I’m the author of this story and this story. The year after the second story, after moving to a completely different area of my city and transferring to a school quite literally behind my house, things were a lot better. I was able to make friends more easily, the overall feeling of the school was a lot nicer (minus the scandals like the seventh-grade girls’ bathroom getting lit on fire and someone leaving a bottle of milk in the lockers over the summer), and my teachers were a lot nicer… except for one.

My gym teacher was the stereotypical gym teacher bully type. He bragged about never taking a sick day, and he spewed that people on any sort of financial aid were lazy. I took both of these very, very personally. Not only was my mother suffering from epileptic seizures constantly and often had to call out of work when she had a particularly bad one overnight, but we were on food stamps, and my mother got partial disability payments.

[Gym Teacher] loved to belittle anyone who didn’t fit his perfect mold of a star athlete student, and if you weren’t on one of his teams, you were lazy and doomed to fail.

During my eighth grade year, this middle school made the decision to transition, year by year, into a high school, and since it was less than a minute’s walk from my house, I decided to stay at this school for high school after finishing eighth grade. This would make me a member of the first graduating class of this school. Moreover, most (but not all) of the teachers actually stuck around; some are still there, years after I graduated!

Unfortunately, one of them was [Gym Teacher], who also made the schedules for the students. And while the curriculum required one phys ed credit to graduate, I had him EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. It was horrible having to listen to the same spiels every day for another four years.

Come senior year, however, I made a painful decision. My classes were just rehashing the same material I’d been learning for the past three years; I wasn’t learning anything new. In the middle of the school year, my dad’s gallbladder went out, and my worry about him after his surgery gave me such chronic insomnia that I couldn’t function for over a month, and then the city shut down for another month right after due to a massive blizzard. I was out of school for a total of two months, and my teachers were cool about it and gave me a packet of makeup work… which I finished during the lunch period the same day because it was middle-school grade work.

Because I wasn’t learning anything new that would properly prepare me for college courses, and because my dad was still recovering and couldn’t do a whole lot by himself, I made the decision to drop out. I don’t regret it one bit, honestly, but what followed that decision is something that made Dad’s rant at my sixth-grade teacher absolutely pale in comparison.

My parents and I went up to the school during a day off to start the process of unenrolling me from the school. On the way up, Dad had to use the restroom, so Mom and I waited outside for him… and [Gym Teacher] saw us. He asked what was going on and why I was in school on a day off. We explained to him that I was preparing to unenroll.

To make a long story short, he attempted to guilt me, saying he was “so disappointed” and that I was “wasting my talent”. He caused me to break down sobbing. My mom got quite mad and told him that he had no right to decide whether or not I could drop out…

…and enter Papa Wolf, who saw me sobbing and my teacher lecturing me.

I thought he’d wanted to throw my old science teacher into a tree, but I have a hunch he would have hurled [Gym Teacher] out of a window. He roared at him loud enough that teachers were poking their heads out to find out what was going on. The less said, the better, because the language my dad used was… quite colorful, to say the least.

[Gym Teacher] left us alone, and we went to the principal’s office to get me unenrolled. The principal then tried to come up with all manner of excuses why she couldn’t just sign the singular form, which both of my parents shut down rather quickly. One signature later, I was unenrolled.

(I get the feeling they were trying to keep me around to boost their standardized testing scores because after I left, the school name went from [City] Community Academy to [President] High School at [City].)

As with my last story, though, this one has a happy ending, as well! Two years later, a school librarian stopped by my mom’s place of employment to try to set up internships for the students. My mom mentioned that I used to go to the school, and when she gave my name, the librarian was speechless. Apparently, I was quite popular among the faculty. We sat down and had a long discussion, and I decided to go back and graduate; they’d instated a new principal in the time I was gone, who personally expedited the process and assured me he’d do everything he could to help me graduate.

When he shook my hand as I walked across the stage, he told me he was so proud of me, and frankly, that made all the crap I endured worth it.

Related:
The Fire Can’t Get You If The Asthma Gets You First!
Teachers Are Supposed To PROTECT Kids From Bullies

I’m the author of this story, and I have a story from middle school this time — sixth grade. My homeroom teacher was, quite frankly, ridiculous. He was our science teacher and also the baseball coach for my school, so he had particularly strict standards.

