People From Around The World Share The Misdeed That Was Totally Worth The Punishment
People From Around The World Share The Misdeed That Was Totally Worth The Punishment
Childhood is a magical time. You have more free time than you ever will again, less responsibility, and more friends. Then why did we all blow it by getting in trouble? From harmless pranks to grand theft auto, (the crime, not the game) we gathered up some of the best stories of childhood shenanigans so you could relive that time again. Just, don't get grounded this time.
41. The show must go on
This just might be the nerdiest thing you read today.
Back in 1983, I was a junior in HS. I was in the A/V club, and also did stage lighting for the drama people. There was a new drama teacher, and he angered the entire stage-lighting crew, and they all "quit."
The same auditorium was also used by the local Children's Theater. That spring, they were putting on a production of Oliver! I got asked to do the lighting (basically running the board/all the cues, etc.) I agreed. I learned the entire show, and it was fairly complicated. Probably had sixty or so cues.
My school also sent out mid-term (we called them "interim reports") reports from the teachers if you were in danger of failing a subject.
So, the show was on Saturday afternoon, and Friday, an in-term report from my Chemistry teacher shows up saying I'm about to fail Chem. My father gets VERY upset and asks me why? I explain about the show, and about how I've been doing rehearsals for weeks, etc. He forbids me from doing any more stage lighting until I get my grades up. I agree with him, but explain that the show is literally tomorrow and the kids were counting on me, and no, literally no one, could replace me during the show. It would ruin the show to have someone up there trying to cue lights based on just following the script. Plus, no one had experience running the follow spot. Dad ignores me and says no, sorry, no way.
So the next day (the show is at 1:00 pm) I shut my bedroom door, tape a "studying, do not disturb" sign on my door and sneak out and go to the school for the show.
Around 2:00 pm, my father starts feeling bad that I've been in my room all day "studying" and brings me a sandwich, and discovers that I'm gone.
I do the show, the kids are happy, I come back home hoping that I might have gotten away with it, but almost sure by now the ruse was up. It was, I got grounded for a month for disobeying him and "lying" to him. It was worth it at the time. I knew I screwed up and accepted his punishment.
About a week later, one of the women who was deeply involved with Children's Theater told my mother what a fantastic job I'd done and how they simply couldn't have had a better lighting tech for that show, blah blah blah. Mom tells Dad, and Dad comes to me and, in his way, apologizes for not believing me that I was crucial to the show. He lifts my restrictions. This is mid-May, and our school lets out in mid-to-late-June.
I got a D+ in Chemistry.
40. Question everything, especially your elders. They are the ones that left the world such a mess for you, why would you take anything they say at face value?
Teacher in middle school tried to write me up for Saturday School for talking during an exam when the person who had done it had already fessed up. I asked him why I had to spend a Saturday in detention when someone else had already admitted to it.
He told me "Do not question your elders and eat the consequences you were fed by them".
So I crumbled up the pink slip and ate it in front of him.
My punishment was my mother buying me a spiral notebook for dinner.
39. Time is an illusion
My mom was always very strict about my curfew. When a girl from work asked me out for ice cream after the late shift I couldn’t refuse. I called my mom told her I was going on a date and I would be home later. She wasn’t very happy but I went anyway. That date was the start of one of my best relationships.
38. The world could always use more heroes
At my 11th birthday party, my step sisters son (who was also 11) hit me in the back if the head with a croquet ball. On purpose. Once I stopped crying, I punched him in the face hard enough to bloody his nose. My mom spanked me for it. No regrets. He was a mean little jerk who was always doing stuff then blaming it on me. After I fought back, he pretty much left me alone. And no, he didn't get in trouble for hitting me with the ball.
37. I guess you could say grandpa was in a sticky situation
My grandpa was searching for chapstick all around the house and I ran up to him, handing him a gluestick. I thought he'd realize and laugh. He didn't realize.
36. If you're gonna do the time, you may as well do the crime
One time, my younger brother told our mom I hit him. Just walked into my room and started screaming about me hitting him.
I hadn't even looked at him.
So of course, mom comes in, won't hear me AT ALL, and immediately grounds me. My younger brother has this stupid grin on his face. So mom's like, "You're grounded for hitting your brother."
And I thought, "Well, I'm already getting punished for hitting him..." I turned to him and punched him as hard as I could in his sternum. He instantly DROPPED. Then I go, "Alright. I'm grounded." And walk away.
Oddly enough, mom didn't say anything at that point. I like to think she realized what was up.
Bonus: My brother never pulled that joke again.
35. The classic "Help other people unless it impacts my life in any way" style of parenting
I let a friend do 4 loads of laundry in our basement while my parents weren't home because her family's washer and drier broke and they had 5 kids and no clean clothes. I didn't want my best friend to have to go to school in dirty clothes when I could help her.
