We can't all be geniuses. In school, almost everyone struggles with at least one subject, whether it's math, English, or gym. Still, when we say these students are dumb, we REALLY mean it. From clueless capers to dim-witted comebacks, these kids give new meaning to the word "stupid." Read on, but beware: Your IQ might drop a couple of points in the process.
1. Photo-Copying You
I'm not a teacher, but I did grade exams, homework (mainly worksheets), and some papers for a few professors back in college. Hands down, the dumbest student I ever saw was one who turned in a photocopy of his friend's homework. Yes, a straight-up, minimally-edited Xerox. I couldn't believe my eyes, but then I looked closer...
He had made the tiiiiiiiniest effort to trace over the first few answers in pen but had stopped well before the end of the first page. Of a five-plus page worksheet. But that wasn't even the best part. The best part was that his friend's name was still clearly visible on the first page of the worksheet. This guy hadn't even bothered to obscure it.
2. Flat-out Wrong
I thought I would be teaching about plate tectonics today. Ended up having to do a lesson on why the Earth isn’t flat.
3. Gender Neutral Stupidity
One of my female students came to me and said, "Coach, I just walked into the weirdest restroom. There were weird toilets attached to the walls with no stalls around them. I couldn't figure out how I was supposed to pee in them!" I replied, "I think you walked into the men's bathroom by mistake. Those were probably urinals that you saw." I couldn’t believe it when she then asked me, "Oh...so then how exactly do men pee in them?"
4. Inflammable Means Flammable?
Very weird kid in my year came into school with huge amounts of hairspray in his hair, the amount where your hair eventually sticks like gel but without actually using any. Guy that sat behind him in one of our classes happened to be one of the dumbest and worst-behaved kids in the school, and he proceeded to get out his lighter and light the kid’s hair on fire.
It didn’t go up like if it were oil but it definitely stayed lit long enough to see him running out the door with his hair smoking. Both kids were expelled after that.
5. A Wild Imagination
I used to be a private writing instructor. A couple of years ago, I had a student ask me if commas were real or imaginary. He was equally dubious about semicolons, which he referred to as "imitation periods." Since I know people are probably wondering, he was 26 years old and very serious about his questions. I know...
6. Just Mermaiding
I worked as a substitute for a while. The first question the kids always asked me was why their teacher wasn't there. They never tell the substitutes this, but they expected that I would know. So, I came up with an ingenious plan. I'd just start making stuff up and the kids would totally fall for about anything. And I do mean anything.
I had a high school class get very upset that their English teacher didn't tell them she was going to space camp. I also had a habit of telling the elementary kids that their teacher had to go to the ocean because they were really a mermaid and needed to go to the ocean regularly or they wouldn’t be able to change back. They always thought that was a good reason to be absent.
7. I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter
One of my 16-year-old students asked, while starting a multiple-choice test, if it mattered what letter he chose. I just stared at him. Sometimes there are no words.
8. The Government Incinerator
In my senior year of high school, I was in a personal finances class. The teacher explained that not paying your taxes could get you incarcerated. The student said, "So if you don't pay your taxes, the government will light you on fire?!" The teacher, after a long pause, then said, "No, incarcerated means to imprison. You're thinking of incinerated." The student's response was unforgettable.
Totally deadpan, he just says, "Oh. Wait, then what's taxidermy?"
9. When Life Gives You Lemons
We were playing a guessing game when I said, “I’m thinking of a fruit that is yellow and very sour!” One student replied: “Is it chickenpox?” Not sure how I was supposed to respond to that...
10. Get Your Hands off Me, You Dirty Apes!
Fifth-grade field trip to a zoo. During a tour of the primate exhibits, a notoriously ill-behaved student hurls a stick down into the gorilla habitat and it lands near an adult gorilla. Without hesitation, the now angry gorilla arms himself with the same stick and sends it back like a tomahawk to the boy with terrifying velocity and wildly impressive precision.
The stick shatters around the boy’s face and he goes down. Commotion ensues. More gorillas make an appearance and begin to scream at the group of horrified children. Zoo staff start piling in out of the woodwork to see what’s going on. The Orangutans on the other side of the trail have now gotten wind of the situation and have begun mobilizing to assist their gorilla comrades.
It's a war on two fronts now. Gorilla and Orangutans launch volleys of poop and students scatter everywhere. Throughout the entire exhibit, all manner of primates begin their intimidating chatter and howling. An army of zoo staff has swarmed the primate exhibits and manages to stop War For The Planet Of The Apes. All because of one dumb kid.
11. I Don’t Do Lines
I teach fifth grade. I had to explain walking in line to a student. He would never walk in line correctly. Finally, after correcting him for the 1,000th time, he snapped. "What do you mean? What do you mean get in line? What's the line? Why do teachers always say that?" It never occurred to me he didn't understand after being in school for literal years.
12. Weird-Looking English
When my mom was a history teacher at a local high school, they went on a trip to Spain. One girl, let's call her Megan, was not quite a clever student. They went to a restaurant to eat and Megan was looking at the menu. She was frowning the whole time and made some "hmm, hmm" noises and looked like she was struggling with the language.
My mom told her there was an English menu on the other page, because she didn't understand Spanish. Three minutes later, she still looked confused. My mom asked her what was wrong. Megan then asked my mom why the English language was so different than what they learned at school. Megan didn't understand a word.
My mom looked at her menu, went quiet for a second, and told Megan she was reading the German menu.
13. Breaking the Glass Ceiling...Retroactively?
I was doing a lecture on diseases for an Intro to Healthcare class. When discussing polio, I like to ask “Which President had polio?” expecting “Roosevelt,” because I like to follow that up with “Which one?” I once had a student raise his hand and say “Eleanor!”
14. The Mystery of Africa
A student in my COLLEGE economics class started his final essay with this: “We are all familiar with the country, Africa. Yet at the same time we know little about them. All we know is that it is hot there, African Americans live there, and they are really poor. This begs the question, why is Africa that poor?” It was just so jam-packed with stupid I had to stop grading for 24 hours.
15. They Come in All Shapes and Sizes
I once had a student ask me, "What are those pyramid-shaped things in Egypt called again?" I have never seen a class laugh that hard before in my life.
