What class doesn’t have an awkward kid? But we all know that student—the one who took “growing pains” to a whole other level. From bad classroom hygiene to outright lies, there are no limits on how to be a weirdo. Hold on to these wacky stories about the school “weird kid.”
1. Wise Words From a Strange Place
There was a girl in grade 5 who created her own language called Shmolbi, and she'd sit in the corner and whisper to herself in it. People also used to tell her there were spiders on her hair and she'd get mad at them and scratch their faces. She purposely grew out the nails on her index, middle, and ring fingers and filed them into sharp claws.
To be fair, telling someone who is clearly not completely all there that they've got spiders in their hair is probably not going to end well for you. She ended up leaving the school in grade 6. Aside from that, in grade 3 I microwaved a kid’s winter boots in our lunchroom because I thought they were the reason he ran faster than me. I was just fat. That was why he was faster. So, I was the weird kid too.
2. I’m With Him on the Last Part
The weird kid smelled like he bathed in cat pee every day, and hissed at anyone who ever came near him. He also used to run through the hallways from class to class incessantly—except that wasn't even the worst part. He then threatened to kill me in a computer lab because I used Internet Explorer instead of Firefox.
3. Remember to Spay and Neuter Your Pets
She was a furry who tried recruiting people into her newly founded “Furry Religion” where the type of furry you were spiritually was based on your birthday like some freaking astrology thing. She also had a boyfriend who was into the whole furry thing, but in a really weird intimate way. They’d make out on the floor or in the lounge areas and bark/growl at each other.
It just made everything incredibly uncomfortable for everyone around them. Oh, and this happened in my first year of college, which totally adds to the weirdness. Teachers had to make a public announcement banning people from making out and doing all that romantic stuff on campus because of how bad it got. It didn't make any difference to her.
4. A Sacred Bond Between Smash Brothers
There was a kid in my school who was obsessed with Mario. He had Mario sweatshirts and notebooks, and a Mario backpack. Well, someone figured out that if you told him, “Mario is dead,” he’d flip. Scream and cry “screw you, no he’s not” every single time. He got in trouble multiple times for attacking kids who said anything about Mario dying.
5. Fashion Is Filed Under “Z”
This kid ALWAYS wore a zoot suit. Every day. Not that weird, I guess. But back in high school, weird as heck. Some more details: These were not Salvation Army/hand-me-downs quality. This kid wore nothing but high-quality zoot suits, with a chain and nice shoes to match. Every once in a while, he had a chrome tipped, black cane.
His closet must have been full of these suits. He had bright-colored ones, pinstriped ones, dark blue ones, and pure black ones. Just every kind of zoot suit under the sun. I didn't see him with the hat very often, though. This was in 2005 or 2006, and I think he won "best dressed" in the yearbook. I don’t have one to confirm, though.
6. You Could Say He Was Yellow-Bellied
Mustard Boy. I’ll never forget him. He would cover his lunch tray in mustard. Chicken nuggets? Mustard. Mexican pizza? Mustard. Breakfast for lunch? Mustard. It didn’t matter what it was, he would drench it in sweet, yellow mustard. He wasn’t doing it to just to make a mess of his lunch tray, either: he always finished his mustard-food.
7. A Silence Says a Thousand Words
There was a kid at my high school who never talked. It wasn’t that he couldn't speak, or that he only spoke to his close friends; he just wouldn't speak to anyone. Teachers didn’t call on him because they knew he didn’t talk. When a substitute would come in and try to call on him, there was always some kid who would have to explain, "Ricky doesn't talk.”
If you asked him a question, he would just look at you. It was weird and some people would take offense to his silence. But eventually everyone realized that was just his thing and rolled with it. The only time he spoke was when we had to present individually in class. On those days, people would get really excited if they had a class with him, because hearing him talk was like seeing a unicorn.
A lot of people have mentioned this possibly being a case of Selective Mutism. I looked up the diagnosis and it seems like a good match. There were also rumors from kids who rode the bus with him who said that once he got off the bus, he would meet up with his neighborhood friends and (presumably) talk to them. When he did present in class, he didn't have a weird voice or any strange vocal qualities.
8. Playing by Himself
He would jack off in the middle of class. He didn’t actually pull it out, but he would aggressively “rub” the side of his pants and his face would get really red while staring at the girls in the class. Everybody noticed but a word was never spoken about it.