One day in the middle of winter — snow on the ground and everything — we had a fire drill during the sixth-grade lunch period. No big deal, just shuffle out to the field and wait for the drill to be over. Some kids were chatting because, well, we were a bunch of ten- and eleven-year-olds in the middle of a conversation, but it was hushed so we didn’t interrupt anything. The drill ended, and we went about our day.

The school was set up so that each class moved with their homeroom to the different classrooms, looping around and ending with whatever class their homeroom was. (My class schedule was social studies, math, English, gym, lunch, computer studies, and science.) When we got to class, [Homeroom Teacher] was glaring at us through most of the lesson. We thought it was because of his broken thumb (from a messed-up catch during baseball practice), and we didn’t think anything of it.

About five minutes before school ended, as part of the closing announcements, we heard:

Announcement: “[Homeroom Teacher]’s homeroom class, please report to the cafeteria at dismissal.”

As soon as it was time for everyone else to leave, [Homeroom Teacher] marched us to the cafeteria without letting us get our backpacks or coats from our lockers, had us sit down, and started lecturing.

Apparently, even though there were other classes talking as well, the fact that we were speaking during a fire drill was unacceptable, and he demanded absolute silence. We were to repeat the fire drill until we did it without so much as a whisper.

Remember I mentioned he had very strict standards? This “absolute silence” included bodily functions like coughing and sneezing. One student cleared their throat? Back into the cafeteria and then back outside for another drill. Someone sniffled? Back inside, back outside.

This wouldn’t be a problem normally, but to recap a few things, it was freezing cold out — the middle of winter with snow on the ground — and we didn’t have our coats.

And I’m asthmatic.

By the third lap to the cafeteria and back out, I was wheezing and coughing badly because of the temperature changes. My inhaler was in my backpack.

Well… [Homeroom Teacher] didn’t quite count on the fact that my dad could see us marching to the field and back because he was there to pick me up from school, and needless to say, Papa Wolf was in full effect. I swear, I thought he was going to pick [Homeroom Teacher] up and full-body throw him into a tree with how angry he was, screaming at him for not noticing a ten-year-old wheezing and being unable to breathe. I was allowed to go home, where I ended up having to miss the next day because, surprising no one, that little stunt got me sick. I never had a problem out of [Homeroom Teacher] again.

Related:
Teachers Are Supposed To PROTECT Kids From Bullies

I treated myself to a birthday cruise, and I made sure to take lots of US cash for tips. Having spent lots of time in the customer service trenches, I was determined not to miss rewarding any service member who helped me in ANY way (and I needed a LOT of help), and to be known as “that fat American lady with the water bottle who always tips”.

I took said water bottle with me to dinner one night and inadvertently left it under the table when I left. I handed my waiter the typical $10 and wished him a good night. I was halfway back to my cabin when I heard, “Miss! Oh, Miss!” behind me. I turned to see the waiter jogging down the hallway with my water bottle. I thanked him profusely, and as he left, I decided he deserved a better tip.

I ducked into my cabin to grab more cash, and returned to the dining hall to find my waiter. When I approached him, he was chatting with other waiters (dinner was over by then), and they were all concerned when I asked my waiter for the $10 bill back. He did so without hesitation, albeit some confusion.

I placed a $20 in his hand, and said:

Me: “That’s for returning my bottle to me!”

The confused faces changed to smiles (and a few chuckles), as I thanked him again and went on with my vacation.

The following are stories from the glory days of “Pokémon GO!”

1. “Pokémon GO!” had just come out, around noon. I was working in a software team of thirty- to fifty-year-olds.

Senior Manager #1: “Oh, crap! A Koffing is at the other end of the building!” *Takes off running*

Junior Manager: “Ooooh, a Koffing?!”

Senior Manager #2: “You’d better not be leaving this meeting and running down the hall to catch a f****** cartoon character.”

[Junior Manager] pointed after [Senior Manager #1]

Junior Manager: “…he started it!”

2. Gym battles had just come out. The very first gym battle launched two blocks from my office. I looked around, and no one was paying attention to me, so I took off running. It was raining lightly, so all the other players were huddled under an awning together. 

