40 People Share “The Incident” At Their School That Everyone Still Talks About
Teachers should get paid extra every time they have to call a parent and explain something they can hardly believe happened themselves. There’s no training seminar that adequately prepares you to say, “Your child put yeast in the swimming pool.” You just have to pick up the phone and see how it goes.
Reading these school stories, I kept thinking about the adults who showed up expecting a normal workday. Instead, they’re dealing with a hazmat team or discovering that a school tradition now requires police involvement.
People shared “the incident” everyone remembers from their school, and the range in this AskReddit thread goes well beyond harmless senior pranks.
1. The Undercover Cop Needed To Work On His Grades
“We had the state’s (probably all of the U.S.) largest sting operation in our school. It began when a ‘senior’ who looked 25 started at the school. He wouldn’t date any girls, had horrible grades, and missed a lot of school.
This undercover cop was trying to buy drugs on school property. He was there for several months. One day, we were all sitting in class, and in the class next to us, a few cops plus the principal started pulling students out of classes and arresting them.
Turns out something like 20-plus kids were arrested, plus some parents in the whole operation. Made the front page of the AJC with photos and everything.
He had like a 7 in math class, and when the teacher would call his parents to discuss his grades, they’d get a separate line to whatever police officer was acting like a parent. Apparently, he was told to start trying more in class. Pretty funny for those not involved.”
via rlmoblat
2. The Easter Egg Hunt Survived. The Parents Were Banned.
“Easter egg hunt, in 1998. I think five people were injured. One had to be taken by helicopter to the hospital.
I was never really sure of the specifics, but apparently some of the parents were trying to cheat and find eggs for their kids instead of letting the kids do it themselves. This led to arguments, and things got out of hand.
Fortunately, no one died. And the school didn’t ban Easter egg hunts. It just banned parents from it.”
3. Her Own Perfume Failed The Smell Test
“This is pretty tame but funny. We had a music teacher who absolutely doused herself in perfume. It was like a cloud all around her all day, every day. You could pretty much smell her before you saw her.
We had music after lunch, so a few were in the room to kill the remaining 10 minutes of lunch. One girl went through her desk and found her perfume and sprayed it once, laughing that she was Mrs. X.
A few minutes later, Mrs. X walks in, sniffs, and starts looking around. We all think we are in trouble because she must know we were in the drawers.
She then proceeds to tell the girls that they shouldn’t wear such cheap, nasty perfume because now her room stinks of cheap perfume.
Never tried harder to stifle a laugh in my life.”
via Livid-Leader3061
4. They Tried To Turn The School Pool Into Bread
“Senior prank: Someone dumped a few hundred pounds of flour and yeast into the school indoor pool in hopes of turning it into a giant glob of dough, I guess.
It didn’t work, just caused about $100K damage to plumbing, pumps, filters, etc.
Prankster never caught.”
via Sea_Ganache620
5. Programming Class Was Going To Be A Little Difficult
“Pretty tame compared to some of the other stuff here, but my school at one point decided to crack down on anyone who had ever connected to the TOR Network from the school Wi-Fi, including on personal devices.
Over the course of a day or two, around 200 students were informed that they were banned from using all electronic devices, including those required for classwork, while in school for a semester.
I remember walking into a programming class and the teacher asking anyone who still had computer access to raise their hand.
None did.”
6. P.E. Class Somehow Lasted Until 12:30 A.M.
“In the fifth grade, our P.E. teacher had our class hula hoop for physical activity. Two girls in the class ended up hula hooping the entire 45 minutes to one hour of the class without stopping.
Our teacher decided that it would be fun to see how long these two girls could go. By the end of the school day, one girl was still going and had not stopped.
Our teacher then got the wild idea that this girl should keep going to try breaking the world record. The student’s parents were called, and they gave her permission to make the attempt.
Someone looked up the rules of Guinness World Records and discovered that you can take a few minutes’ break every hour. The local news was called, and they filmed this poor girl hula hooping her heart out. She finally gave up around 12:30 a.m.
