If you can remember your high school years vividly, it’s most likely that besides jocks, raging parties and short-lived crushes, you also remember incidents that stuck in your mind like chewing gum under a school desk.
From flushing down a cherry bomb in the girls’ toilet to someone going into fisticuffs with the principal, there are legends that are still being hush-hushed inside your former classrooms. And so, when someone asked the good people of the internet to share their iconic school stories on r/AskReddit – wild, hormone-fueled tales spilled like fruit punch on a sweaty prom night.
#1
Someone brought their capybara to school and it ended up becoming class president.
Image source: Europa_Gains, peakpx
#2
In the 5th grade, our P.E. teacher had our class hula hoop for physical activity. Two girls in the class ended up hula hooping the entire 45 minutes – 1 hour of the class without stopping. Our teacher decided that it would be fun to see how long these two girls could go.
By the end of the school day, one girl was still going and had not stopped. Our teacher then got the wild idea that this girl should keep going to try breaking the world record. The students parent’s were called and they gave her permission to make the attempt. Someone looked up the rules of Guinness World Records and discovered that you can take a few minutes break every hour.
The local news was called and they filmed this poor girl hula hooping her heart out. She finally gave up around 12:30am. This took place in the late 1980’s in Roswell, GA. at Mimosa elementary.
The same year, the same P.E. teacher taught our class to juggle. Within 3 months, she started a juggling club in which I was a member. We eventually had a choreographed routine, with music, printed ‘Mimosa Jugglers’ tee-shirts and began performing our routine at other local elementary schools. It was weird but actually pretty fun at the time. We juggled balls, rings and plastic bowling pins. I ended up discovering that I could juggle 3 apples while taking a bite out of one – it was a crowd pleaser lol.
Image source: squiblib, Tony Fischer
#3
In high school Two kids both named Logan
Both last names were very similar
One was popular and the other was not
Unpopular Logan was drunk and ran across a road in the middle of the night and was k**led by a semi-truck
The next day the principal announced that popular Logan had died
Popular Logan was late for school.
Everyone was very sad
Then popular Logan showed up and all school rejoiced that unpopular Logan was the one who died
Was f****d up
Image source: AggressiveSmoke4054, RDNE Stock project
#4
This is pretty tame but funny. 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 were in the room to k**l the remaining 10 mins of lunch. One girl went through her desk and found her perfume and sprayed it once laughing that she was Mrs X.
Few minutes later Mrs X walks in, sniffs and starts looking around and we all think we are in trouble because she must know we were in the drawers.
She then proceeds to tell the girls that they shouldn’t wear such cheap, nasty perfume because now her room stinks of cheap perfume. Never tried harder to stifle a laugh in my life.
Image source: Livid-Leader3061, Yan Krukau
#5
A group of kids threw a desk out the 3rd story window. The desk crashed onto a girl’s head and broke her neck. Fortunately she lived.
Image source: siorys88, pxhere
#6
A sophomore (my classmate) dropped unconscious in gym class and was rushed to the hospital. 3 days later they took him off life support and he died from a brain aneurysm.
Edit to add: his funeral was held in the high school gym and damn near everyone went. Never in my life did I think I’d attend a funeral AT school.
Image source: DisappointmentToMost, Olga Kononenko
#7
Coolest guy in school was an amazing guitarist, really good at finger picking, super lovely, talked to everyone, even the teachers loved him. He was in my homeroom (Australian Highschool) he was older but he used to let me sit near him sometimes. One weekend he went out with some friends to play with fire crackers (fire crackers are super illegal here because of the Bush fire risk) anyway, the guy BLEW ALL OF HIS FINGERS ON BOTH HANDS OFF…..
He didn’t come back to school for a few months, and then one day he came back, sat in the corner with a hoodie over his face and his hands buried deep in his pockets. Never spoke to anyone again. Couldnt play guitar- couldn’t even open a door. So f*****g sad. We were all so sad for him.
Image source: Dry-Classroom-2372
#8
My highschool went on lockdown because my mother was going through a manic episode, thought I was the second coming of Jesus, and said she was going to save me.
I honestly never lived it down.
Image source: ASemiAquaticBird, Karolina Grabowska
#9
We had so many pregnant teen girls that they had their own gym class.
A friend of mine who had a fake leg— he had a solid metal rod from mid thigh to mid calf from childhood leukemia so he couldn’t bend at the knee, was in the same class. Just this one poor guy and 30 pregnant 16 year olds.
**Edit: I never imagined there would be so many upvotes & questions.**
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 sex education classes didn’t teach anything but “Just Say No” so there were girls who thought jumping up and down would prevent pregnancy. Not kidding. 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.
Remember that there was no internet at this point 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 why my friend was the lone guy in the class.