My family was not poor by any means and we do laundry constantly so I didn't think there would be any problem with it. We had already finished and just folding the last load of clothes and putting it into her hamper bag when my parents got home.
They waited until she left to yell at me and then 'grounded' me, taking the door off of my room and removing all the 'fun' stuff from my room (books, art supplies, ect), and wasn't allowed to go anywhere but the school for 3 months.
I decided that they were being selfish jerks and continued to help my friend do laundry, we just made sure to limit it to 2 loads and made sure she was gone before they were home.
34. I would have got away with it too if it weren't for you meddling kids
I had a house party at 15 when my parents went away. It was a great party. I would have gotten away with it if a boy didn't break a Pane of glass on my dad's greenhouse. Was only grounded for a week and went 50/50 on the Pane with my twin sister
33. The road goes both ways
My mum once said that Carol from work had told her she needed to get THIS car. I asked her what she would do if Carol from work told her to jump in front of a bus.
32. Maybe don't lose your phone next time
I flew to Washington DC with some friends to see a concert. I told my parents I was at my friend's house for the weekend. I almost got away with it too, but I left my phone at the concert venue and someone was "nice enough" to look into it and dial my home number and let my parents know they found my phone in DC. This was back in the day when it was basically a flip phone so I would have preferred he stole it. Grounded for about 3 months, no phone, no computer, no TV.
I went to great lengths to hide the trip from my parents too. I switched my debit card to paperless (my dad was a snoop) The flight was really early in the morning, so for a week ahead of time I went to school early every day and told my parents that I had a study group before class, so it wouldn't seem odd that I was leaving so early that one day. I hid my car in a college parking lot. All to be ruined by some guy trying to do a good thing.
31. You're going to get some hop-ons
I took the car out on the joyride with my buddy when I only had my learners permit. It was worth it because we got to drive to the local park where everyone hung out to show how cool we were. They only caught me because when I was backing up I backed up into a hillside full of weeds and there were some weeds hanging from the tailpipe they noticed when they got home from work.
30. What a twist
I existed in what I jokingly called "the ground state" for my entire high school life in this garbage, gossiping cornfield-town. Eventually, I realized that one parent's desire for total control was going to guarantee that I'd always be grounded. When my Beetle was totaled with no fault on my part, my parents decided to keep the money and just say that I was grounded forever. My crime was, "everything."
So I stole my father's car, a fire engine red Toyota Supra. I stole it four nights a week for close to a year. And I drove it like it was stolen, too. Me and my friends took that car flying, literally flying, through the mountains, every chance we got. And unlike all of my other misbehavior, none of us squawked about it to anyone, ever. I even put it in a ditch once, and I was so hammered I honestly don't know exactly how I got it back, unscratched. Somehow, I learned to drive well without killing everyone.
It really paid off, too. A couple of years later I landed a summer job driving Porsches, and that became a reliable and fun line of work for years to come.
In a totally unexpected twist, some years later my father just out of the blue gave me that car, claiming the seats were too low for his bad back. Much later, after the death of his wife, he confessed to me that he just wanted me to have that car because he never once let me borrow it when I really needed it, in high school. I miss that guy, he was so cool.
He was a smart fellow, too. Some small part of that smartness wore off on me, and when he told me that story, I smiled, hugged him, told him I loved him, and never, ever told him the truth.
29. We call this the "Reverse Alcatraz"
When I was a kid in the late 70s, maybe early 80s, I saw an opportunity to get back at my sister, who wasn't always kind to me. My mother had an old wig from the 60s. I made it look like there was somebody in my sister's bed by putting pillows under the blankets and letting a bit of wig poke out. I had to work fast because she was just in the other room, and I knew she'd be going to bed soon.
She really freaked out. I think she was genuinely scared. I don't remember what my punishment was, but I know I got punished and I didn't care. It felt so good to pull one over on my sister for once.
28. I have slain the dragon
Aunt of mine on my dad's side used to bully my mother a lot, very condescending and belittling so much so that I recognized this as a young child. My dad would put a stop to it when he was around but he worked a lot... One day this aunt was in the kitchen on the phone and I burst in, wearing full plastic armor, helmet, shield and sword and stabbed her right in the butt.
She was heavily overweight and I managing to jam it in there for full effect. Bending the sword just above the handle and I believe I managed a slight butt punch too.
She jumped up a remarkable height considering her bulk and let out a Wilhelm scream to rival any.
I was punished, grounded, scolded and told to apologize. But after she left I wasn’t grounded and I heard my parents laughing about it when I was in bed.
