School is full of happenings—some good, some bad, and some downright crazy. These Redditors recall some of the most unforgettable incidents at school that left them and their peers reeling.
1. Date Of Doom
One of the guys at our high school thought it would be funny to pretend he had lost his life in a car accident on a specific date. He didn't show up for class and had friends spread rumors right at the beginning of the day about it. People were grieving because he was part of the popular group, and just well-known all around.
Near the middle of the day, he walked in smiling and laughing; people were shocked but amused. But here's the horrifying part. Exactly a year later—on that day—he lost his life in a car wreck due to him and three others crossing the border between states. The girl driving tried to swerve due to an armadillo.
Out of the four people, he was the only one who didn’t live. People thought it was him trying to pull the same joke again that year around, but no.
2. The Poolberry Dough Boy
For a senior prank, someone dumped a few hundred pounds of flour and yeast into the school's indoor pool in hopes of turning it into a giant glob of dough, I suppose. Of course, it didn’t work. The only result was that it caused about $100K in damages to the plumbing, pumps, filters, etc. Not only that but the prankster was never caught.
3. Too Many Teen Mamas
We had so many pregnant teen girls that they had their own gym class. I was a teenager in the late 90s and grew up in the southeastern United States. It was a suburban area where a ton of people (still) identify as Evangelical Christians; it’s also called the Bible Belt.
The required education classes didn’t teach anything except for “Just Say No," so there were girls who thought jumping up and down would prevent pregnancy—not kidding. Oh, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. These were really sheltered girls who would attend purity dances, so it was quite a scandal that so many were pregnant at the same time.
Most of the baby daddies were just dumb teenage boys who didn’t know the facts of life. There was no internet at the time, so it’s not like teens could get information on their own, especially if they were from a super religious background.
A girl on my street was “sent away” to live with an aunt when she got pregnant. Also, the pregnant girl gym class was technically for the physically disabled kids. Hence, a friend of mine who had a fake leg was in the same class. Just this one poor guy and 30 pregnant 16-year-olds.
4. Mr. Cool Was A Fool
The coolest guy in school was an amazing guitarist, really good at fingerpicking, super lovely, and talked to everyone; even the teachers loved him. He was in my homeroom. He was older, but he used to let me sit near him sometimes.
One weekend, he went out with some friends to play with firecrackers. Where I lived, firecrackers are against the law because of the bushfire risk. The guy BLEW OFF ALL OF HIS FINGERS ON BOTH HANDS. He didn't come back to school for a few months.
Then one day, he came back, sat in the corner with a hoodie over his face and his hands buried deep in his pockets. He never spoke to anyone again, couldn't play guitar, and couldn't even open a door. It was so heart-wrenching, and we were all so sad for him.
5. A Pretty Person’s Mess
It was 1982 in rural Indiana. Someone went into the bathroom, lit up, and stuck the fuse from a quarterstick/M-80 into the other end. A nightmare ensued. It destroyed one toilet and a section of the wall. The state authorities' explosives squad was called in, along with trained dogs, and even the FBI.
I was one of those questioned as I was the typical burnout kid. I knew who did it. It was one of the “pretty people," as they were called back then. He even kinda confirmed it while trashed at our 30th reunion.
6. Who’s The Poopertrator?
There was a “poop-a-traitor” leaving smeared poo around the walls in the bathroom. I found one, and I’ll never forget it. It was a picture of a flower and sun drawn in poop. There were several incidents before the person was caught “brown-handed," and there were several jokes about “code browns” flying around.
7. Sniffing Out The Source
We had a music teacher who absolutely doused herself in perfume. It was like a cloud all around her all day, every day. You could pretty much smell her before you saw her. We had music after lunch, so a few of us were in the room to spend the remaining 10 minutes of lunch.
One girl went through her desk and found her perfume and sprayed it once laughing that she was Mrs X. I still can't believe what happened next. A few minutes later, Mrs X walked in, sniffed, and started looking around. We all thought we were in trouble because she must have known we were in the drawers.
She then proceeded to tell the girls that they shouldn't wear such cheap, nasty perfume because now her room stunk of cheap perfume. I never tried harder to stifle a laugh in my life.
8. Rocketman Caused A Ruckus
One of the science teachers thought having a class project around creating mini rockets would be a fun little activity. Well, unfortunately, he didn’t notify the school where or when they were going to test these. So, the school went into lockdown because of the explosions, and he and his class ended up getting locked out of the school.
LightField Studios ,Shutterstock
9. The Class Of 2008
There were several incidents, all involving the sophomores, when I was a senior. Like, there was something seriously wrong with the class of 2008. One kid started printing $20 bills from his dad's office. Apparently, he was so good at it, the Secret Service paid him a visit. There were also multiple incidents regarding drinking on campus.
