There was this big blond kid in my high school science class who frequently caused
trouble. I can’t remember his name so for this story let’s just call him Bill. Bill
thought it was fun to punch other kids in the arm or push them. Our teacher, Mr. G,
moved him to different seats in the class but Bill just continued his antics. Mr. G finally
suspended Bill for a few days and when Bill came back he behaved himself for about a
week before returning to his usual behavior.
As science teacher, Mr. G had to spend a few days going over some sex education materials
with us (over 40 years later I can’t remember what this covered). Now Mr. G. was
a short, nerdy looking middle aged guy with thick glasses who seemed very uncomfortable
covering this subject. In the middle of the lecture Bill said in a whisper loud enough
to be heard by the entire class “Hey, did you know that Mr. G has* nine *kids?!” (implying
that Mr. G actually knew quite a lot about sex). There was a moment of silence followed
by Mr. G exploding like Krakatau: “I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU!!! YOU’RE GETTING
OUT OF HERE!!!” Mr. G continued to yell and rant, his face turning beet red and then
purple as he pulled out a form from his desk and filled it out. In the meantime, Bill
was grinning from ear to ear like a kid that got to light off the biggest Fourth
of July firework ever.
After Bill was escorted out of the classroom by Mr. G we just sat at our desks looking
at each other, almost not believing what had just occurred. We never saw Bill again.
I felt sorry for Mr. G, but years later I wish I had a photo of that incident. I had
never before - or since then - seen someone get so angry that they turned purple.
I still remember ROBERTO being a complete asshole to me at all times. One day he poked the bear one too many times, and I pulled the chair from beneath him, causing him to hit his head against the leg of the table and cry a whole damn lot. When I explained this to my family, my older siblings (10 and 14 years older than I) remarked something like, “Aw, he has a crush on you,” and that was when I learned I was supposed to accept abusive behavior from boys who claimed to like me.
One memory that always make me chuckle is the time that some kids were being really noisy outside a second floor window while we were in the middle of a class. The teacher calls out the window repeatedly to ask them to keep it down but they just ignore her. Finally, she gets fed up and dumps the contents of her coffee cup out the window. The next sound we hear is some kid outside going, “Heeeey!”
Another time was in Film class when our individual film projects were being shown in class. Being sixteen years old, virtually all of the films we made featured themes such as depression and suicide, slasher flicks about serial killers roaming the school, etc. The teacher is just picking kids at random without knowing what their film is about beforehand. After we’d just seen what was probably the fifth bad slasher flick in a row, as the teacher selects the next kid’s tape and pops it into the VCR, she comments, “Well, I’m sure the next film we see will be a shining example of outstanding and thoughtful film-making.”
In high school bout a half-dozen of us were working on a project and were sitting in a circle, brainstorming. One person came up with a really hilarious quip (lost in the mists of time) and everybody was guffawing. Suddenly, one guy jumped out of his seat with the a shocked expression on his face, stood stock still a few moments, then began running in tight little circles going, “Aaaah! Aaaah!” After about two circles he broke for the door and tore out of the room, leaving us all literally gobsmacked. Several minutes later he was back with the explanation.
He had run out of air laughing and just as he was doing a huge inhalation, a fly came by and got snorked up his nose. Defying all odds, it got past all of the guard hairs and into his sinuses. “You have no idea what it feels like to have a fly buzzing in your sinuses,” he told us. He’d gone to the bathroom and inhaled splashes of water up his nose to wash the critter to the back of his throat. Unable to cough it up he had to swallow it, then spent some time fighting to keep his lunch down.
It was the last day of eighth grade and in one particular class, we just sat around shooting the breeze with the teacher. One of the kids mentioned that Mr. X kept a paddle in his desk to spank misbehaving students with and that it had holes drilled in it to make it hurt more. Mr. X got it out and showed us. And then it was somehow decided that we all should receive a whack from Mr. X. He was game so we all lined up and took turns presenting our posteriors to his paddle, boys and girls alike. We all had a good laugh and went on to other things.
This was in the mid-seventies. Nowadays, I’m sure Mr. X would have received all sorts of heck for this, even though it was done in jest. Especially, from parents of the girls. Back then, I don’t recall hearing anything about him getting into any kind of trouble at all.
We had a student teacher for jazz band. He was using cocaine as a way to lose weight. Comes out of the office in a panic, rubbing his nose. ‘Oh my God, it’s already Friday and we haven’t practiced this piece yet!’ It was Tuesday.