27. Vindication for grandma, though
I had a, fortunately short-lived, shoplifting phase when I was 8. I would often steal gum and candy from stores and got away with it for weeks. It came to an end when I got cocky and tried shoving a giant bag of gummies in my pocket.
A man caught me, and he looked me with a concerned face, asking “Are you really going to do that?” He didn’t seem like he was going to snitch on me, but he didn’t need to.
He scared me so much that I put it back and my mom caught me pulling it out of my pockets. She finally realized why I kept having candy when before she accused my grandma of buying me excessive candy in secret.
I was not allowed to watch TV, play video games, nor go to any friend’s house for a month.
I learned to never steal again.
26. My parents gave me the same punishment, only I went over to a friends house and played video games for a few hours before filling my bag up with garbage from a dumpster. Two kinds of people, I guess
When I was about 11 and full-blown into Pokemon, I was buying the sticker collection and just dropping the wrappers on the way home from the shop. My Mum saw the litter one day and asked if it was me and I admitted it.
She sent me out with a bin bag and some rubber gloves and told me to clean up all the litter I threw, and any other litter in between and not to come home until the bag was full, which I did.
My Mum was usually a really easy going parent and let me get away with a lot of stuff that other kids got punished for (staying out late, staying up late, not being where I said I would be, foul language, etc), and this was by far the harshest punishment I ever received. I never littered after that, and it wasn't through fear of being punished, but because it was something my Mum was passionate about, so that meant it must be important.
25. I'll take any excuse to use this smiling poop picture
I was at this summer camp for kids 5-12 or so. I was one of the oldest kids at the camp. One kid had a birthday party and brought a piñata. I grabbed a bunch of chocolate candy. Then I put some in my mouth to soften it and then spit it out in front of these kids. I convinced them I didn’t poop normally and this is how I pooped. Kids got freaked out and they had to call my mom to pick me up. She was absolutely livid.
Another time at school during the winter I brought some fake blood from Halloween to school. We had these retiree recess monitors. I laid in the snow and put fake blood all around me. I had my friend go get the monitors and when he saw me, he fainted. My mom was a teacher at the same school and was so upset.
24. Classic "I just got hit by a car" prank
When my friend was about 17 he's learned to take a hit by a car by rolling with it over the hood and up over the roof. Could still get bruised or hurt if you messed it up, but usually, it just looked cool and makes a terrific "thumping" sound.
Anyway, one time he decides to show his then-girlfriend this trick by doing this to her car as she came to pick him up at his house. As she rounded the corner, he came jogging out of the trees near the road like he didn't see her and perfectly rolled right up and over her car. Being who he was, he had those little capsules with fake blood in them and crunched them when he landed and just lay there as she got out of the car panicking.
Clearly, that relationship was short-lived.
23. Teamwork makes the dream work
My brother and I were very smart kids. (He still is, I've settled around average.)
We came up with a plan to get candy. So much candy.
I think we were around 10 at this point.
Our parents would habitually go grocery shopping, and they would take us with them. We were both quite well behaved, and polite, so it wasn't a big deal to bring us along. Dad usually beelines for the butcher section, while Mom putters around the produce. This was a weekly thing.
Dad would pick up something, and hand it to one of us. "Go put this in the cart." (Can you see where this is going?) My brother and I realize that Mom doesn't question when we put things in on Dad's request. Dad doesn't question things on the conveyor belt, because Mom must have okayed it.
We got so much candy.
Remember Baby Bottle Pops? We had, like, 2 packages of them. Gushers. Gummy bears. Chocolate bars. Caramels. Those dip sticks that you lick and stick in a powder that changes the color of your tongue and has the consistency of chalk.
Oh God, it was glorious.
We get in the car, giddy to go home. Mom grumpily says to Dad: "I can't believe you let them buy that much candy."
Dad: "Me? You let them get it!"
There was a pregnant pause as they both turned around in their seats and looked at us.
"Guys. Seriously?"
So we didn't get the candy. They didn't return it, though. We were grounded for a month, and everything we brought to the shopping cart was now scrutinized. But so worth it.
Because about 6 months later we got to eat the candy.
Now that we're adults, my Dad still thinks that was one of the most clever things we've ever done.
22. It's better than chopping their hand off, I guess
I was about 4 and I took a single walnut from the bulk section of a grocery store. I was so excited that I had just discovered this thing we could do!
On the drive home I pulled it out of my pocket and said: "look Mommy I got this and didn't we have to pay for it!" In my mind, this was a game-changing innovative idea. Gone were the days of us not being able to get junk food because it's "not in the budget" or whatever other reason my mom gave.
She looked in the rearview mirror and SLAMMED on the brakes. She starts going on about how since I don't have any money to pay for it the police were going to take me to jail or I was going to have to work at the store to pay it off or whatever other weird lies parents tell their kids.
