(I’m an assistant leader at a youth group with kids aged six to eight. We’ve taken them to use a climbing wall, which is at the school I used to attend. One of the kids asks to use the toilet, and I offer to take her. I’m 22, and I left that school when I was 18.)

Kid: “How come you know where the toilets are?”

Me: “Because I went to school here.”

Kid: “Yeah, but how do you remember?”

Me: “It wasn’t that long ago!”

Kid: “But I thought you were old…”

(A girl in my year comes up to talk to me in the library.)

Girl: “So, we don’t really know one another, but I need to tell you about the party, and you should have joined the student society, and—”

Me: “Sorry. Look. We have a test in three days. Please let me read.”

Girl: “Why? You’re always reading.”

Me: “I’m thinking about going for a research masters, and to do that, I need average of 7.5. So I need to study. Please let me.”

Girl: “LIAR!”

Me: “What?”

Girl: “The only reason any woman goes to university is to get a husband with an education; they earn more! You don’t need a good average, no woman does!”

Me: “…”

(My biology teacher is notorious for his tough style, his strongly worded opinions, and for being ‘scary’.)

Teacher: “…and when I say something, you learn. If you have a question, you ask. But I won’t abide students trying to pull the chair from under me!”

(I draw a cartoon of him with the chair being pulled out from under him, and make sure to throw it away before leaving the class. Over the course of the year, I do many such cartoons. On the last day of the year, we start to leave, and he pulls me aside.)

Teacher: “[My name], I want you to know I enjoyed your questions, even though we usually disagreed. You are smart; I like smart. Also…”

(He pulls open a cabinet door and reveals every one of my drawings which he’d picked out of the trash and pinned up.)

Teacher: “…I enjoyed these.”

(In our class, we pick a station and are partnered with two or three other people. We have a computer-generated lesson plan based on which station we’ve picked. I’ve ended up partnered with a student I had a fight with a year or two prior, after he had attacked my friend.)

Me: “Why the h*** did you come to this station?”

Student: “Shut up, I just wanna do this one.”

Me: “Whatever.”

Student: “Fine, so you pick where we start.” *turns to a friend* “Man, this’ll be the easiest unit. She always manages to get a good grade somehow.”

(He then proceeds to spend the rest of the day doing zero work, letting me carry him. I decide that I could survive flunking one unit. At the end of the day, we get our grades back…)

Student: “What the h***?! How did I get an F?!”

Me: “Oh, gee, that’s really too bad. I guess I just wasn’t able to do so well all by myself.”

(The teacher actually apologized for letting him pair up with me when I explained our history, and actually forbade the guy from working not just with me, but in any unit taking place at a station next to me for the rest of the semester!)

(One of my teachers in high school tells our class about her son’s time on the school wrestling team.)

Teacher: “When was the last time you showered?!”

Son: “Uh, two weeks ago. Coach said not to. He said it would soak into my skin and bump me up a weight class.”

Teacher: “Wait, your coach told you not to shower after practice because the water will soak into your skin?!”

Son: “Uh, yeah.”

Teacher: “Listen, he doesn’t have to live with you but I do! You are going to shower as soon as you come home from practice, and if he has any problems with this, he needs to take them up with me! I’ll need to wash your sheets afterward, and everything you’ve worn.”