Just wondering what some of the things other dopers did in high school back in the day that most likely result in serious suspension/expulsion nowadays. I have a couple (and I only graduated in 2000 :eek:) :
1: I found some old Anbesol in my parents medicine cabinet that was about 5 years expired. I tried it on myself and thought, hmm… that’s a weird sensation. So I took the bottle to school the next day to share w/ friends. After my friends had all tried it and agreed it felt pretty weird, we started scheming up ways to use it to mess with other kids.
I had some friends in band, so I gave them the bottle and before band practice they put a bunch of Anbesol on a bunch of the mouth pieces of their fellow band-mates. This resulted in almost an entire brass section unable to play their instrument correctly that day and them drooling uncontrollably for the next 20-30 minutes.
2: There was one kid who kinda tug along with our group even though we didn’t like him. So again one of us raided our parents medicine cabinet for some laxatives. Mixed it into his OJ one day at lunch while he was away. He wound up shitting his pants while walking around the mall with his mom later that night.
Shot a fellow student in the eye with a rubber band from point blank range. Wasn’t aiming for the eye, but that’s where it wound up. Got a week’s detention, but nowadays I’d probably have broken some zero-tolerance violent weapons thing and gotten my ass sent to the school board.
Well, smoked pot pretty much every day before school. Never brought it on to the school grounds though. I parked off school property. But was definately still within the 1000-2000 ft. drug-free school zone.
Anyone else with interesting stories that you got away with?
Going around the campus with a friend and a camera, taking pictures of him planting ‘dynamite’ in various places (we were theatre students, and the 'bomb was a prop from a play we were doing).
Unfailingly carried a pocketknife. Teachers knew, and not only didn’t care, asked me for it a couple times throughout H.S. so they could cut something while in class.
Took a gun to school so i could make a stock for it in shop class. Admittedly i got the principals OK, and had to give him the bolt for safekeeping so long as it was inside the school.
Hmm… I did a bunch of other stuff, as stupid teens are wont to do, but i don’t think much of it would have got me any more punishment today. Unless you want to expand the discussion to things we didn’t get caught doing.
Being in a group of more than 5 people (my middle school instituted a rule at the tail of my 8th grade year that being in a group of 6 or more was “mobbing” and had very, and I mean disproportionate repercussions. Needless to say before they yelled at the monitors to crack down and enforce it the next year we all disregarded it and they didn’t care at the dawn of its adding to the rulebook).
Back in 1982 I was in the third form. Busted smoking pot at school. Got ‘six of the best’ from the headmaster’s cane. Probably an automatic expulsion or suspension now I would think
We used to belt each other with wet tennis balls. When the tennis balls got lost/were being used by other kids for “legitimate” games, we would wet our wide-brimmed hats so they were heavy and sodden and then belt each other with those.
My best friend Sarah had Paul’s blood on her white hat for over a semester…
Carrying knives, matches, lighters, fireworks; occasionally using them, too. No one ever used them for violent reasons, just typical boy stuff.
Bringing Alka-Seltzer tablets to school for lunch-break pranks. “Aaahh! My chicken soup is erupting!” Bringing medicines in general, carrying my own prescriptions rather than having them dealt by a school nurse or something.
Drawing pictures of destruction and violence at school. Did parents and school folks not know just how common that is among all students, at least pre-Columbine? I recall collaborating with nearly everyone in an elementary-school class on a comic book featuring an attack on the school, and then we gave it to a few teachers with military experience to see what they thought. They gave it back with suggestions on weapons to use in the story, corrected some spelling…
Then again, at this same school, being caught coming out of a movie theater, going to an all-ages concert or dance-hall, or listening to rock would cause suspension and/or expulsion. So…
Let’s see, there were the knives I would carry. I had a swiss army knife, a butterfly knife, a regular pocket knife, and one from the early 30’s that had a straight edge razor on it. Any of them would get someone arrested these days.
I used to carry matches and/or lighters every day. Used them on a couple of occasions too.
I kept Excedrin migraine tablets in my backpack, as I used to get migraines back then.
I sat off regular firecrackers on 2 different occasions, which resulted in me being suspended both times. These days I’d be arrested for trying to blow up the school.
I used to bring playboys to school, and give them away to friends. Back then it would’ve gotten me a couple of days in-school suspension. These days it’s a criminal offense.