My class wasn't innocent in this, we all at one time passed around a bottle of spiked Gatorade, but these kids drank to such excess that they had to be hospitalized. It got to the point where the school banned all water bottles and drinks from home. And finally, there was the great thermometer incident of 2006.
A group of sophomores broke open an old glass thermometer and played with the mercury inside. They did this in the cafeteria before the first bell. So, around the second period, an announcement was made telling everyone who was in the cafeteria before the first bell to report to the auditorium immediately.
A third of the school showed up, myself included. They then proceeded to lock us in and informed us we have to wait to be cleared by a hazmat team. Around 2–3 PM, some rumor started that Hazmat had arrived and was ready to start checking students. This led to hundreds of kids gathering around the stage of the auditorium.
A crowd crush almost occurred. One kid was wheeled off on a stretcher with thankfully minor injuries. Meanwhile, the hazmat team took their sweet time getting there and we didn't leave the school until 6–7 PM. Those of us with jobs basically lost a day's pay. All of this, because some idiot wanted to play with mercury.
It's been 17 years, and I still wanna throat punch the three stooges who did that.
The National Guard, CC BY 2.0,Wikimedia Commons
10. A Foul Farewell
During senior year, classes would finish two weeks before exams started, and exams would go on for two weeks. Then two weeks later, there was the graduation and prom. On the last day of classes, the seniors got sent off. It was a pretty big deal, with the junior class lining up to hand out flowers and throw confetti as the seniors left the main school building in a procession.
It was a really special event and a part of the larger graduation festivities. Around 30 people from my class of 120 decided to have an all-night party and get absolutely hammered. They showed up to school absolutely trashed—and the consequences were just vile.
They were spewing in the hallways and running around the outside bench areas, screaming and hitting chairs. They didn't show up to any of their classes, and that was important for the send-off on the last day. By 11 AM, the administration had had enough.
Junior classes and below still had about a month of classes to go, so they didn't care about the noisy idiots outside their windows. The dean ended up calling a school assembly where he canceled the send-off and gave a speech instead about how disappointed he was in my entire graduating year.
Everyone in my graduating class was tossed off the school grounds.
11. A Tough Tackle
A friend of mine in high school had a brain aneurysm as a sophomore. He'd been complaining for a few days about sudden, brief, very intense headaches. He was on the JV football team and went to play a game. He took a hard tackle, and the aneurysm ruptured. That actually turned out to be the luckiest possible time for it to happen.
The school always had an ambulance on call at the side of the field during football games, so he was in the hands of EMTs within a minute of people realizing something was wrong. He was rushed to the hospital. They removed part of his skull to reduce the pressure on his brain and he spent a week or two in an induced coma.
In an absolute miracle, he made about as complete of a recovery as one can from that kind of injury. The only long-term effect was some very minor loss of muscle control on the left side of his face, so his smile was a little crooked.
12. Something Was Cooking In The Kitchen
There was a guy who broke up with his girlfriend and started dating someone new. The whole situation took a nightmarish turn. The ex went into a jealous rage, took a knife from cooking class, pulled the new girl aside at lunch to “talk," and nearly took her life.
She had multiple wounds, including one that was dangerously close to her heart. She survived, and the ex went to juvie.
13. Payback Time
When I was a junior in high school, a kid in the grade below me set our school on fire and successfully burned down a big part of it. It happened in April on the Monday after prom. He got caught cheating on the standardized tests that the state of Texas required us to take at that time, and this is how he chose to retaliate for not getting to finish his test.
We had just taken the exams, and they were all in the front office waiting to get shipped to the state. Therefore, they all burned and we had to retake them.
14. Undercover Brother
We had the States’ largest sting operation in our school. It began when a “senior” who looked 25 started at the school. He wouldn’t date any girls, had horrible grades, and missed a lot of school. This undercover officer was trying to buy illicit substances on school property. He was there for several months.
One day we were all sitting in class, and in the class next to us, a few officers, plus the principal, started pulling students out of classes and cuffing them. It turned out something like 20+ kids were taken into custody—plus some parents—in the whole operation. It made the front page of the AJC with photos and everything.
15. Snow Day Destruction
Two kids broke a window to get a long snow day. When that failed, they broke into the school and trashed it. They threw paint and dirt everywhere, ruined the cafeteria with mayo and ketchup from the machines, destroyed the classrooms of teachers they didn't like, broke windows, and left the anatomy and physiology cat carcasses out overnight on the upper floor—they thought the cats would rot despite being preserved with formaldehyde—and generally messed the place up.
