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.
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/
Reddit user, u/teddirbus, wanted to hear the unhappy haunts when they asked:
What is the worst memory you have of school?
Scaredy Pooper
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Grade 5, took my first and last sh-t in school.
Some younger kids kept jumping into or under the stall...
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.
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.
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.
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 Snyman is a b-tch.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'll Have Your Finest Milk Pizza, Please.
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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."
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.
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...
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)