This took place in the late 1980s in Roswell, Georgia, at Mimosa Elementary.
The same year, the same P.E. teacher taught our class to juggle. Within three months, she started a juggling club in which I was a member.
We eventually had a choreographed routine with music, printed ‘Mimosa Jugglers’ T-shirts, and began performing our routine at other local elementary schools. It was weird but actually pretty fun at the time.
We juggled balls, rings, and plastic bowling pins. I ended up discovering that I could juggle three apples while taking a bite out of one. It was a crowd-pleaser, lol.”
via squiblib
7. The New Class President Was A Capybara
“Someone brought their capybara to school, and it ended up becoming class president.”
via Europa_Gains
8. The Science Teacher Forgot One Important Announcement
“One of the science teachers thought having a class project around creating mini rockets would be a fun little activity.
Well, unfortunately, he didn’t notify the school where or when they were going to test these. So the school goes into lockdown because of the explosions.
He and his class get locked out of the school.
Or at least that’s what I’ve been told. Wasn’t actually in that class.”
via Transdevil23459
9. The Class Of 2008 Kept Everyone Busy
“There were several, all involving the sophomores when I was a senior. Like, there was something seriously wrong with the class of 2008.
Some highlights: One kid started printing $20 bills from his dad’s office. Apparently, he was good at it, as the Secret Service paid him a visit.
Multiple incidents of alcohol on campus. My class wasn’t innocent in this. We all at one time passed around a bottle of spiked Gatorade. But these kids drank to such excess that they had to be hospitalized. It got to the point where the school banned all water bottles and drinks from home.
And finally, the great thermometer incident of 2006.
Basically, a group of sophomores broke open an old glass thermometer and played with the mercury inside. They did this in the cafeteria before first bell.
So around second period, an announcement is made telling everyone who was in the cafeteria before first bell to report to the auditorium immediately. A third of the school shows up, myself included.
They then proceed to lock us in and inform us we have to wait to be cleared by a hazmat team. That hazmat team took their sweet time getting there, and we didn’t leave the school until 6–7 p.m. Those of us with jobs basically lost a day’s pay.
It’s been 17 years, and I still wanna throat-punch the Three Stooges who did that.
Edit: I forgot to add, around 2–3 p.m., some rumor started that hazmat had arrived and was ready to start checking students. This led to hundreds of kids gathering around the stage of the auditorium.
A crowd crush almost occurred. One kid was wheeled off on a stretcher with thankfully minor injuries.
All of this because some idiot wanted to play with mercury.”
via Lyn1987
10. The Mystery Bandit Never Actually Made Any Demands
“Poop bandit. He would poop in lockers and teachers’ desks and leave the note, ‘If my demands are not met, the Poop Bandit will strike again.’
There were never any demands.
I knew exactly who it was, but I ain’t snitching even after all these decades.”
via VampireKissinger
11. The Lockdown Memes Were Already Going Up
“There was a suitcase that was left unattended across the street from the school, just standing upright on the sidewalk.
It had been there for hours, and so the principal freaked out because she thought it was a bomb. So the bomb squad arrived, followed by twenty million cop cars, while the students went on lockdown.
Turns out some dude genuinely just forgot his suitcase on accident. Maybe he was carrying a bunch of stuff or was in a rush?
And all of that was for nothing. Memes were made about it and were being uploaded to the unofficial school Instagram DURING the lockdown.”
12. The Reunion Came With A Very Late Confession
“1982, rural Indiana. Someone went into the bathroom, lit a cigarette, and stuck the fuse from a quarterstick/M-80 in the other end.
Destroyed one toilet and a section of the wall. State police bomb squad called in. Explosive-trained dogs. Even FBI.
I was one of those questioned, as I was the typical stoner loser burnout kid.
I know who did it. It was one of the ‘pretty people,’ as they were called back then.
He even kinda confirmed it while drunk at our 30th reunion.”
via NonsenseImFine
13. Nobody Could Find The Source Of The Smell
“Someone sprayed butyric acid throughout the entire school. In high concentrations, it smells like pure vomit.