The school had to replace the gym floor. The theater club had to redo some props and costumes, which was extra terrible because the play that year was I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a story about the Holocaust. They ONLY destroyed the Jewish character costumes, but not the two SS officer costumes. However, they made one key mistake.
These idiots did this while dressed in hoodies from a different school. They didn't cover their faces, so the CCTV cameras caught everything. We got a week off while they cleaned, the losers got expelled, and the one senior in the group didn't get to graduate.
16. The End For The Starting Lineup
It was high school football Friday. One of the players emancipated himself and had a small shack out in the woods; he was a big kegger. An older kid who had graduated showed up at some point. Later that night, the older kid drove into the rear end of a payloader and lost his life.
An investigation ensued, which led to many underage kids getting in trouble. The starting football lineup was all involved, and it wrecked the season. The emancipated kid took all the trouble. We even had an assembly and the principal said, “Heads will roll”.
prostooleh , Freepik
17. A Love Letter Sealed His Fate
A girl was sleeping with our biology teacher, who was married and had three kids in college. He was by far the most respected teacher at the school. She was 17 and he was nearly 50.
There was some suspicion, but nobody knew it was happening until he broke up with her in a long love letter about how bad he felt for falling in love with her while he had a wife. That letter would be his downfall.
She showed that letter to most of the school, the guidance counselor, and the authorities. He spent a year behind bars, and about ten on probation, became an offender, his wife left him, and his kids disowned him.
18. Jack And Jill Doing It On The Hill
My high school had a lot of pine trees in the front grounds, with an adjacent area of open lawn and low shrubs that sloped down to the main road in front. The word spread like wildfire between classes one day that two senior students were doing it on the sloping grass area during class time, hidden from the school area but in full view of cars driving past.
Some of these drivers called the school to complain, and three teachers were sent out to locate the two students and enforce decency, so to speak.
19. What’s In The Bag?
There was a suitcase that was left unattended across the street from the school, just standing upright on the sidewalk. It had been there for hours, so the principal freaked out. She thought it was an explosive. The authorities arrived, followed by twenty million cruisers, while the students went on lockdown.
It turned out some dude genuinely just forgot his suitcase by accident, and all of that was for nothing. Memes were made about it and were uploaded to the unofficial school Instagram DURING the lockdown.
freepik, Freepik
20. The Phantom Pooper
We had your standard public school stuff—creepy teachers, fights at least weekly, etc. However, the one that stands out above all is the Phantom Pooper. The Phantom Pooper is a still unidentified student who, in between the two busiest lunch periods of the day, managed to take a massive, stinky dump in the middle of the hallway leading to the cafeteria.
Nobody saw who did it, and somehow the cameras caught nothing. The school barely even tried to catch him. They knew they were no match for the sheer willpower of the Phantom Pooper.
freepik, Freepik
21. Two Tales Tied For The Win
There are two that I can never choose between. Students fell through the ceiling in the locker room once because they were up there doing the deed. The track girls were changing when BOOM, unclothed bodies hit the floor.
The other big one was our band director, who was taken into custody for grooming and getting busy with students. The principal and AP were both turning a blind eye to this and allowed him to take one of the students on a field trip alone where they shared a hotel room. She was 14.
22. Beware The Bush Man
Our high school was located pretty close to a nearby shopping center which everyone naturally congregated at after school. Being the lazy teenagers that we were, we never wanted to walk the long way around following the streets, and, instead, pretty much everyone took a shortcut through a bushland park that cut through behind houses and easily cut the walk in half.
Anyone walking to school from that direction in the mornings would take the same shortcut. This was a public path that cut through thick bushland. There was a paved walking track and a second “off the beaten path” track, which went through even thicker bush. So, aside from some of the houses that backed onto the park, it was a pretty private spot with lots of places to hide.
One day at the morning assembly, we got a disturbing warning. It was about some creepy old guy who had been approaching students alone in the park. We were sternly warned not to go down that path even though it was a shortcut, or at the very least don't walk it alone. Of course, this didn't stop anyone.
This became a semi-regular occurrence which we were subsequently warned about for the next 3–4 years. Nobody ever did anything about it more than that, and he was never identified. Around the same time, our school also started getting reported for “a student's bad behavior in public," and generally being a public nuisance.
It turned out that this was not done by a student but by some 40-something-year-old dude wearing our school’s uniform. No one knows why he was dressing up as one of our students, and he was never caught. I always wondered if these two incidents were the same guy.
23. Food Fight Friction
Some of the popular kids decided to plan a food fight during the last few weeks of school. Only a few of them and their friends knew when it was going to happen. Well, it happened, and the whole cafeteria smelled like trash for those last weeks because of all the food that was stuck in places janitors couldn’t reach.
