When I am younger, I join my middle school’s student council. I soon find that the president is a little controlling, but I try to avoid her if possible. One of the student council jobs is emptying recycling bins of water bottles into a larger bin across the small campus which accepts bottles and cans. My friend has given me a fruit drink in a can, which I have finished and am trying to put in the recycling can just as the president walks up to empty it.

President: “Hey, you can’t throw that away in here!”

Me: “Why not? It’s metal, and this bin accepts metal cans.”

President: “No, it doesn’t!”

She points to a paper sign on the side that says, “Water Bottles Only”.

President: “It only accepts plastic bottles!

Me: “The big bins over there accept cans, and that’s where you are taking this bin!”

President: “Then why don’t you put this in the bin over there?!”

Me: “This one’s just going there right now. Why would I waste my time walking there when I could just save a trip?!”

My friend, who has been next to me the whole time, speaks up.

Friend: “Come on, [My Name]. This isn’t worth arguing about. Let’s go.” 

I ended up throwing the can into the trash and quitting the next year. I couldn’t avoid the president, as I had three months of morning announcements performed by the student council with her.

This story is part of our Recycling roundup!

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I take driver’s ed at a local high school with other teenagers. One is committed to being the class clown, and we all think he is doing pretty well at it. For example, after our teacher stresses that a green traffic light means go WHEN CLEAR, he asks what red means. The class clown calls out, “Stop when clear!”

One day, the classroom phone rings. The class clown is sitting closest and offers to answer it. The teacher obliges.

Class Clown: “Hello, [Teacher]’s room; this is [Class Clown]… Yes, that’s me. Oh, [Teacher] has mentioned me?”

Teacher: “Who is it?”

Class Clown: “Your wife.”

He continues the conversation with the teacher’s wife. The teacher walks over to the phone.

Teacher: “Here, let me have the phone.”

Class Clown: “She said she wants to talk to me.”

The teacher rolls his eyes and grabs the phone.

Teacher: “Right. Hi, honey, I— What? Um, okay.”

He then hands the phone back to the class clown.

Teacher: “She wanted to let me know what she was making for dinner tonight… and now she wants to talk to you again.”

The class clown and the teacher’s wife ended up talking another five or ten minutes. From the side of the conversation we could hear, it sounded like a pleasant one!

When I was a teenager, my dad and step-mom sent me to a Christian camp for a week, citing that my brother had loved his time there years ago and that I would have fun, too. A lot of kids from our church in my age group were going, too, but I don’t think my parents realized that I wasn’t really friends with any of them.

The week started off poorly when it turned out that the only bedding provided was sheets — no pillow or comforter — so I had to use about half of my spending money to buy a tiny and overpriced pillow to use. I have no idea how my parents missed that, as the other campers all had supplies, and I was never given any information beforehand outside of “You’re going; isn’t that great?!”

Days at the camp were filled with mandatory sports activities; anything that I actually found fun, like rock climbing or paintball, cost extra money per session that I now didn’t have due to the pillow problem. While I love being physically active, I hate being told how to be physically active, so I half-a**ed my way through the first day or two until life gave me a blessing.

Right on schedule, that time of the month arrived! I might have been a tad too gleeful telling the counselor that I wouldn’t be able to play flag-volley-fris-ball for the rest of the week, as they kind of squinted at me and asked if I was fine with telling everyone I was on my period, which I was.

The rest of the week, I was able to sit in the shade sketching, and I was only required to attend the daily church gatherings where over-excited twenty-somethings would tell us how important it was to make sure we brought all our friends to God so they wouldn’t end up in Hell. Fun for the whole family!

I finished up the week with a dozen sketch pages filled and a frown on my face as my dad asked me how my time was. I told him exactly what I thought about being sent to camp with no friends and people telling me to do things I hate all day. My dad got a thoughtful look on his face and then said, “Oh, yeah! [Brother] actually hated that camp! Sorry about that!”

While I didn’t commit patricide, I also didn’t get sent to camp again, so small victories, I guess.

I have unusual taste in music and typically know zilch about new or popular releases. I’m in middle school and my orchestra teacher has just announced that we’re going to perform a string version of the Coldplay song “Viva La Vida” as our “fun piece.”

Me: “Viva La Vida?”

Classmate: “I love this song! Do you know it?”

Me: “Nope. Never heard of the group, either.”

The teacher plays the song on her laptop. I’m excited beyond belief.

Me: “IT’S ‘FALLEN KINGDOM’!”

Classmates: *Pause* “What?”

It turned out that “Fallen Kingdom” was a parody of “Viva La Vida.” Geekdom strikes again!

I am a secondary education major in college. One of the requirements to get into the secondary ed program is to write an essay on why we want to be a secondary ed teacher. Our advisor has to sign off on the essay before we can submit it to the education department for our final approval to join the program.

Because of the timing of the program and the semesters, I only have about three weeks during the end of fall semester — on top of fall semester finals — to get the essay written, signed, and submitted before everyone goes home for Christmas break; secondary ed program classes start with spring semester.

After reading through my essay, this is what my advisor says.

Advisor: “This is really good. Definitely good enough to get you into the program. But… I still think it can be better. I’m not going to approve it yet; I want to see what you can come up with to make it better, and then I’ll read it again.”

As disappointed and stressed as I am with everything else going on at the time, I scramble to rewrite the essay. I end up using the most boring “why I want to be a teacher” cliches online and turn it back in to him. He rifles through the pages without actually reading a single word… and then signs off on my ORIGINAL essay.

Advisor: “I just wanted to see what you would do. Being a teacher means being prepared to change your plans at the last minute and come up with a whole new lesson plan, so I’m just giving you a taste of what that feels like!”

Fortunately, that was the last time I really needed anything from him as my advisor, beyond mandatory check-ins on my grades once every semester, so I was largely able to avoid him for my last year and a half of school.