Tell me about the “incident” at your school

[calgarygeologist]

In my junior high we had a couple of special education classes, two levels based on needs, and in some cases those students were incorporated into the regular classes for short time frames. One day a higher needs kid was in one of my classes and I don't remember what, if anything, led up to this but he stood up from his desk, walked up to the teacher who was at the chalkboard and choked her against the wall. It was pretty crazy.

[Julio]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

On Saturday, March 24, 1984, five students at Shermer High School in Shermer, Illinois, report for an all-day detention: socially awkward Brian Johnson, volatile wrestler Andrew Clark, shy loner Allison Reynolds, popular girl Claire Standish, and rebellious delinquent John Bender. They gather in the school library and meet with our vice principal Richard Vernon, who warns them not to talk or move from their seats and assigns each of them the task of writing a thousand-word essay describing "who you think you are."

Bender ignores the rules and spends his time antagonizing the others and defying Vernon, who gives him eight additional weekends of detention. The students sneak off to retrieve Bender's marijuana stash from his locker. Still, when they see Vernon returning to the library, Bender deliberately gets caught to allow the others to sneak back in. Locked in a storage closet as punishment, Bender is berated by Vernon even further who tells him that he wants Bender to prove how tough he is and is offered a chance to punch Vernon but fails to act. He soon escapes into the ceiling panels and falls into the library, where the others hide him from Vernon.

The students pass the time arguing, listening to music, and smoking marijuana, gradually opening up about their home lives and their reasons for being in detention:

- Claire's popularity subjects her to intense peer pressure, while her bickering parents use her against each other; she received detention for skipping school to go shopping.
- Bender reveals the physical abuse he and his mother suffer at the hands of his father, including cigar burns, as well as other injuries he has sustained from his father physically abusing him. He is serving detention for pulling a false fire alarm.
- Andrew became influenced by jock culture and is intimidated by his father to succeed in wrestling. He was given detention for taping a student's buttocks together in an attempt to win both his teammates' and his father's approval.
- Brian is under so much academic pressure from his parents to get good grades that he contemplated suicide after getting an F in shop class. He was sent to detention for bringing a flare gun to school to kill himself.
- Allison is compulsively dishonest with neglectful parents, constantly stealing things to use should she ever run away from home. She admits that she showed up to detention for lack of anything better to do.

Despite their differences, the students realize they all face similar problems; Andrew and Allison bond over their complex relationships with their parents; Brian and Claire each feel anxiety over being a virgin. Still, the group suspects that their new friendships will end once detention is over. Meanwhile, Vernon complains to the janitor, Carl, that students have become less disciplined, but Carl suggests that Vernon is the one who has changed and cares too much about what his students think of him.

The others convince Brian to complete Vernon's essay on the group's behalf. Claire gives Allison a makeover, which sparks romantic interest from Andrew, and Bender crawls back to the closet, where Claire challenges her "pristine" reputation by kissing him. As the students part ways, Allison and Andrew kiss, and she rips the state championship patch off his letterman jacket to keep; Claire gives Bender one of her diamond earrings, and they share their own kiss.
Vernon reads Brian's essay, which asserts that the vice principal has made petty assumptions about all of them and declares that "each one of us is a brain (Brian), an athlete (Andrew), a basket case (Allison), a princess (Claire), and a criminal (Bender)." "Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club." Bender then triumphantly raises his fist in the air while walking home across the school's football field.

I had forgotten about this incident, and the people involved.

[BlackArcher101]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

To the best of my recollection, kids were playing for keeps and the school got complaints about it from parents.

Crazy how many people went to OHS at the same time...

Huh, that's wasn't the whole point of it? haha

[CliffFletcher]

One lunch hour, the most notorious headbanger in our school was taken away in an ambulance. Speculation spread like wildfire. Was he stabbed? Did he OD? Consensus built around the story that he was on acid and fell off the roof of the school.

Turns out he choked on a french fry.

[Yamer]

In my hometown we had a smaller school for Kindergarten to Grade 3, and the primary school for Grades 4 - 12. When I was in the smaller school a disgruntled kid went into the primary school with a rifle and shot off a couple rounds through the gym doors. Thankfully there wasn't a class going on. This must have been around 91 or 92. Not sure what became of him.

In the primary school there was a notorious Grade 5 teacher that would physically abuse students for misbehaving. I remember hearing horror stories in Grade 4 from the Grade 5 kids, and unfortunately it all turned out to be true. I watched him punch, kick, and slap my classmates all the time. He walked up behind me and jabbed the tip of a pen into the top of my head and I started bleeding. Another classmate had surgery to restructure his ear lobes, and after giggling in class one day the teacher grabbed him by the ears, twisted them, and pulled him up into a standing position from the floor. Needless to say he required further surgery. Another he pushed into those metal coat hooks along the wall and the kid had to get a bunch of stitches. I remember coming back from recess and seeing the blood all over the floor. That was pretty traumatic to an 11 year old.

Of course back then it was always the kids fault, and the guy had been teaching there for 20-30 years. At some point after I had already graduated I heard he was silently "retired" after some incident they couldn't disclose.

[Puppet Guy]

I can't recall anything interesting happening in any school I went to. Either I was in some dull places or was terribly socially isolated.