We had a kid who brought a WWII bomb to school. It was an inert, practice bomb (even marked “inert”), and had been part of his grandfather’s Air Force training in WWII. It was a war souvenir, but I don’t think taking it to school would go over well nowadays.
I was living out in the country in Salinas, CA. My neighbor had been wounded in Vietnam. He apparently had prepared the land around his house in case of attacks. In the creek near his house and mine, the bomb squad found more grenades, land mines, and ammunition randomly buried.
In 4th grade, right after lunch, a kid went up to the teacher who was sitting at his desk, and said, “Mr. Thomas, I don’t feel very blarrrgh”
Remember Animal House?
“I can’t believe I threw up in front of Dean Wormer.”
“Now Flounder, you didn’t throw up in front of Dean Wormer, you threw up on dean Wormer.”
Yeah, that. All over Mr. Thomas, who just sat there, looking stunned. I remember seeing chunks of sandwich among the mess.
On another tale, I got excused to go to the nurse’s office because I was feeling ill. n the way there I had the overwhelming urge to barf, so I sprinted to the bathroom to throw up in a toilet. Didn’t make it. It was a fair feat of acrobatics to avoid being covered in puke while running full tilt down the hallway. Also, makes for a heck of a mess.
Mainly a “you had to be there” story, but I’ll tell it anyway.
In middle school, a jock named Steve had his own style of talking. If your name was John, he’d address you by calling you"The BAIG John!" If you were Mary, he’d call you “The BAIG Mary!” (BAIG = big. That’s the way he pronounced it.) Of course, if somebody’s name was Dick, Steve would call him “The BAIG Richard!” He loved false alarms.
He was really clever about not saying anything naughty but making it sound naughty. He’d ask teachers perfectly innocent questions in a way that sounded like he was saying something dirty. One history teacher made some remark about so-and-so having hair under their arms. Steve grabbed that anchor and held on to it for good. Whenever the teacher referred to a historical figure, Steve would innocently ask “Did he have hair under his arms too?” His way of talking was infectious, and all the jocks eventually talked like him.
One time in English class, he kept calling Herbie “The BAIG Hub Tub Tub!” The English teacher, a very proper lady, raised her voice for the first time I can remember. “Steve, if you say Herbie’s name in that tone of voice again, I’m going to scream!”
I moved after my first year of high school and found out later he became the class valedictorian.
Small town school, evening performance of a drama club revue in the gym. The stands are full of parents and kids and fellow students. The act is a mime act with two girls, both dressed in all black. One of them, a very attractive young lady in that small town curvy with fair skin and blond hair way. The act involved broad stepping and squatting down movements. Somewhere early in the routine the seam on her trousers, right in the crotch area, gave way. Of course, that day she had chosen to wear bright red underwear. So, we were all treated to this bright red against a black background. The eye was naturally drawn to it.
I didn’t know her personally, so I really have nothing to base this on, other than the prejudice at the time that she was from one of those families with too many kids that lived way out of town, and we always thought of them as a bit more “earthy” types. But, I could never convince myself that she didn’t plan this on purpose.
Second grade, saw a girl get dared to lick a metal pipe running up the building on a bone chilling day on the playground. We were treated to the sight of her having a full on freak out with her tongue frozen to the pipe. It was so upsetting that many of the other girls were crying just from watching.
We had a teacher who really did not like kids leaning back in their chairs, since it bent the legs and they would be irreparably wobbly. He would loudly shout out an offending kids name “Larry! How many points in a plane?”. The stunned kid, in the dead silence of the room with everyone looking, would then usually stammer…“Ummm…three?” and then come to rest with all legs on the floor before the teacher would let the class proceed.
It got to be a regular ritual, and kids would earn their counting-coup honor with the class by trying to lure the teacher into a loud points-in-a-plane shout. The teacher was wily and wise, however, and it was difficult to truly pull a genuine correction, since if the teacher noticed he was being deliberately trolled it was an instant walk to the principal’s office and detention. I personally secured three wins before getting a detention.
I went to an elementary school and we were told by principal that there would be no Halloween or Christmas parties. To this day I had no idea why, it was your basic public school. My teacher went against the grain and we’d celebrate it as long as we didn’t say party nor celebration nor holiday. Even as a third grader I sensed great tension between her and the staff/principals. I remember with morning announcements they would always announce whenever a teacher had a baby. My teacher had hers and even brought her baby one day during her maternity leave; there was no morning announcement at all. When I went to fourth grade, she was no longer at the school.
