School is supposed to be where we go to learn things.
Unfortunately, sometimes the thing we learn is that adults are big fans of ridiculous punishments for ridiculous and seemingly arbitrary things.
One Reddit user asked:
What was the most ridiculous thing you got in trouble for at school?
and hey it turns out school really DOES prepare you for the real world where rules only apply to some people some of the time!
Who Do I Ask?
Algebra teacher yelled at me for asking for help.
First, he told me "Don't ask me. Ask your partner first!"
Later, I turned around and asked my "partner" for help. The teacher then yelled me at again "Don't ask her. If you need help ask me!"
I Know My Own Name
American Horror Story Fx GIF by AHSGiphyMy parents wanted my name to be unique and went with an extremely uncommon spelling on top of a rare name.
My first grade teacher called a parent-teacher conference to impress upon my parents that I refused to spell my name correctly. Before the parent-teacher conference, when my teacher refused to let me use my first name correctly, we negotiated that I could use my middle name.
That's when I proudly told her my middle name is Apostrophe. This lead to her claiming I'm a liar on top of my sh!tty attitude - all of which she told my mother.
I'll admit, I had a shitty attitude because I 100% knew my name and my name's spelling - and I loved it. I was frustrated with this dumb witch of a teacher who seemed to hate me for some reason.
My mom was furious and chewed my teacher out for making her leave work early for something so stupid.
Shockingly that incident did not make my teacher like me more.
If you know a kid struggling with a unique name... the children's book 'Crysanthemum' is great. Was my favorite book for a long while after this incident.
Intimidating
Reading a book.
Apparently the head of History found me sitting on a bench reading across from her office window "intimidating".
I was a grungy 90's white kid just sitting there minding my business.
- klc81
How the hell do you read "in an intimidating" manner...."reading intimidatingly?", "intimidatingly reading at me, causing me to fear for my life and safety?"
"Tattling"
In grade 1, there was a day where everyone brought in their favorite stuffed animal. The teachers warned us not to bring valuable ones because there was a chance they could get damaged.
I brought my favorite stuffed animal. The teacher's daughter and a boy in my class completely and purposefully destroyed it; ripped it, cut it up, colored on it).
I went to the teacher and told on them. They got absolutely no punishment for destroying my stuffed animal. The teacher reprimanded me for "tattling" and told me that I shouldn't have brought a stuffed animal that I cared about, since there was a risk of it getting damaged.
Most of the teachers in the school were really awesome, but that one was decidedly not. I didn't get along well with her daughter, and she always took her daughter's side.
When Your Locker Is Too Far
Not putting my jacket and back pack in my locker.
All of my classes were on the first floor and one end of the building. My assigned locker was on the second floor and in the furthest corner from my classes. I would have been late to every class, so I just never used it.
The administrators refused to move my locker... so pretty much every day this one teacher would write me up and I got a couple of in school suspension for it.
Finally after a few meetings I got the principal involved and she essentially told the teacher to leave me alone.
- Met90LX
Rural Life
GIF by DemicGiphyOne time in 7th grade I was talking about how I went hunting with my dad over the weekend. The school made me talk to a counselor about it
I got the same crap in grade 1 for saying that I helped my grandfather kill turkeys over the weekend.
My 4th grade teacher was one of those people who would always ask on Monday what you did during the weekend. She went around and made everyone in the class share what they did.
Hunting is a big thing in my state, so naturally when the season opened a lot of kids said they went hunting and got a 6 point buck, or 8 point buck, etc. After about the 5th or so kid said they went hunting the teacher got mad and said something to the effect of, "Ok, no more stories about hunting, talk about something else you did."
That's not fair, what if someone else went hunting and that's all they had to share? If my memory is correct, that is exactly what happened. More kids said all the did was go hunting so they had nothing else to share.
The teacher got mad again and stopped asking what everyone did during the weekend.
No Touching
Two month into the first grade I got suspended for lightly touching the arm of the teacher.
This wasn't the first time I got in trouble with her. She was very very strict and I grew up with my rather laid back mother and I've been to a lets call it "hippie kindergarten" (Kinderladen).
So this teacher was my first real authority person.
We were standing outside at the class room door, there was a lot of noise and I wanted to tell her something but she did not listen. I do not remember what it was. So I touched her arm lightly to get her attention.
