At the time of this story, I’m a very shy and very petite high school freshman. My locker is right next to my homeroom. A middle school friend’s locker is right next to mine, which we’re both excited about… until she gets a boyfriend a couple of months into the school year. Every time I go to my locker, they’re making out and grabbing each other against it. I try going between different classes, during lunch, and at the end of the day, and they’re always there. It takes me several tries to get their attention, and then they only move over enough for me to barely get my books out. This goes on for about a week.

One morning, I am running late and have about ninety seconds to grab my books before the homeroom bell. I sprint to my locker and, of course, they’re making out right in front of it.

Me: “Um… excuse me!”

They ignore me. I tap my friend on the shoulder.

Me: “[Friend], can you please move over? I need my books.”

She waves me off.

Me: “Come on! I don’t want a detention!”

I try to squeeze around them but get shoved out of the way. My fuse is officially lit. In the loudest voice my 4’11”, super shy, freshman self can muster, I yell:

Me: “WILL Y’ALL GET A ROOM ALREADY?!”

They stop and stare at me.

Friend’s Boyfriend: “What did you just say?!”

Me: “You block my locker all day, every day! There’s a freaking hotel down the street; go there! Now move!”

They jump apart. I get my locker open in record time, grab my books, and dart into homeroom as the bell is ringing.

Me: “Am I late?”

Homeroom Teacher: “Not at all.”

Classmate: “I didn’t know you could yell that loud.”

Me: “Did y’all hear all of that?”

Most Of The Class: “Yes!”

My face turns red. My homeroom teacher chuckles.

Homeroom Teacher: “Don’t worry about it. They won’t be doing that again against your locker anymore!”

He was right; they didn’t. My friend didn’t talk to me again until we were sophomores.

Back in high school (högstadiet, where students are thirteen to fifteen years old), a part of PE was orienteering. You were given a map with forty places to find and five or six lessons to find as many as possible. You didn’t have to get them all, but the higher grades were essentially impossible to get without finding at least a majority. Each location had a little hole punch with a unique combination of up to none or twelve pegs, and you marked a little sheet of plastic with these punches in neat little pre-marked squares. Control station number one could have three dots in a diagonal line and number two had a hollow square. These punches could also be very easily replicated with a paperclip and patience if you had the pattern. 

There was, therefore, quite the black market for these patterns. Hence, the patterns were unique for each grade, and they were also changed every year. The teachers hated the black market with a passion and did a lot of things to stop it, but the temptation to just cheat a little (or a lot) and chill in the forest for an hour during each lesson was far too great for most kids, and so the market for contraband orienteering patterns kept living for generation after generation of students. The only problem was finding out what this year’s patterns were, and the most remote one, due to some strange tradition, was always number nineteen.

I happened to be a typical nerd, a straight-A, teacher’s pet, and goody-two-shoes. I was quite bad at the whole running bit, but I was really good at reading maps, and I liked taking a nice September stroll to weird places like the most remote stations. I was therefore the first one to get the most remote one of them all: number nineteen. 

A classmate approached me when the rumour had spread.

Classmate: “So, [My Name], is it true that you have pattern number nineteen?”

Me: “Maybe? Why?”

Classmate: “Can you show it to me?”

Me: “Wait, are you with the Black Market?”

Classmate: *Shrugs* “Maybe? Look, I just want a peek. I can pay you money?”

Me: “No. No, no, no, no. I don’t want any part of this.”

Classmate: “Come on. Name your price! I’ll owe you one! Do you want to be seated next to [Popular Girl who I like] in class? Maybe even a date? I can get you that. Even both!”

Me: “I will not be bribed! Go away!”

Classmate: “Everyone has their price.”

Me: “Not me!”

He rummaged through his backpack.

Classmate: “What about…” *pulls out some candy* “…eleven banana skids?”

Me: “SOLD!” 

And thus, I sold my dignity and accepted the only bribe of my life for the steep price of eleven pieces of banana-chocolate chewy taffy, priced at one krona each, so around 1.10 dollars in total.

I really like banana chocolate.

I’m in a college communications class of fifty people, not including our teacher. For our midterm, we are to “become the US Senate”. The class will vote on several classroom measures, the goal being to “communicate professionally whilst demonstrating competent debate strategies.”

My teacher often sticks to his word, and we really do make a cool little senate, complete with dress codes, a candy desk, a gavel, and a flag. This is important to note because the teacher wants our senate to be as accurate as possible.