16. Worth Every Penny
This is a weird one, and it got the kid kicked out of school. He had a history of being a jerk but was a really funny (if stupid) kid. So, it's early junior year and it's lunchtime. Two people jokingly say to “Kevin” that they will pay him $60 to pee his pants. Money talks so he stands up from his seat and within minutes pees his pants.
They record the event and the video is passed around the school. Maybe a day or two later, he gets called down to the office and is promptly expelled for whatever reason. The kicker here is that the two kids never paid up the money until the disciplinarian committee forced them to pay “Kevin” instead of getting detention.
17. Explosively Hot
I had a classmate put a thermometer into the middle of a Bunsen burner to "See how hot the fire was." As glass and mercury promptly exploded everywhere, I'm pretty sure that I saw the teacher’s soul leave her body. I literally never saw her look so horrified or angry before. For the record, the classmate and I were 12, so he definitely should have known better.
18. Never Admit Defeat
When I was teaching, I had one classmate who was JUST on the verge of passing, thanks to our teacher's generosity. All he needed to do was turn in a worksheet that he finished in class. I know that he finished it because I watched him and helped him do it. All he had to do was give it to the teacher. Except he didn't. I'll never forget his reasoning.
In his mind, doing that would mean that she had "won". So he refused to turn it in. I left the school before the end of the semester, but I would bet money that he failed the class.
19. What Planet Was She on??
I once had a girl in my class who thought that there were people living on Venus, and that we just couldn't talk to them because they didn't have access to phones.
20. You’re Just a Hater
Back when I was teaching high school, I was giving an exam to my first-year students and one of them stole the key...to the exam the second-year students were taking. He was not subtle about it, either. The whole "fake a sneeze, go get a tissue, pick up a large piece of paper and think your skinny teenage body can conceal it"-angle.
I should have said something, but the fact that I was so fed up with this sort of junk by that point is one of the reasons I quit teaching high school. But that's not what made it such a dumb decision. What made it dumb was when he messed up the exam, he tried to claim that I purposefully mis-graded his exam because I hated him.
He even got his mother in on it for a parent conference. But my revenge was so, so sweet. That just meant his own mother was front and center for me when I pointed out how his answer form was a perfect match for a test he didn't take. Mom was not happy with him, to say the least, though for the icing on the cake she did ask that I let him re-take the real test.
Since she honestly seemed to care a lot more than many of the parents I met, and since I did admittedly feel a little guilty for not trying to prevent it in the first place (not that I admitted to that part), as a compromise we let him come after school to re-try at a penalty. And in the end, he freaking aced the test. He was normally a C-student or so, and if he'd just done that the first time, the weight of the exam probably would've bumped him up to a low B.
21. Jumping for Joy
I teach swimming lessons and lifeguarding courses at a local swimming pool in my area. During one of the lessons, I was trying to teach them how to perform CPR and instead of showing them first, I asked them to show me what they already knew about it. I then proceeded to observe about fifteen 16- to 20-year-olds do the weirdest stuff you could imagine to those poor training dolls.
My favorite, though, was the kid who did a two-foot jump onto the chest of the dummy. The dummy slid out from under his feet like a cartoon banana and he landed on his rear end on the pool deck. Good times!
22. Four Score and Twenty Classes Ago
I have a funny poster on the wall in my classroom that says something about not believing everything you read on the internet, and it attributes the quote to Abraham Lincoln. It’s obviously just meant to be a silly and harmless joke. Nevertheless, a student came into the classroom one day, read the poster, and—in full seriousness—said, “Wait, did they have internet back then?”
23. Cheat Better
Teaching freshman English, I had a couple of instances of cheating that left me speechless. First, my college uses an online plagiarism checker and the students know this. With one student, over half of his essay was copied from a website. He looked genuinely shocked when I called him out on it, and then told me that his mother wrote the paper for him.
I explained that his mother writing his paper was also cheating. Then he asked me something that made my jaw drop. He wanted to get credit for the half that wasn't from a website. That's a no from me.
24. I’ll Sue!
A student once threatened to sue me over the definition of the terms "necessary" and "sufficient" that he had mixed up in an exam. No real biggie to mix them up, but loudly threatening to sue me over an age-old textbook definition in an exam review session was kind of stupid. It did entertain all other students who were present, though.
25. On the Left-Hand Side
Taught English/Literature in a Juvenile Justice long term treatment facility. I have many great stories. My favorite, though:
Me: This is a map of the United States. Here is the Mid-West, where your math teacher is from.
Student: Oh snap. We're in a war with them.
Me: Are you thinking about the Middle East?
Student: Oh yeah, is that a different place?
26. Two Birthdays
One of my students told me she was going to be 21 when she graduated high school. I asked her why, and her answer stunned me. She explained that she ages TWO YEARS every year. She is 15 turning 16 so that is two years. She is probably right that she will not graduate high school until age 21, but not for the reason she mentioned.
27. A Hard Poke
I don't usually wear glasses when I teach. Except for one day. And it was subsequently a big deal among all my fifth graders. The next day, at the start of class, I noticed a boy in the front row wearing glasses for the first time. Something seemed a little off, so I finally decided to chime in. I asked him what the deal with his glasses was.
Him: "These? I need them to see." Me: "But they don't have any lenses." He appeared befuddled and said, "They don't?" before lifting his finger up to one of the eye frames and poking himself in the eye.
28. Almost
Everyone in my sister's French class had a fairly lengthy piece of French homework. One student put the entire thing in Google translate, but then made a hilariously dumb mistake: He translated it to Spanish.
29. Do You Even Know What My Dad Does?
Had lots of students from Saudi Arabia. They typically pushed boundaries, so I learned quickly to set boundaries and be firm/fair with everyone in the class. One guy didn't see the need to come to class much or do homework, and his grade suffered greatly. He came in one day and said, "I want a better grade, my family is the XXXX's" (I don't remember the name).
Apparently, they were wealthy and well-respected. I didn't care and I reminded him of his lack of effort. He was mad and he made some generic threats, but nothing specific I could call anyone about. I found out from the other Saudi students, most of whom hated the guy, that he said screw it during the last week and went home without taking any finals.
30. Money Machine
Dude asked me why poor countries couldn't just print a bunch of money and give it. Keep in mind this was Grade 12 economics.
31. Just Looking
I was a former college recruiter who used to set up a booth at low-income schools to help guide first-generation students into college. Had a high school girl come up to me and tell me she wants to be a gynecologist. So I start talking about which schools have good pre-med programs, the kind of classes she would need to take, broaching the idea of med school.
