Schools are like their own little universes. A whole mini-society, complete with its own specific rules and customs, some of which make absolutely no sense whatsoever. You can't help but wonder what the faculty was thinking in some of these cases, or why no one stopped to think about why they were so weird.
While schools are a place of learning, they can also be places of absolute stupidity.
U/SoLe123456 asked:
What's the dumbest rule your school ever enforced?
It really makes you stop and think, what event led to these weird rules being put into place?
Seems counterproductive.
"My school had 3 staircases along a very long corridor. We were banned from using the middle staircase because it got overcrowded. The ban was lifted once they realised it only made the other two staircases just as crowded."
"This road has too much traffic. We should close it."
How did they get to be principal?
late school GIFGiphy"The new Principal made a "morning round-up" rule where anyone arriving to class after the last bell had to go to the cafeteria and listen to a lecture about not being late for class. This took about an extra 15 minutes, making the students even more late to class than they would have otherwise been. Needless to say, everyone hated it, even the teachers. That principal didn't last long..."
"Lmao this sounds similar to a rule at my high school. If you weren't in your 1st period class before O Canada played, you had to head to the cafeteria, miss class (yup cuz THAT's smart) and "sit in silence". The first day it went into practice, I walked in just as the principal was telling everyone over the PA to stand up for the national anthem, so technically O Canada hadn't started yet. Regardless, my teacher said I was late and I had to head to the cafeteria AFTER the national anthem had finished playing (Again, I'm already in the class so what was the f*cking point?)."
"The cafe was FULL with other stragglers and the teachers on duty couldn't have given less of a sh!t. I sat with some friends who were also late and spent the entire time playing cards. The next day the rule was cancelled. Go figure."
No drinking water allowed.
"I was sent to the principal in elementary school for getting a drink of water out of line (as in we walked down the hall in a formation and we had designated water drinking stops). To this day I still remember the principal asking angrily well what if every one started getting water without permission? And I still don't have an answer."
Doesn’t the dean have better things to do?
"Toilet paper rationing. This was in 1997/98, btw. Apparently the high school girls room was going through too much toilet paper so the dean, a woman, stood outside the door and distributed a few squares of 1-ply institutional toilet paper to us as we went in. If she noticed toilet paper on the floor, our ration got cut down. If we asked for more for...bigger jobs...we were told to save it for home."
"There were several episodes of girls stuck in stalls until friends could beg for more TP because of period messes or unexpected bowel incidents. The dean wouldn't even hand it over--she would go in the bathroom and pass it a few squares at a time over the door. If you didn't catch it as it fell and it landed on the floor, well, that's your fault and you're not getting more. If you used more than she thought necessary, tough luck, go to class with blood/sh!t on your body."
"It took about a week of extremely angry parents coming to the school and calling both the school and the school board, but we finally got our toilet paper back, unlimited."
"How did we celebrate?"
"By TPing her car, of course."
It’s incredible how far some schools go to enforce the zero tolerance rule. It’s like they don’t fully understand what it means to be bullied.
Best Excuses For Late Assignments That Were Actually True | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
A bit of the ol’ ultraviolence.
stop it science fiction GIF by FilmStruckGiphy"After 9/11, my school instituted a zero-tolerance policy on bullying and violence. What 9/11 had to do with bullying, I don't know. Anyways, Halloween 2001, I dressed up as the guy from Clockwork Orange. He carries a cane around."
"The principal pulled me aside, told me walking around with a cane could be a weapon, therefore just walking with it is an act of violence, and suspended me for a couple of days, telling me that after 9/11, "we don't mess around with that kind of stuff"."
Neither of these rules make and sense.
"That if you say/do anything back to your bully it becomes a mutual conflict and isn't bullying, so if they start calling you slurs and making you feel bad every day and you call them stupid once or twice the school probably won't help."
"Also dress code required school branded hoodies... they were 50 dollars. If you wore a non school hoodie you got in school suspension."
What kind of gang would that be?
"No beads. Apparently, they thought beaded jewelry was gang-related?"
"Nothing says hardened criminal like matching bead bracelets that say "BFFs <3" ."
And of course, we can’t forget the truly bizarre rules that were put into place by clueless adults.
This is just sad.
Bored Fun GIFGiphy"My school was in a poor area of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Not a lot of schools here have money for anything. Because of a huge donation of books at the time I was in school, my school got an absurd number of books, including expensive ones."