Now I have to say here that normally my mom tried to make it a point to NEVER lie to us or say "because I said so" or anything else vague like that but I think she kinda had this irrational fear that someday we could end up becoming trashy criminals like her family was growing up. Anywho I digress.
So we speed back to the grocery store and she takes me crying to the manager and convinces him to play along. He says since I did the right thing and brought it back he would let me off with a warning and my mom paid for the single walnut and we went home.
21. Don't believe in yourself, believe in the me that believes in you
My mom was sloshed when my eight-year-old little sister told her that she wanted to do some acting in a school play. My sister was notoriously shy and my mother sat there and told an eight-year-old that “I don’t think you can do it, you’re too nervous.” I lost it (I was fifteen), all I said was “I can’t believe you just told your daughter you don’t believe in her!” I got grounded and I’d do it again every day.
20. One time I stole a .25 cent football eraser from the school store. I don't even like football
When I was young (like 6/7), I started taking a piece of gum from a store without paying for it. It wasn't like a pack of gum, they were these small rectangles wrapped in silver paper with a Hello Kitty label. I'd only take one, and I'd put it in my pocket until we got home and I would chew it in my room while I played with my dolls or whatever. I was very secretive about it. I probably did this 4 times or so without getting caught.
Well, the next time we went to that store, I saw this adorable tiny pair of Hello Kitty scissors in a plastic pouch with a keyring. They weren't much bigger than the gum pack, so I went for it. Put them in my pocket (along with the gum, duh), and went about our day.
That night at bathtime, I got in the tub, and a few minutes later my mom came in to get my clothes to wash them. I had already chewed the gum but left the scissor pack in my pocket. She found the scissors. She asked me where they came from. I burst into tears and told her I had taken them from the store. I probably got a spanking, but that wasn't the thing that hurt most.
The next day, she drove me back to the store with money to pay for the scissors, and for the gums that I also confessed to stealing. She made me talk to the manager and tell her what I did, and that I had come to pay for everything I had taken.
The manager was very kind and accepted my money, we totaled it up, got a receipt and change, everything. Then she handed me the scissor packet since I had paid for it. I cried because I felt so bad but also because she had been so nice.
BUT - my mom took them away. She said that I did something wrong and that while I was already punished, I didn't actually pay for them, she did. So she took the scissors and put them in her jewelry box. Where they still are. 30 years later.
19. Pretty sweet band name
When I was in my teens I was in a band with my best friend. Like many bands, we went through various names before settling on our final one, which ended up being Lucky Strikes Again...
Another friend of mine's mom worked in the Chamber of Commerce in Pilsen and she was helping organize this art/music festival. He asked if we wanted to play at the festival and we agreed. We never really played many shows, it was mostly a band we had just to have fun on weekends, but this one was going to be the biggest show we ever played since there was likely to be a good amount of people at the festival.
They asked us for a band picture and we didn't want to do this lame picture of the 3 of us posing. The name originally came from my love of Lucky Strike smokes and this drawing I did of the phrase painted on a wall that I wanted as a tattoo on my back. We decided to recreate that picture but do it on the side of a train car instead. My friend and I drove around the city looking for a clean train car to do it, but every time we found one it was being watched by security.
Finally, I was like, "You know what, I got an idea, let's go back to my house." We got back and I went to the basement where we had a bucket of black paint left over from some project. I decided that we were going to paint it on the door of our garage and since we had time to do it right, we'd use paint and a paintbrush instead of spray paint like I had for the train.
As we're heading back to the garage my mom was coming home with my cousin who was visiting from Mexico. She sees me and the can of paint and knows I'm about to do something stupid. I told her, "You can punish me later, just please let me do what I'm doing." She didn't really feel like dealing with whatever I was going to do, but she figured it probably wasn't dangerous and left me alone.
Even though the show itself ended up being a mess for various reasons, it was totally worth it though because the picture came out awesome.
18. Just wait until they see what kind of retirement home you put them in
My parents don't like me thrifting (they think people will judge them for what I wear).
I bought a whole outfit that I LOVED and wore it to School. Everyone commented on how confident I looked. I loved it. When I came Home my parents burned the outfit.
Worth the $25.
17. You have the entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips at all times, and you use it to look at cat pictures
Point out they were wrong.
There's no winning here - even if you prove that you're correct and they aren't you're still getting in trouble.
What I like to do in this age of instant access to the Internet is to go all in immediately. Oh, you think swimming less than an hour after eating causes cramps? How much do you want to bet there's no evidence for that? How much have you got in your purse right now, mom? How about I bet my car vs. whatever cash you have, that you're wrong? Want to take that bet? I have my phone right here, shall I look that up? Where are you going?