9. Can’t Say He Isn’t a Baller
We had this one kid who was a bit of an oddball, always said the most obscure things in the middle of class, and overall he kind of reminded me of Dwight from The Office. Anyways, we were in gym class playing kickball indoors because it was raining, and he was on me and my friend's team. Everything was going well so far.
His turn came up, bases loaded, with a pretty close game, and class was about to end. We were all just watching in anticipation as the pitch came. Mid-roll, he turns around and looks directly at us and gives us the most confident smirk I've ever seen. Then he turns back around, runs up, and kicks the ball high into the air.
Now, we had a pretty decent-sized gym area, and at the top were all these metal beams for support. A couple of them were giant i-beam type things. So anyways, he kicks the ball and it goes flying up 40 feet and hits all these beams and somehow lands perfectly on the edge of one of the i-beams that could only have been the length of the ball itself.
The guy ran the bases like it was business as usual, and me and my friends died laughing, convinced that he freaking knew that he would do that. The ball stayed up there the rest of the school year.
10. Whip It Real Good
He was on a hair trigger, and would easily snap and threaten people. Suspended multiple times. Two memorable incidents were when he freaked out at an art teacher. After he got mad, he went to his locker and came back with a bullwhip. He made that thing SNAP and sent everyone running, while the teacher barricaded herself in the supply room.
Another time someone made the mistake of teasing him about something and everyone laughed, and he pulled a knife and screamed "Who wants to be the first to die?!" He was expelled and I'm not sure what ever became of him. If I had to guess, though, I don't think his life turned out all that well once he became an adult...
11. Who Says the Classroom Isn’t the Place for Fantasy?
I had a few weird kids. One was OBSESSED with all Asian culture (kind of random since we lived in a very rural community in Canada with little connection to the outside world, let alone to Asia) and would lose her mind if anyone said anything remotely negative about it. It started out as mainly just a fixation on Pokémon, anime, and K-pop, but quickly branched out to all things Asian. She once hit me with a textbook because we were discussing M. Butterfly in class and I said that I didn't like it. This was at age 16.
Another kid used to pick his nose until it bled, and then he would just go home because he had a nosebleed. Guess what? He would also eat the boogers. We were all surprisingly chill about that part of his personality—the thing we all hated most about this kid is that he would lie about the most random stuff, in any situation.
For example, he would deny that he got hit when playing dodge ball or caught when playing tag on the playground. One time my neighbor made me a little inukshuk glued to a piece of driftwood, and I brought it to school to show the class. This kid picked it up in front of everyone, immediately dropped and broke it, and then denied that it was him who broke it, even though we had all literally watched him do it.
He cried when we continuously called him out on it. This was also at age 16.
12. Crime Runs in the Family
His dad started a house fire for an insurance scam and died in the fire. This was around sixth grade....I guess that messed him up a bit. The kid would tap his feet and hands uncontrollably, and he talked about shooting people.
13. You Never Know What’s Behind Closed Doors
Kid I went to school with was a nice kid, but weird. Definitely had some form of special needs, but I never knew what exactly. I'll never forget the day I watched him walking down the hall with a Twix wrapper across his eyes. Like he was wearing a Cyclops (X-men) visor. I asked him why he would do that. His response was: "Well I can see through it, so I wanted to see through it."
I felt so bad for this kid. He was bullied badly. The kids at school were awful to him. One day at lunch, I watched a giant jerk walk up to him after just sitting down with his lunch. Grabbed the kid's backpack and also his Gameboy from the table (which was like the only nice thing the kid owned), threw it straight in the trash, and then dumped the freshly bought lunch right on top of it.
God, that makes me mad just now thinking back on it. On top of the constant bullying he received from the kids, the teachers had a hard time dealing with him (they did try, but it was tough when the kid comes out of left field with things and had zero home support), and everyone knew his mom didn't give a darn about him.
Wouldn't take him to doctors' appointments, wouldn't get him his meds, wouldn't do laundry for him or help him with basic hygiene. She ran a salon and told him to sit in the corner and not bother her. He would ask for things like water or a snack, and she would just yell at him in front of clients (which is why everyone knew all this).