In Grade 11, I talked a student teacher into letting me make a miniature working guillotine in Social Studies instead of writing a paper. Figuring the presentation needed some color, I obtained a Barbie doll, filled her up with fake blood and when her head came off she oozed gore for the rest of the class.

Girls wouldn't talk to me after that day.

[La Flames Fan]

In high school 4 friends passed away in an avalanche...looking back that was traumatic. I still think about them. I wasn't super super close to all of them, but close enough that it was pretty crushing. RIP you beauties.

[iggy_oi]

There’s probably a few but one that immediately comes to mind is the time in elementary school when a dude walking by from the other side of the fence shot at a bunch of us with a pellet gun while we were playing soccer during our lunch hour recess. We got to skip out on classes for the rest of the day to talk with the police and we ended up on that nights news edition of crime stoppers. That was our 15 minutes of fame for me and a few buddies.

[The Yen Man]

In junior high, I remember one kid drowned during a Phys Ed camping trip. I was in the same class as his younger brother, and I remember the school had a memorial for him in the gym.

[Geraldsh]

Russel rode a horse to school. One really cold day he had not closed his zipper properly and was frost bitten in a very sensitive area. The teacher had him sit on the furnace vent most of the day.

Small school = small incidents

[Jiri Hrdina]

Marbles were really popular. The most desirable marble was a “king king steely” which in reality was just a big ball bearing a kid brought. But everyone wanted it. If you went up against the kid who has it you had to have a good marble and hit him five times while he only had to hit you once. I took my crack and hit him three times before he got me. Lost one of my best marbles because of that but at least I took a chance. Anyways a kid finally beat him and won the king king. But the other kid wouldn’t give it up. This led to a masssive argument and in turn we had an assembly, letters went home and the whole deal to ban all marbles from the school yard.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Also one day we had Church’s Fried Chicken and our lunch came with those styrofoam planes. We thought it will be hilarious to hide and throw them at our grade 3 teacher (who was just a sweet old woman) when she came back into the room. We scared the #### out of her and she just went to her desk and sat down and started crying. Another kid went and got another teacher and we all felt awful. We weren’t doing it out of malice. We just thought it would be hilarious.

[Reggie Dunlop]

Junior High band class had a substitute teacher. Everyone switched instruments and it was absolute, glorious bedlam. The flustered teacher left the room in exasperation, and the principal came in and read us the riot act.

[DoubleF]

Did anyone else remember a substitute teacher named Ms. Hanson? My class was the one that supposedly got her fired and she never subbed again in the CBE system. To be fair, my classmate was being a little #### shooting paper welts across the classroom. But you don't jump on a kid to try and take something away (especially someone of her size). You especially don't do this in a manner that leaves scratch marks and swelling as part of the aftermath.


In Jr. High, I had one of those mini fans you could buy at the dollar store. In an attempt to increase the fan output on a hot day, I cut out the bottom of a slurpee cup to create a wider and lighter fan blade. It didn't work. But then we cut the plastic slurpee cup piece into a buzz saw shape. It was like a Dremel with a plastic buzz saw shape on the end. We were sawing through paper, fruit and other random stuff. Someone discovered they had a 9V battery that allowed us to increase the speed. That got confiscated quickly, so we got more stuff and made another a few days later. That too got discovered and was quickly confiscated. Soon after that, mini fans were banned from our school.

[KelVarnsen]

There was the time all the cool kids got rewarded with Taco Bell. They all got the ####s.

[BlackArcher101]

Originally Posted by DoubleF

In Jr. High, I had one of those mini fans you could buy at the dollar store. In an attempt to increase the fan output on a hot day, I cut out the bottom of a slurpee cup to create a wider and lighter fan blade. It didn't work. But then we cut the plastic slurpee cup piece into a buzz saw shape. It was like a Dremel with a plastic buzz saw shape on the end. We were sawing through paper, fruit and other random stuff. Someone discovered they had a 9V battery that allowed us to increase the speed. That got confiscated quickly, so we got more stuff and made another a few days later. That too got discovered and was quickly confiscated. Soon after that, mini fans were banned from our school.

We would make bow 'n arrows out of bic pens. Use a scissor to drill a hole in the middle of the casing, notch each end, put a rubber band around it, then use the pen tip/ink insert as the arrow. That thing had power, would go straight across the room and penetrate paper. Things got dicey when we would add sharp items to the tip and have fights between two teams. Blood was shed and that practice was soon banned.

[#-3]

Bear Spray in the stairwell, they didn't know what happened at first told us to evacuate through the front door instead of our normal exit that had been subject to a 'chemical attack', called in every kinds of Emergency vehicle imaginable, I don't know if they sent all of us home for the day, but we all just left.

[Reggie Dunlop]

Kids making hash pipes in shop class and the teacher said nothing.

[Shazam]

Guy tried to look up a girl's dress using a mirror on his shoe. She kicked him in the balls, he laid motionless in the hallway all day.

[bluejays]

High school. A girl in my grade had a younger sister. Younger sister got caught in the staff washroom giving a rinse to three basketball team members. The teacher who caught them was French and angry about life and we had his class with the older sister the day after. The older sister would’ve wanted to be the size of an ant the next day in that class as she was nothing like the younger one. Whispers for about a week about what happened.