Myself and a friend decided to share a cigarette in the toilets one day. This was fairly common practice way back then. You’d get someone to look out and they would cough if a teacher was coming. It wasn’t flawless but it has a high success rate.

So we’re utterly destroying one cigarette between the two of us as quickly as we can and there’s a cough followed by loud banging on the door. We’re rumbled.

“OPEN UP. I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE”

So we open the door, sheepishly.

“WHAT WERE YOU BOYS DOING IN THERE?”

Now we’re both confused and look at each other. I timidly reply:

“Smoking, sir”

“WELL I HOPE THAT’S ALL YOU WERE DOING”

and the man stormed off. We couldn’t believe our luck. Smoking apparently A-OK once you’re not being gay.

Barred from the school computers for Responsible disclosure of a security laps in the school computers.

Turned out of you open Encyclopaedia Britannica application and select the open document window it brings up the regular windows open file dialogue window. If you pressed the up folder enough times you went from your local profile to the folder on the server that contained every users files and you had full read right privileges in all student folders.

I reported it to the it desk and was barred from using the school computers for a month for hacking the school computers.

When the letter was sent home about it dad wanted to know what I had done so I told him and he thought, yea you did the right thing I’ll call the principal and get this sorted.

Dad use to be the treasurer of the parent teacher committee so he knew the school admin quite well. My teacher for computer studies got a note from the principal the next day that I was permitted to use the computers again.

This is probably stretching the definition of strange, but I got in school suspension in middle school for having 3 tardies (aka arriving late to school). I rode the school bus to school each day, I had no control over whether I was late or not, so I find it strange to be punished for something like that.

I got in trouble at multiple points for reading books during recess/bringing them to lunch. For some reason, it made some teachers really upset. It wasn’t even that they were school library books - just that I wasn’t supposed to have books at recess or something.

What was really ridiculous was the troubled teen facility/alternative “school” I went to (as a punishment for tattling on my mom for all of her drugs/attempting to kill myself because she was a psycho bitch I couldn’t escape from).

They would punish me for things that “happened” at home, so she would tell them that I cussed/fought my sister/did drugs.

The absolutely insane thing though: I wanted to watch Fight Club. My mom had friends over and was drinking, I asked her permission to watch the movie, she gave me permission, I watched the movie (I had read the book so many times, fell in love with it as a silly teenager.)

The next day, she was angry that I had taken advantage of her being drunk by tricking her into letting me watch the movie. (Big thing with her - getting punished retroactively because she didn’t mean to give me permission for something.)

So I was sent to school with my “stoplights” being all red.

We had to come up with “goals” that we would work on to improve ourselves at the school. I genuinely thought I had done something wrong, so I made my goal “not to ask my mother for permission to do things when she is drinking.”

This lead to consequences. We had a meeting, where I was told saying things like that was dangerous, implied my mom was an alcoholic (the bitch had DUIs!!! My siblings and I used to show off how good our lungs were by starting the car because it had a fucking breathalyzer), and that I could be taken away and put in foster care.

I lost my “progress” in my levels, and spent a week in the red with no privileges - because my mom was a fucking oxy popping lush.

This is the “funny” story there. What they did in retaliation to my allegations of sexual abuse was far worse.

I got thrown out of class for borrowing a pencil.

Didn’t understand then, don’t understand now.

Grade 5 or 6, teacher was introducing a project about the wisdom inherent in proverbs (not biblical, traditional sayings). In discussion I opined there was no wisdom in contradictions like “look before you leap” versus “he who hesitates is lost” and “many hands make light work” versus “too many cooks spoil the broth”, the wisdom was knowing which proverb applies to the situation at hand. Sent to the principal and received a beating with a paddle for being a disruptive smart aleck.

I wore a Blossom hat to school. I had just started junior high and it was like the third day of the school year. I had this brand new crushed velvet hat with little pink rosebuds and I was so excited to wear it. I paired it with a satin floral vest, a pink turtleneck, and a pair of stirrup pants, as was the style at the time, and strutted into school knowing I was stylin’.

I had no idea there was a rule against hats, and in homeroom, in front of everyone, my battleaxe of a homeroom teacher yelled at me: “Who told you you could wear a hat?!” To which little timid me said “… my mom?” And she yelled “You know you’re not allowed to wear hats in school, take that off right now! I don’t want to see it again!” And I almost fucking cried.