To be honest, I was seriously afraid of him getting a gun and shooting up the school. My city was a hair's width away from being in the woods (lots of camo and country music), so it would have been not too hard for him to get a gun somehow. I was actually planning (based on his schedule) escape plans, and what I would say if I encountered him on a rampage.
One day, he knocks on my door. Tells me he's moving down south to live with his dad, and he seems really excited. Thanks me for being his friend, and wished me well. Then, a couple years later, he was visiting the area again, knocks on my door, and says hi, asks how I'm doing, tells me he was thinking about me.
He tells me things were much better, that he was happy living with his dad. If I were a betting man, I'd bet that his dad actually got him proper meds and acted like a half-decent parent to the kid. I hope things are going well for you, Josh. I hope that you got it together, because you always deserved better than pretty much everyone in town gave you.
14. Tall Tales From the East
His go-to excuse for not having homework finished was that he was "traveling" (even though he was at every class), and he never payed attention to anything but his fidget spinner unless he was talking. The way he spoke, he knew everything there was about creative writing, yet his submissions consisted of plots ripped off directly from anime. This was in a college class.
15. Messed to Impress
This girl Maggie would find someone new to latch onto every month or so. When she found someone she wanted to befriend, she would do crazy, over-the-top stuff in an attempt to impress them. At one point, she was obsessed with a girl we'll call Kat. One day, Kat brought in a baggie of celery and was dipping it in a sauce cup of peanut butter.
Maggie WOULDN'T STOP staring and basically watched Kat consume every last piece of celery....Sure enough, the very next day, Maggie comes into class with, I kid you not, like 6 bunches of celery stalks, and a family-sized tub of peanut butter. She just eats it ALL day, with the biggest smile on her face, all while staring at Kat from across the room.
This is a lighter example of the many off-the-wall things Maggie has done for her transient idol of the month, but the endless bushels of celery is just something I'll never forget.
16. I Have the Power of Fame and Anime on My Side
The video where a kid goes “I have the power of god and anime on my side” and screams like a banshee? Well, that kid went to my middle school. He was maybe four grades underneath me, but his weirdness turned him into one of the most popular kids in his grade, and we definitely all knew about him by the time that video went viral.
17. The Tentacles Make the Man
He walked around the halls saying "penis penis penis" or alternatively something that rhymed with that, like "smoke mariweenus, smoke mariweenus." Ate chewed gum off the floor. Called everyone he didn't like "a squid." He never got picked on because if anybody pushed him or anything like that, he would scream at the top of his lungs.
18. All’s Well That Smells Bad
I knew this kid who smelled terrible. He'd walk in a room, and this disgusting stench would follow him, like some sort of cloud of garbage-scented air. If you were in class with him, it would permeate the entire room. Anyway, one time one of the teachers found a toenail in his locker. He had some sort of fungal infection on his feet and one of his nails fell off, which he then proceeded to take and save so he could send it to a family member.
Quite possibly the most disgusting and weird event I've ever witnessed.
19. A Most Delicious Misunderstanding
I wasn't there when it happened (I had changed schools), but I keep in touch with my old friends. The weird kid (also a friend of mine) had gone up to the "popular kids'" table and told them he had a surprise for them tomorrow. So, of course, they think he's going to shoot up the school, they have a lock down, evacuate his class, and an officer goes in to talk to him.
Turns out he bought some donuts for the "popular kids" to try and make friends with them.
20. Not a Laughing Matter
We called him the "ha-ha man." I can't even remember his real name anymore, but he used to follow my friends and I around the playground, and he was a year or two younger than I was. Once, he started to creep us out and we tried to ignore him, so he started yelling, "if you don't get back here, I’m going to grab your HA-ha." I'll never forget how he would say it, and this went on for over a year.
21. Don’t Play With Fire
Regularly put a lighter to his hair in the computer labs to make the teachers think a computer was on fire. I suspect they knew what was happening, but had to take the necessary precautions like call the fire brigade. When the same kid was about 13 or 14, he was bullying some girl. The girl’s older brother, about 18, confronted him about it, and the bully put the guy in the hospital.
22. Get a Kick out of This Story
We had a kid in 6th grade, let's call him Tim. Tim was constantly getting in trouble for not listening to the teacher. One day, Tim and the teacher got into an argument. The teacher told Tim to step out of the classroom and wait in the hall so they could talk. On his way out, Tim slammed the door extremely hard, with the echo bellowing throughout the entire school.
