# Were there any weird or stupid things that were fads specific to your school/area growing up? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 8, 2021, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330 "2021-09-08T20:22:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/41 "2021-09-10T01:17:16Z")
My son "smoked’ those when he was around 8 years old in 2010. Ice cream trucks sold them in our midwestern suburb. I didn’t really want to encourage it, but when I found him spending $1.50 a pop at the ice cream truck I ordered in bulk off Amazon and rationed his smokes. ---
**Author:** ![actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e79b87/32.png) [@actualliberalnotoneofthose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/actualliberalnotoneofthose)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/42 "2021-09-10T01:32:02Z")
We had a pencil machine that was stocked with sports team pencils. Of course everybody had teams they wanted, teams they didn’t, and some were different textures. This was during the Starter jacket era, too. So what would happen with the pencils is you would try to win the other guy’s good teams. They were a quarter each in the machine and part of the thrill was trying to get a good one. Of course no one wanted an ugly losing team like the New England Patriots. If you wanted to trade or sell those, I don’t think you could get a quarter for 5 or 6. of course I discovered you could buy an entire NFL set at some stores. ---
**Author:** ![Hampshire](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hampshire/32/4887_2.png) [@Hampshire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hampshire)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/43 "2021-09-10T01:36:00Z")
We did the pencil thing in grade school also but some other kids preferred to be more creative and took up the fad of taking large wads of toilet paper, wetting them into mushy blobs in the sink, and throwing them up to stick on the bathroom ceilings. Our bathrooms had the 14 foot ceilings also the janitors had a lot of fun getting those scraped off. ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/44 "2021-09-10T02:16:15Z")
> [@erysichthon](#): > > I had a couple of sets of “clackers,” and one of them did shatter as I was clacking them. Fortunately, none of the fragments ended up in my eyes. Did you acquire any perfectly round bruises on your forearm? My sister got several. > [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > Does anyone know what that dance was actually called? Looks like it’s called, “Tinikling.” No charge. ---
**Author:** ![TheGunIsMightierThanThePen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thegunismightierthanthepen/32/2981_2.png) [@TheGunIsMightierThanThePen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheGunIsMightierThanThePen)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/45 "2021-09-10T03:09:38Z")
I got a good LOL out of this. Thanks for sharing. Back on topic of the OP, when I was in junior high, the boys had a unhealthy obsession with the game Bloody Knuckles - this particular version involving trying to keep a coin spinning by flicking it with your fingers, and the poor schmuck who makes the coin fall over having to endure the other participants shooting coins at their knuckles. Me, being the hungry-for-peer-acceptance dumbshit I was back then, partook in one too many of these games and had quite the set of bloodied knuckles to show for it. Fortunately, when you’re young, wounds heal fast. Curiously, the game seemed to have died out after I entered high school. ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/46 "2021-09-10T03:57:17Z")
Ah, the milk cartons. Don’t open them from the wrong side! Anyway, for a while in elementary school we would read the numbers on the bottom to see who won. I don’t remember the rules, and nothing was really won except to say your carton was the winner. Also, there was a thing about how one folded in the top before taking the empty carton to the trash. You could make either two triangles or an X depending on how you did it- I guess we were easily entertained. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/47 "2021-09-10T04:24:44Z")
I remember pencil fighting being a thing in grades 2-4 in two different schools I went to. In 5th grade I remember a short lived fad of hot cinnamon toothpicks. I remember some enterprising kids bringing these to school and selling them to their classmates which I think they just made at home by soaking the toothpicks in cinnamon oil or something. ---
**Author:** ![Didi44](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47c2d/32.png) [@Didi44](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Didi44)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/48 "2021-09-10T04:32:48Z")
The Filipino stick dance is called tinikling (tee nick ling) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinikling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinikling) In grade school, we’d put wax on the bottom of our shoes and slide around the classroom. One teacher put a stop to when she slipped and fell because of the all wax on the floor. The wax came from wax candy, the wax tubes and soda bottle shaped candy with a few dips of syrup inside. Rubbing the adhesive off the back of bumper stickers, STP and Wynns were were the most common at the time. Completely pointless as we’d see who could make the biggest ball. For a short time, a small group of use would have marker wars. Seeing who could mark the other guy’s arms the most. This stopped because my friend and were doing this during class and the teacher made us hold up our arms to show what we here doing. We had pencil fights too. There was a particular Chinese pencil, Moonlight, that was extra tough and costs 5 cents, which was a lot of money in the 60’s. The Moonlight pencils were crappy for writing, but unbeatable against the regular Mirado brand. ---
**Author:** ![erysichthon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/d07c76/32.png) [@erysichthon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erysichthon)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/49 "2021-09-10T08:50:23Z")
> [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](#): > > Did you acquire any perfectly round bruises on your forearm? My sister got several. Oh, sure. Those things hurt like hell when (not if) they hit your arm, and they were LOUD. I remember getting off the school bus and hearing the clacking (before the school banned them); it sounded like a war zone. Yo-yos and squirt guns at least had the virtue of being silent. ---