She says hold up, a gynecologist is a doctor? I say yes. Her next words were so disturbing, they're impossible to forget. “Well I do NOT want to go to medical school. I just want a job where I can look at women's private areas all day.” We ended up talking about possibly cosmetology school or esthetician programs.
32. Just Smile and Scream Internally
In my statistics class, a girl asked if changing the minus to a plus would change the answer. Not a negative to a positive, like she wasn't questioning how negatives worked. She sincerely wanted to know if changing from subtraction to addition would change the answer. To the professor’s credit, she answered with a kind "Yes" and only a slight pause.
33. An Important Text Message
I had a student who didn't show up for class regularly, and her grade was going to be a C, maybe a D depending on her final exam. What made her dumb, however, was how she tried to cheat on the final exam. She reached down into her bag and took out her phone, put it on the desk, typed something into it, looked at the test, looked at her phone, looked back at her test, rechecked her phone, then answered whatever question she was looking up.
Just to make sure, I let her do it one more time. I was watching her THE WHOLE TIME, and she was completely oblivious. She got an F.
34. These Questions Are Better
One of my husband's colleagues said a kid came up to him after an exam and said, "I didn't know the answers to the questions you asked on the test, so I made up my own questions and answered them." The professor had the perfect reply. He said: "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, and when I go to lunch, I'm going to tell all of my friends."
35. 14 Is Everything
I had a little boy (first grade) who always got 14 as his answer to every problem no matter what. One day ay school, I sat down to do 3+2 with him using counters. We set out a pile of three and a pile of two. I told him to count, and I thought I finally had him and that there was no way he could make the same mistake. I was so, so wrong.
I watched in horror as he pushed the counters into a line and then counted back and forth and back and forth, re-counting them until he got to 14. The worst part? That was just the biggest number he knew, otherwise he would have just kept going.
Public Domain Pictures
36. Copy-Pasta Chef
I'm a professor grading papers right now, and I have a few contenders at the moment. This one student blatantly plagiarized in his first paper, I mean just cutting and pasting from random webpages. I was so surprised at how badly he plagiarized that I gave him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he didn't understand what it really was.
I just gave him a zero along with an email describing the issue in detail with some additional links for whole sites that do the FAQs really well. We met, and I explained it to him. He was abjectly apologetic and explained that he had missed the nuances before. Except when I was grading his final paper, it was the same problems all over again.
Also, I test this stuff using a free website I found just on Google and it takes like two minutes to check. What the heck is he thinking? Also, the non-plagiarized part was so poorly written I don't know how he even got into college, much less made it to become a junior. The guy is also pre-med. I just don't understand.
37. I Put a Spell on You
While dictating for a spelling test last year, I said a word three times before a student put up his hand and innocently asked, "Miss, how do you spell that word?"
38. Can’t Get Creepier Than That
There was this dumb, redneck dude in my art class who usually kept to himself, but would only talk to this one girl who was a year below us. One day, me and my friends saw them making out hard in an empty classroom. I asked him the next day about his girlfriend and he told me with a straight face that his girlfriend was actually his cousin.
39. A Slippery Mistake
We were discussing the three most common phases of matter: solids, liquids, and gases. Using water as an example, I asked a student to tell me what we call the solid phase of water. He replied, "Oil!" I was dumbstruck, but at least mine was only temporary...I can absolutely not say the same for that one student.
40. She’s Not the Only One in Need of Guidance
We were on a field trip, and I asked my students to be respectful of other pedestrians while on it, because some people want to enjoy the nature center by themselves. One kid saw a woman with her service dog and tried to pull on it because “Mommy would let me have it.” We had to leave because of that. He ruined the entire trip for everyone.
41. Conquering Fear the Dumb Way
Not a schoolteacher, but I’ve taught swim lessons in the past. I was once teaching the adult learn-to-swim class and had an incredibly dumb dude (let’s call him Rusty) sign up. Rusty was a 100-pound guy with an absolute fear of water. He wouldn’t even shower, but he decided that swimming lessons were gonna cure him. Okay, buddy.
It was the first day, when we were just getting accustomed to the water and helping people with a phobia start to get over it. The first few people are puttering around in the shallow end and getting a feel for the water. Some of them were immigrants from some place very dry and had never been in a pool before, so it was quite the experience for them, and things were getting loud.
Suddenly, Rusty does the dumbest thing. He screams, giving his best bald-eagle-screech attempt, and sprints down the deck to launch himself into the deep end. He immediately starts drowning (no fat, no float) and is going down fast. My assistant got in, got him holding on to the rescue tube, and pushed him to the shallow end, still screaming and flailing. I seriously couldn't believe what happened next.
Rusty hauled himself up the stairs AGAIN and started sprinting for the deep end and chucked himself back in. I went in after him since my assistant was still in the water and dragged him out again. He tried to do it a third time, but I was able to stop him until security showed up to hold him back for his own safety.
I never saw him again after that day, so I’ll never know why he, an aquaphobic non-swimmer, would think jumping in the deep end was a good idea.
42. Craters Attract
I will never forget this girl. She raised her hand and asked why meteors always fall into craters. For context, this was a journalism degree and we were talking about libel laws. This girl did not pass.
43. Kids Don’t Need Air
In my design class, I had this girl who had placed a garage beside the house, but couldn't, for the life of god, figure out why her 90cm by 200cm door was not appropriate for a car to enter through. Same girl planned a small space for children in a library. Said space was only 1.5 meters high, and no matter what the teacher said, she kept going back to, "But this space is for children, they are not tall!" "But they will suffocate!" "But it is a space FOR CHILDREN!"
44. Dentists First
All she had to do to graduate was to show up to a seminar. I pointed out the importance of this, as it was the last time this mandatory thing was being run, and the last chance for her (having missed earlier opportunities) and I wouldn't run the class next year. Got an email saying she had a dentist appointment and missed it. She failed, couldn't get her degree, and had to come back 18 months later for it.
45. So Much Educating to Do, So Little Time!
I have been fortunate enough to have had many students over the years whose intellect levels have made my jaw drop from time to time for all the wrong reasons. Here’s just a small sample of some of the things I’ve heard them say to me over the years: A tenth grader asked, "George Clooney was the first President of the United States, right?"