Worse yet, the whole 8th grade got punished because of those few students, even though most people didn’t know a food fight was going to happen. The school ended up canceling our end-of-year field trip to celebrate the last year in middle school.
24. No Longer the Big Man On Campus
The vice principal in charge of attendance told a BMOC on the football team that he couldn't play because he had missed too many days or had been late too many times. He did not care for that. So, he got two other football players with him—twin sons of one of the teachers—and set fire to the vice principal's office or rather tried to.
They actually made a Molotov cocktail but made it wrong, so it didn't actually break and burn; it was more like a candle. But they did break the window to get into the office, which triggered an alarm. Officers showed up and cuffed all three. The BMOC ended up thrashing out the back window of the squad car and got into the driver's seat, where the officer had left the keys in the ignition.
He drove off, and at the first intersection outside the school, T-boned another cruiser that was arriving, breaking that officer’s leg. The BMOC ended up behind bars, the twin sons were expelled, and the teacher quit.
25. Hard Times For Some
I went to two separate high schools, one for my freshman year and the other for the remainder of high school. While the first high school incident is more light-hearted and funny, the second one is more serious. The first occurred during a talent show the school hosted.
One student told a joke but had technical difficulties. He apologized, saying, “Sorry, this is very hard”. Out of nowhere, the principal yelled out, “THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID," and everyone there erupted in laughter. The principal was very reserved and closed off, so no one expected that joke from him.
The second incident was when this brother and sister duo, who hardly did any work at all, were passing due to bribing their teachers. They were eventually caught and suspended, and the teachers were fired. I still can’t believe it happened.
26. Don’t Mess With The Best
Not my high school, but my dad’s high school. He was sitting in class back in the late 70s or maybe early 80s, and two random guys barged into class with hunting blades. Apparently, a kid in the class had gotten involved with the wrong people. The teacher asked them politely to leave, but they refused. But there was something they didn't know.
My dad’s teacher was a former Green Beret. The moment they went for the kid, the teacher gave one a compound fracture through his leg, and the other ended up with a few broken ribs. Officers came and took them away, and all was fine after that, but it was absolutely wild.
27. It Was An Offer They Couldn’t Refuse
My school's "incident" occurred in the fall of 1970 at our middle school book fair. We would be excused from class in small groups and could go browse the racks of books for sale in the atrium for 15 minutes or so. Some nitwit school admin had included the extremely naughty book The Godfather on the order sheet for the fair.
On approximately page 38, there is a VERY detailed depiction of Sonny Corleone sleeping with one of his sister's bridesmaids up against a door during the reception. Well, it didn't take a group of 8th graders more than two hot seconds to discover this passage, and word got out quickly, electrifying the student body.
We all had to be DRAGGED back to our classrooms because so many people were in line to read "the racy scene". This was 1970 in Texas, with no internet, little education, and only three TV networks. All of us girls were just scandalized but wouldn't turn loose the book copies until we read every last word.
28. The Magic Of Disney Did Them In
For the senior trip, we went to Walt Disney World. The first day was at the Magic Kingdom. We were a group of a hundred there for the whole day. At some point, someone noticed that the Disney security in the merch stores and kiosks was lax. When that first person lifted that first big stuffed Mickey Mouse, they commented to some of our classmates how easy it was to do.
So all of a sudden, a dozen or so of my classmates started hitting Disney points of sales for the big animals. They’d get something and give it to a classmate. They were all amused that none of them were stopped, questioned, or even caught. This went on the whole day. At the end of the day, as night fell, we’d all come back together at the bus.
Nearly everybody had a big stuffed Disney character over their shoulders. But then the other shoe dropped. As people were getting onto the bus, some plain-clothed Disney loss prevention officers made an announcement to all of us. “If you have an item that was not paid for, we need for you to put it in a pile on this spot”.
They had every theft on video. This was the mid-90s, not today where video is more ubiquitous. Disney played it chill not to make a scene in the park. Our young teenage minds were too short-sighted to realize inaction wasn’t just patience. The pile by the end looked like a skyscraper.
There were dozens of the big stuffed Disney characters and a lot of more modest sizes. Gifts for the students’ families back home, mementos for the visit to the happiest place on earth, all in this gigantic pile. Disney let some of the smallest thieves who may have swiped a single toy go with a pat on the wrist, but the originators and ring leaders, they took back with them.
Some of my classmates went to the Disney prison, the one that Ron DeSantis wants to shut down. I don’t know if they got charged, but they were banned from Disney properties and sent back home on a Greyhound bus.
