Not everyone looks back on school with fond regard. What may have been the best time for a certain group of kids (a.k.a. "Popular") was not fully shared among all students. Awful times during such formative years can lead to terrible memories you never really move past from, as these stories are evidence of.
WARNING: *The following article contains discussion of suicide/self-harm.
Reddit user, u/teddirbus, wanted to hear the unhappy haunts when they asked:
What is the worst memory you have of school?
Scaredy Pooper
Giphy
"Grade 5, took my first and last sh-t in school."
"Some younger kids kept jumping into or under the stall..."
davidbesp
A Lasting Physical Mark
"Teacher punched me directly in the face."
"This was 3rd grade, I can't remember who it was, and as far as I know, She is still a teacher."
Errotenthesynth
Too Much Blood
"When my classmates would play this game where they would hit a coin into eachother's knuckles until they bled just for fun. Or when they made a guy cut himself, like they told him to do it "because it was cool and they all did it" or stuff like that, when they actually didn't. Even now I hate remembering the blood stains on the desk."
pixiedreamgirl-
Smoke And Fire
"I have too many bad memories of school. When I was in middle school nobody would believe a word I said. They thought I was a dumb kid who amounted to nothing. They were wrong when a fire broke out and I smelled smoke. It was an electrical fire and I was the scapegoat. Good thing I had an alibi. I was in band class and the fire broke out in the science wing. Nobody would believe me except the band director who had proof I was in his class at the time of the fire. Took forever to clear my name, but it wasn't enough."
NightHawk877
Accusations Without Evidence
"Not my worst memory, but pisses me off just thinking about it..."
"My primary schools art class was situated in the library. The teacher gave each kid a random image from a book to draw. I meticulously recreated the grey-scale nature scene and used graphite shavings for a nice shadow effect."
"The teacher then aggressively tore up my artwork and accused me of making a photocopy...
Happened 20 years ago and I still think Mrs S***** is a b-tch."
deoswan
Compounded With Interest
"I was bullied in school. had a very bad bully in elementary school. probably 4th or 5th grade. Would beat/hit me on a daily basis. Then one day after a school break (1 week) we all came back to school."
"Then said bully came to me and said something along "i usually hit you x amount a day. I haven't seen you for 9 days so i should beat you 9 times x now""
"Then we negotiated how much he could beat me. Classmates, teachter etc. didn't say anything."
"And then he were allowed to hit me some 40 times. good times."
NicolajN
Boys Pointing It Out
"In sixth grade I was wearing neon pink pants to school. I didn't realize until halfway through the school day that I had started my period and had huge splotches on the seat of my pants. I had to use a jacket to hide it and pass it off as me sitting in spilt coffee."
Dicloniusqueen
One For Every Stage
"I have a bunch"
"Kindergarten my teacher forced me to drink milk even though I was full so I threw up on myself."
"Middle school during a test my bully had some halls he found on the ground putting it on my desk saying how I dropped my candy (saying I'm fat still am ) I flicked it off it fell on his chair thinking I threw it he threw it at me and it fell in my bra I was trying not to cry. he said are you crying for your mommy? What was worse is that the school counselor was there to look after us because my teacher was at a meeting. She couldn't see that I was in distress. Same school gave my journal photocopies of my journal to my parents because I got into trouble"
"Different middle school same thing happened where they photocopied my journal and got into my Facebook messages gave it all to my parents."
theathena7
Sweating It Out
"We had a threat made and the middle was evacuated. They put all of us in the football stadium. We sat in 95°F direct sunlight for about 2 hours. They tried distributing water but couldn't get enough. Once people started passing out they moved us to the High school auditorium. It was a tight fit but at least we had AC and reheated sandwiches for lunch. Nothing was found and in the end our hall pass policy was stricter. There was also an adult monitoring the bathrooms at all times for the rest of the year."
HatchedRaptor
Holding Onto It, Even Though You Hate It
"Drama club kids making a game of seeing how far they could push me until I quit the school play once they got the other designated punching bag freak to quit."
"They wouldn't give me a copy of the script and someone only lent me a copy to photocopy once I swore I wouldn't tell who let me have it. They'd move my stuff around whenever they found my latest hiding place. I got threatened physically, and got cornered and told what a f-ck-up loser I was a couple of times. They got me to stand at the very end of the cast photo and I was the only one that got cropped out in the yearbook photo. They did so much sh-t, if I detailed it all it would be a wall of text."
"It f-cked me up for a while and I never went for another play even though I loved being onstage. But I never gave them tears and I didn't quit."
Umuiyan
SPOILER: Everyone Noticed.