A high school-aged girl asked, "Hey coach, our bio teacher was talking about menstrual cycles today. What is that?" An eighth-grader asked, "What was Vladimir Lenin's first name?" I replied Joseph just to mess with him. And finally, a ninth-grade boy...in history class...actually asked: "Does a male octopus have eight testicles?"
46. World Class Pouter
She had somehow gotten all the way to college still believing that weirdly and creepily exaggerated coy-little-girl flirting would get her what she wanted, including with female faculty. It was cringey to see in action—literally tilting her head to the side, playing with her hair, pivoting her leg back and forth mannerisms, combined with semi-childish speech patterns while glancing up through her eyelashes.
Definitely "I'm only talking to this one in front of witnesses" territory. She told me that she was reading and studying every night and still not making progress on tests and needed help. I explained how to make written study materials to help her absorb information better. She said she'd done that and reviewed the materials regularly, but still wasn't seeing results.
At this point, I was genuinely concerned and puzzled, so I asked her to bring me her materials next class period and we'd go over them to make sure they were accurate and useful. She agreed. Next class period rolls around. She announces, with even more exaggerated mannerisms, that wouldn't you know it—she was so frustrated with her score on her last test that she'd thrown her study materials into the trash in a fit of anger and they were all gone.
Almost as if they had never existed. I looked her in the eye and said, "I think you should consider, then, that self-discipline may be playing a role in your grades in my class." She huffed and pouted in outrage, and I never saw her again. What makes me sad is that clearly someone, almost certainly her family, had taught her that these behaviors worked.
47. That Name Doesn’t Ring a Bell
In a high school writing class, we used to do an exercise where I would write a topic on the board as a prompt and the students would have to write whatever the topic made them think of. One time, I wrote “Pearl Harbor” on the board as the prompt. A student responded by saying, "Who the heck is Pearl Harbor?"...
48. Breathing Helium
I used to volunteer teaching at an after-school program for 14-year-olds. We were doing a project that involved balloons. One boy had blown into his balloon but couldn't get it tied. I tied it and gave it back to him. He immediately tossed the balloon up. As it sank to the floor, his face fell. Obviously disappointed, he asked: "Aw, so they're not helium?"
49. Bringing out the Animal in You
As a high school biology teacher, a 16-year-old student in my class once asked me, "Wait, aren't rhinos made of mud?" I had absolutely no idea where he could possibly have gotten that idea from, nor where to even begin to try and answer his question.
Wikimedia Commons, Derek Keats
50. Not Touching That One
Had some students come up to me the other day to ask if they could go see a teacher during their lunch break. I asked why, and one of them said, "We're in trouble because we accidentally made fun of someone with optimism." I then asked her to repeat herself, hoping she would correct herself, but she said, "optimism" instead of "autism" again.
I let them go see that teacher because I did not have time to think about how to approach that conversation.
51. What Am I?
I worked at my university’s tutoring center while in college. Had one student who was a sports science major and would come in for tutoring for every single class. He had to do this because he was barely literate, as in reading MAYBE on a first-grade level. One of his assignments was to write about an important African American figure.
He asked me what African-American meant. But it gets better. The student was African-American. For the record, I don’t blame him for being dumb. I blame every single teacher he ever had whose responsibility it was to ensure that he was learning, and instead just passed him on so he would be someone else’s problem.
52. Just Not Cut out
I worked as an "unofficial TA" in college and was in charge of a student publication—taught it as a class because while it was open to all students, certain students had to work it as a practicum course. One of the students was very quiet, but very nice. Didn't participate in class, but their effort was supposed to go into their written works, so it was fine.
Deadline for their rough drafts arrived and he turned in two pages, much shorter than the expected 800-word article. Whatever, I can work with him. But then I looked closer and realized the truth. There were no quotes. There was no attempt made to write from a neutral perspective. Suspicious, I copied and pasted the first two paragraphs into Google and...yep.
Every word taken from an online brochure. He had contacted no sources, done little-to-no research—just pasted the text into Word and reformatted it. When we had our individual consultation, I gently asked him, "This doesn't seem to have any sources or quotes in it...?" Just trying to feel it out. He stared at me with a blank expression.
"I mean... it kind of feels like it's missing some research." He just looked at me. "E., who did you consult with for this article? Who did you interview?" Silence. He just kind of waited out the half-hour with silence. Did this work for him in high school? In his English comp courses in college? I have no idea how this worked for him.
Ultimately, I had to bring it to the attention of the professor in the course. She said what I couldn't, which is that he plagiarized the entire piece—and stupidly. He was withdrawn from the course. I felt bad. Really bad. But something the professor said stuck with me: "Some people aren't cut out for college. I hate to say this, but not everyone is academically smart enough to do this work."
People are smart in their own ways, I believe, but maybe the kind of work college requires doesn't compute with everyone. Unfortunately, he dropped out of college sometime later. I saw him a few years ago, working at the local movie theater as an assistant manager. He saw me and booked it into the office without talking to me.
53. Classroom Confusion
I had a student when I was a TA who took the first quiz in my class, but I realized he wasn’t on my roster. I told him this, but he insisted he was in my section. Soon, he stopped coming to section altogether but did insist on handing his exams and papers back to me in lecture. I eventually discovered the weird reason for his actions.
He was supposed to be in my colleague’s class, but never attended that either. After the final exam (which he handed in to me!), he admitted to me that he had just realized he was in the other class, and had been confused because his roommate was in my class, but “I guess it doesn’t really matter since I didn’t really show up anyway!”
54. Follow the Breadcrumbs
A kid escaped school on a Gordon food service truck during recess. When they got back to their little warehouse, while unloading the truck, they found him hiding in the uncrustable sandwich box.
55. Good Luck out There, David
I was a camp counselor who had to “teach” kids in a supplemental capacity with the director of whatever activity our group might be doing on any given day. I will never forget a very special student named David. David came from a religious family. David’s father was not religious, but David’s mother (who had custody) was “born again.”
His father made the compromise that he can be homeschooled, but has to go to a non-religious camp during the summer. I met his mother on the first day with other parents and she was so happy that I, a “good white catholic boy,” would be his counselor. What she didn’t know was I was really just a polite atheist who put on an act in front of her so she wouldn’t be a pain.
David was dumb. I blame the mother, but here are some gems:
- David thought goats were cows and tried to milk a male goat. Goat kicked David.