29. Off-Campus Calamity
We had off-campus lunch. You could go anywhere around as long as you were back in 45 minutes. It had been a tradition for the school's entire 60+ years. The entire mile or so surrounding the school had tons of small carryout restaurants. During my senior year, a girl snuck out of her middle school to meet her freshman boyfriend.
She stopped at one of the restaurants for ice cream, then left the restaurant and stepped off the curb into the highway, directly into the side of an 18-wheeler. Sixty years of off-campus lunch around that highway, and that was the first serious accident. The school banned leaving campus within days.
The local businesses tried to come up with a compromise, like having a shuttle service, a walkway bridge over the intersection, etc. However, the school refused to even discuss it. We lodged protests and walkouts, but nothing. One life lost is too many, is what they kept saying. Within a few years, almost all of those restaurants closed and sat empty.
The whole area around the school looked like a ghost town, which then became the place to go for illicit substances.
30. Kung-Fu Friars
There were some guys from a Catholic Christian boarding school studying to be priests who attended regular classes at my high school but then had other lessons and activities and slept at the boarding school. One day it was fire alarm simulation day.
After it rang, the school became like a fair with activities and stuff. Part of the activities was this karate simulation hosted by the priest dudes. They did some safe moves among themselves and asked if anyone in the audience would like to give it a try. There was this beefy dude who said yes.
People were cheering, and he entered the arena and started actually hitting the karate priest with fists, legs, and real fighting. Once the priest found out it was for real, he went into beast mode and beat the daylights out of the beefy dude.
After school, the beefy dude called his friends to beat up the priest, thinking the priest would have no chance against five. But, the next day, there was a full van of karate priests who beat the daylights out of the beefy dude and his friends. Nobody ever again messed with the karate priests.
31. I Got Creative With Ketchup
I pulled a pretty fun act of vandalism when I was 16 years old, near the end of my junior year in high school. One of my senior friends really wanted to "Just, you know, take one of those five-gallon bags of ketchup they got by the condiment dispensers and just DO something with it".
I was in my junior year and feeling particularly fatalistic about my young life.I thought, "Well, I'll take on the risk and put it in my hoodie on the way out from lunch period". I smiled at the principal while I walked past him with it. It sat at the bottom of my locker for probably a good month and a half as I'd weighed what to do with it.
But, I never really nailed down anything special enough because it was a five-gallon bag of ketchup. We thought "Maybe let's put it in the school elevator during the blood drive with a sticky note saying ‘US Red Cross Donation,'" or something like that. However, my depression led me to a slightly more destructive solution.
We had a three-story stairwell in our school which had a pretty decently-sized central shaft. It was easy enough for the bag to fall through unimpeded. I had decided that's where I was going to drop this thing, and I assembled an audience.
Right before gym class, my friends and I gathered at the edge of the railing, and I flopped it out of my backpack over the edge. I still regret to this day not actually watching the thing fall, but I will NEVER forget the sound that it made. Just imagine a percussive, thick-sounding "SPLACK," echoing off the walls of a three-story stairwell.
Apparently, I caught two cheerleaders with the spray from it, ketchup coated all the walls and even the ceiling of the first floor, and well up the walls of the second story. It was an absolutely biblical mess. I thought I'd gotten away with it when I went to gym class and made it through the whole period without so much as a question or an inkling from any teachers or administrators.
Then, the principal walked into the locker room after gym class and asked for me. Honestly, I was kind of surprised that he didn't already know me, as he'd personally congratulated me for my roles in school plays before this incident. He sat me down in his office and said, "What WERE YOU THINKING?!"
I was made to help the janitor clean it all up and affectionately became known by her as "the Ketchup Boy". I was lucky I wasn’t fined more than the price of a couple of ceiling tiles, or charged with vandalism.
32. Chicken Of The Corn: Fields Of Terror
In the early 2000s, for the senior prank at my school, chickens were released into the courtyard of the school. It was not a very big area, was almost never used, and had weeds and tall grass. Classrooms and halls lined the area, but you could not see much as the weeds were several feet tall and thick. The doors were locked, and you really could never get in unless you had permission.
Seniors released a dozen chicks into the courtyard by dropping them in from a floor-level window. The prank became known to a small group and spread, but ultimately nothing came of it. It was overshadowed by another prank where a group drove large tractors and combines to school and parked them on the lawn, which involved the authorities being called.
Two years later, administrators changed, and it was determined that the courtyard would be open for students and faculty during certain hours. The janitor started the process of cutting down the weeds and grass to landscape, only to be besieged by an animal. The 6'5", nearly 400-pound janitor screamed and pounded on the door and window to get out.
He finally got out when a teacher ran down and opened the door. After calling animal control, 14 chickens and a very aggressive rooster were caught. Additionally, a bucket of chicks was recovered. After this, the school tried to press charges on the kids who released the animals and filed a civil lawsuit to recover damages.
