I'm elementary school, a teacher has the habit of punishing the entire class if something happened and he didn't know who did it. So I got into trouble not knowing why.
this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2025
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At age 7, I got in trouble for 'acting out' when they gave all the students a basic eye chart test. When it was my turn, they put me on the measured out line and asked me to read the chart.
I asked "What chart?" The teacher pointed at the door. Apparently the chart was on the door, but all I could see was a large white/greyish rectangle from that distance.
Yeah, my vision was that bad. You know that big capital E on the top of the chart? Yep, nothing, I literally couldn't see the chart. So I didn't know what else to do but keep asking "What chart?"
They called my dad in and between him, the teacher, and the principal, I got scolded for 'acting out'.
The next year, age 8, they assigned seats in order based off the first letter of our last names, which happened to put me in the back of the class. I couldn't see a damn thing on the chalkboard...
So my parents finally had to take me to a proper eye doctor. They found out my vision was like -4.5, which is extremely nearsighted.
So I finally got glasses, and about 2 weeks of apologies from my mom. Every time she apologized, I reminded her that she had absolutely nothing to apologize for, I was just thankful I could finally see!
I never got an apology from my dad, the teacher or the principal though. It's a bit fucked up that they could have caught it earlier on when the whole reason they gave students the basic eye test was literally to catch obvious vision problems early on..
Ffs they didn't even have you try closer? That's like the first thing they are supposed to say if you can't see the chart.
Nope, they sure didn't.
I actually thought about that as I typed out my short Ted Talk, it's really a shame isn't it?
Thank you for understanding, things might have went differently if I wasn't afraid of the teacher authority at the time and just walked closer myself.
Please, if anyone happens to see children acting 'strange' or whatever, please do have them checked out for the bare basics of vision and hearing.
Some of us weren't trying to be weird kids, we just perceived the world differently.
To be fair, your dad was probably just as scared of your teacher. Same with the principal.
If I hadn't had a dad who was a school counselor in my district used for all the worst problem kids I think I would have had a different experience. I wasn't a bad kid, but I was a weird one. As a result I got to see behind the curtain a little and think office politics plays a bigger part of why kids get in trouble than anything else (well, except actual parent involvement and how you raise your kids). Now that you mention this I think I'll take my youngest to get her eyes examined just to be safe.
Nah, if you knew my dad at the time, he insisted there was nothing wrong with my vision. I actually was already a pretty intelligent kid, mostly from book learning at the time.
Book learning worked great for me, but only because the book was close to my face, which works fine for nearsighted people. So my dad was convinced, my vision was fine.
I was disappointed at my dad for quite a few years, but ultimately had to let my anger go.
A few years later, dad asked me why I didn't tell them I had bad vision. All I could tell him was "I didn't know, until I finally got to see good vision."
That's fair and only you know your situation. I'm just speaking from my experience as a dad, and what I have seen from other dads. You'd be surprised how often grown men and women get intimidated by elementary school teachers. Which is easier to avoid when you see them as a teammate with you instead of an authority figure. I frequently ask them how we can coordinate our efforts with my kids when they get it trouble. Not that that happens too often.
I have also noticed that my kids have more trouble certain years because of who the teacher is, and who they sit near. But my kids say that has nothing to do with anything and die on that hill. I'm not saying this in relation to what you said, again only you know. But it is always good to remember that our perspective of our childhood memories is developed by our childhood brains. It is impossible to know what we missed and how different our perspectives would be if we re-experienced them as adults.
But, sincerely, sorry your dad was a tool about your needs. That's sucks.
Yes, you only know what you've experienced. If everything's blurry, that's normal.
I know when I got my glasses, the optician said to look across the road with my glasses on. There was a brick wall the other side and I could see it clearly. I was amazed and said as much. I don't think my sight had always been bad but it must have been bad for long enough for that to be a revelation.
I was amazed that I could see the leaves on trees as we drove home. Apparently thatβs an extremely common experience among people who just got glasses.
I had the same experience. Starry nights were almost like stepping into a fantasy. I remember one friend came with me to get my glasses and he quoted his sister when she got first glasses and for some reason it stayed with me for the last thirty years.
I can actually see individual blades of grass.
Selling elevator keys.
