One day, when my younger sister was in kindergarten, her class had a field trip. The teacher told everyone to use the bathroom before they left as they had a long bus ride ahead of them. When my sister said she didn’t need to go, the teacher insisted. She said my sister couldn’t go on the trip unless she used the bathroom.

My sister then proceeded to walk into the bathroom, only to come out a few minutes later.

Sister: “You can make me go to the bathroom, but you can’t make me go pee.”

I wish I’d had the confidence to stand up to a teacher at that age.

This took place in 2001. I was nine years old and in third grade. We were just starting to learn multiplication and were learning the multiples of threes. My teacher warned us that from here on out, the multiplications were going to get harder and she didn’t want us to feel overwhelmed, so she came up with a song to help us remember the solutions to multiplying threes.

Teacher: “I am going to sing a song that’ll help you memorize all the multiples of three up to the number thirty. I sing this song every year to my students and I’ve had past students, including middle schoolers and even high schoolers, who come back to visit me tell me they remember this song. Are you ready?”

Us: “Yes!”

Teacher: “Three, six, nine, the monkey drank wine; twelve, fifteen, eighteen, we’re going skating; twenty-one, twenty-four, twenty-seven, we’re almost to heaven; thirty!”

Our class erupted in laughter at the silliness of the song, and we asked her to sing it again which she did.

Classmate #1: “Mrs. [Teacher], there’s no way we’re going to remember this when we get older. It’s too silly!”

Teacher: “You might say that now, but I’m telling you, I have students from many years ago come up to me and say one of their favorite memories was learning this song and they still use it to this day!”

Classmate #2: “Yeah, right!”

Fast forward to today. I just turned thirty and I taught my nine-year-old nephew, who is just starting to learn how to multiply, this song my teacher sang all those years ago. It might sound silly, but it turns out she was right when she said we would never forget that song!

CONTENT WARNING: Injury

In fourth grade, I got a growth spurt. I was finally tall enough to reach and climb a set of horizontal bars that were on my school’s playground. So, during one lunchtime recess, I climbed to the highest one, which was maybe eight feet off the ground, but it seemed like twenty to a short kid like me.

Now that I was hanging off the highest bar, I realized that I had no idea how to dismount. I simply let go. But as I fell, my legs swung out and my hands went down to cushion my fall. What ended up happening was that my left humerus wedged into my left ulna, not breaking the latter into pieces, but cracking it lengthwise a couple of inches. And yes, it hurt like h***.

I went into the school to see the nurse. Since it was lunchtime, there was a teacher monitoring the hall; we were only allowed one entry into the hall during lunch.

Me: “Mrs. [Hall Monitor], I think I broke my arm.”

Hall Monitor: “Let’s see. Oh, that doesn’t look broken.”

She then attempted to bend my arm, which I’d been keeping straight since one bone was wedged into the other.

I screamed.

Hall Monitor: “Oh, perhaps it’s more damaged than it looks.”

I walked down to the school secretary’s office, which led into the nurse’s office.

Secretary: “[My Name], why are you here?”

Me: “I need to see the nurse. I think my arm’s broken.”

Secretary: “The nurse isn’t at our school today. Let’s see what it looks like. Hmmm… It doesn’t look broken.”

As she was looking, she tried to bend my elbow. Again, I screamed at the top of my lungs.

Secretary: *Sigh* “I’ll call over to [Other School] and see if she can come over.”

I waited for about half an hour for the nurse. When she arrived, we went through the whole it-doesn’t-look-broken routine, including my scream. She conceded that I was more seriously hurt than it looked but not a broken arm. She called my mother to come get me. Coincidentally, Mom worked for our family doctor.

At the doctor’s office, he first numbed the area around my elbow before doing any manipulation. After an X-ray, he saw the unusual crack in my ulna, along with my humerus partly inside it. He managed to get my bones back in position and then put on a cast, Ace bandages, and a sling.

The look on the teacher’s, secretary’s, and nurse’s faces when I returned the next day WITH A BROKEN ARM was priceless.

I am nine and in primary school. We are using tape measures to measure our height as part of the lesson. Everyone has paired up, and I am left out, so the teacher measures my height and records it as 51 cm (20 inches). I am one of the tallest kids in the class.

Me: “Um, miss, I think you wrote my height wrong.”

Teacher: “Nonsense! You’re 51 centimetres.”

I hold up the metre ruler.

Me: “Miss, if I were 51 centimetres, I would be half as tall as this ruler, and I’m taller than it is. Everyone else is 100 cm or more, and I’m taller than them.”

Teacher: “Don’t talk back.”

Me: “I think you read the wrong side. I might be 51 inches, not centimetres. Then, I’d be…” *looks at tape measure* “…129 centimetres, which sounds right since [Classmate] is 120 and I’m taller than him.”

Teacher: “You’re an idiot.”

She shooed me off. I measured myself again and, lo and behold, I was not, in fact, the shortest person in the class. She also told me I was spelling my name wrong, recorded my height and weight incorrectly — leading to me getting a letter home about my obesity even though I was underweight — and screamed at me for asking how to spell “marshmallow.” I don’t miss her.

I’m teaching a class of five- and six-year-old children, and, it being close to Christmas, a debate has somehow erupted about whether or not there is a Santa Claus. The class is clearly split into two camps, one for and one against the jolly old man being real. Then, a kid from the True Believer camp drops this bombshell:

Kid: “Oh, yeah? Well, if Santa isn’t real, how come I saw him at the mall on the weekend?”

Best. Fallacy. Ever.