Ultimately, they dropped the case due to circumstantial evidence and the statute of limitations. Amusingly, when the work to remove the grass/weeds continued, another five chickens were discovered, which caused the janitor to have a mental breakdown requiring a leave of absence.
The school enacted an expulsion policy going forward that any live animals brought on campus without approval would result in immediate expulsion and officer intervention.
33. Jock Smacked
A jock at school was always doing stupid stuff. He was like, "Here's your ball," and booted it away to the top of the building kind of stupid. He was a jock who thought he was the king there. Well, one day, he decided to put his chair on the outside of the bar, right next to some steps that everyone had to go through, and stretched his legs onto the steps.
Doing this made some of the students deviate from their path so that they would not trip on his legs. Yeah—some. One seventh-grader was distracted and didn't see the legs, tripped, and face-planted on the cement floor. Our jock friend got up and said, “You better clean my shoes," to which the seventh-grader told him to take a hike.
The jock's reaction was chilling. He smacked the kid, who ran away crying, "Wait until the afternoon! You'll see! You'll see!" Our jock friend didn't pay any attention to this warning, and once he stepped out of school, he was grabbed by the neck by a seven-foot-tall guy, who was the kid’s uncle.
He told the jock, "You see that kid? Remember him?" He proceeded to punch him several times in the face. Blood started spewing. I was walking outside the school when I saw the uncle "cheese grating" the jock's face on these metal bars that had cement on them. His face was completely destroyed.
He must've fainted from shock after that. Finally, one of the parents there called the authorities. He was taken to the hospital and didn't come to school for months. Now, he's the nicest guy. Go figure.
master1305, Freepik
34. Access Denied
At one point, my school decided to crack down on anyone who had ever connected to the TOR Network from the school Wi-Fi, including on personal devices. Over the course of a day or two, around 200 students were informed that they were banned from using all electronic devices, including those required for classwork, while in school for a semester.
I remember walking into a programming class and the teacher asking anyone who still had computer access to raise their hand. No one did.
35. Coaches That Made The Headlines
Back in the 90s, one night after a football game, the principal walked in on all the coaches drinking brew and watching racy videos in the locker room. The video was of one of the coaches with an underaged student. A huge investigation ensued that turned the entire school on its head.
The coaches were all fired and charged, good teachers were leaving the school because they didn't want to be associated with the scandal, and our classes and schedules were in shambles because of the lack of teachers. It was such a big thing that it made national headlines, and Jay Leno even made a joke about it on The Tonight Show.
Library of Congress Life, CC0, Wikimedia Commons
36. Sensitivity Slaying
One of our Japanese teachers got sliced in the back by a South Korean exchange student. Apparently, he had said some pretty insensitive things about North Korea versus South Korea, and the next day the student came to school with a blade. The teacher was okay, and the student was taken into custody and imprisoned for 18 months.
37. Perfecting The Pumpkin Projectile
We had one physics teacher, and every year he’d throw a pumpkin launcher contest. Normally, people make slingshots, catapults, and rarely, an air cannon if you built it from scratch. The rule was just “no combustibles”. So while everyone toiled away for weeks, I came up with the brilliant idea of sealing off one end of an average pumpkin-size PVC pipe, dropping a dry ice bomb in, and a pumpkin quickly after.
Because it’s not technically “combustible," it’s just a bottle exploding, I skirted the rules. I made it a couple of days before it was due, and it worked perfectly and launched the pumpkin. I won the competition, and from then on, he had to make a specific rule about not using dry ice devices.
wayhomestudio , Freepik
38. Paging Mike Hunt
The girl reading the morning announcements would read through all of the pieces of paper in the announcement box. One day, one of the student office aides added an extra slip of paper with this announcement. It said, “Would Mike Hunt please come to the office”. The announcement girl dutifully read it. What a mistake!
The entire school cracked up. I remember, about four minutes later, being in the office and seeing the 65-year-old secretary holding the offending announcement, trying to explain it to our principal. We are about to celebrate our 40th class reunion, and it still gets a laugh.
39. Locker Loot-Out
One kid decided, as a joke, to take a pair of bolt cutters to every locker in the main building’s hallways. He bragged about it to multiple people. Hundreds of lockers were left open, and people who came to school early looted them. They even destroyed textbooks just for funsies. There were no cameras at the time.
The kid was charged with the destruction of school property and theft of everything, even though he said he hadn't taken anything. People were claiming everything from shoes to phones as being taken. Luckily, his parents were rich and just paid off all the claims, which amounted to thousands and thousands of dollars.