I got suspended and the school janitor watched me until my mother picked me up.
I did switch schools after that to a much more understanding and patient teacher.
The Guy With 12 Guns
So I was the good nerdy kid in school. My sophomore year we had a new principal and she saw some video that showed a guy with 12 guns hidden on his body.
The new principle made a rule that your t shirt had to be shorter than your fingertips at your side. I'm a small guy so all my shirts were non compliant.
So long story short I was sent to in school detention for the first time in my life.
I loved that PSA video!
Let's see him walk with all that hardware. Unless he gets wheeled in Hannibal Lecter style on a dolly, he'll be lucky if he doesn't just sound like a toolbox falling down the stairs.
Half the guns would slip out and clatter across the floor, and the other half would quickly follow as soon as he tried to bend over.
JUG Units
Jesuit high school. Detention was called 'jug' it stood for Justice Under God. It was in 30 minute unit intervals of sitting in silence doing nothing after school. If you missed it without an excuse, it doubled.
There was a school rule that you had to check the jug list every day. Well, I didn't. I was given two units intended for a kid with a similar name to mine.
By the time I realized I had jug, it added up to 16 units. I explained my situation to the person in charge of discipline. He saw my point and removed the original 2 units. But, since I broke the rule of checking the list, I had to do the other 14.
That's 7 hours.
The Wrong Blue
I got in-school suspension because I wore blue tights under a dress. They were not a school-approved shade of blue.
This was my senior year of high school. My school decided to enforce a dress code. Navy was one of our colors, but apparently my tights weren't navy enough.
I was a straight A student who never got suspended till this.
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Redditor littleallred008 wanted to compare notes on all the degraded quality in the world of retail.
"What has simultaneously gotten worse and more expensive?"
Fast food in general. Wendy's? Your potatoes are shriveled and sad. They used to make me happy.
Ronald?
big mac 80s GIFGiphy"Big Macs. That burger 'patty' is a stones throw away from being a slice of roast beef."
badmangoodguy
Read Closer
"Cable/ Internet providers. Oh yes sorry your trial period was over, your bill went up 200 dollars. Oh no we didn't promise you 200mb/s download speed constantly, we said UP TO. read the fine print."
demonardvark
"In the US, if you’re lucky enough to live in a place with more than one option, call and threaten to cancel (speak with retentions) at the end of your contract."
"You should be able to renew at a better rate (maybe not as good as the trial offer). I actually just switch every year between Comcast and AT&T. I just set a calendar reminder for the following year once I sign a new contract. It’s a small hassle but worth it to save hundreds per year."
sameoldtexans
Skin
"I swear that Reese's peanut butter cups have gotten shi**ier over the years. the peanut butter seems chalkier and the chocolate tastes blander.
Plus I can't ever seem to pry them out of that little cup wrapper without leaving the bottom chocolate 'skin' stuck to it...
"I think the push to put them in the freezer and eat them chilled is a ploy to cover the declining quality."
thatstupidthing
No place like no home...
"As someone shopping for a house, I have to say homes. Not only has the real estate market been ridiculously inflated (especially in NYC, my residence), I'm finding that the actual quality of a lot of these homes are absolute crap. Due to the ability to find and source cheap materials and labor, developers are able to make huge profits off high prices and low costs. It's making me really rethink if I want buy a house, or just use all that money to aggressively invest."
orange_cuse
Not so Wild
I Hate You Wings GIF by The BachelorGiphy"Buffalo Wild Wings. I don’t know if it’s just me, but their prices have gone up and the quality has gone down."
ChongerHonger333
From my reviews, wings in general have just taken a hit.
Never Lasting
Show Off Renee Zellweger GIF by Working TitleGiphy"Clothes, very few companies make clothes to last and fast fashion is rising while the cost of items continue to increase!"
Longest_YeahBoi_Ever
Yuck
"Scented candles, Yankee Candle in particular used to be the candle that was considered premium. But while they've never been cheap at least a while ago it was worth the money. But now they're just exorbitant in price, they don't smell like they used to, and they are not worth the money."
llcucf80
Use an IPhone...