Yeah, I'll pay for it later but it's SOOOO worth it.
16. The easiest way to not get bullied is to be the bully
I went completely mental on a bully and attacked him. When the teachers finally got to me I had him against a fence, on the ground, and me jumping up and down on him holding the top of the fence. I was punished, but as I was, I was being praised. They all knew he was a bully.
I got in a bit of trouble, I mostly got in trouble for going too far, not the act of standing up for myself, more for the overreaction and the pure unadulterated violence of my actions. But if you have ever been pushed to this level of reaction, you know that there is no off switch once you are to that point, it ain't going back for a while.
15. The best little hacker in town
I was ten.
I remember when my mom answered the phone, and I heard her telling someone that she didn’t think I’d “do something like that.” I got curious and snuck to a different room to pick up another handset and quietly listen in on their conversation.
“All I know is that the computers were working when she got here,” the lady explained.
“How do you know it was her,” asked my mother, “if you didn’t see her do anything?”
“Well... it had to be her... none of the other girls even know how to use the computer.”
Apparently, every computer in the library network had its hard drive formatted, and because this was in the days before The Cloud, they were pretty screwed. My mother continued to maintain my innocence, and reluctantly, begrudgingly, the library lady backed down. I hung up then, and not long after, my mother came to stand in the doorway to my room. She glared at me for a long, long moment. Then she burst out laughing.
“You’re so grounded.”
And kept laughing as she walked away. From what I hear, it took them six months to get their computers up and running again. I earned a lifetime ban from the library.
To this day, my mother still laughs when she tells the story.
She later told me that the library lady was (what we would now call) a Karen, and because I spent a lot of time at the library, my mother had to deal with Karen and her shenanigans far too often.
Apparently, my mother was thrilled that someone took Karen down a peg.
I have never explicitly confessed to my parents, but, I did do it.
I didn’t know as much about computers as my Mom thought I did, but I knew more than enough to be dangerous. My mother just assumed her hyper-competent daughter was being a deviant genius. She was proud of me in a way, so I didn’t know how to correct her: I didn’t mean to break their stuff. At the time, I didn’t have a computer at home, so the only chance I had to play around on them and learn anything was the machines they had at the library.
Poor password protection on old machines running old operating systems. At school, I’d seen my teacher type in her password, though it was a weird password, noticed a pattern, and used it to reverse engineer every other teacher’s passwords.
They used the same software on the library computers (school district ran the library in such a small town), so I could also figure out the library passwords in the same way.
I’d been given a big box of old computing manuals for various things, and I was focusing on learning my way around MS-DOS 6 and QBASIC, but with no real understanding of how a computer physically functioned.
I spent three months with unrestricted access to the library computers.
I had written a few rudimentary programs in QB I wanted to show my friends at school, so I was trying to figure out how to copy them to a disk, but the computer kept telling me there was something wrong with all my diskettes, or that it couldn’t find the files.
So I tried a bunch of stuff I thought I understood to try and make it work. I had recently read that you should format your diskettes before using them, so among other things, I tried that. It worked, but still, every attempt to copy failed. I thought maybe something was wrong with the disk drives. Every single computer I tried did the same thing, so I (rightly) assumed that I didn’t know what I was doing.
I gave up and went home.
Anyways... a couple of days later, the library called.
I was certain I’d done something awful, but I didn’t know what. My mom was proud of me, but I had no idea why.
It was the next day, I think, when I was reading an owners manual for some system, that the drive lettering conventions were spelled out to me—c: for the hard disk, a: for the floppy disk.
Then I realized what I’d done.
I assumed the most important drive would be a:—of course it would be. The computer defaulted to c:, the disk drive (and not the hard drive, that would be dumb), I assumed it was the destination drive, not the hard disk. All I knew was that my saved files were on the hard drive.
c:> copy a: startrek.bas
It didn’t work. I tried different paths, with or without the extension, even formatting the disk as the thing had suggested.
Nobody was using any of the machines, so I thought I’d be clever and speed up the formatting of a dozen or so diskettes by using a different computer for each simultaneously.
c:> format c:
That worked just fine every time.
14. As a man that always goes commando, this is a real threat I live with every day
I pantsed my friend in junior high school and they suspended me for harassment.
When I got home, my dad ordered me to stand up. And then he did the unthinkable. My dad pantsed me.
We used to do this all the time to each other back in junior high school. If you were wearing sweat pants or shorts and weren't being aware of your surroundings, you got pantsed. Never would the underwear come down too. If it did that was purely collateral damage as it was not the intention to display one's pee-pee in public. It was usually done to embarrass the victim - nothing more, nothing less. And yes, guys and girls were subject to this tradition, but for girls, it was much rarer and just a dumb thing boys do.