The teacher then told Tim to go to the office, and he closed the door, only for Tim to start running and kicking the door over and over again. The teacher walked up to the door and locked it for our safety, then grabbed his phone to call the office. We couldn't see anything Tim was doing in the hall because the door was one of those ones with only a tiny window to see through, so what the teacher said on the phone caught us all off guard.
"Hello, yeah, one of my students was misbehaving so I sent him to the office, and he began kicking door. Now he is currently pacing around in circles outside the door with his belt in one hand and...a boomerang in the other."
23. One Day You’ll See (or Not)
There was this guy everyone called Big Andy. He was kind of nuts. I mean like, the most caustic neckbeardy guy you've ever met in your life. I was kind of one of a few people who figured he was mostly harmless, but dude was that militant nerd variety that made it kind of hard to defend him. Threatened to bash people's faces in, blow stuff up...I mean he had some serious issues.
The reason people picked on him was that he was about 300+ lbs, in high school, constantly wore anime t-shirts that were about 2 sizes too small, jean shorts, and carried a box of doughnuts around. No seriously, a box. He also had a really high-pitched squeaky voice. I mean, all of that, and people are real jerks.
He had it in his head he'd go become a computer programmer, start a video game company, and land a helicopter on the roof of the school during our reunion (His words). I always wondered what happened to him. I don't know of him ever having any friends, and he dropped off the face of the planet after we graduated. Looked him up a few months ago on Facebook and just couldn't find him. So, no clue whatever happened to the guy.
24. One Banana Short of a Full Fruit Packet
One kid in my freshman speech class was extremely socially awkward, so this was already just a perfect setting for disaster. We had to give a one-minute speech the second day of class off the top of our head about some of the things we liked and present an item or two that symbolized your passions and interests.
He goes up there, pulls out a pack of juicy fruit and just holds it up, pauses for a second, then said, "This is Juicy Fruit, my favorite gum. If you don't like Juicy Fruit, then you can screw off." Then went back and sat down. Everyone paused for a second, looked around, and just burst out laughing. It wasn’t for a grade or anything, so I'm pretty sure the teacher just didn't care because it was so funny.
25. Should Have Got Him While He Was Cheap
He wouldn't stop asking us to join his "Investment Club" or become a writer for his Investment website. Well four years later, that website got bought out for 2 million. Fast forward to today, he's got his own firm and parties with models like every weekend.
26. It Didn’t Have His Back
There was this weird kid named Gavin who sat in the front row of my nutrition class. One day, he was not in class (he never missed class). So, as the teacher is doing attendance, she asks "Where's Gavin?" Just as she says this, everyone looks outside to see Gavin throw his backpack down a couple flights of stairs, jump down the stairs, and begin beating his backpack with a baseball bat.
The teacher silently walked over and closed the blinds as the entire class burst out in laughter. Had to be one of the most hilarious moments in my high school experience.
27. Not Every Move Can Be Magic
He was a wizard. One day after watching him for weeks, a couple of us just had to talk to him about it. So, we approached him and another young man who had what looked like a girlfriend there and started with "So um, heard that you were a wizard?" He nodded his head with a serious face. Of course, we asked how this happened, and he informed us that he was just born that way.
So, we asked if he could show us something, and he told us we weren't ready. One of us, being an anarchy-loving individual, told him that his friend standing over by the wall was talking smack about him, and had said his staff was better than his. He chuckled and said he didn't even have a staff. My friend followed with a, "Well, he said you were a wuss."
At that time, he looked over his shoulder, looked back at us, then walked over to the dude, put out his hands and looked like he was straining and started yelling. The dude standing at the wall collapsed, and we all kinda lost it. He came back over to us and smirked. This guy lay there for a good half hour or so until the girl convinced him to resurrect her boyfriend.
He went over to the dude laying in the grass and stood over him with his hands out, and the dude got back up. After that, one of our goofy friends begged him to teach him the ways and make him a wizard.
28. Can’t Gape at This Ape
This weird kid at my school (great guy, really good friend and fun to be around) rode a unicycle every day to school. For the "Talent Show" that the school hosted on the last day before winter break, he wore a body suit and a Gorilla mask and did this dance. The best part is he had really bad social anxiety and he was a mess the entire day leading up to that point.