We debate three measures, all created by us, the students, in advance.

• Hats should only be allowed in the classroom if they are cowboy hats. (Passed, 39 to 11.)

• We should be able to wear pajamas to class. (Passed, 48 to 2.)

And finally:

• Fidget/stim toys should not be allowed in the classroom. (You’ll find out how that went.)

I use fidget toys because I have ADHD. They’re all pretty silent, and the person who wrote this “bill” has it out for me because I get accommodations — like extra time and earphones — that no one else does. Since we are allowed to talk as long as we desire about any measure, I get comfortable in my seat (since we are all remote) and begin to talk about what my ADHD accommodations are, why I need them, the fidgets I use, my favorite books, and what majors I’m thinking about.

Five minutes pass. Then ten. Then twenty. And then my professor interrupts.

Professor: “[My Name], you’ve talked too long. Give someone else a turn.”

I look him dead in the eye.

Me: “No.”

The LOOK on his FACE!

Me: *Politely* “Since this is a senate, I am allowed to filibuster.”

That is, to delay a vote simply by talking us out of time.

The other classmates looked at [Professor]. He turned red and spluttered but allowed me to proceed.

Grades are based on individual performance, so I knew I wasn’t harming anyone but myself; everyone else had already spoken enough. So, my ADHD a**, the one always scolded for talking too much, successfully filibustered the remaining hour and thirty-six minutes of our four-hour midterm. As for the fallout, my classmate’s bill died on delivery and I got a B+.

I was in a physical education class with a kid who walked with canes. Even though he knew the theory that we were taught perfectly, the teacher scored him low at the end of the year. We asked her what her reasoning was.

Teacher: “If I score him like you guys, you’ll complain that he got as good scores as you did, even though he can barely walk.”

We tore her a new one.

When I first moved away from home to study, I started out living in student housing. We all had our own rooms, but every floor shared a kitchen and common room. In Sweden, this is commonly referred to as a “student corridor”. There is no adult supervision, and people are expected to take care of themselves. I had a corridor neighbor who had, like most of us, just moved away from home. It was [Boy]’s first time on his own, and he was miserable.

We had to teach this poor boy EVERYTHING. It started with the mystery of why the plates in the communal kitchen were always greasy, even when they’d been put back into the cupboard as clean. It turned out that [Boy] didn’t know he had to use hot water to wash the dishes; he just rinsed them off and put them back.

He spent the first six months complaining about how he was always running out of money. This was because he didn’t know how to cook. The rest of us lived on the usual student diet of oatmeal and cheap pasta dishes and treated ourselves to a pizza on weekends. [Boy] got fast food every single day. I could feed myself for a month on his weekly meal budget.

I once found him in the laundry room, staring dumbfounded at a washing machine. He had no idea how to do laundry. I had to take him shopping for laundry detergent because he didn’t know what it was. He thought he could just put ordinary soap in there. 

To his credit, [Boy] was very grateful for the help and very frustrated that no one had taught him how to do all these things before he moved out.

Then, his mother came to visit. He happily introduced all of us as his friends. Then, she came up to me.

Mother: “I’ve heard so much about you! I’m so glad to finally meet my son’s girlfriend.”

Me: “Sorry, girlfriend?”

Mother: “Yes, [Boy] has been telling me all about how well you’re taking care of him.”

Boy: “Mom, I’ve already told you, we’re not together. She’s just been showing me how to do stuff. We’re friends, that’s all.”

Mother: “But you told me how good she is at cooking, and how she did your laundry, and—”

Me: “No, let me stop you there. We’re cooking together sometimes, but that’s so he can learn how it’s done. Same with the laundry; he didn’t know how to do it, so I showed him. People are supposed to know how to do this stuff for themselves when they move away from home!”

Mother: “How would my son be expected to know how to do housework?”

Me: “I don’t know. Maybe his parents should have taught him? Mine did!”

Boy: “She’s right, Mom. I should have known this before I moved out.”

Mother: “I guess I just expected you to have a girlfriend by now. You’re handsome enough. You’re going to be an engineer; you’ll make a lot of money someday!”

Boy: “And [My Name] is going to be a doctor. She still knows how to do her own laundry!”

Mother: “That’s different! She’s not a boy!”

He really was a sweet guy, and we did end up dating for a while a year or so later, but unfortunately, his mother was a dealbreaker.

After we graduated, I was invited to his wedding. He introduced me to his new wife as “the one who taught me how to be a man”.