"1st grade, my teacher wouldn't let me use the bathroom until my desk was organized. She was pretty mean in general. I really needed to pee. The rest of the class was dismissed, so it was just her and I, and I couldn't focus because I had to pee so f-cking bad. So I did, standing there. Then I promptly left and hoped no one would notice."
"Spoiler: everyone noticed."
sara_cattt
When Teachers Focus On The Wrong Problem
"Probably at the beginning of 10th grade. I was getting a lot of stomach problems + anxiety and depression were hitting my life hard. So because of the problems above I wasn't really going to school, I was barely eating anything, and I just wanted to sleep my life away."
"One of the school council teachers (that I was good friends with at the time), said "that I wasn't trying hard enough and that my depression is a joke." I never talked to her again and I ended up switching schools in the middle of the school year."
Tenebris_Ignis69
A Snapped Finger
"In grade 1 my friend Colin and I were in the bathroom, and I leaned up against the stall doorway not realizing my finger was in the hinge. Colin thought it would be funny to slam the door, and to this day I don't know if he knew my finger was there or not. But he swung that metal door closed so f-cking hard that he basically broke my finger in half without breaking the skin."
"I cried so hard that I got a nose bleed, and continued crying even harder until, to the discovery of all the faculty in the office, you can actually cry hard enough to bleed out of your eyes. I popped enough blood vessels that the whites of my eyes looked completely red, and as a result of the pressure on my face from crying so hard I started crying blood. I'll assume this isn't just my worst memory of school but maybe a few of the office people too, since they had a small child with entirely crimson eyes with trails of blood streaking down his cheeks like a horror movie screaming and pointing a crooked finger at them."
Theguywhoalwaysdies
Having Fun At Your Expense
"In kindergarten I peed in the lunch line and when I got back from changing there were kids sliding around in the water where they mopped it up. I was MORTIFIED."
"I'm sure I had worse things to happen but this was the one that has stuck the most."
sgf12345
I'll Have Your Finest Milk Pizza, Please.
Giphy
"In second grade, the kid next to me at lunch poured his entire carton of milk all over my pizza, so I went to throw it away but the lunchroom monitor said I hadn't eaten enough of it and made me take more bites of it so I was just standing there crying by the trash cans and eating milk-soaked cafeteria pizza until I had achieved some arbitrary level of 'done-ness.'"
CaughtAllTheBreaks
Running Away From The Real Problem
"My dad kidnapped us for the first time and put us in school. When my mother found us she went to school to get us. I didn't want to go. Cause she physically abused me and I was kind of happier with the less abusive parent. I ran throughout the school as police officers, teacher, and my mother looked for me. I think they found me in the bathroom hidden in a stall. It took them a bit to find me. But I remember not understanding why the school, the place I would escape to, would give me over to a woman who beat me."
symbioticgestures
When You Just Want To Get Out
"I was put in a group of kids that were classed as 'bad', even though I was a good kid, even having my head of year vouch for me. I lost most of my friends because of this split and with the fact that the year before, I lost my best friend to heart failure, I was hoping to die."
"They called it 'Nurture', but instead of a desire to learn, I had a desire to GTFO by any means necessary. Five suicide implications later, I moved schools. Best decision of my whole life."
ZeroTheGopnik
The Most Real Feeling Of Drowning
"A group of students tried to push me under water repeatedly until I was almost there they were going to drown me. I managed to escape to the side of the pool and grab the edge while they tried dragging me back into the deep. Then a girl got out of the water and one by one pulled my fingers from the edge. I cant remember how I got out eventually."
Omepas
Betrayal
"My entire school experience... but one that really sticks out is when a teacher I liked and trusted completely back stabbed me when I made a sex joke during class and he overheard it... then he proceeded to give me a 0% on my project I worked 3 months (which was voted best the class by then students) and refused to shake my hand or even look me in the eye... just completely rejected me as a person and continued to crack down the whip on me like I was some kind of monster... and I'm a girl! I never did anything else aside from that joke!"
"All the other students worshipped him because he was young and hip, yet there I was... completely dehumanized"
"This later pushed me to try and kill myself a second time on the night of my 17th birthday..."
Nyah_Chan
Sharing In The Awful Together
"Getting my period and bleeding through my clothes. Walked around all day with blood on the back of my skirt until someone told me and I had to tie a jacket around my waist. This happened a few times in middle school. I had heavy periods and had to wear khaki clothes."
"Not as bad as my husband's worst memory, though. When he was in 9th grade, during an assembly a student pulled out a gun, shot at the ceiling once (sending everyone running and screaming)"
OverallDisaster
It's a wonder any of us graduated!
Do you have similar stories to share? Let us know in the comment section below!
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
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The old wives' tales.
They are the stories of legend.
