During my obligatory weekly phone call to my parents I told my mother, who taught elementary school during the early 1970s before having me, about this thread and she asked me to add that each year back when she was teaching she would regularly receive several bottles of wine and at least one bottle of “spirits” as a Christmas gift from her students.
I wrote a disturbingly violent short story about shooting up the school in frustration pre-Columbine. Totally fiction. I’m quite peaceful… but today that would mean extensive office visits and counselor appointments and possible suspension/expulsion.
I carried Sudafed and Benadryl during allergy season, and my inhaler and epi-pen all the time. None of this “keep it in the nurse’s office” nonsense.
Oh, and we played Assassin. At school. With squirt guns. My high school had outside hallways and classroom windows that opened from thigh-height on up. Desks were next to the windows, and were ***perfect ***for a run-by “assassination”.
My purse was the go-to OTC pharmacy for not only myself, but my friends who needed things. Advil, Tylenol, Midol, Tums, Benadryl, cough drops…that sort of stuff.
We re-created the Reagan shooting at recess one day.
Sixth grade, I won a school pumpkin carving contest with a pumpkin that had a cowboy hat, a pistol (cap gun) and a note saying “I shot JR.”
In the early 70’s (in the South), I mentioned to my science teacher that I was going frog-gigging after school. I also told him I occasionally would shoot at the frogs too, and I had my .22 rifle in the car. His reaction was to ask the class whether I should aim above or below the frog as I saw it in the water. No reaction to the gun in the car, or touchy-feely bullshit about feelings and animals, just a science lesson on light and refraction. I had to give a report the next day on the results of shooting above or below the image.
I am on the list of pocket knife carriers. (high school 1967 - 1971)
Mine was an Italian switch-blade which I still have. It is right here on my desk and is currenty being used as a letter opener.
SWIM used to buy and deal drugs in school. You could buy speed, pot, ecstasy and LSD in your lunchtime. We thought we weren’t that bad, especially as our teachers were the ones getting in trouble with the police (drunk and fighting), and our headmaster was murdered in a male prostitute’s apartment.
ummm------yeah, okay.
So… nowadays, this would get you suspended? 
No one would know what it was so they’d call the bomb squad.
When I was 13 my school issued me with a Lea Enfield 303 rifle, complete with bayonet. This was part of the Cadet Corp we had at school. We had to store it in the armory, they kept the machine gun we used there too.
ThIs was in the UK, late 60’s. They don’t do that now.
That’s a cool story. Quick thinking by the teacher to bring up the relevant science concepts.
I was a terminal goody-goody, but we did have a song that probably wouldn’t go over well today:
Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay
We’re off from school today
Our teacher passed away
We threw her in the bay
She scared the fish away
They found her yesterday
Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay
Ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay
Yeah, real gangsta stuff! 
Oh, I almost forgot. Ninth grade science fair - on student made a still and distilled… something… into pretty much pure alcohol. The teacher went around the classroom with an eyedropper and anyone who wanted to try it got a tiny squirt on the tongue. It was potent stuff - I remember taking my glasses off to let the steam escape my eyes! I’m pretty sure he’d not get away with that today.
From the age of 6 I walked to school by myself.
Admittedly, in elementary school, it was about 3 blocks and everyone knew my name along the way, but jr high was a mile and a half.
Today the cops would put me in the police car and arrest my mother.
My elementary school was 1.2 miles.
Oh, wow, didn’t even think of that. But yes, walked without an adult beginning the second week of kindergarten. There were usually three of us kids on my block walking together about 1/2 mile to school, but if they were running late or going to be absent, I’d walk by myself.
In 8th grade my hamster went to school with me every day. He rode around on my shoulder, and sat on my desk in class. His name was Tarzan, and we were inseparable.
We used to sing “Joy to the World, the school burned down” and “Deck the Halls with Gasoline…burn the school down to ashes”. No way that’d fly now.
I dressed up like a cowgirl for Halloween in first grade, complete with toy pistol. That probably wouldn’t be allowed either.
Here’s another:
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Teacher hit me with a ruler.
Hid behind the door with a loaded forty-four,
And the teacher hit me no more.
In high school, my buddy’s gym bag generally contained a full bar. He could add some rum to your Coke from McDonald’s; or if you’d finished that and had ice left, he could add some Scotch to your cup for Scotch on the Rocks. He usually had a can or two of club soda or tonic water for those who preferred those mixers with, say, gin or vodka. I should add that his “full bar gym bag” was not an everyday occurrence; it typically only happened during football games, and only among his friends in the stands.
And that’s how, long before the Toronto Blue Jays could legally serve their fans beer at Exhibition Stadium, I sat in the stands at a Toronto high school football field, enjoying a gin-and-tonic over ice out of a McDonald’s cup, while I watched our team play.
Today? No way.