- David believes that dinosaurs are not real. Like, they never existed. Not that humans walked alongside them but like dinosaurs were never a thing. Kids made fun of him and he punched the paleontologist guest. Said God wanted him to do it when we called his mom.
- David ate rubber cement because he liked how it made him feel when he smelled the bottle and thought eating it would make him feel the same way but faster (?!).
- David tried to “escape” camp in one of the foot pedal boats that were on the secluded lake but gave up after he didn’t know which way would get him to his house.
- David knows how to swim but chooses to almost drown, holding his breath to swim underwater because he doesn’t like “slapping” the water when above it. Also, when doing the above-water swim, he inhales water accidentally all the time, which causes him to cry because “it burns.”
- David seems to believe that somewhere in the camp is a tetherball setup that can A) support his weight and B) won’t slam him into the pole when he tries to swing on it, causing him to hurt himself despite the camp having many rope swings.
- David thinks all colorful plants are edible.
- David believes that all the girls he likes are his girlfriend. He gets mad when they aren’t on his team for games. He will climb the backstop on the field and threaten to jump if the teams aren’t changed. We change the teams and he’s too scared to climb down. Kids play anyway while he cries on top of the backstop.
- One day David discovered adult internet content. He tried to share this discovery with his many girlfriends.
- David told a camper with dark skin that God left him in the oven longer. I tried to explain to him that the joke is insensitive but...this wasn’t meant as a racist joke. He really believed that we were all made of clay and put in some Heaven oven.
- David can’t cut his own food. At first, I thought it was a “won’t” and had his mom do it all the time but no, he sliced his fingers (yes, plural) using a plastic knife.
- David asked me if I had an extra “pee pee diaper.” Okay, I know he’s toilet trained so I asked what that is. Apparently, he uses his mom’s pads to catch the extra drops so it doesn’t get on his underwear. (That one was kinda not that dumb but like uhhhh.)
- David makes up stories about how far he gets with his girlfriends who aren’t his girlfriend. To prove he “got some” he showed campers a pair of women’s underwear that was clearly his mom’s as she is a rather large woman and the girl he claimed to have gotten with could’ve used it as a blanket.
- David tries to hit people with the ball when playing tennis. Nobody wants to play with him, so he plays tennis with the wall until we’re done and always hurts himself.
- David built a “teepee” out of decent-sized wood, but it collapsed on him when he hit a piece of the wood structure he built trying to make a fire in it by rubbing two sticks like he saw in a movie. Lots of scrapes but nothing broken but his pride.
- David, as per his mom’s instructions, is not allowed to have rubber bands. She made me promise her and acted as serious as someone saying he’s not allowed to have a firearm.
- David thinks if he throws a rock high and hard enough, God can catch it. Proof of this is if after throwing it you don’t hear or see it land, God caught it. He told me he does it all the time in his backyard.
I truly blame the parents.
56. This Story Has Legs
I was teaching my kids how to spot the difference in things. I started out with a group of boys with blue shirts and boys with white shirts and asked them if they could spot the difference. Cool. So I asked a girl to spot the difference between a whale, a dog, a cat, and a mouse. Like the genius she is, she said, "One doesn't have any legs." Awesome.
Now I ask this boy, who just doesn't have "it" mentally, to spot the difference between himself and the students who wore glasses. His response, it nearly ruined me. This boy said, "I don't got no legs." I was in SHAMBLES. I had to leave so I could laugh properly.
57. Using Her Noodle
A girl in my honors science class once asked the teacher, and was 100% serious, if ramen noodles grow on ramen trees.
58. Taking Technologically Challenged to the Next Level
I am a college instructor, and you would be shocked at how stupid some college students are and how ridiculous some of the things they say and do can be. Just last year, I had multiple students who were not able to save Word docs as PDFs despite clear and simple instructions. But honestly, they were smart in comparison to some of the others.
There were a bunch of students who would take smartphone pictures of every single slide that I showed while I lectured, even though I would always upload them all to our course website for everyone to use. My personal favorite, though, has to be the time when I asked the class to insert a picture into a Word document.
One student printed the Word doc, printed the picture, physically placed the printed picture on top of the printed Word doc, took a smartphone photo of it, and then uploaded that photo as a new file and submitted it to me. I was literally speechless from wondering how dumb he had to be to do that. I gotta say, I sure do miss my millennial students!
59. He Had It Coming
Teaching grade 10 history. I cracked a bad joke one day about how the Cold War happened every winter for about 50 years. One of the questions on the test was to list eight to ten important facts about the Cold War. Guess what fact appeared in several students' responses to that question? Yep, that it happened every winter for 50 years.
60. Which One?
In a university course, I once had to mark a paper on the topic of witches. Amazingly, the student had misspelled the word “witches” as “whiches” consistently throughout the entire paper. But then I noticed the best part. She even footnoted a phone number as a source! Marking those papers absolutely broke me.
61. Clear for Landing
I’m a flight instructor. Had a student who really wasn’t cut out for flying. Before each lesson, his job was to do a preflight on the airplane and make sure everything was working. One of the items you check during the preflight are the flaps. Basically, they are a flap of metal that extends from the wing and drops down into the airstream during landings.
Well, we fly a Cessna 172, where the wings are on top of the cockpit (above the pilot) and the flaps are situated just behind the door. Without fail, this guy opens the door, moves the switch to deploy the flaps, and turns around to run face-first into the flaps he just lowered. It’s funny the first, concerning the second time, and expected after the tenth time. Every. Single. Lesson.
62. Strap Yourself in for This One!
One of my sixth graders had a brain fart moment recently where he couldn’t remember the word for “suspenders” when trying to mention something about them. He called them “farmer straps,” complete with hooking his thumbs through his imaginary suspenders and moving his hands up and down, like an old guy wearing suspenders might do. I laughed so hard I cried.
63. Try to Set a Better Example
I once asked my students to write a sentence and give an example of something. One of the students (age 12 or 13 roughly), in full seriousness, asked: "What's an example?" As surprising as that was, even more surprising was how hard it was to try and explain the concept of an example to a teenager who had somehow never heard of one.
64. Can’t Argue With That
I was a teaching assistant for a semester in a grad school program (never again). One time during that school year, a student submitted this paper to me that I will never forget for as long as I live. Basically, the student was arguing that an author who he was writing about was wrong because he happened to find his writing style "boring."
