I remember Wardell Finney from elementary school. He was the only other kid who shared my birthday. He constantly had snot running down his nose and was generally a weirdo. He seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth after elementary school, with no social media presence whatsoever.
I also remember the librarian from elementary school, Ms. Haney. She had enormous boobs and painted herself with makeup to the point it looked almost like a costume. She also had giant, poof-ball hair.
I just Googled Wardell Finney and found two of them; one is 74 years old and lives in Florida, and the other is a college student in Michigan. Was that his real name?
We had a teacher in junior high named Mrs. Gay, and her husband’s name was Benjamin. True story. There was a persistent rumor that her water glass contained vodka, although junior high kids really should not know what vodka smells or tastes like, if you think about it.
ETA: I had two male classmates who also seemed to disappear off the face of the earth, with seemingly no social media presence, and then I found out that they had married young (i.e. in the early to mid 1980s, when they were in their late teens or early 20s) and took their wives’ surnames, for whatever reason.
Nm
There’s one girl in my daughter’s playgroup who has her index fingers in her ears all day long. Respect. She’s only two and she’s already tired of hearing everyone’s shit.
True story. The 2 math teachers in highschool were Mrs. Fry and Coach Bacon. Their rooms were next-door to each other. It was funny to us kids.
Who, upthread said 8th graders don’t know what vodka smells like? I was mixing Martinis for my Daddy by that age. I was advanced for my age, I guess;)
The Vodka I have drank had no smell or taste beyond… wouch!! .
This is a bummer of a thread.
I had a grade school friend who always had green boogers from his nose, grunge in his ears (visible due to late 70s haircuts) and was a bit overweight.
Our Freshmen year he died from huffing tv cleaner. I can’t point at the product but it was thing to clean the huge (yeah) tv screens in even bigger wooden (furniture) enclosures.
He was a friend who was trying to fit in at a party. 
I didn’t have many friends (nor do I now) but Craig should not have died so young. Peer Pressure sucks
I had to contact my high school and make them add my name as a graduate of Class of XXXX on the School Internet page for my Class. I graduated, I walked. But I didn’t have nor did my “parents” care to pay for Senior pictures. The school checked, sent me an apology 12 years later, and added my name (ok, 3 days after I complained and probably 2 years Internet time that the list was up and then I saw it) and I called it to myself “all good”.
So according to my Senior yearbook other than my name and 2 pictures in it, I did not exist. Why they didn’t use my school ID picture (which finally used a number other than my SS# after 6 years of them using the SS#) as my Senior picture (and was used 9-11 years)… it was a $$$ community. Was. Both the changing from using an SS# as a Student ID # and… it’s not as an Elite bedroom city anymore. (Bettendorf, Iowa)
There was a kid in our class whom I will call Vic. He was pretty normal in every way. Until we got into the gym locker room. Then, he wanted to play a game he called “Long Ranger.”
It was pretty simple. You start by peeing into the urinal, and walk backwards until you no longer have the strength to put your stream into the urinal, or you run out of urine. Vic was a champion at the game–I believe his record was about eight feet, if I recall correctly. Nobody could win against him, so it wasn’t long before nobody played against him. He didn’t care; he played (and peed) anyway, trying to better his record.
Like I said, he was pretty normal outside of the locker room. But in the locker room? “Hey, guys, who wants to play Long Ranger?” Yeah, no.
Yeah, count me in the group who hears that story and backs away slowly.
More sadness:
My middle school had a very weird kid, who undoubtedly suffered from serious mental or emotional illness. Maybe some form of autism or something? No idea. But he never spoke and never smiled. Most notably, though, every single day during the lunch period, when everyone went outside, he stood rooted to the exact same spot on the edge of the playground pavement. He’d have his arms clasped in front of him with his hands pulled up his sleeves and would just swivel his head back and forth, continuously and without interruption, until it was time to go in. Left to right and back again. Back and forth, ceaselessly, just scanning the scene in his view. No smiling, no words, no apparent purpose. Back and forth. Back and forth. Every single day.
I had no idea what happened to him, but about 10 years ago I learned. Apparently as an adult he lived a reclusive life in his mother’s home. Not quite reclusive enough, though, because somewhere along the line the house got a reputation as the place where the freaky crazy guy lived, and it became common for teenagers to drive to, and trespass around on, the property. He and his mother felt harassed (understandably, in my view). At some point, a group of girls was sneaking around on the property at night, he went for a gun for what was, to him, self-defense…
The end results were that a teenage girl was paralyzed for life, a mentally ill guy who just wanted to be left alone- and probably should never have been allowed to own a gun- was sent away to prison for many years, and an elderly mother lost her son and housemate to prison.