School reeked for weeks. Police were involved, etc.
No culprit was ever found.”
via BazookoTheClown
14. A Pair Of Football Boots Became A Banking Crime
“One of the best students from this one class was found to have stolen his teacher’s smartphone and online banking details.
He got caught when he did the first transaction.
He apparently was into football and wanted to buy some specific football boots, but his parents wouldn’t let him.”
via YouCanDoThings
15. Thirty Seniors Ruined The Send-Off For Everyone
“Here’s how senior year worked: Classes finished two weeks before exams started. Exams went on for two weeks. Then, two weeks later, there was the graduation and prom.
On the last day of classes, the seniors get sent off. It’s a pretty big deal, with the junior class lining up to hand out flowers and throw confetti as the seniors leave the main school building in a procession. It’s a really special thing and a part of the larger graduation festivities.
Well, the ‘incident’ was that around 30 people from my class of 120 decided to have an all-night party and get absolutely hammered.
They showed up to school absolutely blathered. They were spewing in the hallways and running around the outside bench areas, screaming and kicking chairs.
They didn’t show up to any of the classes, and that was kind of important for a send-off on the last day of classes.
By 11 a.m., the administration had had enough. Junior classes and below still had about a month of classes to go, so they didn’t care about the noisy idiots outside their windows.
The dean ended up calling a school assembly where he cancelled the send-off and gave a speech instead about how disappointed he was in my entire graduating year.
Everyone in my graduating year was kicked off the school grounds.”
via GrammatonYHWH
16. The Two-Foot Rule Was Strictly Enforced
“Well, considering I graduated in 1970 from a very small Midwestern school largely run by Mennonites, I seem to recall someone ‘might’ have gotten pregnant.
I can still see old Mr. Turner walking down the aisle calling, ‘Two feet! Two feet!’ telling all boys and girls to stay two feet apart.
Lol. Oh, the good ole days.”
via woodedlane1
17. He Was The Only Boy In That Gym Class
“We had so many pregnant teen girls that they had their own gym class.
A friend of mine who had a fake leg, he had a solid metal rod from mid-thigh to mid-calf from childhood leukemia, so he couldn’t bend at the knee, was in the same class.
Just this one poor guy and 30 pregnant 16-year-olds.
Edit: I never imagined there would be so many upvotes and questions.
I was a teenager in the late ’90s and grew up in the southeastern United States. It was a suburban area where a ton of people still identify as Evangelical Christians. It’s also called the Bible Belt.
The required sex education classes didn’t teach anything but ‘Just Say No,’ so there were girls who thought jumping up and down would prevent pregnancy. Not kidding.
These were really sheltered girls who would attend Purity Dances, so it was quite a scandal that so many were pregnant at the same time.
Most of the baby daddies were just dumb teenage boys who didn’t know the facts of life. Remember that there was no internet at this point, so it’s not like teens could get information on their own, especially if they were from a super religious background.
A girl on my street was ‘sent away’ to live with an aunt when she got pregnant.
Also, the pregnant-girl gym class was technically for the physically disabled kids, hence why my friend was the lone guy in the class.
His leg, from what he explained to me, had cancer in the bones of his knee. They didn’t want to amputate his whole leg, so they removed the knee and grafted a rod in place. This would have been back in the late ’80s, so I’m sure they do stuff differently now.”
via Malicious_Tacos
18. The Sports Renovation Uncovered A Bomb
“The only thing I can think of was when, during the sports area makeover, which also happened to be during our mock exams, they found an unfired or live or whatever bomb and evacuated everyone and had to call a bomb squad.
Merits of living in a post-Soviet country that had a colorful history for most of the last 1,000 years.”
via mornaq
19. Their Senior Shirts Had Plenty Of Material
“Which one do you want? Our senior T-shirts were literally ‘the incident’ from each year.
Freshman: Older high school kids are having a party near the end of the school year, get busted, and one tries to run from the cops and crashes into the electrical transformer in front of the school, giving everyone two days off.