In trying to explain and disprove the author's argument, he got almost every single part of it completely wrong and then proceeded to say that he had a better argument to offer in its place. He then went on to describe the exact argument that the author had actually been making in the book to begin with.
65. Where Have You Been for the Last Three Weeks?
My class was three weeks into the process of writing a major research paper. Me: "Okay class, so today we'll continue working on writing the body paragraphs of the essay." Student: "What essay?"
66. Screen Time
Every semester, at least one class comes into my computer lab to take a test on the computers. The teacher reminds them all that no sites other than the test page are allowed. Nevertheless, there's always one kid who, without fail, pulls up Google the first time he doesn't know an answer. It's like clockwork. I guess they don’t realize that we can see their screens…
67. Catfishes Never End Happily
We had this girl in middle school who would purposely make up crazy lies for the sake of impressing her classmates. For instance, she once claimed that she was related to Nicki Minaj. The thing is, after a while, we all figured it was a load of bull, but silently we agreed to just nod our heads whenever she came to share another “jaw-dropping story.”
Well, turns out our tolerance created this illusion that her plan was working, and she must’ve felt as if she was getting the attention she craved, which worsened the situation. We were in seventh grade at the time, and she was crushing real bad on a dude who was a year older. Instead of walking up to him and trying to befriend the kid, she makes a whole fake Instagram account, which she used to DM him.
She set up a different name and surname, found a hot model with a relatively small following, and used her to catfish the guy. They began texting, which became a regular everyday occurrence. He’d send her good morning and goodnight selfies, and she took ages to reply because she was constantly searching for a fitting picture.
This fake girl was “supposedly” from a whole other state. They kept texting for several months, nobody knew except for me and a few other people from our class, but we weren’t spreading the story. To be honest, I wasn’t very interested anyway. Well, turned out the guy had booked plane tickets to go visit the nonexistent hot chick he’s been talking to non-stop.
He flew to a completely different state hoping to meet the love of his life in person. He had relatives there I’m pretty sure, so he stayed with them. He shared all this with the fake girl after landing. She had to confess and tell him about everything. The girl moved schools after that and her story spread like a wildfire. Not sure what went on with the guy.
68. Join My Pirate Crew
Actually one of the smarter kids in my class. But ethics, awareness of social norms...not so much. He sent me an email after the semester ended, asking if I'd mind telling my next semester class that his digital textbook was available for sale. Oh, and that it's a PDF so if multiple people want it, he can sell them all copies.
I responded that I admire his entrepreneurial spirit, but it probably wasn't a good idea to solicit his professor's help in starting a piracy-based bookselling business.
69. 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 paid 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.
70. Some Questions Are Better Left Unanswered
A less than super intelligent classmate of mine in elementary school once had this exchange with our fairly impatient and annoyed teacher. The teacher asked, "What's the answer to this [multiple choice question with only 3 choices]?" The kid asked, "Is it A?" The teacher replied no. Then the kid asked if it was C. The teacher said no again. But he wasn't done yet.
The kid, getting visibly confused and frustrated, yelled, "I don't know what it is!!"
71. Call It a Bad Harvest
Group of rich high school kids in Montana out driving around, drinking. Found two expensive tractors out in a wheat field. Decided to have a demolition derby. Got caught. In the judge’s chambers with the farmer, who just wanted the damages reimbursed. The high-end family lawyers asked what the heck they were thinking when they did it.
The response: “Well, you can’t put a price on a good time.” Turns out that was the wrong answer...
72. Greece Monkey
Student: “Athens? Isn’t that the capital of Africa?” No, no it’s not…
73. A Cite to See if There Ever Was One
Many years ago, I taught a third-year engineering class at my local university on the subject of petrochemical engineering. I started the students early on in the semester on their term project, which was a large-scale research report that they each had to write. I told them that they had to find at least five credible academic sources to reference for their chosen topic.
I was very clear right from the beginning that Wikipedia was not considered a credible or acceptable source for this project and that they were not allowed to cite it as one of their sources. I told them that they could feel free to use it as a starting point for their research process, but that was really it and they couldn't use it further.
I checked in with them multiple times over the course of the term and kept reminding them over and over again not to cite Wikipedia. Nevertheless, when the time came for the papers to finally be submitted to me, I was stunned to discover that at least five students out of the 20 who were in the class still ended up citing Wikipedia.
74. I Don’t Know Where I Am!
I once asked my class of fifth graders what city they live in, and the first response I got was “Texas.”
75. A Future in Comedy
This is a good one. One of the teachers in my high school was born without his right arm from the elbow down. He was the new English teacher, pretty young, good looking and whatnot. We also had another new female teacher come in that year who was quite attractive. If you’ve ever heard of the movie Teeth, it’s about this girl with teeth in her you-know-what.
Anyway, some kid photoshopped both of their faces onto the movie poster and made it say, “Mr. Blank didn’t always have one arm.” The picture got around quite fast, and the kid was expelled.
76. Everything Is Bigger in China?
While I was a student teacher in a local high school in my area, I once had a student put up his hand to ask where Texas was on the map that I was projecting onto the screen. It was a map of China…
77. Never Her Fault
I go to school with a girl who finds a way to blame others for all her wrongdoings. She failed a class three times for not doing the coursework or going to class. Claimed the teacher was out to get her. People constantly walk out of her life because they’re sick of her gossiping about them. Claimed she is such a loyal friend, so (insert name) must be a total witch.
Puts down a friend because “she’s way too confident.” Doesn’t understand why that friend doesn’t hang out with her anymore. Someone called her out for always putting people down. She complained about how mean that person is.
78. Mad Pooper
This kid would poop in a bag and stick it in someone’s backpack. He did this twice. The first time he was given a warning and got suspended. The second time he got expelled. This was in the ninth grade.
79. We Need to Talk About Kevin
It's not uncommon as a teacher to have students who are a bit behind the curve in certain areas, but 99.99999% of the time they are at least keen on something else to make up for it. They might not understand how to identify a noun or what a theme is, but they somehow know how to make a mean plate of nachos. You learn pretty quickly not to judge the fish for their tree climbing ability, ya know?
I thought this was the rule when I was teaching...until I met Kevin. Kevin isn't his real name, but it doesn't matter because he can't spell it anyway. Kevin was a student of mine during my last year of teaching. He came to my classroom with very little to show for his academic past. He had moved a few times and thus was missing a lot of typical test scores that we use to try and ballpark their ability.