"Photo booths! Oh the old ones were so cool! Four different real photos for 1 dollar. - Now you pay $ 7 for four identical bad laser prints."
aSadGirlsTongue
"This is why we bought all the supplies and just made one ourselves, super easily. Literally bought a backdrop & frame, all the fancy lighting, props, tablet, tablet stand, color printer, and even the little clicker thing to press when to take the photo."
"All of that off of Amazon, for less than 1/3 the price we were quoted to rent one from a company. And now we have a photo booth... lol. We can be that cool couple that can bring a whole photo booth setup anytime we're invited to our friend's weddings, parties, events, etc."
Rachelalala
Ruined
"The Cadbury Egg is honestly the most disappointing to me, because nearly every one of the food products mentioned has plenty of viable alternatives that haven't been ruined. You can find a thousand high-quality chocolate bars or ice creams or whatever."
"But the Cadbury Egg is a singularly unique product. There's nothing else like it on Earth, so once Cadbury ruined the recipe, it was a treat lost forever."
KlaatuBrute
Learning
Robin Williams Movie GIFGiphy"My university education, specifically this year. They are raising tuition AND fall semester has no in-person sessions."
BlueKnightBrownHorse
I feel like life itself has degraded and become too expensive in general.
Redditor LBE wanted to hear about the times in life we've all been left with unease and shivers down the spine.
"What is the Creepiest or most Unexplained thing that’s happened to you that you still think about to this day?"
Noises. My creepiest enemy is simple noises. I've wasted hours hunting small noises that could be someone hiding. I'm always on guard.
Vanished...
"To this day, there was a kid in my class that no one else remembers. I distinctly remember playing with this kid in kindergarten, and we were pretty much inseparable. About a month past Christmas break he disappeared. No one remembered him."
GIF by VPROGiphy"Not the teachers, or the others in my class. No one. I even asked the school counselor if he was okay, and she humored me by going through records to see if he’d transferred. She couldn’t find a thing. I think about it at least once a month."
CrippledUnironically
Deliverance
"Was delivering newspapers on my paper route when a longtime customer pulled his car next to me and asked me to just give him his daily newspaper now because he was going on a long trip. I handed him his newspaper then skipped his house as I continued my route."
"The next day I was collecting the weekly fees (you used to have to go collect the money back then, no internet payment yet) and I went to his house to collect my fee. His wife answers and promptly complains that I missed her house on my deliveries the day before."
"I explained to her that her husband pulled up next to me, I told her what he said and that I gave him the paper. She started crying, told me that he had died a couple weeks ago and it was obviously not possible that I spoke with her husband the day before."
"I know what I saw and nearly 30 years later I still think about that situation. I have no way to logically explain what happened and it still give me the creeps."
avionchef
All Black...
"I have a weird memory that's not mine; I'm a small boy with a suit and tie, I'm at a party in a huge ceremonial church or something and there's lots of men and women wearing fancy black clothes, they all get in a circle its the middle of the day light was brightly coming in through the windows and there are old-ish couple dancing in the middle of the circle with some very classy/fancy music."
"And I was trying to look at them through people's legs, suddenly the man falls, no gunshots no one did anything to him and then the second he falls everyone starts screaming, people were running away but the men were running towards him, I think I was trampled because I was lying on the floor and then everything goes black."
"That's all I can remember. This is a clear memory that has stuck with me since I can remember, I'm really creeped out because I know that memory isn't mine, I've never gone to a fancy party in a church when I was little and I don't know what happened to that man because I fell over."
waterbottleman8000
Spooked
"Driving home from work late one night I was followed and it was weird. I left the hospital and turned off the main road to a bunch of side streets I would take. At one point I noticed a car behind me that made the same left turn as me. They sped up to get behind me. I thought nothing of it. Then I briefly thought about running to 7-11 to grab some food and turned on my right signal."
"But I realized I had food at home, so I turned my signal off. The car behind me turned on their right signal and turned it off as well exactly as I had. At that point I got a bit spooked. So I turned my right signal on and they did as well. Instead at the next intersection I turned left even though my right signal was on. They did as well. They proceeded to follow me through a series of odd turns."
"Eventually I turned onto a cul-de-sac I knew about and figured I could turn around there and look at the driver to see who was following me. As I approached the end of the road they figured out what I was doing. They stopped and did a fast k-turn and sped off. It was weird. Still don’t know who it was."