A businessman in a 1,000-dollar suit, a surgeon in scrubs, two young men wearing gang colors, a female baker covered in flour, and a fast food worker were all huddled together, taking down the Pokémon boss. As other people have joked, “We have never been closer to world peace than that time when ‘Pokémon GO!’ came out.”

3. Same day. A church was having one of the first gym battles. (The game picked churches randomly for events to spawn. Churches did NOT sign up for this, which became a lawsuit later on.)

About twenty nerds had shown up for the boss battle. My spidey sense was tingling, so I stood across the street on the sidewalk, next to a store where I knew most of the staff.

As two cars of nerds pulled up and parked, two church ladies came out screaming. Keep in mind this was 7:30 pm on a Thursday, hardly the Sunday morning rush.

Church Ladies: “Get off our lawn! Stop having fun! We’re gonna call the police!”

Someone pointed out that the matches lasted five minutes and there wouldn’t be another that night; everyone was about to leave anyway. No dice.

A security guard — a massive Ving Rhames-looking man (plus 100 pounds) — came out yelling… at a bunch of nerds in their twenties to forties, looking at their phones.

Someone shouted, “This is why no one likes churches,” and, “Maybe it’s time churches paid taxes!” World peace was NOT achieved that day.

4. Not my story but one I read online that had me spewing giggles out my chuckle-hole. It was a post from the city police department on their Facebook account.

Police Department: “Dear Pokémon GO! players: Please be careful playing Pokémon GO! around police stations. Our officers are armed and deal with threats to their lives daily. Having someone scream, ‘I GOT YOU!’ at 2:00 am as the officer was leaving to go home made him believe he was under attack and not facing two grown men chasing a virtual yellow rat in the bushes where he ‘spawned’. Thirty years on the force, and I never once thought I’d say any of these words.”

I used to work for a video game company. We made an action-RPG dozens of you played. Members of the team had previously worked on “Fallout 3”, “Diablo”, “GoldenEye 007”, and other titles most of you actually did play! (Our RPG was great; it just didn’t sell well.)

It was my first job I truly loved, and although I didn’t make much as a lowly game tester, it was amazing to work with artists whose work I knew well, and to work a job where EVERYONE wanted to be there. I had just worked retail and data entry jobs before then. My experience there got me an IT job making four times as much, but that’s not the focus of this story.

I was eager to make a good impression, network, and be KNOWN.

It’s worth noting that I have a huge sweet tooth, love candy, and grew up lower-middle class. I will pick up any freebie I can. Buy one, get one free? Free pizza for anyone who signs up for text alerts?! BRING IT ON. I fill out every sweepstakes or contest I happen to see, including those little surveys on the bottom of receipts. (I’ve won a few thousand dollars’ worth of stuff, to be fair.)

So, of course, I was overjoyed that we had catered meals twice a week, and if shareholders or investors or the press visited, they’d have pizza, subs, sushi, or Indian food delivered, and everyone was welcome to a share. I loved when an email would come out saying, “Free pizza in the lunchroom. —Human Resources,” or, “My buddy at [Game Studio] just sent me twenty copies of the unreleased [Game Series], sitting in the lunchroom. —[Coworker]”.

It all came to a head one day when I had to use the bathroom or something and started moving quickly toward the lunchroom bathroom. 

Suddenly, five or six programmers and concept artists dashed toward me. 

Me: “What’s going on?!”

Developer #1: “You tell us!”

Me: “…what?”

Developer #2: “You’re the free stuff guy! We all keep our notifications off to concentrate when we work, but if you or that 6’6” guy suddenly leave your chairs and move quickly, it means pizza or Chinese or Halo 4 or something!”

Me: “…do you remember our names?”

There was a long pause.

Developer #3: “No, but I know if you’re moving fast, there’s a 99% chance there’s a cheesesteak or a cake nearby.”

There was another long pause.

Me: “I started college at fifteen, attended grad school, applied to 130 jobs last year, and uhhhh… I’m glad you remember that I love cake and that’s how people remember me.”

Just then, the 6’6” guy came out from a meeting, saw me slowing down, and yelled out:

Tall Guy: “Ooooh, is there pizza?!”