His leg, from what he explained to me, had cancer in the bones of his knee. They didn’t want to amputate his whole leg so they removed the knee and grafted a rod in place— this would have been back in the late 80s so I’m sure they do stuff differently now.
Image source: Malicious_Tacos, Geert Pieters
#10
We had off campus lunch. You could go anywhere around as long as you were back in 45 minutes. It had been tradition for the school’s entire 60+ years. The entire mile or so surrounding the school had tons of small carryout restaurants.
My senior year, a girl snuck out of her middle school to come meet her freshman boyfriend. She stopped at one of the restaurants for ice cream. Left the restaurant and stepped off the curb into the highway, directly into the side of an 18wheeler.
60 years of off campus lunch around that highway and that was the first serious accident. School banned leaving campus within days. The local businesses tried to come up with a compromise, I know they talked about shuttle service, walkway bridge over the intersection. School refused to even discuss it. We lodged protests, walk outs. Nothing. One life lost is too many is what they kept saying.
Within a few years almost all of those restaurants were closed and sat empty. The whole area around the school looked like a ghost town. Which became the place to go for drugs. Four years after I graduated, fifteen kids OD’d. Five years and I think the number was closer to 50.
All because of one girl.
Image source: Think_Hall_7826
#11
a girl had an epilepsy attack and she lost control of her bowels. Not a pretty sight.
Mean girls type made fun of her, and she transferred to another high school.
Image source: StuntCockofGilead, Pixabay
#12
Which one do you want? Our senior T shirts were literally “the incident” from each year.
Freshman: Older HS kids are having a party near the end of the school year, get busted, one tries to run from the cops and crashes into the electrical transformer in front of the school giving everyone 2 days off.
Sophomore: Some moron stole 3 mercury thermometers from a science class and decided it would be fun to smash them in the gym during a passing period. School was evacuated and the gym was closed for a week.
Junior: Someone made a bomb threat against the school. The police said they had it covered and kids wouldn’t be in danger. Only about half the school showed up anyway. It was a very odd day.
Senior: Kid brought a gun to school to show his friend. Others kids saw it and by the time I arrived (free period first period so I didn’t have to come to school until period 2 senior year) the school was surrounded by police officers and news copters and I was yelled at to “go home”. School was locked down all day as they went room to room searching. My old Spanish teacher actually thought the cops were the active shooter and tackled one as he came into the room. He ended up with a giant lump on his head, but he was a hero to us all after that.
Image source: GlassEyeMV
#13
We had the states (probably all of the US) largest sting operation in our school. It began with 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 under cover cop was trying to buy drugs in 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 cops plus the principal started pulling students out of classes and arresting them. Turns out something like 20+ kids were arrested plus some parents in the whole operation. Made the front page of the AJC with photos and everything.
He had like a 7 in math class, and when the teacher would call his parents to discuss his grades they’d get a separate line to what ever police office was acting like a parent. Apparently he was told to start trying more in class.
Pretty funny for those not involved.
Image source: rlmoblat, Yan Krukau
#14
One of the guys at our High School thought it would be funny to pretend he had died in a car accident on a specific date (I’ve forgotten it now), so he didn’t show up for class ~ had friends spread rumors right at the beginning of the day about it ~ People were grieving because he was apart of the popular group, and just well known all around.
So he walks in near the middle of the day smiling and laughing, people were shocked but amused (Don’t ask me why…).
A year later, exactly a year later… on the day – he dies in a car wreck due to him and three others crossing the boarder between states to get drugs – the girl driving tried to swerve due to a armadillo.
Out of the four people he was the only one to die. People thought it was him trying to pull the same joke that year around, but no.
Image source: Ab-Duck-Tea, Tobias Tullius
#15
So this was like 15-16 years ago. Our school used to have a fun little rivalry activity during homecoming week. We had three school colors: red, white, and black. On the day of the homecoming assembly, each grade year was assigned one of the colors, and whichever grade has the most participation would be the winner. (Sophomores wore red, Juniors wore white, and Seniors wore black.) People would get VERY into it – dying their hair, making signs, trying to bribe teachers onto their teams, etc. It was honestly a lot of stupid fun in a slightly more innocent/ignorant time. Things that would appear to be an obvious problem today (blackface, anyone?) were not really in our Wonderbread Midwestern zeitgeist. Of course, the year after I graduated, it went too far.
Most years, the seniors would win this little competition, and the juniors would be grumpy about it. Anticipating this, a few idiot juniors thought it would be funny to show their disdain by dressing up in white with KKK hoods, with a fake lynched black ‘senior’ dangling from a pole…
Yeah. Bad time.
