for some sadistic reason wanted me to have long hair. Anyone who has tight curly hair knows that its impossible for a 9 year old child to manage long hair on their own. So Matron-Comber of Hair was in charge of combing and braiding my hair every morning and night. She was in charge of all the girls hair, as well as some of the boys (2 were biracial and their hair was HARD!) so anyway, Matron - Comber of hair would line us up and try to comb our hair with a brush for the white and Indian children's hair. Of course it did nothing and it would snag and break my hair. Then I would cry, and then matron would cane me for crying, it was a right clusterf*ck. But I would leave that dorm every morning looking like a normal child instead of a golliwog. Thats what she used to call me, "our little golliwog."
This is kind of impressive.
Not me, but I go to a farming boarding school, and someone bought back a pet chicken from town, and managed to keep it in the dorm for 12 weeks without authorities knowing. It was like a personal alarm clock every morning too.
When you gotta go you gotta go.
Military school.
After evening study hall, my company was called to a meeting. "Don't stick your genitals out the window." Apparently, someone decided to do that rather than go to the bathroom.
This happens more often than you'd think
Edit: And not just at military boarding schools, others as well.
I thought peeing in your sink was the usual practice.
It was.
He raised the dead.
One time, I had a dorm pet beta fish called Weed von Marijuana, for the little plastic seaweed toy that came with his tank. I regularly maintained his tank, but one time I pulled him out too roughly, and so he got scared and played dead. Thinking I had to bury him, I decided to call the only other person in the dorms at that moment - a very studious, reclusive student - to join me in the burial ritual. We somehow found a way to light a candle (illegal in the dorms) and dimmed the lights, as we made a candlelit burial procession from the kitchenette to the bathroom. All the while, I was holding my dead fish up, lion king style and we wore blankets like hooded robes while chanting somber tunes. When I was at the crescendo of the tunes and was about to pour my fish into the toilet, he started flopping around, and at the last second, I got to keep him.
Nah you just summoned his soul back from the dead.
🤫
Best years of this person's life.
I went to an Episcopalian boarding high school in New Hampshire.
One year anonymous letters were sent to all the black students with a picture of a target and the word "bang" written on them. The incident rocked the school but it was awesome how the community came together in support of each other. The FBI got involved and I remember giving a statement to two agents. I don't believe that case was ever resolved.
One of my classmates got kicked out for academic dishonesty because he cheated on a Spanish test. He was a native speaker.
The school got flooded out one spring and the last few months of the year were cancelled, including finals.
During my 5th form year, my dorm had a massive underground Texas hold em ring going. Of course, gambling for real money was strictly against the rules, but we managed to create a good system for concealing what we were doing even if faculty visited our room while we were playing. Despite being a bunch of high school students, there were never any instances of not paying up, which I find impressive in hindsight.
The mini library in the main academic building was one of the most popular spots for loud sex. I regularly heard people going at it at late hours while passing through.
The school internet from the dorms shut off at night until around 6 am, and it was normally quite slow otherwise. A friend of mine figured out that he could set up a VPN through a laptop he left in the science building. By connecting to that laptop, not only did we have 24/7 internet access, but during the hours the dorm internet was cut off, the VPN internet was blazing f*cking fast - the entire campus's bandwidth being used only by the few people my friend entrusted the information to. We called it Ford Prefect and it lasted a while until a faculty member somehow found out about it. He only got a slap on the wrist.
I'm probably forgetting a lot, this sh*t was so long ago. Boarding school is f*cking nuts and if I had a time machine I'd happily do it all over again.
For girls, boarding school is no fairy tale.
I wish your question was, "people who went to boarding school, how is it different to what you see in the movies?" I went to an exclusive all girls boarding school: it's not hot girls having pillow fights in skimpy lingerie. It's bad skin, braces and men's pj's (as in, that's what we all wore to bed).
When there were school functions (to raise money) we were the waitresses/slave labour. One time I nicked a few bottles of wine from one of these events & hid them up in the roof above our dorm. By the time that story went through the school gossip system (& got back to teachers) I was supposedly running a bar in the attic.
Late at night (2am'ish) i'd sneak out & over to the boys boarding school down the road. We'd just do stupid stuff like take their bikes or skateboards & ride around the neighbourhood, then purposely put them back in different places.
Two girls did get expelled for sneaking out through my escape route to go to a John Mellencamp concert.
Also attended all girls' boarding school and wore pajamas nearly exclusively when we were out of uniform.
Every school has one...
Fall 2012. One of the newer girls in school ran to the teachers in hysterics. She's deathly allergic to peanuts, and claimed someone crushed up some in her room after she got in a shouting match with some of the other girls.
The girls' floor is on lock down, basically. We're all grounded from going to trips to the mall or movie theater or something. The police aren't called or anything, since it would have been impossible to prove anybody did anything. However, regular classes are cancelled, and for maybe a fortnight all we did was team building exercises. Long conversations about what "sisterhood" means to us. I'm sure in the teachers' heads dramatic music was playing like the climax of a chick flick about a close group of friends.