My little story is so mild compared to these. But I thought it was funny.
In 7th grade, our science teacher (a rather terrifying nun) had us all make name cards for our desks to help her learn our names. Michael K (name withheld to protect the guilty) wrote “Johnny Cool” on his card, and Sister A called him that for about a week till she figured it out. Michael sat behind me, so I never saw his card, and I couldn’t figure out who she kept calling “Cool.”
Anyway, I don’t know how she punished him for that little stunt, but one of her favorites was to give you a number, make you square it, than subtract it all the way down to zero. (She gave me 57 once for not getting a test paper signed by my parents.)
My 8th grade social studies teacher (Ms. Cornes) quit halfway through the year. We had a string of substitutes for a while until they hired a new permanent teacher. This new lady was an extremely frumpy red-head with a giant backside. She was just strange looking and awkward. The class never took to her. She tried to act tough with the black kids in my class by touting her so-called “experience in the inner city schools in New York”, but nobody took her seriously as it was pretty obvious that she was afraid of black kids. One day, me and my friend Grant (he was white) were chatting in class, and Grant said something like “why you did that”? The teacher reprimanded him in front of the whole class for speaking that way (like a black kid). The black kids saw the hypocrisy immediately. One of the black girls yelled across the room to another girl saying “Yo Crystal, why you did that?” Saying it over and over again, really loud so the teacher obviously heard. The teacher never said a word to her.
One day the class got so frustrated with her that everyone started chanting in unison “We want Cornes! We want Cornes!”.
Fun times.
+1
Not only is it disturbing and gleefully malicious, it’s damn cowardly.
Mmm - there is rather a lot of dark in this thread. I’ll try to lighten the mood.
I went to a comprehensive school (your regular local authority run school) for a couple of years, where pupils were allocated to houses (think Gryffindor, Hufflepuff…) - it’s basically an airs and graces sort of thing, trying to dress yourself up like a private school (Public School in the UK). Ideas way above its station.
The houses were named for Great British Figures. (Frank) Whittle, (Henry) Moore, (Cecil) Rhodes, (Benjamin) Britten. Patriotic or what?
So that’s the inventor of the jet engine, busily destroying an ozone layer near you; a sculptor who ripped off the entire oeuvre of Barbara Hepworth*; the poster boy for British Colonialism; and a paedophile.
How’d I do? Mood lighter? 
j
Sounds like a real-life version of Boo Radley. The link you posted locked up my computer, but I did get enough information to do a Google search, and here’s another link that didn’t:
This is her website. She’s 29 years old now. Warning for people who don’t like Bible verses: This website has lots of them. As of the latest update, she has taken a few college classes and works as a clerk in a dentist’s office.
I think I get it. You were Mike, and you still feel guilty about beating up someone who didn’t deserve it. So you tell the story in a way that makes it more someone else’s fault than your own. Either that, or you had some problem with Mark, and set this up to get back at him with Mike as your proxy.
Or if it really did happen this way, how the flip is it funny?!
Nope, not funny. At. All.
My favorite of this otherwise depressing thread. Just keep us up to date as she gets older.
When my youngest was in kindergarten, his teacher said they’d be talking about bushes. His reply? “George Bush is the worst President ever.”. There was a kid in my elementary school who claimed that his younger brother didn’t have any blood when he was born. A friend who now teaches at a medical school figured later that his brother’s Rh factor was different from their mother’s.
The younger brother later announced he was going to use the county for the right to practice Satanism in jail. He withdrew the case because it upset his parents.
Maybe you had to be there? Dunno.
One morning in junior high, we had a substitute teacher for boy’s physical education class. The sub must have been nearly illiterate, because he had a hard time with every kid’s name on the roster. Most of the names, he got close enough that the correct kid would say ‘here’, but he really mangled some of the names, which would make us howl. He really mangled mine: he called out, “Charley Hole?”, which is sorta kinda like my real name, but waaay funnier, especially to 13-year old boys. Heck, I still think it’s funny. Well, that became my nickname for a couple of years.
The weird thing is, being Charley Hole changed how I was treated. Despite being short, skinny, and nerdy, I attained some kind of mascot status from that day on. I became protected.