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!

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.

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.

Barred from the school computers for Responsible disclosure of a security laps in the school computers.

Turned out of you open Encyclopaedia Britannica application and select the open document window it brings up the regular windows open file dialogue window. If you pressed the up folder enough times you went from your local profile to the folder on the server that contained every users files and you had full read right privileges in all student folders.

I reported it to the it desk and was barred from using the school computers for a month for hacking the school computers.

When the letter was sent home about it dad wanted to know what I had done so I told him and he thought, yea you did the right thing I’ll call the principal and get this sorted.

Dad use to be the treasurer of the parent teacher committee so he knew the school admin quite well. My teacher for computer studies got a note from the principal the next day that I was permitted to use the computers again.

The teacher had a favorite, who sat behind me. Anytime she tried to talk to me I got in trouble. I literally got detention once where I had to write out the same run on sentence over and over again 75 times about how sorry I was for being disruptive in class, all because this girl leaned forward and tapped me on the shoulder while the teacher was looking at me. I never spoke a word to her, I didn’t even look back at her. Teacher didn’t care, it was somehow my fault. I remember my hand cramping up writing the sentence and after the first however many minutes my writing started deteriorating so the teacher made me redo sentences. It was a very painful and miserable experience, I could barely hold the pencil by the end. Thinking about it now, that teacher was a sadist and had a very creepy fixation on that girl.

Wearing blue camo shorts in 4th grade because it promotes violence by looking like the military

There were two brothers in my high school, our last names were similar. And we were always getting in trouble for the other’s actions. When we would hear one of us get called to the office we would meet after class to see if it was a legit getting in trouble or something one of the other two did. We would always trade punishments too.

So literally I got into trouble for having a last name sharing 5/7 letters with someone else’s last name.

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.

Grade one detention. Yelling at another kid for reading over my shoulder during quiet time after I quietly, repeatedly asked him to stop.

I’m in my 30’s now and you can still get FUCKED Mrs. Williams. You can eat a dick too, Patrick. Get your own fucking book.

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.

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.

2nd grade, the meanest teacher I ever had got mad at me for using a colorful pen to write on my classwork. In front of the class, she told me to “never bring that pen back to school.” This was a new pen that I had just bought - the kind with multiple colors inside and I wanted it for my babysitter’s after school so I could use it on the Spirograph - so I said, “Can’t I just keep it in my backpack? I go to my babysitter’s…” and that’s where she cut me off and proceeded to yell at me in front of the whole class and made me sit out for recess for “talking back”. Since I had “lunch detention”, I had to eat last, but I had never been in big trouble before and I cried the whole recess and, by the time my lunch came I couldn’t eat from crying so they called my mom to talk me into eating.

This is probably stretching the definition of strange, but I got in school suspension in middle school for having 3 tardies (aka arriving late to school). I rode the school bus to school each day, I had no control over whether I was late or not, so I find it strange to be punished for something like that.

3rd grade. Teacher sent me and my best friend to the office with a note for being too disruptive (we were snickering a lot). I was used to getting into trouble, but he was petrified and shaking. I felt bad for him, so I told him I would take care of it.

I tossed the note over the wall, then we went off and played in the yard for the rest of the morning.

In the afternoon, there was school assembly. The two of us were called out by name and were told our parents would be called to come collect us. My mother showed up and couldn’t stop laughing at the silliness of it all.

My friend, he never talked to me again.

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.