However, a lot of us girls became suspicious. If it were true that somebody basically attempted to murder her, who cleaned up the mess, if not to verify there really were peanuts in there? Why was she still in the same room, and why wasn't any of her stuff sanitized? That girl claimed that she cleaned it up herself, and that she'd only die if she ingested peanuts. A week after the initial incident, she claimed that she was airborne. Later on in the year, she claimed she'd die if she touched someone who happened to eat peanuts in the past 24 hours. Then, she told us she was going through chemotherapy for an overactive thyroid, which, by the way, was why she was morbidly obese. Mysteriously, she didn't miss a day of school or a hair on her head (I know that chemo doesn't guarantee hair loss but still, she looked fine).
Until we graduated, she was basically shunned by everyone in our age group; even the boys avoided her. However, the teachers and much younger students loved her, mostly because of the sweet "big sister" persona she maintained when you first meet her.
As far as I know, she's currently working at a nursing home for the elderly, and that kind of disturbs me. I guess she could have changed in over five years, but then again, she was actually already twenty years old at that point...
I have an overactive thyroid and let me tell you, chemotherapy is not a treatment for it nor is morbid obesity a side effect.
She had crazy stories about her damn thyroid problem. She showed us pics of her at a wedding that took place maybe the summer before she came to our school, and there she looked mildly chubby at best. Apparently her thyroid made her gain well over a hundred pounds. The spring before we graduated, she apparently claimed to the younger girls (like thirteen or so) that her thyroid problem was contagious that particular morning. (Then again, perhaps that wasn't her compulsively lying and rather her just trying to get those kids to fuck off...)
She constantly made excuses for her weight. That is, until a veterinarian told her that her horses' spines were all fucked up because of it, and as a result the guys who owned the barn/hosted horse racing competitions basically forbade her from riding until she dropped a few pounds. She initially claimed they were all fat shaming her, but eventually realized that her horses' physical health was at stake and she took up jogging. She actually lost a decent amount of weight!
...but then she claimed her family was soooo pooooor because they couldn't afford to have their horses live at their house. They had to keep them in a barn and pay their rent like a bunch of bums. Y'know, forgive me if this is judgmental, but if you live in Connecticut, have bought three racing stallions, and go to a private high school that costs ten grand a year, don't be so shocked if you end up living paycheck-to-paycheck.
Poor turtle.
So many. I'll share the first one that came to mind.
My roommate had bought a small turtle on a school trip without asking me. This was against school rules, but we decided to hide it by moving our bunk against the window and hiding its tank between my very large sheets and the window.
Eventually he moved it to his desk, which I also objected to, but our room was never checked. Asshats from the 2nd floor of our building would frequent our room, play with it, and sometimes 'accidentally' drop it.
One day, when we came into our room, it wasn't in the tank. My roommate, who does not give a f*ck about it, decides to just leave the room and let me figure it out. I turn the entire room inside out looking for it, and I'm starting to lose my sanity not finding this thing.
I check under his bed as a last resort, and see his dirty underwear. I decide to grab it just to clean the room some more, and I find the turtle wrapped in it, belly up, dry and not moving. I toss it back in its tank and, after a while, it begins to move again.
Needless to say, I took it back to my house the next break and care for it myself.
Another really fun story was the annual senior dorm retreat earlier this year. We went to a lake with a bunch of log cabins, where we split about 150 kids into 15 cabins. Obviously all the girls are on one side of the lake, and the guys on the other. The about 5 faculty on the trip with us are somewhere in the middle.
My cabin, which was the 2nd furthest guys dorm, looking for some fun, persuaded a small group of the girls to come to our cabin at around 1 AM. To our horror, we look outside and see all ~75 girls pouring over to our cabins little patio. We desperately try to quiet them down but they keep making noise and the faculty catch on.
One of the faculty starts walking over and, thankfully, we had someone keeping watch of them. Our guard quickly notifies the guys, and we alert the girls of the situation. Cornered and with nowhere to go, they desperately start streaming into the 3 closest guys cabins, including ours, in an attempt to hide. I funnel them into our bathroom, out of sight from windows or faculty. Their attempt was futile, however, as the faculty came in the cabin and basically gave the girls one chance to leave or face severe punishment. Suddenly, 30 girls flow out of our bathroom and sprint back to their cabins. The involved faculty never further addressed this incident.
Well, at least you got a turtle out of it. How is he/she doing now?
Thriving! It has quadrupled in size.
Ding dong.
Attended a New England boarding school for two years. It was what you may imagine. Lots of rich kids and athletes. This is a coed school.
Anyways craziest story... our school like many others had a chapel. The chapel had a big bell tower that was only accessible through a locked door.
One day I got to go up there for a photography class. On the way out I left it unlocked. At approximately 10 pm that night I snuck out of my dorm, as did a female friend. We met at the chapel and snuck in a back door.
We climbed the three internal ladders to the top and proceed to desecrate that bell tower, while looking over the entire campus. Not realizing how long we had been up there the clock struck 11 and the bells rang for lights out.
A bell like that ringing by your head is not enjoyable. I nearly fell off of the tower in the scramble to get down the first ladder. Then I was successful in sneaking back to my dorm to play video games or something.
We also had other crazy sh*t happen, lots of drugs, fights, suicide attempts, skinny dipping in the pond in the woods, having friends get you into NYC clubs. Just stupid high school sh*t but with more money.
Hey, it's not all turtles and bell towers.
Nothing crazy, it was just depressing--All we did was study--100% of our senior class was accepted to 4 year universities.
If you went to boarding school, what's your craziest memory?