From being reprimanded and getting detention for another student's mistake, to a best friend stealing his bicycle and not owning up to it, people share childhood moments that they're still mad about.
[Sources can be found at the end of the article]
It’s spelled correctly!
“In 2nd grade we had to pick a country from the big world map, look up the flag in an encyclopedia, then draw the flag and write the name of the country above the flag. I chose Iraq. I handed it to the teacher, and she insisted I spelled it wrong, because there’s ALWAYS a ‘U’ after a ‘Q’. I checked again and told her I spelled it right. She had me stay in class for recess because I wasn’t ‘following directions.'”
All that time, effort and sleepless nights for nothing
“When I was about eight or nine, we had a big project in school which ended with us writing a story. I spent hours on this thing. It was going to be the best book ever. It was only a matter of time before it was snapped up by some publisher and then it would be the talk of the Scholastic Book Fair, no doubt in my mind. It absolutely had to be in by the time school finished for Christmas, so my teacher could mark it over the break, so I stayed up until about ten o’clock at night for about a week beforehand working on it — which, you know, is the closest thing you get to an all-nighter when you’re about nine. It was my magnum opus.
I got back to school in January to find that a) she had lost it, b) she was accusing me of not handing it in, and c) because mine was the only one she couldn’t find, she decided to call me out in front of the class about it. I ended up locking myself in the toilet because I was crying so much. Worst still, it later transpired that when it ‘turned up after all,’ she marked it as though it was handed in late, and still only gave me a middling grade.”
Worst way of dealing with school bullying
“I was bullied really badly when I was in primary school. The girls would spread horrible, nasty rumours about me and call me names. The boys would hit me, knock over my books and they would also say horrible things to me.
One day, the worst girl bully (we’ll call her Rebecca) punched me in the stomach. It was really hard and hurt a lot so I was crying. My teacher asked me why I was crying so I told her what happened (‘Rebecca punched me.’)
Instead of quietly dealing with it, my teacher decided the best course of action was to involve the entire class. She went to each individual student in the class and asked them what happened with me and Rebecca. Most people didn’t know but some did. Nobody was going to squeal in front of the entire class, so everyone said that I was lying and Rebecca didn’t punch me.
I got punished for lying and Rebecca’s parents called mine to inform them that I made false accusations to the teacher about their precious little angel. Thankfully, my parents believed me, but I’m still beyond pissed that my teacher did that.”
Sensitivity Training
“In 6th grade I was playing baseball at recess and a kid got mad and punched me. I just walked away because I didn’t want to get in trouble for fighting back.
So the principal found out, and made the kid apologize and gave him a recess detention.
But she also took me into her office and got out her books on bullying and told me, ‘Hey, it’s okay that you didn’t fight back. It’s perfectly fine to be a sensitive guy.’
She kept me all recess.”
Growing up with trust issues
“When I was about 9 or 10, I was very angry with my mum (I can’t remember why) and wrote her a letter explaining how I felt. I am still not someone who likes to talk about feelings, so for little me to write them all down in a letter was a big deal.
Anyway, I give this letter to my mum.
She got so angry with me. I wished I hadn’t written the letter. To make matters worse, she showed the letter to my grand-dad and proceeded to laugh at me in front of him. I haven’t trusted her since. I’m now 39.”
Detention for receiving special valentine gift
“In middle school, we were not allowed to give out anything for Valentines Day unless we gave it to the whole class.
However, there was a boy that had a crush on me so he gave me a special Valentine at the beginning of class. The teacher saw him give it to me and then the teacher gave me detention for receiving the illicit Valentine. The boy did not get in trouble.
Its been 16 years and I’m still furious.”
Trouble for one day, more candy the next
“On Halloween, both my sister and I would go trick-or-treating. When we got back my parents did the whole ‘inspecting the candy’ thing then said that for the remainder of the night we could eat as much candy as we wanted to. Then everyday after they would only give us so much so that it would last longer.
My sister would proceed to gorge herself on her candy until she vomited. She would eat nearly her entire supply of candy that night. I, on the other hand, was more responsible and didn’t want to puke so I just ate a decent bit of my favorite candies.
Well, the following few days and weeks my sister would complain and pitch a fit that she didn’t have any candy left and that it was unfair that I did. So my parents would give her equal shares of my candy. I got shafted two years in a row because I have impulse control and my sister doesn’t.
Not only that but I caught her multiple times stealing candy from my bag when my parents weren’t home. She’d get in trouble for a day but then just get more candy the next.”