Thanks for embarrassing me in front of everyone, Mrs. DeFilippo.

I was a very well behaved kid, but somehow got punished multiple times for absolute bullshit reasons.

I think the most inexplicable was when I had changed schools. My old school was strict about sun safety. Hats were expected every time we were outside. The new school was the opposite, not allowing hats to be worn indoors at all, because they were only worn by rebellious kids or something.

I still wore one at lunch out of habit, and because I burn easily. One time I was going from one outdoor area to another, and had to pass through a covered walkway. It would have been 2 seconds under cover, but a teacher saw me. I got detention and my hat was confiscated.

Inadvertently walked in on two teachers discussing their affair in junior high school.

My choir teacher, at the time a young woman in her twenties, was fucking a history teacher in his 40’s who was married to another teacher at the same school. I walked into the room where all the sheet music was stored to get something and they were talking, at which point he immediately turned to me and snarled: “Do you mind?!” I didn’t even hear what they were saying, but in hindsight, the circumstances make it obvious.

I was just a teenager and not expecting this weird moment, was stunned and just backed out of the room. I didn’t put it all together until later because I couldn’t imagine a young woman screwing what I saw as an old man at the time.

I got called in to the office later that day and she’d made an allegation that I’d harassed her and I was going to be suspended, but really, she and history teacher concocted this to cover for themselves in case it got out.

It was an important early lesson in distrusting authority.

Didn’t get in trouble, but did get called after class and chastised for arguing with my science teacher that her description that current electricity was useful and static electricity was useless had an exception of dusters, aren’t those useful? She was furious that I questioned her lesson and told me to accept it or shut up next time. Pretty universally hated teacher.

I was in grade 2 in the 60’s, around 7yrs old I guess. I had a teacher who was named Miss Eaton. She was a very old mean spirited spinster.

We were learning how to write. I find that I am left handed. Old battle axe started smacking my left hand with a ruler saying I’ll get the devil out of you yet and kept forcing me to write with my right hand and smacking me when I didn’t. This went on for a while (ya I guess I was dumb) until my mom saw my red hand and asked. Well holy shit she grabbed her keys and me right then and there and drove at the speed of light to the school and barged into the office. Damage to this day was done. I have horrible hand writing.

Throwing ground pepper at the three bullies who tried to beat me up.

Got sent to the director, and told her I had to do something to protect me as she didn’t, and thank you that you finally cared about what was happening in school.

2nd grade, the meanest teacher I ever had got mad at me for using a colorful pen to write on my classwork. In front of the class, she told me to “never bring that pen back to school.” This was a new pen that I had just bought - the kind with multiple colors inside and I wanted it for my babysitter’s after school so I could use it on the Spirograph - so I said, “Can’t I just keep it in my backpack? I go to my babysitter’s…” and that’s where she cut me off and proceeded to yell at me in front of the whole class and made me sit out for recess for “talking back”. Since I had “lunch detention”, I had to eat last, but I had never been in big trouble before and I cried the whole recess and, by the time my lunch came I couldn’t eat from crying so they called my mom to talk me into eating.

Got accused of setting fire to the school. At the time of the fire, I was miles away, taking a music exam, after getting official permission, and being picked up and taken there by my mum. All very easily verifiable. Didn’t stop them from ‘interviewing’ me for 3 hours.

Went to a pretty strict school with uniform/dresscode in Asia. One of the rules is we’re not allowed to dye our hair. One of my high school teachers was convinced that all Asians have black hair, so my hair that’s very slightly brown under sunlight cannot be natural. It’s so subtly brown that most people would say I have black hair. It’s just that he saw me under the sun with my friends who had blacker hair than me that he assumed I died my hair.

At first he gave me a written warning. I thought it was stupid so I ignored it. The next time I had his class, he pulled me aside and told me he was gonna send me home cos I still hadn’t dyed my hair back to black. I’d never really been in trouble at school so I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do. Since he was teaching a class, he sent me to the teachers lounge and find someone there and tell them I’m supposed to be sent home. Luckily the teacher I found there was someone who liked me and when I told her about the issue she just laughed and said that’s stupid. She let me hang out with her until the end of the period so I didn’t have to deal with the other teacher until she got a chance to talk to him.