There were the stories where fellow classmates and teachers met horrible, gruesome ends. I used to get teachers to proof read them and give me suggestions. Today it’d be seen as a threat and likely result in jail time. Same goes for the stories where the school would be destroyed.
In the later part of the school year, when it started getting warm weather again, we’d have water gun fights. If I remember right it was always the last week of April. We’d never get in trouble for it, as long as we did it outside. These days it’ll get you charged with possession of a weapon, and sexual assault if you were a guy targeting a girl.
We would play poker, or flip quarters, or bounce pennies off walls during our free time for cash. These days it’ll get you expelled.
We were doing all of this up to, and a little after, Columbine. It was the introduction of draconian measures as of a result of that incident that led to me quitting school, among other things. (If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t quit, but that’s another thread.)
Fighting. It appears to be a huge sin now, but when I was in school, it was common. Fights before school, fights during recess, fights after school, fights on the weekend. It was not unusual to get in a fight every day. Punching, strangling, the whole shebang. Black eyes, bloody noses…I’ve had my nose broken more than once. If the teachers couldn’t figure out ‘who started it!?’, you’d both sit in the corner for a while. Once in first grade, two guys who were supposed to be sitting in opposite corners in the back of the class got into it again during class. That was great!
Bombs, both smoke-generating ones and explosives ones. Twice, I was involved in the liberation and use of chemicals from the school’s storage to make bombs. (Unusual only in that we stole the school’s materials, made the bombs at school, and set them off at school.) We never even got caught for those episodes.
Taking knives to school was normal. The kid who always had incendiary materials on him; I swear, he never left the house without some magnesium strips in his pocket along with other interesting stuff. The kid with Greek ancestry brought a bottle of ouzo to show us all once. The stoner kids showing us what pot looked like. Ah, the good old days…
fighting, booze, pot, amphetamines, nunchucks, butterfly kives (carried a jack knife from 10 years old until getting tired of losing them to airport security, tossing a lit smoke bomb into a French class, making weapons in shop class, etc.
pretty middle of the road stuff in small town america in the 1970’s.
Depends depends. I had one teacher who loved my writing, and didn’t care (I write fantasy and at that age I also found a way to bring my classmates and myself from the real world to the fantasy world).
But once teacher read my intro (for nano wrimo of all things) that I plucked straight from The Big Book Of Completely Generic Hero Motivations (random unnamed school with no obvious parallel to my own of hero that wasn’t me because I moved past needing to be an attention whore got magic-blown out of existence by dark-lord, hey it was NANO dammit) got me in one short talk about how “dark” it was, and one quick trip to the counselor he signed me up for which went “I read part of your story, it’s great.” “Cool, I guess it’s okay for writing it in a month with little to no editing and generic plot devices, by the way, why am I here?” “Oh, something about it worrying him that a school got blown up, I see no problem, have a good day.” “Okay, bye!”
If you follow the stories on this stuff the school tends not to react too badly unless you already have a criminal record or are known as a troublemaker.
I know, I got in a fight with my friend once in first grade and I got… detention… for one lunch, they left us unattended at separate sides of the room and we played rock paper scissors the whole time (the fight was over something stupid enough to forget about after one day). Nowadays it’d be about four parent teacher conferences, a newspaper blip and a one week suspension minimum.
Ha! They LET us raid the chemistry closet at the end of the year, we even put on a beautiful show of What Thermite Can Do™, Results of Mixing Potassium and Water™, and What Happens When You Pour Water Into Boiling Candle Wax™ a few years ago, the (completely oblivious to what we were doing) chemistry teachers came out and were angry for a second and then asked what we learned, we didn’t get in trouble. This is remarkable for our otherwise terrible chem department (worst teachers in the school but I’ll be damned if they won’t let you do stupid stuff). To be fair we took safety precautions including making everyone stand back and the experiment doers putting on eye protection, otherwise we probably would’ve been killed. By them I mean.
Anyway, IME (and you have to remember, this is recent) a lot of the “nono” stuff now isn’t enforced a lot. My friend just last year (my Senior) carried around a butterfly knife and played with it in class, not once did he get in trouble. Maybe it was the advanced school thing so the teachers expected us not to be stupid enough to… well… do something stupid, but I somehow think that we have distorted perceptions because when it DOES get enforced the local news blows up.
Or am I threadshitting now? If so, sorry, didn’t mean to, I JUST realized my odd contrary experiences may be dragging this thread down.