**Author:** ![hogarth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hogarth/32/1773_2.png) [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/50 "2021-09-10T12:24:48Z")
> [@Hampshire](#): > > We did the pencil thing in grade school also but some other kids preferred to be more creative and took up the fad of taking large wads of toilet paper, wetting them into mushy blobs in the sink, and throwing them up to stick on the bathroom ceilings. There was one kid at school who would get a Mini Babybel cheese for lunch each day. He’d peel off the red wax coating, mush it into a ball, and huck it at the ceiling of the gym. It was covered in little red dots after a while. > **[Babybel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babybel)** > > Mini Babybel is a brand of small snack cheese products that are individually packaged and available in various flavors. It is a product of Le Groupe Bel (French for 'The Bel Group'), a company with roots in the Jura region of France, started by Jules Bel in 1865. Half of the global production of Mini Babybel is made in Évron, a commune in the northwest of France. > In the United States, Le Groupe Bel produces the Mini Babybel cheeses in Kentucky. In March 2016, Bel Brands USA opened a new plant i... ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/51 "2021-09-10T12:40:33Z")
> [@naita](#): > > In elementary school we would get small 8 ounce cartons of milk delivered to our classroom. (All Norwegian kids brought sandwiches from home, and mostly still do.) For a while there was a fad for stabbing one of the bottom corners several times with the pointy end of a pair of compasses and drink the milk through those holes instead of opening the carton the regular way. > > Saved me a worse experience the time I stupidly decided to drink the carton I’d accidentally left in my desk over the weekend … Americans call that [shotgunning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgunning), though it’s usually done with a beer can. And the kids are usually older. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/52 "2021-09-10T13:16:55Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Americans call that [shotgunning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgunning), though it’s usually done with a beer can. And the kids are usually older. Nope. In shotgunning you make a substantial hole and then you open the regular hole to allow inflow of air. We made a half dozen holes with the sharp spike on the pair of compasses and had to suck the milk out. It was a lot slower than just opening the top. ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/53 "2021-09-10T14:13:20Z")
We had many of the same ones as the folks in this thread, including clackers and doing jacob’s ladder with string. As others have noted, always interesting how things jumped from school to school somehow. Nothing really idiosyncratic to our area, however. ---
**Author:** ![WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wookinpanubv.2/32/3260_2.png) [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WOOKINPANUBv.2)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/54 "2021-09-10T14:18:46Z")
I think unless you grew up in a smallish town, maybe it would be hard to come up with something that is specific only to one’s own area(?) In middle school, it was a given that only “sluts” wear black and red on Fridays. Does anyone else remember that one? What a horrible thing for young girls to carry around in their minds. In high school the big thing was to keep your ski lift ticket affixed to your zipper pull(on your puffy, down, ski jacket). ---
**Author:** ![burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/burpo_the_wonder_mutt/32/365_2.png) [@burpo\_the\_wonder\_mutt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/burpo_the_wonder_mutt)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/55 "2021-09-10T14:48:27Z")
> [@erysichthon](#): > > … and squirt guns at least had the virtue of being silent. … but deadly. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/56 "2021-09-10T14:55:43Z")
> [@erysichthon](#): > > I also recall yo-yo and water pistol fads, and playing “football” with a tightly-folded triangle of paper. One thing I’ve wondered is if these fads were happening at roughly the same time everywhere, or if they popped up in different areas at different times. I grew up in the pre-Internet era, and we had no idea what was popular in other schools, much less in other cities. One of the local sports talk stations here hosts an annual paper football tournament, so it must have been common in middle schools across the country. Penny basketball, I’ve never heard of anywhere else, though. The NFL pencils were a big fad, too - this was northern Ohio, where the NFL was king. Likewise, we could buy little plastic NFL helmets, too, out of gumball machines. This may have been peculiar to my high school, because none of my contemporaries remember it. But for a brief time, wearing surgical scrubs was _de rigeur_. Then it was khaki trenchcoats (this was pre-Columbine). ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/57 "2021-09-10T15:14:55Z")
> [@WOOKINPANUBv.2](#): > > In middle school, it was a given that only “sluts” wear black and red on Fridays. No, but you were gay if you wore green and yellow on Thursdays. They were the school colors, so if it was a secret code it must not have worked too well. ---
**Author:** ![Dark\_Sponge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dark_sponge/32/121_2.png) [@Dark\_Sponge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dark_Sponge)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/58 "2021-09-10T16:01:40Z")
In elementary school we’d play “Butt Ball” at recess every day. Like wall ball but you got to ‘bean’ other people in the butt after they messed up. I remember it being extremely fun but I always thought it was something one of the older kids at my school had invented. I just came across a wiki explaining it is widespread and has formalized rules. Slightly shocked. > **[Butts Up](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butts_Up)** > > Pages for logged out editors learn more > > Butts Up or Wall Ball is a North American elementary school children's playground game originating in the 1950s or earlier.\[citation needed\]. It is slightly similar to the game Screen Ball, and began in the 1940s or 1950s as a penalty phase of various city street games.\[citation needed\] Butts Up is played with a ball (such as a tennis ball, handball, or racquetball) on a paved surface against a wall, with a variable number of participants—usually ... ---
**Author:** ![mixdenny](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mixdenny/32/2962_2.png) [@mixdenny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mixdenny)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/59 "2021-09-10T17:22:46Z")
I think green on Wednesday was the cue to get teased about being gay in these parts. And the school colors were green and gold. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2021, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330/60 "2021-09-10T17:38:05Z")
First off, thanks everyone for their responses, I’ve enjoyed reading them. And don’t worry too much about it being unique to the area. I was just trying to get away from national phenomena like say the Rubics cube craze of early 80’s. Speaking of which it turns out that my class weren’t idiots they were trend setters decades ahead of their time. 🙄 > **[Educators worried by rise of students who snort crushed candy](https://www.al.com/spotnews/2011/12/educators_worried_by_students.html)** > > Sugar's no narcotic, but still its unsafe to inhale [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-weird-or-stupid-things-that-were-fads-specific-to-your-school-area-growing-up/950330.md?page=4)