29. King You Will Be…Eventually
Guy who claimed to be a genius in math and science said he would one day rule on a floating continent. He had pages worth of random equations and formulas that somehow gave him the answer to creating a floating continent. He would walk around school with a clipboard asking people if they wanted to participate in the gladiator tournament he would hold once he had his floating continent.
I signed up for this gladiator tournament. I'm still waiting for the phone call.
30. Save It for Your Diary
Not exactly the "weird" kid, but definitely the kid not many people wanted to interact with. He was very pushy, generally awkward. Also often tried being all cool by using big words but failing miserably. But the thing that took the cake was when some girl sent the entire grade something along the lines of "say your name X times, say your parents' names X times, and then say your crush name X and in a few days your crush will be with you!”
He actually responded to the email. It was an awkward year until his crush left.
31. Liar, Liar, Pants Arrested
We had one guy who was always talking big smack, faking injuries (bent my ankle so I can't practice/liver is burning, etc.), always drew pentagrams on stuff, took Japanese so he could get a "waifu," just all around a freaking creep with girls, too. Well, he got arrested here last month for deviant behaviors. I wasn't surprised.
32. He Has His Own Back
He ended up being the valedictorian for my graduating class, but his refusal to use a locker and carry all of his textbooks in his backpack led to severe back issues, resulting in him wearing a backplate throughout high school. It was honestly so preventable and tragic. I believe he also has Asperger’s, so he wasn't social either.
33. No Stopping This Locomotive
I was in year 10 when he came up from Primary school. I don't know what was wrong with him, but he'd always pretend to be a train and chug along through the quad. People would chuckle as he went past, but he didn't care. Him and his other weird mate would just scoot on by minding their own business, and mostly no one bothered them.
When I was in Year 11, though, one of the kids blocked his tracks and started bullying the heck out of him. A group of us shoved the bully out of the way and berated him for it, all while encouraging train boy to go on his way. Ours wasn't the best school in the district but God dang, at least the trains ran on time that day.
34. At Least the Critter Believes You
One weird kid walked around in high school with a stuffed possum and made it talk in class. Also went on a rant during a class debate about how much she hated Australia because a classmate from there had rejected her. This had absolutely nothing to do with the debate topic and none of us knew what she was talking about.
One claimed she was the CEO of her dad’s company and made 1 million a year at 16. Also said she was the granddaughter of the king of Norway. She’s not from Norway. She also tried to claim that her friend was killed during the 2011 Oslo terrorist attack. Again, not from Norway or Europe for that matter. Somehow, I got classified as "weird" but I’m really not sure why when I think about how many other weird kids went to my school.
35. To Serve and Make Uncomfortable
Dude had an unhealthy obsession with the Marines, but not the usual sort of small-town redneck thing where it's all about 'Murica and whoever is killing the bad guys deserves respect, but a sort of hero worship. He had a whole running fantasy about this team of Marines that he was the leader of and a bunch of us that were his "circle" were also characters in this.
That by itself would be one thing, but he treated it as if he expected us to play along in this fantasy game he'd created (not that he believed it, just wanted us to play along). He would come to lunch and tell us about our pay grades, the missions we went on, etc., and he created Lego sets of this fantasy and took pictures and tagged us on Facebook.
As I think back on it, I don't think he had a father figure in his life and he didn't live in a particularly great part of the town, so hero-worshiping the pageantry and all of the Marines is among the better outcomes. And so, while on one hand he shouldn't have tried to rope us in so hard when we were clearly uncomfortable, our reaction should never have been to be openly hostile to him like we were.
To my knowledge, dude became a Marine. Hope he's doing well.
36. The Door Is There for a Reason
He once pooped at school, which is weird enough...but he had the cubicle door open, wiped his butt, and then held the tissue up to his face and smelled it. True story. My friend and I saw it by accident when we turned around the corner from the urinals after we went to the washroom. I'll never forget it in my entire life.
37. Playing Hard to Get or Hard to Like?
Imagine the stereotypical kid being bullied in every American high school film ever and how they act all dejected and like everyone's out to get them…except the guy wasn't bullied and everyone tried to make an effort to talk to him when we were near him. I'm not exactly much of a social person myself, but I heard the guy mumble one word in the whole three years I went to school with him.