Most of the things listed here would not get you expelled from the urban public school I teach at. Lots of kids have matches or lighters, setting off a stink bomb gets you suspended, lots of kids carry prescription drugs or asprin in their bag, boys still rough-house and when they push it too far, there is sometimes blood or a minor concussion.
The things we don’t play about are usually violence or drug related: A violent, dark story is probably going to get you talked to–but not expelled. The simple fact is that teen suicide, more than school shootings, is an ever-present possibility, and while it is unlikely, it’s horrible enough that everyone is on their guard. Weapons are still a big deal, but a pocket knife (under 4-inch blade) will get you 3 days in in-school suspension, not expelled. A longer knife, or a gun, will get you sent to alternative school for a 6 or 12 weeks. There is language about “terrorist threats”, and they can get you sent to alternative school for 12 weeks, but enforcement is pretty reasonable. Caught with drugs on campus will get you sent to alternative school for 6 weeks. Caught with cigarette will get you a $250 or $500 ticket (I don’t remember which). Minor fighting will get you suspended 3 days. If there is actual injury or it keeps happening, you will be sent to alternative school for 6-12 weeks.
The only draconian measure I disagree with is that any felony arrest on campus will get you sent to alternative school for 12 weeks, however bogus the charges: I had a student, who happened to be a nice kid, saluditorian, never a problem, credit to the school, arrested for painting a joke on the school. It was a stupid prank, but it was a prank, and he fully expected to have to clean it up. The grand-jury no-billed it, but he was still kicked out of school.
After Columbine schools did get a little crazy (clear backpacks?), but by and large they didn’t stay that way. At least not where I am. Suburbs may be different.
Not expelled, but I was just talking about this with my son when I asked about recess in his new school.
Kids in my school played a handball sort of game with a tennis ball called “Butts Up”. I don’t remember the rules because I was sitting on the wall with a book, and a lot of time has passed, and you can ask for cites all you want, there is no way I’m typing “butts up” in google…
In my vague recollection of the game if someone who was supposed to catch the ball didn’t catch it he (girls played too, I just mean “he” in a generic singular pronoun kind of way) had to run to the wall and stand there as if waiting to be frisked and the opponent would throw the tennis ball at him.
My son’s eyes were big as saucers as he asked “they let you play that??? In middle school???” As far as I remember kids played it in all 12 of my school years in NY. I don’t know if they’re still allowed to. Back then a particularly gnarly purple bruise was a sort of badge of honor, it seems like nowadays a kid lifting up a shirt to show off a battered rib cage would result in detention or some quality time with the school counselor.
In the mid 1950s in rural Ohio – routinely playing mumbly-peg on the junior high lawn; on the first day of pheasant season (started at noon on a Friday) bring your shotgun to school, stash it in the school office until noon when you retrieved it and went hunting; fist fight all the time, all over; dangerous chemicals-coating pennies with mercury; vicious snowball fights with ice balls, rocks in the snow ball; depantsings and physical bullying on the school grounds. Faculty and staff didn’t seem to care about any of this stuff as long as you didn’t actually splatter blood on the walls. Of course, smoking was regarded as little more than breaking training.
On the other hand, not wearing a belt, wearing shorts except in gym, wearing a hat in the building, not addressing a teacher as Mr or Mrs or Miss or sir or ma’am all got you in big trouble – maybe a beating at the hands of the principal.
I’m not sure that the old system was any better that what is going on now that the schools seem to be run by authoritarian jerks and concerned mothers
Senior class prank: Me and a few guys dressed up in ninja garb and ran down the hall shooting teachers with water pistols. Not those colored ones either, black plastic that looked like they might be real guns.
At the time all of the teachers who got “shot” took it in good spirits (except for that old fart Mr. Albert), and the students cheered us on as we went from room to room. Not much fallout afterwards except a scolding from the principal the next morning.
Today that would get us expelled, hunted down by the feds, probably shot at and headlined on Nancy Grace.
A song commonly sung when I was in elementary school went a little something like this:
Glory, glory hallelujah,
Teacher hit me with a ruler
Hid behind the door with a loaded .44
and there ain’t no teacher no more
This was not considered a credible threat. Today, that group of 8-year-olds would be hauled down to the principal’s office and the police would be called, and if we were eventually allowed back at that school we’d all have an eye kept on us till we graduated.