BiologyJ
Bad Vibes
"This didn't exactly happen to me, but I got some backlash and bad vibes from it. My best friend and his mom were moving out of their house (they were the only ones living in the house) and he went to take one last selfie in his room. When he showed the picture to his mom, she goes 'Who is that?"
"Upon further inspection he notices there was a straight up white face almost like a mask looking over his shoulder from the attic hatch above his room. He always heard things from the attic but never saw anything. A few weeks later we went on a wrestling trip and stayed in a hotel. He showed the pic around to everyone in our room, and then some spooky things started happening."
"In our room we began hearing knocks on our door when nobody was there. We also saw flashes or glimpses of a figure in the mirror in our room. Everyone was a little freaked out about it and thought it could be the demon from the picture, and my friend who took it became so paranoid he played bible verses to ward any demons off all night. He said ever since he took that picture he has had weird things happen to him."
Xander20021
Always listen to your bad vibes. They know all...
The Grunt
"I would cut weight/train for wrestling in high school, which meant a lot of dark-night runs at the middle school track. It was an old gravel one close to the woods with no lights. I didn't like running at the high school track for some reason so I'd just go there. I'd hold my phone to time my laps and one night while I was looking down at it, someone tackled me out of nowhere."
"We rolled around on the ground and he never said a word. Just grunted. Luckily, I got up and ran towards the middle school. I ran into some people and they called the cops. I left all of my stuff behind and he didn't take any of it. It was pretty strange."
Dragoevsky
3:21
"Driving from Northern California to Southern California through the middle of the night about a decade ago. I was tired, and the scenery along the freeway through the central valley isn't very interesting. I remember passing an old silo, looking at my car clock and it was 3:17 in the morning."
"Drove some more, passed a powerline, and it was 3:21."
"I blinked, shuffled in my seat, and passed that same old silo, and it was back to 3:17. I was in disbelief. I just stared at my clock for a few moments."
"Drove a little bit more, passed the same powerline, 3:21. Don't know why or how, but I went backwards about 4 minutes. Never experienced anything similar or since."
haysus25
Meow...
"A random cat on the street once protected me from a man who I didn't realize was following me."
"I was (stupidly) talking on my phone while walking home at night. I saw a man who was talking to himself near a park and I deliberately chose to walk down another street to avoid him. In the middle of my phone conversation, this orange cat comes up beside me and starts walking next to me."
"We walk in tandem for about three blocks, me telling the person I was talking to how funny this was."
"Suddenly, the cat starts to turn around and head back the other way. I look and see that same man I'd seen earlier, who had changed his original direction and had been following me for a few blocks. The cat got in between us and howled at him until he turned around and went the other way."
"Then the cat and I walked another block together, at which point he peeled off into a yard. I double-checked and the man was had disappeared. I can't be sure that the man wished me harm, but I know I wouldn't have noticed him if it weren't for that cat. I never believed in guardian angels or anything of that sort until I had that experience."
Mgnolry
Prints
"You know on cold days inside your car you can breath on the window and draw on the glass? I got in my car, and as I look at the windshield I see a few small baby hands. I thought it was strange someone would let a baby play on my cars windshield. I had an urge to touch the baby prints and as I touched it, I wiped away the hand prints. The hand prints were made from inside of my locked car. This is probably the strangest creepiest unexplained phenomena that’s ever happened to me."
ScootyPufff
Sucking lIfe
"I had a recurring nightmare of a pitch black parasite sucking the life it of me. Sometimes it waited for me in dark corners to go to bed. My cats always slept on my bed during that time. For me it was a very stressful time, a got an itch at the place of my chest where I dreamed the parasite was sucking my life out of me."
"I got sick and felt a pea sized lump. I went to my doc and they ordered a biopsy of that lump. As it turned out I had male breast cancer at the age of 28. After I got well again the dream never came back and my cats slept in their places again and not on my bed."
Teething Mental Health GIF by PBS Digital StudiosGiphy"The dream was creepy enough what it made for me were my cats protecting me."
Mechanic84
How do any of us sleep at might?
Do you have similar experiences to share? Let us know in the comments below.