Stolen bike by best friend
“My ‘best’ friend and his brother stole my bike. A few weeks later I was at his house and they showed me this obviously freshly spray painted bike that they ‘found’ in the woods. I actually had the serial number, and I later told them that it was my bike and I can prove it. Like an idiot, I told ’em over the phone so when I went to get the bike, the serial number was conveniently scratched off. But the worst part that still bugs me to this day is that I was always so scared that I didn’t do anything about it.”
The parents that sold his items without permission
“My parents loved to take my stuff and sell it in garage sales. They thought, ‘oh he’s getting too old for these, let’s sell them.’ So the binder that held every single first edition Pokémon card in perfect condition went bye-bye for $5. It even included several rare limited editions.
I could have sold that binder today for thousands and thousands. One of the special edition Charizard cards was worth $800 by itself.
But because they decided I was too old, they took my stuff that they didn’t even buy me, and they sold it for a happy meal.”
No appetite for broccoli and cheese anymore
“Around the age of nine I was a picky eater, particularly wouldn’t eat vegetables. My grandma tried to make them more appealing by melting slices of cheese on them which I thought made them taste way worse. Usually I’d try to eat what she made. Once though, I refused to eat cheese covered broccoli and I was banned from eating in the house until I did. My grandma froze and reheated the same serving of broccoli with cheese for at least five days. I was finally hungry enough on the weekend to agree to her terms and eat the reheated broccoli and cheese. Naturally I vomited it right back onto the plate and my grandma scolded me for what I assume was me crying about the event. I’m still mad about that and STILL can’t eat broccoli and cheese.”
The most amazing story by a 5th grader
“In 5th grade, I was in an advanced english class. Don’t know if it is relevant, but i was the only new student to advanced english that year, because all the other kids had taken it from like 1st grade or something. They also all took advanced math so they were very smart.
One day, our teacher assigns us a writing prompt in which we had to write our own fictional story of any kind. All the other kids start writing realistic fiction stories of people with domestic problems or disease – mind you this is 5th grade. Being a normal child who liked fantasy and video games, i decided to write a fantasy/sci-fi adventure story called ‘Moon Mettle.’
I was and still am very interested in space, so I knew a fair amount about all things space, even for a 5th grader.
So my story revolved around 2 American astronauts who meet up with other astronauts on an international Moon base to fight aliens. The aliens were trying to make a black hole weapon to destroy the Earth. I ended the story with a cliffhanger where the weapon was fired, intending to make the second part on our next fictional assignment.
I got a 0 out of 100 and a SAD FACE on my story because I ‘wasn’t allowed to use cliffhangers’ and ‘it wasn’t a good enough story’ although everyone in my family and friends who read it thought it was amazing for a 5th grader. I thought that since professional writers do it, why couldn’t I?
It got to the point where I cried because my teacher wouldn’t even let me read it to the class, which everyone else did. My mom got involved after that.”
Terrible way of teaching this kid a life lesson
“I don’t know if I’m as mad as I am confused… I remember when I was very little my cousins were over. I was very proud of my piggy bank and the change I’d collected so I emptied it to show my girl cousin. I forget everything that happened except when my cousins left, my stepmom told me she had seen my boy cousins walk out with pockets full of my coins and she didn’t stop them because I shouldn’t have been showing them my money. I remember being confused and hurt that she would just let this happen. I have no idea what lesson she was trying to teach me. I even remember going over my cousin’s and considering stealing some of HIS coins since he took mine! I didn’t, and now that I’m older I wonder if my mom was lying to me for some reason (I definitely didn’t have enough coins to fill pockets) or if she legitimately would just let people steal from me. I still think about it sometimes.”
Hand raised for eternity
“In first grade we were talking about synonyms for words. My teacher had started with a word like subtract or something. Those who thought they had a synonym would raise their hand and say what they thought it was.
Kids were saying, ‘add,’ ‘plus,’ ‘less,’ and small words, because first grade.
I was over there with what I thought to be the epitome of words: ‘deduct.’ I sat there with my hand raised for what seems to be an eternity. Everybody got called on except me and this other guy. The teacher then goes: ‘If someone would have said ‘deduct’ or ‘reduce’ they would have gotten to be line leader! Lets all try to study our thesaurus a little more next time!’
I was heartbroken, and still think about it often to this day.”
Getting hit for no reason!
“When I was in 5th grade (9/10 years old) a friend of mine came to me crying, so I went to comfort her and ask her what was wrong when one of her friends came up to me and smacked me across the face. Naturally I went to tell a teacher who decided that I must have done something to deserve it. She spent the whole bus ride to a school trip interrogating me and making me cry because she wouldn’t believe that the goody two shoes that hit me did it for no reason.”