The high school I went to was an old building that was built like a prison (seriously, look at that thing), it's 3 stories plus a basement (and the smoker's area - this was in the 80s - was out back from the basement), so I routinely had to go from basement to 3rd floor for classes. it sucked. The school had an elevator, but it was key-operated, and they only gave out keys to kids who actually needed it. I faked a knee injury to get a key and it was great not having to climb 4 flights of stairs. But after a couple days I noticed other kids were always waiting around for me so they could ride the elevator with me and such.
Thus, a brilliant idea was hatched: I went to a locksmith's shop and got 10 copies of the key made. Whenever anyone wanted to get on the elevator with me I would offer to sell them a key for $10. I sold out by the end of the 2nd day and word was beginning to spread. I went to a different locksmith and got another 10 keys made, but only sold 7 of them before somebody ratted me out. Still, $170 in my pocket less a couple bucks for the copies for 2 days of 'work' seemed like a pretty sweet deal to me, even if I did have to go back to climbing the stairs again.
The funniest part is through one of the classes I took I had been invited to join some kind of 'young entrepreneur's club' and they kicked me out when I got busted. Seems like I was doing things exactly right for that sort of crowd, I guess the lesson learned there is getting caught is the problem, not doing the thing that gets you caught. :P
For putting my signature under my drawing on the blackboard. I was six.
We were encouraged to go and draw on the board as a Friday afternoon end of day activity.
The teacher took it personally in the worst way possible. The fact that my mother was an artist may have contributed to the matter.
I said "jesus christ" to a teacher (3rd grade'ish), why I can't remember but probably because I was asked to do something I felt was silly. Turned out the teacher was very religious and accused me of blasphemy, and was really up in arms about it. He invited my mom to a meeting to discuss the issue but, according to my mom, quickly dropped the whole thing when my mom had said "jesus christ" 5 times in the same amount of minutes.
I guess I know who taught me to use that phrase.
Iβd be fuming if someone called me away from work for some bullshit reason like blasphemy.
I always was very rebellious as a teen, and liked to check what the limits were in every aspect of life.
I went to a catholic school in country, and if you ever been in this country, you KNOW that they were bad at english. So much so, that even professors speak with the thickest local accent. Now in this country the professors are actually super strict. They are always ready to beat you down morally if you fk up.
This is where I come in. I always was good at english, having mostly grown up on american tv and shows, interacting with english speaking ppl as friends offline or online, and even have a midwestern accent. No one really bothered me in this subject, so it usually goes like this: my friends (terrible at english) would come up to me for assignments+projects, and I carried them in exchange for some favors. Most of the load took like an half an hour tops, so it was a fair exchange, and I was getting Wow gold, food and homework for other lessons.
However they did not know how much of a terribly bad deal they got from me.
We had an assignment, and the assignment was "make a realistic journalistic cover". Thats it. Honestly, we were given too much time to do this assignment, and I was bored.
I decided, after explaining to the group what the british newspaper "the sun" does, to ask my professor if it was ok to make a tabloΓ―d.
She said yes.
So, we carefully crafted the worst possible photoshop montage mostly about famous ppl of our country, ridiculous rumors happening at the school, some bikini pics etc... The professor even checked our cover despite being an insta suable piece of fiction, crude, and an absolute waste of academic time.
But somehow it was approved.
Then came the name. I already had it loaded. It was perfect, as it would be the true magnum opus to deride the english level of the whole faculty.
We called it Pen Island.
It passed the professor's check, and afterwards (we didnt know this at the time) was passed to the admins. The admins, being beings of true shining genius, decided to publish the goddamn whole collection of news covers of all the english classes together, and distributed it widely around to who knows how many ppl. (I guess they were proud?)
And there it was. Penis land was front and center, being the most enjoyed piece of fictional media in school, and literally everyone, completely oblivious to the name.
I actually got mad. No one got it. And then... a not so bright friend (but he had good grades in english) laughed a ton a few days in. He got it, I was so proud! So did the professors and the whole admin as well. Apparently that friend has the habit of explaining jokes way to loudly, and someone taddled.
We were all called to the big cheese's office. Pen Island apparently caused alot of trouble for the school. We all were suspended. I got 2 days. My white friend too. My arab friend a week. My black friend 2.
But fk it was so funny.
I asked my health teacher to describe an orgasm.
Did you only get in trouble with her? Surely a higher up would have been like "B1tch, that's your job"
It was a long history of me antagonizing her, because she was a religious prude and deeply unsuited for the role, and I was a little asshole. I sat in the hall more than at my desk.