They had to repay the school, and he still faced charges that pretty much amounted to more fines and taps on the wrist.
40. Squad Goals
After coming back from the summer in my senior year, we found out the principal everyone admired and looked up to was sleeping with the entire varsity cheerleading squad and was even seen at a local mall, hand in hand with one of these girls, while she was still a minor. He had a wife of more than 20 years and two teenage children who went to a school in the next town over.
I heard they had to switch schools to be in a different district because they were being harassed so badly. I’m pretty sure the old principal went to prison, too. We ended up getting a new principal who used to direct the marching band, so as a music student, that was cool.
41. Jiminy Crickets! What Did They Do?
During the last assembly for my Grade 12 year, a few other Grade 12 students decided this would be the day to prank the heck out of the school. One guy threw a few chickens into the assembly. Apparently, he was going to do a skunk initially but luckily decided against it.
Another scattered a ton of crickets throughout the library, and the rest of them silly-stringed the vice principal. The cleanup required was ridiculous. One of the chickens got lost during the assembly and was found a few days later hiding in some shrubbery, and they had to call an exterminator to deal with the crickets.
It was funny initially until you realized the full extent of the damage.
42. It Was A Game Of Risk
It was the middle of winter in Michigan, and I was president of the Strategy Club. I had over $400 worth of Risk and Heroscape games with me. I was sitting in math class when the fire alarm went off. We all assumed that it was a drill. We all got outside and immediately smelled smoke—oily smoke.
Three students had planned on setting our school on fire. One backed out but two actually did. They had set the toilet paper dispensers on fire, hoping that the toilet paper would burn and set the plastic on fire. I’m not sure what they thought was going to burn after that, maybe the ceiling. The fire was out by the time the fire department showed up. I thought for sure I was losing my nerdy investment, which was a lot for a high school student, especially since I bought them myself.
Their plan really fell apart when they brought us into the gym at the middle school. One of the arsonists hopped off the bleachers and hit the floor which was wet and slippery. His lighter flew out of his pocket right in front of our vice principal. He looked up and knew he was caught. Then, he gave up the other two really fast. The one who chickened out actually pulled the fire alarm in a warning.
43. Revenge Of The Spider Woman
Freshman year, we were sitting on the floor in three rows in a specialized drama room. Our drama teacher, Mr. A, was off for training one day. He was a relatively calm person. So, we had a supply teacher that day, Mrs. B. We hadn't had her before, so we assumed she'd be nice; we were half right.
The lesson got going, and we watched a video about the scene we'd have to re-enact. While she was figuring out how to work the computer with some other boy, Jake, helping her, she let some people who were the class clowns muck about. I threw them a prop plastic spider and they began to throw it around.
The whole class was on the floor laughing, even Mrs B; she was finding it funny. I got the spider passed back to me to put away when someone behind me asked for it. Reluctantly, I gave it to them. It got passed between them for a while until someone found it funny to get one of the clowns' attention and throw it at them. It missed and hit Mrs B. The class went silent.
She asked, “Who THREW THIS?" She started threatening whoever threw it with a suspension and said it was harassment because it touched somewhere she didn't want it to touch.
A few people went over to her and asked if they could speak to another staff member, myself included. We tried to speak to someone, but they were either teaching or not there. So, as no one wanted to own up, she was going to give everyone in the class a detention. Luckily, she didn’t know how to do that, so she confiscated the spider and we left class a little shocked and upset, but otherwise, we carried on with our day.
A few days later, we needed a substitute teacher again for a different subject. Mrs B ended up covering. She walked over to me and said, “Now what you did was very hurtful to me because it was assault and it hurt me and that is a criminal offense. If I were here to be have done [sic] things like that, then I would not walk into the school and work. You have been punished and move on with your life, okay? Now don't come into my lesson with your head down and get back to work”.
I explained to her it wasn't me but she didn’t believe me. Eventually, a higher-level staff member, Mrs C, got involved and sorted out the problem. We got the spider back and Mrs B is now known as spider woman.
44. Sharpie Shut Down
People kept writing notes to each other on their lockers. It wasn't anything offensive, just stuff like, "Meet my place 5:30 PM," and it all wiped off super easy as long as you used a Sharpie, which is why they did it. The staff didn't like it either way and decided to go on a big power trip about it.
They decided they would keep fighting until eventually they were "forced" to straight-up ban Sharpies because of it. Anyone caught with a Sharpie from that day on was suspended on the spot with a three-mark system that would lead to potential expulsion. All over having a writing utensil in a school and using it to communicate effectively.