The Incident
My friend had pantsed me the day before and I was itching for the opportunity to get back at him. We had just finished PE class and were lining up for an assembly. He was wearing shorts, so it was the perfect moment. I snuck up behind him and with one fluid motion pantsed him in front of everyone. I would say it was one of my best pantsings of all time, or at least in the top 10. He was thoroughly embarrassed, but that was the extent of it. My gym teacher (who notoriously had it out for me the whole year) noticed all the commotion and asked what was going on. Some kid piped up and snitched on me. She immediately told me to go to the principal's office. "That's harassment," she said. That was the first time I had ever heard that word uttered. I had to go to the principle's office and explain what happened. They called my parents and slapped me with a 3-day suspension.
Later that day...
I came home and my parents were waiting for me in the living room. My dad was super strict, and I was constantly frightened of him. I sat down across from him (on the farthest seat across from him no less). He just stared at me, for what felt like hours, with his eyes burning black like the fires of hell. I was terrified. "Stand up!" he then ordered. I had no idea what he was going to do. And then...he walked up...and in one fluid motion pantsed me. "YOU LIKE PULLING PEOPLE'S PANTS DOWN!? I'LL SHOW YOU WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO PULL PEOPLE'S PANTS DOWN!!" I burst into tears, with my pants hanging down by my ankles, in total embarrassment and humility. Talk about giving someone a taste of their own medicine.
The Perfect Punishment
After that day, I never pantsed anyone again.
-and I always remembered to wear a belt or drawstring to school.
13. Shoulda ran away again
I ran away from home when I was 13. I was punished both physically and mentally for months following the incident, but that was my first true taste of freedom in the world. I still remember what it felt like to walk under a bridge in my town as a train passed over it, I'd never experienced anything like that before! I walked all the way to a remote church, singing Adele songs to myself, I was having the time of my life before I was finally caught. All during the horrific months of punishment that followed, I just thought of how it felt under that bridge, that thought really kept my spirits up during that time.
12. But on the box, it says for ages 4-99
My mom boxed up my legos in middle school because she said it was time to put away childish things. I broke 'em back out when I was a junior in high school. Totally worth losing my driving privileges for a month!
11. What is it with hyper-religious families forgetting about the "forgiveness" part
My sister had a job stripping, and my parents didn't know. She was 21, and I lived with her part-time because both of my folks worked night shifts, so after school, I would wander to the club and hang out in the dressing room until she was ready to go. A bunch of nice ladies that worked there would help me with my homework, do my makeup, and send me to the nearby bodega to get snacks. They basically taught me how to have confidence, because I was a schlubby goth teen who hated everything about myself and thought I was ugly. Nothing quite bolsters your self-esteem like a group of bikini-clad women fussing over how pretty your cheekbones are and telling you to stop chasing boys who don't care about you.
It was great until my parents found out. I got an earful about keeping secrets, putting myself in possible danger, etc. I was grounded for months and had to stay with my hyper-religious family until their work schedules changed, but it was worth it. Those dancers set in motion my path to loving myself and taught me to realize that I had worth.
10. This is how you ace high school
I got put into advanced math in high school. I hated the teacher because he played favorites. I am very good at math but I really don’t have any interest in it other than practical applications. I stopped doing work and got a D in the class. The punishment was I was put in the lower level math class and my car was taken away for 6 months. The new class was so easy I barely had to do any work. I also didn’t miss my car because now my mom had to drive me to my 7am class and I could sleep in the car on the way. The best thing I ever did in high school was take advanced classes in the subjects I liked and lower level or no classes at all in the subjects I didn’t.
9. We all had this teacher at one point
I was valedictorian of my graduating class, and before my speech, I called out my calculus teacher, by name. I explained to the entire audience how she said I wouldn’t be valedictorian of her school, and how she went out of her way to make my life a nightmare in that class. I could expand on this, but I’m not trying to make this a novel.
I transferred in from a rival school after it consolidated with another school and changed location. I was in a unique situation zoning-wise, so I got to pick what school I went to. I chose my rival school simply because our baseball team would be more competitive. Apparently, since I was an athlete as well as fighting for valedictorian, she assumed my grades were given to me at my other school. Obviously, she was a butt.
Anyway, during the process of me ripping her to shreds in front of the crowd, she walked out to the clapping from 100’s of students. All in all, it was probably 2-3 minutes directed at her before I continued with my actual speech.
Dad wasn’t too thrilled with my conduct, to say the least. I got away with a mild punishment; I had to pay for my graduation dinner. He warned there would be more punishment in the future, but nothing came of it.
She retired that summer.