Last I heard, the kids were suspended, the principal voluntarily retired in response to the backlash, and I’m pretty sure that little tradition has been dead ever since…
Image source: LyndzLyndz, wikimedia
#16
The female assistant principal lifted the skirts of girls attending a dance to make sure the students were not wearing thong underwear.
Edit: occurred 2002. School is in San Diego, California
Image source: lostmonster, Almada Studio
#17
One of our japanese teachers got stabbed in the back by a South Korean exchange student. Apparently he’d said some pretty insensitive things about North vs South Korea and the next day the student came to school with a knife. Teacher was ok. Kid was jailed for 18 months.
Image source: Games__Franco, 祝 鹤槐
#18
S**t bandit. He would s**t in lockers and teachers desks and leave the note “If my demands are not met, the S**t bandit will strike again”, there were never any demands.
I knew exactly who it was, but I ain’t snitching even after all these decades.
Image source: VampireKissinger
#19
1982, rural Indiana.
Someone went into the bathroom, lit a cigarette, and stuck the fuse from a quarterstick/m80 in the other end. Destroyed one toilet and a section of the wall.
State police bomb squad called in. Explosive trained dogs. Even FBI.
I was one of those questioned as I was the typical stoner loser burnout kid.
I know who did it. It was one of the ‘pretty people’ as they were called back then. He even kinda confirmed it while drunk at our 30th reunion.
Image source: NonsenseImFine
#20
So back in the early 80s a kid at our schools older brother disappeared. The cops searched the neighbourhood and went door to door trying to find out what happened to him. Spoke to every kid in school in case they knew anything. Wasn’t long before he was discovered ro have been the victim of a serial.k**ler. he was only 16.
Image source: Warm-Cheetah3435
#21
The teacher who looked so much like a 70s p**nstar, did turn out to have made p**n in the 70s.
Image source: H_Marxen
#22
My high school had a riot and there was and still is a picture of my principal choking a student.
Image source: NomadFourFive, ktvu
#23
Someone sprayed Butyric Acid throughout the entire school. In high concentrations, it smells like pure vomit. School reeked for weeks. Police were involved etc. No culprit was ever found.
Image source: BazookoTheClown, Polina Tankilevitch
#24
In 3 months November, December and January 3 guys in my graduating class all died. 1 from s*****e, 1 from a skiing accident and 1 on the track at school. It was extremely eerie and sad
Image source: MisanthropicEmpath, MART PRODUCTION
#25
My high school in Australia had agricultural learning so we had livestock at the far end of the oval and some facilities. In the 90s someone broke into the school and slaughtered all of the animals (ALL of them) and drew pentagrams and swastikas in blood all over the school. Pretty historical event for that school!
Image source: spleen5000
#26
There were several, all involving the sophomores when I was a senior. Like, there was something seriously wrong with the class of 2008.
Some highlights:
One kid started printing $20 bills from his dad’s office. Apparently he was good at it as the Secret Service paid him a visit.
Multiple incidents of alcohol 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, the great thermometer incident of 2006. Basically a group of sophomores broke open an old glass thermometer and played with the mercury inside. They did this in the cafeteria before first bell. So around 2nd period an announcement is made telling everyone who was in the caf before first bell to report to the auditorium immediately. A third of the school shows up, myself included. They then proceed to lock us in and inform us we have to wait to be cleared by a hazmat team. That hazmat team took their sweet f*****g time getting there and we didn’t leave the school until 6-7pm. Those of us with jobs basically lost a day’s pay. It’s been 17 years, and I still wanna throat punch the three stooges who did that.
Edit: I forgot to add, around 2-3pm 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. All of this because some idiot wanted to play with mercury
Image source: Lyn1987, Joshua Hoehne
#27
Married male teacher in his late-30s having an affair with a senior female student. Fairly ordinary. They didn’t hide it though, we used to see them smooching all the time.
Rumour says he lost his job over it and then followed her to another city when she left for university. She then dumped him for a boy her own age.
Image source: Eloisem333, cottonbro studio
#28
Senior prank, someone dumped a few hundred pounds of flour and yeast into the school indoor pool, in hopes of turning it into a giant glob of dough (I guess). It didn’t work, just caused about 100K damage to plumbing, pumps, filters, etc. Prankster never caught.
Image source: Sea_Ganache620, wikimedia
#29
Pretty tame compared to some of the other stuff here, but my school at one point decided to crack down on anyone who had ever connected to the TOR Network from the school wifi (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 class work) 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. None did.
Image source: Sitting_In_A_Lecture, RDNE Stock project
#30
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 goes into lockdown because of the explosions. Him and his class get locked out of the school. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told. Wasn’t actually in that class
Image source: Transdevil23459, Steve Jurvetson
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