Nicole Glass Photography, Shutterstock
45. The Paint Job
The seniors painted a junior’s brand-new truck during school. It was Homecoming week, and there was a Powderpuff game the Friday before the normal football game. The juniors and seniors had been pulling pranks all week. This guy really didn't deserve it, but his truck was fresh off the lot, and he was one of the popular kids and football players.
They painted it with house paint in our school colors. No one was taken into custody, but they threatened to cancel the Powderpuff game entirely. The guys who did it were suspended and had to pay to have the truck professionally repainted.
46. Backfired Locker Ban
We got lockers banned for an entire semester, since some kids thought it would be funny to start storing full week-old milk cartons in unused lockers. This was one of those “uptight” public schools that try to act like a private school, so we couldn't store stuff in classes as it was too messy and untidy.
So, after that first semester, everyone started to lay their stuff in the halls, duct tape supplies to the locked lockers or on top of the slanted lockers. Needless to say, we got our locker privileges back. Ever since, we have referred to it as “the incident”.
Serhii Yevdokymov , Shutterstock
47. A Sponge-Sucking Prank Soiled The School
The senior class prank thought it’d be cool to plug all the plumbing in the building, which was coincidentally the original and oldest building on campus. Fifteen students descended on that building quietly in the morning of finals, when seniors were already out and done, so it was not suspicious at all.
They dropped multiple compressed car wash sponges down every single toilet in the building. So, with two bathrooms per floor, we’re talking about 20 sponges per floor. These had the desired impact and expanded in the still original plumbing, some of which had been run through concrete and caused all the toilets to back up. But it was so much worse than they ever imagined.
The problem was that something else had been dropped down some of the toilets and whatever it was, made these original pipes shatter in multiple places, causing some sewage to spray into classrooms and halls, flooding the basement/utility area.
The end result was that the building of an at-capacity school had to be fully gutted and renovated, causing massive strain on the school for the following year. They needed temporary classrooms and trailers. Every single person involved was found, expelled, and hit with a lot of charges as they were all adults.
stockking, Freepik
48. He Wasn’t Looking For Trouble
It was Halloween Eve, and some people were dressed up. The school went on full lockdown, with the SWAT team, officers, locked doors, and all of us hiding and ducking in a corner. Someone was walking around with a long dagger, dressed in a hooded cape.
They captured the guy, and it turned out to be one of my friends, who was the nerdiest, quietest, most harmless guy I've ever met. He dressed as Harry Potter, and he had a wand, not a dagger. We all went back to our regular school day. Almost 10 years later, we still all bring it up from time to time.
49. The Final Climbdown
I remember a kid in primary school who was one crazy cat and in trouble all the time. He was busted so many times for climbing up onto the school roof. He would just sit up there and eat his lunch and entertain the crowd below. He could climb anything. Kids would dare him all the time to climb something, and he would.
He would definitely have been diagnosed with ADHD if he was with us now. In high school, he was still as crazy as ever. He was the class clown and always had everyone in stitches with his stories and antics. But he was destined for the most tragic end.
Sadly, he had been drinking on his 16th birthday and was electrocuted alive after climbing one of those huge electrical pylons that look like the Eiffel Tower.
50. Rallying Around Watermelon Girl
We had an annual celebration called “Rally Day” where everyone would dress up in school colors and basically party during a normal school day. Some of the more rebellious kids would actively be drinking between classes, so it was pretty common to see some wild stuff throughout the day.
I was sitting in history class listening to a standard history lecture when the door to the classroom slowly opened. The entire class went silent since this teacher was usually pretty strict about students showing up late. But the person who walked through the door wasn’t from our class. When I saw her—I did a double-take.
It was a girl with long dark hair, maybe mid-20s, carrying a watermelon on her head. After noticing the watermelon, I quickly noticed she had no shirt on. My initial thought was, “Nice, I love Rally Day”. But after she walked a bit further into the classroom, I also noticed she had no pants on, or any other clothes for that matter.
It was just her and the watermelon. This was when my thoughts changed to, “OK, something very not normal is going on here”. She walked in muttering something to herself, and everyone in the room was completely frozen, as our brains tried to catch up with what was happening.
She walked over to a desk where a girl was sitting, calmly set down the watermelon on the desk, then walked right back out of the classroom. A decently long moment passed where nobody in the classroom moved or spoke. Then we heard running footsteps as two officers ran up to the open door and asked if we saw the lady.
This broke the spell and the classroom erupted into a chorus of, “Whaaaaat?"Our teacher went and helped the officers, then came back and explained that some random people were in the park next to the school and one of them—watermelon girl—got chased by the authorities onto the campus.
He then said, “Yea, I think we’re done for today. You guys can just hang out or whatever”. I assume they caught her, but we didn’t hear anything more about it after that, so who knows?
Sources: Reddit,