8. If he was American, the cops would have just shot him and then left
When I was 12 I bought a pretty high-powered air rifle illegally on a school trip to France and smuggled it home on the coach. My best friend and I started shooting at silly things in the garden, starting with a shaken-up can of Coke (amusing), a deodorant can (more amusing), and then a can of compressed shoe polish.
Turns out compressed shoe polish goes bang... quite loudly. It took off like a surface-to-air missile and the sound echoed around the street.
We lived in reasonably central London in the early 90s, which was during a spate of IRA bombings that had recently included firing mortars at the Prime Minister's official residence.
The riot police arrived shortly afterward and gave us a huge lecturing on not being idiots, but that was nothing - NOTHING - compared to what happened after they left. My mother is a mild-mannered woman but she went absolutely bonkers. I'd say that was pretty justified. The thing wasn't even legal for a child to own, never mind start causing explosions with during a terrorist campaign.
7. Always cool when a parent will admit to their mistakes
30 years ago I helped a friend run away from home. She had an emotionally abusive set of grandparents raising her. She wanted to run away and live with her birth mother but they refused to let her. I took her out on a 'date'. We were good friends and knew her grandparents would be elated for her to go out as more than friends. They adored me.
The next morning after the act my dad woke me up, said her grandmother was on the phone and Amanda (my friend) had not come home. I made up a story about being ditched and not knowing where she went. The truth was I had taken her to the bus station.
I fessed up to my dad. He was furious. Punishment ensued, for about 3 days. That was when her mom came to speak with my dad. I saw them talking but didn't hear what was said. When he came back in he said "Son. You did the right thing. She's a horrible person." Punishment lifted.
6. Doesn't matter, saved a life
In high school, I was invited to a lot of parties but I wasn’t really into partying so I would always offer to be the Designated Driver. I wanted my friends safe and getting home safe. It was a small town and there were quite a few drunk driving deaths.
One night I told my mom I wasn’t sure when I’d be home because I’m not going to be able to shut down a high school party, but that I would keep her in the loop via text.
I had texted her probably around midnight that I felt like I wasn’t going to be too much longer. Well, then a guy was throwing up violently and generally not being okay. So I was making sure he had water and wouldn’t choke on his own vom or something. Got him sorted and I couldn’t find my phone for the life of me.
Figured it was in my car where I last had it, but when I went out to look I was told two guys from the party had taken off. On foot. In the boonies. Sigh. At this point, it’s probably 1 am.
So I load up my first carload of kids and go deliver them to their respective homes. Get back to the party probably around 2. Find my phone in the bathroom where I had been helping Pukey and it’s dead. Whatever I’ve got another carload of people and then I’ll be home. Should be fine.
So I load up the others I was bringing home and start dropping them off. Everyone was on different farms or different towns so it was like an hour run at a time.
At this point, I’ve just got my best friend to bring home and it’s probably like 3 am. I’ll drop her off then get home at like 330. Hopefully, ma fell asleep or I’ll be in trouble.
Suddenly a flash in the ditch and we see two little faces peeking up from the grass. The two guys that had run away from the party had been streaking along the highway. They had made good ground. So I load them and their “treasures” from the ditch up. Turn around to go back to the next town where they both lived, dropped them off, dropped my friend off, and finally got home after 4 am.
When I walked in my mom was standing there in the moonlight. Glassy-eyed and furious. “GIVE ME YOUR PHONE!” So I tell her it’s dead and she makes me go grab my charger for her too. I couldn’t sleep for a long time. And right when I finally fell asleep I was woken up immediately at 7 am to my mom ripping the curtains (and curtain rod) off the window. “I LOST SLEEP BECAUSE OF YOU. YOU'LL LOSE SLEEP BECAUSE OF ME!”
It was a rough day. She spent the whole night going through my phone and taking every little joke seriously. I got in so much trouble for so many things and I thought she was going to exorcise me. Grounded for weeks.
But none of my friends died in a drunk driving accident so it was worth it.
5. I was "The Technomancer"
In high school, I was known as “The Ghost” (or sometimes “The Witch”).
My watch was a programmable universal remote, and I programmed in the power, freeze frame, and some other functions from the remote used to control to school projectors. I then spent an entire year messing with projectors, mostly during my history class.
To be fair, the teacher was an absolute idiot, the class was boring, and we’d spend at least 40 of the 60 minutes just going over the homework or going off on tangents about American idol or whatever. It was a late afternoon class, and we were all miserable, so I decided to spark some life into the class to preserve our sanity.
During class, I would turn the projector on by discretely pressing the right button on my watch, and the projector would roar to life and suddenly project a blue screen on the wall, which would catch the teacher off guard and confuse her. She would turn it off, resume her boring lecture that was riddled with inaccuracies and stupid phrases (for instance, “the island of Vietnam”, or “how motivating is this speech: yes or no?”), and then I’d turn it back on a few minutes later. Alternatively, I would freeze it during a PowerPoint, and she’d go on for a couple slides on her computer before anyone bothered to point out that the overhead projector hadn’t changed.
