Grade 6. I had the correct info on a book report (from the World Book Encyclopedia) but my teacher refused to accept them as correct. I “disrupted class” by telling her she was incorrectly giving me a D, and read the relevant passage from the encyclopedia.

Sent to the principal, who said “You’re right, we’ll have your grade changed, but go have a seat out there for a bit and wait so she doesn’t feel insulted”

One of my truly radicalizing moments about speaking truth to power.

Me and another kid got detention for fighting.

At my house.

On a Saturday.

On 9/11 we were told something bad was happening in the US, but no details. The teachers decided there would be no class for the rest of day, instead we’d have in-class recess until school ended. We were not informed about what was actually going on, just told to play.

I got in trouble for having fun while playing, because it was disrespectful.

High school bathroom during lunch. 15 or so guys, handful smoking. Saw a guy making a smiley face on the ceiling with a cigarette lighter. It just leaves a soot mark that wipes away easily.

No sooner do I attempt to do the same thing, the principal walked in and saw me…

“YOU!” he yelled. “You’re going to HQ!” Like he was a cop or something.

Cops came, he said that he wanted me charged with attempted arson. He took the cops to the bathroom. When they came back, the cops were kind of laughing at the principal.

Got charged with criminal damage to property, but it got dropped, because the mark could be wiped off easily.

I asked my French teacher what a comment he’d written at the bottom of one of my test papers said, because I couldn’t read it.

Apparently it said: “Your handwriting is atrocious.”

He refused to believe I wasn’t taking the piss out of him and I ended up having to ‘explain myself’ to the head.

In the sixth grade I got my first detention ever because I picked up my baseball cap.

We were on a field trip and we went to visit some museum in the capital by train. While we walked back to the train station, our teacher stated that “no one is to step out of the train before her permission or they will get detention”. I was the last to get on the train and my cap hit the backpack of the classmate in front of me and fell out of the train doors. I instinctively turned around, leaned out whist holding onto a safety bar and picked my cap. And stepped back on board.

I was a calm kid and had never broken any school rules or gotten into any trouble whatsoever. So when my classmates saw me putting one feet outside the train they simply flipped: “TEACHER, LORINDÓL STEPPED OUT OF THE TRAIN! YOU’RE GETTING A DETENTION!”

I was utterly dumbfounded. My “friends” had betrayed me and the teacher was approaching and looking angry. With tears in my eyes I explained what had happened and reminded her that we still had more than 10 minutes until the train doors would even close. Her face went from angry to sad and she silenced my heckling classmates with a few strict words. She told me that we would discuss this when we were back at school.

When we got back, everyone else got to go home and the teacher asked me to our classroom with her. “Lorindól, I’m very sorry. I have to give you detention because you did step out of the train, even if it was for all the right reasons. I understand you acted instinctively and did not mean to break any rules. But I must keep my word or it will lose it’s meaning. As stupid as this sounds, the purpose of this detention is not to punish you. It’s purpose is to show the others that my word is the law in this classroom, with no exceptions. I hope you can understand why I must do this.” I thought about it for a while and said that I did.

When I told my parents about the detention my dad couldn’t stop laughing. “You finally get a detention and it’s for NOTHING!”

Mom was so angry that she wanted to call the teacher and make her call the detention off. I managed to talk her out of it and didn’t hold any grudge against the teacher. I learned a lot about the world of adults that day.

I was caught making out with my girlfriend.

I should mention that this was an all-girl Catholic cult school in the early 80s. Not only was I expelled but my parents moved us to a different country because they were so ashamed.

I got beat up by a guy twice my size who was just in a pissy mood. “Participated in a fight, in school suspension”

We discovered our teacher had a secret water bottle that was actually full of alcohol and called her out on it. She couldn’t write us up for anything ‘official’ but we were suddenly getting written up for dozens of incredibly ridiculous things.

I got written up for looking bored in class.

I was in second grade, it was for reading. I don’t remember what book anymore, but it was age appropriate. I was just reading the wrong thing during reading time.

Somebody set fire to a wall mounted bin with a firework inside it.
The deputy head went to put the fire out, the firework went of almost blowing his face off, allegedly, I didn’t see it as I was already in detention for an unrelated incident.
The deputy head storms straight into where I’m sat on my tod for detention and asks what do I think I’m playing at almost killing him.
The headmaster gets called in and everyone’s grilling me to confess for setting the bin on fire while I was in detention the whole time!

This isn’t my story it was a friend, but I think about it often and it still makes me laugh. It was high school English class and the teacher asked “does anybody know the famous quote from ‘The Elephant Man’?” and without missing a beat my friend put his arm in front of his face like and elephant trunk and made a loud and accurate elephant noise while slowly waving his arm up. Everybody thought it was hilarious except for the teacher who sent him to sit in the hall for the rest of the period. So he’s sitting out there and 5 minutes later the door opens and another kid comes out and my friend is like “what did you do wrong?” and the other kid goes “I couldn’t stop laughing”

Which is fucking great. Gets me every time.

Catholic school with uniform including khaki pants. I started my period and bled thru. I swapped to sweatpants. Most teachers just figured I must have some reason and didn’t bother me. A couple asked after it, one accepted my reason and offered to to let me out of class to have a little more time to cleanup or call home or whatever I needed to feel comfortable. The last one gave me detention for being out of uniform.

School administration reversed it when they heard why I was being sent to detention. I was advised to just go to the main office if it ever happened again so they could help me instead of having to deal with each teacher myself.

The reason isn’t really silly, I get it, but the punishment was.

In high school I spent a lot of time reading. Basically every lunch, every study hall period, etc. I read a fairly significant chunk of the library.

Problem was that I also tended to read during boring lectures in class, which pissed off a couple of my teachers and resulted in not great grades.

But all of their punishments were designed to punish people who hated to read. So my math teacher finally snaps and sends me to in school suspension… where I sit in a room and the monitor on duty is absolutely delighted that I sat there the entire day to read and even lets me go early for such good behavior.

I was later kicked out of honors courses and put into a remedial study hall situation. Again with a monitor who was supposed to make sure people were actually studying. Only way to get out of this was … a library pass. Where I could freely read whatever I wanted. Never did spend much time in study hall.

Calling my teacher a dog after he called me a horse. This is no joke, my mother was called in.