Any attempt to speak to him would be met by his best attempt at some kind of death stare to try and actively discourage conversation. I also once saw him outside the university accommodations that a friend was staying at and said hi to him as he walked past. He stopped, looked at me, frowned, looked back down, and carried on.
I had to explain to my friend afterwards how that was normal for him. You can't help but feel bad for the guy, but he did purposely dig his own social grave. I honestly hope he finds some people he can truly have as friends.
38. Most Likely to Be a True Crime
He would talk to himself and sit in the hallways reciting as many digits of pi as he could. He was a small, harmless kid who everyone treated well because he was endearingly weird, if that makes sense. Then he murdered a girl immediately after graduation and hid her body in his bathtub. We were all so wrong about him.
39. Animal I Was
He was caught eating berries off of a tree branch in a compost trash can in 5th grade. He'd act feral around everyone else, but if you got to know the kid, he was actually pretty down to earth and cool. In middle school around 6th grade, I tried getting to know him better and found out he might have had some kind of multiple personality disorder.
He was grateful for someone who didn't judge him that much (I'd try my best to not get him to do stupid stuff). He was later expelled for what everyone said was "biting a teacher.” I saw him once during high school and he 1) got really freaking hot and 2) seemed way chilled out. When I asked about why he left, he said he wasn't allowed to talk about it but was getting help, so that's always good.
Gabe, if you're out there, I hope you're doing well.
40. Friends Who Never Were
In hindsight, she wasn't so weird. She just marched to the beat of her own drum. She was very overweight and had a lot of health issues, including more than one skin condition, so people saw her as gross, and they avoided her. I can remember all the way back in first or second grade when we did dancing in gym class, and no one wanted to be her partner because her hands were covered in scaly rashes.
But she was smart, she had an odd sense of humor, and despite how everyone treated her, she was confident in herself and never hid any part of her personality. She was always the first to speak up in class and she challenged other people's opinions so readily. But at the same time, she was constantly falling asleep in class, and she snored so loudly.
I remember she sat behind me during our AP exam for American History, and for the life of me I could not focus on my test because she was breathing so loudly. She was incessantly bullied, to the point of being pity-voted onto prom court. She had one real friend. And then a year after we graduated, she died completely unexpectedly.
I remember waking up to go to work one morning and my best friend had texted me that she was dead, and I was absolutely shocked. Apparently, she had been out to dinner with her aunt, and on her way back to the table from the bathroom, she collapsed, and they couldn’t resuscitate her. They did an autopsy and couldn't confirm a cause of death.
Her mother died about a week after she did, and they had a joint funeral. Probably the saddest funeral I've been to. The worst part about her death was that I lived in a really small town, so it's all anyone was talking about for weeks. Her biggest bullies were some of the loudest voices. Some people from my graduating class held a memorial service for her where they sent off paper lanterns, but I couldn't get myself to go because it was full of all the people who made high school miserable for her.
I couldn't bear to listen to them talk about how great she was, how beautiful she was, when they never held those sentiments when she was alive.
41. It’s Physics, Not Anatomy
I had one girl in my year who had a weird obsession with our Physics teacher. Once in a lesson where we were learning about spinning forces, she asked if she could show a cool video to the class, and he said yes. The video was of her spinning on a pole in her underwear. Yep, she showed the entire class a video of her pole dancing.
When he sent her out, she was yelling the whole way, "WHY, ARE YOU SAYING THAT POLE DANCING IS SEXUAL? CAUSE THAT'S SEXIST." She wore butt-skimming skirts with fishnet tights and corsets on non-uniform day as well. Always got sent straight home. They ended up expelling her when we were about 17. Don't know what happened to her after that...
42. Work Hard, Party Hard
He always carried around a briefcase, but never opened it. Sat on the brief case during lunch, classes, etc. It was like the nuclear football, always in his hand or he was sitting on it. He carried it onto the stage during graduation, got his diploma, and right as he was leaving the stage, he opened it up. When he did, something amazing happened.
He dumped a bunch of confetti on the principal. I guess it was the long-con? No one questioned why he was carrying it on stage.
Sources: Reddit,