Nice to see somebody practicing the ancient tradition.
I was maybe in grade 6 and it was after class with only myself and two other classmates. Guess these two had beef with each and started fighting. I wanted NO part in it and I was a scrawny shrimp so I walked away. After the teacher came in and broke it up we all got into trouble. The other two got into trouble for fighting and for me the teacher told me I should've done something to stop it.
In the first or second month of my eighth grade, I found an x-acto knife on the ground outside the school in the morning. It was normal for kids to arrive earlier than school hours began and hang out in front, usually forming friend groups. I just held it up my sleeve as I made my way to my friend group. I also wore long, baggy sleeves so this wasn't even really something I had to go out of my way to do.
When I got to my friends, being a dumb kid, I showed them all as a "hey look what I found" kind of deal. After they all saw it, I put it into my backpack. School was starting.
First period of school, an adult comes into the class and asks me to come with them. They take me to my locker where they open it and search it and find the x-acto knife. They asked me what I was doing with it, and I was honest, I said I found it that morning. They bring me to the office and bring my parents in, they had to leave work to do so.
They sit us all down and tell us that another student accused me of threatening them with the knife, as in, threatening to use it to do physical harm. I most certainly did not, but they weren't really interested in any excuses and said I have two options: join this boot-camp-esque disciplinary program which involved a ton of bullshit like forced attire, forced haircut, forced schedule, and more; or I could be expelled for the entire school year.
What happened after that?
I was expelled for a year.
Back when I was 16 my teacher held me after class and told me that me wearing yoga pants and skinny jeans was a "distraction" his words not mine. To this day this story is an odd source of pride for me. To be fair I couldn't blame him.
I have the unpopular opinion that dress codes are a good thing for a good reason. But the problem is that it gets enforced unfairly (like, by how sexually attracted or threatened adults get). Like your situation, the teacher basically said "Your ass is so 'distracting' in those tight pants I need you to stay right here alone with me after class for a while and keep on 'distracting' me."
But a clearly defined dress code meant to prepare youth for a future where they have to work on professional settings (notice that has nothing to do with "distractions") helps to keep the focus on becoming competent adults. Not on asses and boobs. Most people's future bosses don't give a crap about your self expression and just don't want to deal with complaints from coworkers or customers. I think I got this mindset when I was 14 and worked at a Dairy Queen with a seventy year old crack whore who often paraded around in yoga pants (before they were a thing) meant for 12 year olds and would say things like "I can't wait to go home and get naked." No one there wanted to think about her naked.
I started a charitable school club. Back in the day it was the hot thing to sell candy bars in school for fundraising, and there is a company that existed specifically for school organizations to join a program and do so. No staff wanted to be the faculty sponsor of my club, so we didn't have any space to call ours.... Well some fat asshat (hindsight is ...) who was the head of community education office where I helped out on lunch (a whole different story) said "hey! You can store your chocolate stock in our closet." Well, eventually, about $100 or more of chocolate bars went missing. He actually told me they "went bad" and threw them away. (He ate them.) When someone realized there was a problem with the books, they called my parents in, it was implied I either ate the candy or stole the money. I tried explaining what I thought happened, but nobody listened and my Dad didn't do much. My club was dissolved, and I was blocked from any extra curricular activities from then on, including trying to get into an advanced class that would have changed my life. Word spread amongst the faculty ( I'm pretty sure there was a meeting) and my favorite teachers forgot I existed.
And then... And I'm only just now realizing this fucked up detail.... One of those favorite teachers who turned her back on me, was my theater teacher.... because it was an actual class I was able to continue theater class but I was cast as Agustas Gloop in theater class play of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.....
I was 5 and had a butter knife on the bus. I was kicked off for a week. This is back in the early 90s so school violence was much less common.
R u British by any chance?
Shooting staples around the room with my teeth
Do you still possess this talent?
I hope so. It was super easy. You just put it between your front teeth and bite down. Fwiiiing!!! Make sure itβs bending out, not in haha
I was in middle school during 9-11-2001, and around that time there was an anthrax mailing attack too.
I was late to class one time and my late pass had a bunch of chalk dust on it, the teacher i handed it to asked what the powder was on it... Being a smart ass i said something along the lines of "it might be anthrax, better be careful"...they took it as a threat i guess because the next day i was suspended.
We moved and i was in a new city and state the next year. One day at my new school i made pretty much the same exact "joke" and it resulted in another suspension.