No learning new math concepts before class
“In elementary school we were in one of those classes that was just about to introduce PEMDAS. The teacher began by writing on the board 10 – 5 x 2. My mom had taught me PEMDAS before while helping me with homework, so I knew you were supposed to do the multiplication first, so the answer is 0, but all the other kids didn’t know that so they subtracted first and got 10.
I raised my hand so freaking fast, and said 0 really loud cause I knew not a lot of other kids would get it. The class was silent, then the clique of the popular girls started giggling. The teacher then called me out and said, ‘Please stop guessing and actually think about how to get the answer.’ I was so sad I burst out crying and I said, ‘I know how to PEMDAS!’ Then the teacher sent me to the nurse’s office to calm down. The teacher then contacted my mom and told her she needs to give me more attention at home so I stop spending my free time learning about new math concepts before I am supposed to.”
Getting singled out for doing last minute homework
“When I was in 8th grade, me and a whole bunch of guys from class were procrastinating. History class always took place right after lunch time and we would do the previous day’s assigned homework at lunch instead of at home. We all thought what did it matter? If it was done before class why did it matter if we did it at home or not?
Wrong. Our history teacher really, really didn’t like this and I guess someone narced or he caught on.
The day of his crack down, me and the other guys in class are sitting at the lunch table rushing through our homework. Out of nowhere he swings by our table, tears the paper out of my notebook that I’m writing my answers in, and basketball shoots the wadded paper into a trash can. ‘Better start doing homework at home,’ He gave me a 0 later on the assignment in class.
I’m really not mad that he ‘caught’ me. I’m mad that he singled me out of a whole table that was doing the same thing and they all got to turn in the assignment. He HAD to have seen them doing the same thing.”
The perfect new word!
“When I was in first grade I learned the word ‘surly’ from my mom, because I’d misspelled the word surely and she told me to look up surly and see it was a word, just not the one I wanted. A week later, we were discussing Charlotte’s Web and my teacher asked for words to describe Templeton the Rat.
I was so excited because ‘surly’ was perfect! I could use my new word! All the other kids were saying things like ‘mean’ or ‘selfish’ and I raised my hand and said ‘surly!’ all proud of myself. My teacher said ‘that’s not a word’ and I still remember saying ‘my mom showed me it last week, it means bad-tempered and unfriendly.’ I will always remember the definition of surly word for word because of this. And the teacher said, ‘We don’t use complicated words like that here. Please come up with another.'”
Wrongly accused by paint ball staff
“I was invited to go paint-balling at this huge indoor paintball course for a friend of mine’s birthday. It cost around $80 to register, to get the equipment, and to buy their specific paintballs since you weren’t aloud to bring any of your own. As is the usual, you have to sit through a lecture on safety and how you cannot under any circumstances take the muzzle cover off when you are outside of the course. Cool no problem. I get to play one round and out of no where one of the staff says that I took the muzzle cover off and tells me I can’t play anymore. I had to sit upstairs and watch through a glass window for three hours as everyone else got to play and have a good time. It still makes me mad to this day.”
Coming up with an easy math solution
“In 4th grade, for quizzes on multiplication tables, I would memorize all the multiples and write them in a line at the top of the quiz (so, if it was sevens, I would write 7-14-21-28-etc), so I could easily figure out the answer, as it was a timed quiz. (Yes, I would write it during the timing, it was fast!)
My teacher saw it, and told my mother, who was also a teacher at the school. I got in huge trouble. I was told I had cheated, they gave me a stern talking-to after school, and I cried, hard.
Now that I look back, I realize that I was still using my own memory to arrive at the correct answer, right? I’ve always been very good at math, but often end up using unorthodox methods to get the answers (geometry was especially easy for me). Wouldn’t it be better to realize that I had come up with my own, easier to remember, solution?”
Falsely accused for a crime he did not commit
“When I was a kid, maybe around the age of ten, my friend and I were at a restaurant with our families. This restaurant had a small arcade, and we went to play that old Simpsons arcade game.
In the middle of playing, a little kid came up and put in some quarters. The game was easier with more players, so I was happy to have him join, but he just looked at us and then walked away. I didn’t think much of it.
On the way back to our families, the kid came up with his furious mother who accused me of stealing his quarters. I told her what happened, but she didn’t believe me, and my friend wouldn’t say anything in my defense, wouldn’t even look at either one of us. The other kid was dead silent. I think he was too young to really understand how the arcade machine worked.
I gave the woman my remaining quarters, but to this day it upsets me. I was falsely accused and punished for a crime I didn’t commit.”