Don't worry, it was just a ballpark. We didn't make major decisions until we actually had a chance to talk and work with a student for a bit. I thought "That's fine. I'll just do some one-on-one with Kevin and see what's up." One-on-one with Kevin was like conversing with someone who had forgotten everything in a freak, if not impossible, amnesia incident.
There was no evidence that he had learned anything past the second grade, despite the fact that he was now in the ninth grade. Flabbergasted, I figured that we needed to get more serious with this. If he was going to be in my class, I needed to know why and how. I decided to meet with him, his guidance counselor, his parents, and another teacher to see what was really going on. This is where it all became clear.
It was by some incredible fluke that his family hadn't been wiped off the face of the Earth years ago. Odds are that his entire heritage was based on blind luck and some type of sick divine intervention that miraculously saves his family every time a threat presents itself. Kevin was the genetic pinnacle of all this null achievement.
Even my instructional lead, a woman who could find a redeeming trait in absolutely any person, failed to see any explanation of how this kid or his family could be alive today. So, here's a list of events that made it abundantly clear that God must exist and be looking down and laughing uncontrollably from the heavens:
Kevin frequently forgot when and where his classes were. On more than one occasion, I had to go over and retrieve him from other classrooms. Kevin once ate an entire 24 pack of crayons, puked, and then did it again the next day. Remember, this is ninth grade. I have no idea where he even got the crayons from. Kevin's dad wrote tuition checks and mailed them to me...his English teacher.
Also, this was a public school. When I gave the check back to Kevin, voided, and asked him to give it to his dad with a brief note explaining that this is a public school, Kevin got in trouble for trying to spend it at a 7-11 after school. Kevin was removed from the culinary arts program at our school after leaving a cutting board on the gas stove and starting a fire...on two separate occasions.
Kevin once threw his lunch at the School Resource Officer and tried to run away. He ran straight into a door and then insisted that it wasn't him who had thrown the lunch. Kevin once stole my phone during class. I called it. It rang. He denied that it was ringing. Not that it was his, not that he had taken it...no, he denied that the phone was actually ringing.
He tried this again another three times before the end of the year. Kevin called the basketball coach an inappropriate name during gym class. Basketball tryouts were that same afternoon. Kevin tried out. It didn't go well for him. Kevin's mom could never remember which school he went to. She missed several meetings because she drove to other schools by mistake—none of which he had ever gone to.
Kevin once tazed himself in the neck before a football game as a joke. Kevin kept a bottle of orange Kool-Aid in his backpack for over 4 months. He thought it would turn into alcohol. He drank it during class one day and threw up on the floor. Kevin stole another student's phone, then tried to sell it back to them.
Kevin didn't understand that his grade was dependent on tests, quizzes, homework, classwork, and participation. Kevin finished his first semester with a 3% average. He tried to bribe me with $11. Kevin spit on a girl and said, "You should get out of those wet clothes." The girl was the Spanish student teacher. Kevin didn't know that dogs and cats were different species.
Kevin almost always had gum in his hair. Practically every single day. Kevin regularly tried to cheat on assignments by knocking the pile over, grabbing one before I had picked them all up, and then writing his name on it wherever there was room. Kevin had several allergies, but neither his parents nor he could remember what they were exactly.
His parents were also very concerned that "the holiday party" (it's high school, we don't have those) would have peanuts. When they finally got a doctor's note, we realized that it was amoxicillin that he was allergic to and not peanuts. That seems like something they should have known. All in all, Kevin just never failed to make me shake my head and wonder how it was possible that he had even made it this far.
80. The Magic of Nitro
He called himself "Nitro" because he was explosive, like nitroglycerin. He swore he was raised by ninjas somewhere in Russia, and snuck into the country by walking a thousand miles through the snow and hitching a ride on a plane. He sold "Magic Juice" out of his school locker for $100 a bottle. It was just different Gatorade flavors all mixed together with hot sauce and other stuff mixed in.
He constantly threatened to fight anyone who questioned his ninja skills and ran up and down the halls with a headband on, flailing his arms like he was doing some sort of magic spell. He was also the best dodgeball player I have ever seen. Is that related to the rest of it? It's hard to say, but I like to think that it was.
Expres
81. Lego Buffalo
My wife is a teacher, and this is my favorite story of hers. They were discussing how indigenous Americans relied on hunting buffalo and used all parts of it for food, clothing, shelter, etc. In reference to how they used the buffalo for shelter, one student asked the dumbest question I have ever heard. He said, "So do they stack the buffalo on top of each other?"
82. I’ve Heard of School Trips, But This Is Ridiculous
This extremely stupid kid who I went to high school with did a ton of substances shortly before a pep rally. Unsurprisingly, he completely freaked out during it. First the school called the police, but apparently he was freaking out too much so they had to call an ambulance to hold him down and carry him out via stretcher.
83. Not a Laughing Matter
Okay, so we were in the middle of class that took place on the fifth floor of our school and there was this kid who, in the middle of class, stands up, goes to the window, proceeds to open it, and then jumps out. The entire class watches in terror and the teacher just stands there for a second in disbelief of what she had just witnessed.
In actual reality, the kid jumped onto a ledge under the window as some sick prank to make us think he just committed suicide. I know, right? He got expelled the following week and we had to listen to our counselor for a week talk about why stuff like this isn't funny.
84. I Did It My Way
I was asked to show this 13-year-old kid some video editing techniques. He opened the software on the laptop and was asking me how to do different things. At one point, I was going to show him how to drag a video clip into the software so that he could use it. I asked him to restore down the window. He had no idea what I was talking about, so I showed him how to do that.
Then, I asked him to move the window, as in, just a simple drag of the window. Apparently, he didn't know that was a thing. However, he did have his own unique, elaborate, and convoluted way of dragging a window. He moved the mouse pointer to the edge of the window until it turned into the double-sided arrow, then resized the window so it was smaller.
Then, he moved the mouse to the other side of the window and stretched the window back out on the other side until it was roughly the same size as before he made it smaller. I was like, "What are you doing?" He simply said, "This is how I do it." I tried to show him how to drag the window, but he wanted to do it his way and didn't want to learn a different way to do it.