At first only a couple of my friends knew it was me, but soon the whole class (except the teacher) knew. They didn’t rat me out, because quite frankly I was doing us all a favor. Word spread to the other sections of that class, but no one ever spilled the secret.
There were a few theories proposed for why the projector was acting weird. The first theory had to do with mice in the attic. Not sure what that was supposed to mean. The other big theory was that it was cell phone interference.
One day, the teacher’s phone went off during class. Everyone looked at me, mouthing “now! Do it now!” I smiled and winked, there was no way I was going to pass up this opportunity. I turned the projector on, and one of the other students said
“Mrs. Redacted, the projector’s on again.”
Teacher: “no it’s not, I’m not falling for that.”
Several more students: “No really, it’s on! Look!”
teacher turns around, audibly gasps. Holding up her cell phone in triumph, she excitedly squeals
“I was right! It IS cell phone interference!”
Another time I got sloppy, and did it on a day when the class met at a different time than usual. For obvious reasons, it only ever happened during my class in the afternoon, so when it happened midday the teacher suspected foul play.
Teacher: “Alright, now I know it’s gotta be a prank. Which one of you has the remote?”
Everyone denied having the remote, and she proceeded to walk around seeing if anyone was hiding it. It was only a little difficult to keep a straight face, because I knew I had nothing to worry about. She could search through all my possessions and not find the remote. Fortunately, it never came to that. A student pointed out that her remote was actually on the teacher’s desk all along, partially hidden by a folder. The teacher felt embarrassed, and apologized for accusing us of thievery, and accepted the fact that we were haunted.
I have no idea how the teacher never learned the truth. By the end of the year, the truth was known by almost my entire grade, almost everyone of any grade who had that teacher (cuz she’d tell them about the curse of G Block), and weirdly even some other teachers knew.
One day in Spanish class, my teacher was genuinely missing her remote, and said: “Hey, is it true you can turn on the projector with your watch?” “I uh...” “Cuz if so, I’d really appreciate your help. I won’t tell anyone. ” “Oh. Cool, yeah no problem.” turns on projector “THAT’S AMAZING!”
But because we were all united in our disdain for this one teacher (literally even teachers at other schools in town knew how bad she was), no one ever sold me out, even with a small handful of teachers and several hundred students of various grades being in on the joke.
So my legacy remains intact. I go by many names: Mice In The Attic, Cellphone Interference, Faulty Wiring, but most people just call me The Ghost. Sometimes I used my powers for good, sometimes for evil. But usually just for comic mischief. The important thing is that I was never caught, but I was known throughout the school for my dark technomagic.
4. Of all the places to go when skipping school, another school is not high on the list
I went to a neighboring town and pretended to be a student at the high school for a whole day. Kicked it with some buddies I had over there and told some slick lies so all the teachers bought that I moved in on the 3rd to last day of school.
I even got free lunch because I told the lunch ladies my number wasn’t in the system yet and I didn’t have cash.
I got a call from my superintendent the next day who was really mad. Almost didn’t let me walk for graduation, and I was valedictorian. I ended up doing like 20 hours of community service at the school I, “trespassed” on. Just hung out with the dope janitor who talked down on the principal that got me in trouble. Spent 3 days painting the gym while they had cheerleading tryouts.
Overall I’d say the punishment just makes the story even funnier, which is exactly what I was going for.
3. Slip and slide
2. I remember being one of the only kids in school that knew how Photoshop worked
I made fake report cards in high school and would sell them to my neighborhood friends. Word got out and I was making at least 20+ per period and charging $40 a pop.
However, our end of the year report card is mailed out and almost everyone's parents intercepted them in the mail and headed to the school to dispute them because they were "wrong".
School admin found out it was me that was making it because some kids ratted me out but didn't punish me and pretty much left that up to my parents to handle. (It was the senior year and I graduated, but I did this for 4 years)
I remember my dad initially yelling at me about it but within 15 minutes we were just discussing how I was making money doing it and my real grades weren't even that bad. He even mentioned that the school admin was impressed by my work and said it was the best fakes they've ever seen. I was able to build a great gaming PC that summer due to all the money I made and my parents weren't even mad, it even seemed like they were kinda proud lol.
He "grounded" me that entire summer which maybe lasted for 2 weeks before they just stopped enforcing it.
I'm 28 now and we still laugh about that time.
1. And that's how dad lost his job
I changed the autocorrect on my dad's iPhone to change yes, no, or ok to "suck a fat one." Hilarity ensued as he texted that to people throughout the day.
