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

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

One of the kids in my grade just happened to be the son of my teacher at the time. He did not like me because the girl he liked was giving me attention. We’ll, one day he caught us holding hands (hard-core, I know) so he went to his mom, my teacher, and said I punched him in the face and had been bullying him. I never ever bullied anyone, especially him, and certainly never hit him or anything of the sort. Not once. But it was my word against his and obviously my teacher sided with her son. I had to stay after school everyday for something like 2 weeks. She never treated me the same again. I’m still salty about that. He totally got me. That ginger motherfucker. Jesse, if you’re out there somewhere, fuck you.

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

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

Not wanting to play sports.

Not really a strange reason, but I have adhd, and I had a horrible teacher in 4th grade that sent me to the principal for being distracted in class. She was well aware I was in Special Ed and she didn’t care. I was terrified, I never went to the principle, I was a good kid.

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

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

Asking questions and wanting to learn more.

Detention for “smiling.” Teacher took it as disrespect and told me to stop, but given the ridiculousness of the request and my classmates’ giggling as I repeatedly tried and failed to put on a serious expression, I was kinda doomed.

Also not saying I deserved it, but I had broken plenty of rules and not gotten in trouble so it felt fair enough.

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

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

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

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

It was an important early lesson in distrusting authority.

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

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

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

In computer class I searched “gay porn” on my friends computer when while he was gone. The teacher saw me do it and sent me to the principal’s office where I got in trouble for being gay. When I got home my parents were also upset. Apparently the principal called them to tell them I was gay! I was really confused as to why being gay seemed to be the issue and not searching for porn on a school computer and that’s how I learned about homophobia!

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

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

“OPEN UP. I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE”

So we open the door, sheepishly.

“WHAT WERE YOU BOYS DOING IN THERE?”

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

“Smoking, sir”

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

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

Someone – I don’t know who – claimed I had broken into a classroom. I had not. They could not prove I had. There was no clear motive. Just an allegation. I felt like the principal had an axe to grind with me throughout high school and in hindsight my attitude and responses like, “I don’t want to be here at all. Why would I break into a classroom that I have zero interest in being in?” probably did not help.

Ended with me getting a three day suspension. My parents seemed to think the whole ordeal was really stupid. If they doubted I was telling the truth, they didn’t say it and I didn’t get into any more trouble at home.

When I was in high school one lunchtime I was sitting there reading sci fi by myself like a total nerd and some other kids were sitting nearby and they started smoking cigarettes, which was against the rules. Anyway a teacher saw them just as the lunch period ended and the teacher said: “all right You, You, You, and You stay behind!” And the teacher pointed at me, because I was nearby. I was like: wow, I haven’t been in trouble before! I was writing a lot of short fiction and poetry at the time so I thought it’d be a good experience. So I sat there and listened for a while as the teacher berated the kids. But eventually I realized I’d gotten all I was gonna get from this teacher’s unimaginative lecture, so I stood up and was like: I gotta go to class. The teacher glared at me and was gonna go off, but the other kids were cool, they were like nah he wasn’t a part of this. The teacher looked at me, looked at my sci fi book, looked at me again, then realized yeah these kids would never have anything to do with this dork. So they let me run off to class.