In trying to teach him some things, we had to go through Windows Internet Explorer a few times, and that was just a nightmare because everything that should have been a simple click was made incredibly difficult by his insistence on doing it the way "he wanted to do it." This went on for about an hour and a half until I had to go.
They said that I was welcome to come back and teach the kids again any time I wanted. I said thanks, but that I never planned on going back again.
85. I Think I’m About to Explode...
After a lengthy explanation of the effects of volcanic eruptions on human communities, I had a grade six student put up his hand and ask me, in all seriousness, why on Earth people even make volcanoes in the first place if they can do this much damage. Yep, seriously. This started a very long and very involved explanation about geology...
86. 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.
87. Mother Earth
I once projected a picture of the Earth onto the whiteboard at the front of our classroom. A student raised his hand and asked, "How are astronauts able to stand on a planet like that?" To be clear, this was an eighth-grade student, being totally serious, and not under any noticeable influence of anything that I knew of.
88. It’s All in the Game
I’m not a teacher, but I was once helping my friend, who was a Teaching Assistant at our local campus, go over some first-year essays. We read an essay about video games and, aside from the proper essay format being nowhere to be found, one of the first sentences was something along the lines of "There are many examples of video games, such as the Wii and the PS4 and Zelda".
Again, this was a student at the college level. Unfortunately, my friend wasn't allowed to grade any papers below 50%. This student got 50%.
89. A Fairy Tale Romance
A student once asked, "Are mermaids real?" Before I even had the chance to answer, she aggressively blurted out, "I don't believe in dinosaurs." She was 16 years old.
90. The Coinless Future Strikes
I volunteered to do the "book fair" for my old middle school. I had a 7th grader come up to purchase a poster of a car. The price was $3. He pulled out two $1 dollar bills and set it on the desk in front of me. He then pulled out a handful of change and set it on the table. He asked, "Is this enough?" I said, "Well, you need one more dollar." He then picked out two quarters and two dimes.
"Now?" he asked. I said, "That's 70 cents, you need 30 more." He picked out three nickels and added them to the pile. "There you go," he said. I then proceeded to ask him what he thought the denominations for each coin were, and he legit did not know. I had to give him a quick lesson in the value of each coin and helped him count out $1 in change.
91. 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 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 do it. 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.
92. I Guess He Was a Leg Man
Last year, I was a Teaching Assistant for a Gender Studies course at a reasonably well-ranked university in the United States. I asked the students to write a short story about how life for humans would be if we reproduced in a different way, and how it would affect society. For example, if we grew our babies in jars in the hospital, how would that affect society?
I told them not to write anything that they wouldn’t want the old lady teaching team to read. From one student, I got four pages of explicit spider-themed smutty fiction.
93. Goth Kid
There was this kid named Jarmin. He believed he was a vampire. He would do the most random stuff. For example, he came flying outside one day and spit blood across the ground, wiped his mouth, and said, "Sorry, I just had lunch."
94. Easier Ways to Cook an Egg
This “kid”—18 years of age—opened the window, leaned over, pulled a lighter out of his pocket, and lit a bird nest that was just sitting there on fire. For apparently no reason. Smoke started getting into the building and everybody panicked because the janitors just kept saying there was a fire in a classroom and we rushed outside.
95. Inside Job
A kid in my sister’s class called in a bomb threat to the school....from the school cafeteria payphone. This was in 1999, so before everyone had cell phones. He was arrested and expelled.
96. Maybe He Knows Something We Don’t...
Student: "You know, they can upload your entire brain onto a computer now!" This student thought that your entire memory, personality, and everything can be stored on a computer. This was a college student.
97. If You Tossed It Some Food and Ran Away?
We were talking about cheetahs being the fastest land mammal. Someone swells up and says he can beat a cheetah in a race. The class laughs. Kid doesn't let it go. Finally, he just says "I can beat a FAT cheetah in a race."
98. Life Sentenced
I don't think I could declare any of my students as the stupidest, but one who wasn't the best at algebra definitely got me in the best possible way. I was working with another teacher in an incarceration setting for teenage boys. These young men would often ask questions to test boundaries, force reactions, etc. It's jail school–so it's a bit less formal.
Anyhow, in a room of about ten students, my co-teacher and I would do a funny man/straight man routine. Typically, this would fall along the lines of me absolutely agreeing with anything my co-teacher said he knew about me (that I had a criminal record, that I used to weigh 320 pounds, that I'd been married four times, etc.) Then, as the straight man, I'd play along and fill in details of what should have been obvious absurdities.
One day, my co-teacher went beyond the bounds of believability for our students when he said I had a tattoo of his name at the base of my right buttock. I maintained that this was true, that it was the result of a lost bet on a football season, but several of the boys weren't buying it. One of them said, "Mister, for real, you got ANY tattoos?"
Nearly all of my students had several tattoos, typically visible. I was forced to admit I had none, but chose poorly in explaining myself. "Okay, you're right. I don't have any tattoos." "Why not? You have something against tattoos?” said a student. "No. No, not at all. I just don't think I could make a decision like that." "Like what?"
"You know,” I said, “Saying, ‘This is what I want for the rest of my life.' "A pause. "Wait. Mister. Ain't you married?"
99. But, Why?
This boy in fifth grade pooped in class at his desk, rolled the log down his leg, and kicked it over to under a girl's desk.
100. A Class of Her Own
There is a girl in my class who is beyond help at this point. Her best moments: “I don’t want to donate my eyes because I don’t want people to see what I’ve seen.” “Gingers can’t be American.” “Yay! I got a D in French.” I just want to clarify the French grade, though. I don’t want to seem like I think I’m better than anyone because of grades.
I wrote this one down because she interrupted other people’s learning and shouted this out in the middle of the lesson. Honestly, as long as anyone tries in their test it’s fine, but she was on her phone most of the time.
101. Silly Rabbit, Tricks Are for Kids
I was 15 or 16 and teaching kids at church. It was Easter, and one little boy comes in crying up a storm. Nothing that my friend and I do can console him. About halfway through, he stops and just sniffles. At the end when the parents come and pick them up, he sees his dad and starts crying again, telling his dad that he doesn't want anything to do with him.
His mom comes and gets him, and my friend and I tell her about her son. She was trying SO HARD not to laugh and told us why. The boy’s dad hit a rabbit on the way to church this morning, and the boy started to cry, thinking it was the Easter Bunny. Maybe not the smartest kid.
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