"There were a few dumb rules, but the dumbest of them all?"
"We basically couldn't touch the books in the library without permission. It might sound reasonable at first, but check this out."
"The library was huge, and there were lots of books, including contemporary classics, non-fiction like The Last Problem, English Literature like Infinite Jest, How to kill a Mockingbird and whatnot. Dude, there was so much there, that place was probably the most valuable place in the entire school."
"I mean, it was awesome, there were enough books there for each student to lend about 100 every day."
"Here's the problem, the library went all but untouched for the entirety of my time there. Why? The amount of work it took to read one of those books was ridiculous and pretty much made sure not a single student bothered to try."
"First, you couldn't take any of the books home, period. Forget the fact that they had your address and all your parents info, so in the case that someone took it and didn't return it, they could just get it back - it had happened before at least once before the rule was made."
"Second, you couldn't leave the library with them, no matter what."
"Third, if you wanted to read the book, you'd have to do it in the library at the lunch break, which was about 45 minutes, so unless you weren't hungry ever, you had only a few minutes to go to the library. It was only open for a few hours around the break and not at all at any other time, so unless you stayed there for hours until the break for the afternoon classes, you just wouldn't have another chance. (Those hours around the break could be used for you to be tutored by a teacher, which almost never happened)"
"Fourth, once you went through all of that, you could only read the book under the observation of the people that volunteered to work in the library for credit, which was never more than two or three people, sometimes no one. Which means that if you got there and there were already three people there, forget it. Unless you were willing to read it standing up close to where the book was kept and even then they'd check on you every minute or so."
"Fifth, you couldn't get inside the library with a backpack, with food, in groups, speaking, without the appropriate uniform - you couldn't get in with the gym one, for instance -, with other books, earrings, necklaces or anything that could make noise while you were walking. Some were reasonable, but the issue was that one simple mistake and you would get banned."
"Sixth, any banishment from it was permanent. I complained about it once in the second year and was never allowed inside ever again. I even tried to get some teachers to help me, but it didn't work."
"Seventh, and probably the dumbest, only the students that had a certain amount of high grades could get any book at all. If you got something like 4/10 on your last biology exam, you couldn't even get inside the library. The standard was so insane, only six other students and I in my classroom had enough good grades to get books."
"In all my time there, the library was basically deserted for the majority of it. I tried to go there many times, but it was too much work. Out of all the books I only managed to read two Brazilian ones "A guerra do lanche" (The lunch war) and "Blecaute" (Blackout) which I remembered to this day in details. There were times where I legit thought about straight up ditching class to read some of them."
"I tried to get more, like The Last Problem, Kafka's Metamorphosis, Ulysses - which I know I wouldn't have been able to do it, but I was just curious -, A brief history of time, Withering Heights, etc."
"But the amount of work it took was so much that it was just almost impossible to be able to read more than one or two books a year, and even that took dedication, because I basically had to sacrifice part of my lunch time."
"The rumor was that the principals* - we had more than one - basically saw us as "savages" who would destroy the books if we were allowed to touch them and even though they had no reason to believe so - the library worked well without those restrictions a year before I had gotten there, with only minimal incidents and even those didn't result in the books getting destroyed."
The principal did WHAT?
"We were not allowed to have facial hair at all."
"Like to the point where the principal would walk around during lunch with razors and shaving cream and do "Stubble checks"."
"Absolutely ridiculous and he would send tons of us to the bathrooms to shave during lunch, no matter how small the stubble was."
Unnecessary precautions
"It wasn't really the rule that was dumb but the reason for it. In my last year of high school, the school issued a rule that all students had to wear student IDs. If you didn't, you had to immediately go and pay for another ID. While you can see how many students may have saw this a way to skip class, the reason for this was the school shootings that happened the previous year."
"The reasoning was that it would be easier to spot who is a student and who is not a student to then see who has malicious intent.....except that most shooters were students....so..."
It's safe to say that every single one of these rules were entirely unnecessary. Like, worse than the "two finger" rule when it came to wearing tank tops (to prevent girls from, god forbid, wearing spaghetti straps). These rules are completely absurd, and it makes you wonder how the adults in charge got their jobs in the first place.
To all the kids stuck in schools like this- stick it out, because I promise that the real world is nothing like this.
Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.