I think we all need a big DEEP Google dive though.
Where did they originate?
WHO ARE THE OLD WIVES!
You don't hear about them as much anymore.
It's like science and logic are suddenly a thing.
But they sure are a good way to keep your kids and their behavior in line.
Redditor the_spring_goddess wanted to discuss the tall tales we've all been fed through life, so they asked:
"What is an old wives tale that people still believe?"
"Wait an hour to swim after eating."
What a crock!
So many summer hours wasted.
I want revenge for that one.
Say Nothing
Giphy
"An undercover cop has to tell you he's a cop if you ask him."
LonelyMail5115
"Pretty much most advice when it comes to cops are old wives tales. I’m not even a cop but most of the advice you hear is pretty off."
I_AM_AN_A**HOLE_AMA
Say Something
"That you have to wait 24 hours to report someone missing."
Severe_Airport1426
"I really think this one is important and should be the top regardless. As it’s a piece of advice that needs to be relearned and the only way to do that is through awareness."
crappycurtains
"This used to be true. I think they changed it after some guy named Brandon went missing back in the '80s or '70s. You used to have to wait 24 hours if the missing person was an adult because they had 'a right to be missing' and then everyone realized that was stupid and stopped doing it."
AlbinoShavedGorilla
Body Temps
"That drinking ice cold water after eating oily foods will solidify the oil and permanently remain in your body. I informed my coworker that if your body temperature ever reached that point, you’d have bigger problems than weight gain."
chriseo22
"Oh, I have a cousin who 100% believed this. One of those guys who believed every early 2000s internet rumor and old wives tale. One night I chugged a big glass of ice water after dinner and he started freaking out and saying my guts were gonna harden."
"I sarcastically told him to drive me to the hospital if that happened. Obviously, nothing happened and the next morning I said something like 'Thanks for being on standby in case my guts filled with hardened oil.' He just walked off muttering under his breath."
apocalypticradish
Arms Down
"When I was pregnant, I was told by young and old alike that I should NOT raise my arms above my head or exert myself in such a manner because it could cause cord strangulation to my unborn sons and daughters."
Fatmouse84
10 Years Actually
Unimpressed Uh Huh GIF by Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Giphy
"Chewing gum stays in your stomach for 7 years."
"I remember accidentally swallowing a piece of gum when I was a kid in like 1995 and just accepting my fate like welp, gonna have this in my stomach til high school I guess."
Gecko-911
I was so afraid to sallow my gum when I was young.
This tale is haunting.
High/Low
Hungry Debra Messing GIF by Will & Grace
Giphy
"You can tell the sex of the baby by how you carry."
LeastFormal9366
"Pregnancy certainly wins awards for the most old wives tales. So much absolute BS was repeated to us by everyone we talked to."
IllIIIlIllIlIIlIllI
The Cursed
"If you’re a woman and you wear opal jewelry but opal is not your birthstone (October), you’ll never be able to have children, or will be widowed, or just generally have bad luck or something. You can counteract this by having a diamond in the same piece of jewelry as the opal, though."
"I have a nice opal ring that my parents gave me years ago, and I’ve had other women give me this 'advice' unprompted more than once when I’ve worn it. I have absolutely no idea where it started, but I’m pretty sure this little chunk of silicate rock has no concept of what month I was born in, let alone of how my reproductive organs work."
SmoreOfBabylon
Stay In
"Going outside with wet hair will make you get pneumonia. Or an earache. Or maybe arthritis. Depends on which old wife you listen to."
"Jokes on them - I haven't blow-dried my hair in decades and usually leave the house with wet hair in the morning. On winter mornings, the tips of my hair get frozen. No ear infections or pneumonia or arthritis yet."
worldbound0514
Dreams and Facts
"You never make anyone up in your dreams you've seen everyone in your dreams somewhere else before and never make anyone up entirely."
"How would you possibly prove that to be true? My partner adamantly believes this and tells me this 'fact' whenever I have a dream about someone I've never met before."
mattshonestreddit
"My late wife used to tell me that before she met me she would have dreams of standing at an alter on her wedding day but could never see the guy's face, no matter how hard she tried. After meeting me the face was filled in with mine. Don't know if it's true but one of those things I like thinking of every now and then when I miss her."
Darthdemented
Cracked
Getting Ready Episode 2 GIF by The Office
Giphy
"Some people still believe cracking knuckles causes arthritis."
Choice-Grapefruit-44
"There's a doctor (Donald Unger) that cracked his knuckles a couple of times a day for 60 years, but only on one hand, just to prove it. Both hands remained exactly the same."
MacyTmcterry
I love my knuckles.
Do you have any tall tales to add to the list? Let us know in the comments below.