Sophomore: Some moron stole three mercury thermometers from a science class and decided it would be fun to smash them in the gym during a passing period. School was evacuated, and the gym was closed for a week.
Junior: Someone made a bomb threat against the school. The police said they had it covered and kids wouldn’t be in danger. Only about half the school showed up anyway. It was a very odd day.
Senior: Kid brought a gun to school to show his friend. Other kids saw it, and by the time I arrived, the school was surrounded by police officers and news copters, and I was yelled at to ‘go home.’ I had a free period first period, so I didn’t have to come to school until period two senior year.
School was locked down all day as they went room to room searching.
My old Spanish teacher actually thought the cops were the active shooter and tackled one as he came into the room. He ended up with a giant lump on his head, but he was a hero to us all after that.”
via GlassEyeMV
20. The Snow-Day Plan Was Caught On Camera
“Two kids broke a window to get a long snow day. And when that failed, they broke into the school and trashed it.
They threw paint and dirt everywhere, ruined the cafeteria with mayo and ketchup from the machines, destroyed the classrooms of teachers they didn’t like, broke windows, left the anatomy and physiology cat carcasses out overnight on the upper floor, and generally wrecked the place.
They thought the cats would rot despite being preserved with formaldehyde, to show how dumb these people were.
School had to replace the gym floor. Theatre club had to redo some props and costumes, which is extra awful because the play that year was I Never Saw Another Butterfly, a story about the Holocaust.
And they ONLY destroyed the Jewish character costumes, but not the two SS officer costumes that had literal swastikas on them.
These idiots did this while dressed in hoodies from a different, majority-Black school. They were white and didn’t cover their faces, so the CCTV cameras caught everything.
We did get like a week off while they cleaned. These losers got expelled, and the one senior in the group didn’t get to even graduate.”
via AqueousSilver91
21. A Family Crisis Put The School On Lockdown
“My high school went on lockdown because my mother was going through a manic episode, thought I was the second coming of Jesus, and said she was going to save me.
I honestly never lived it down.”
via ASemiAquaticBird
22. A Teacher’s Past Became School News
“The teacher who looked so much like a ’70s adult-film star did turn out to have made adult films in the ’70s.”
via H_Marxen
23. The Teacher Followed Her To College. She Moved On.
“Married male teacher in his late 30s having an affair with a senior female student. Fairly ordinary.
They didn’t hide it, though. We used to see them smooching all the time.
Rumor says he lost his job over it and then followed her to another city when she left for university.
She then dumped him for a boy her own age.”
via Eloisem333
24. A Dance Came With An Invasive Dress-Code Check
“The female assistant principal lifted the skirts of girls attending a dance to make sure the students were not wearing thong underwear.
Edit: Occurred in 2002. School is in San Diego, California.”
via lostmonster
25. The Photo Outlasted The School Riot
“My high school had a riot, and there was, and still is, a picture of my principal choking a student.”
via NomadFourFive
26. Homecoming Took A Racist Turn
“So this was like 15–16 years ago. Our school used to have a fun little rivalry activity during homecoming week.
We had three school colors: red, white, and black. On the day of the homecoming assembly, each grade year was assigned one of the colors, and whichever grade had the most participation would be the winner. Sophomores wore red, juniors wore white, and seniors wore black.
People would get VERY into it, dyeing their hair, making signs, trying to bribe teachers onto their teams, etc.
It was honestly a lot of stupid fun in a slightly more innocent/ignorant time. Things that would appear to be an obvious problem today, blackface, anyone?, were not really in our Wonderbread Midwestern zeitgeist.
Of course, the year after I graduated, it went too far.
Most years, the seniors would win this little competition, and the juniors would be grumpy about it. Anticipating this, a few idiot juniors thought it would be funny to show their disdain by dressing up in white with KKK hoods, with a fake lynched Black ‘senior’ dangling from a pole.
Yeah. Bad time.
Last I heard, the kids were suspended, the principal voluntarily retired in response to the backlash, and I’m pretty sure that little tradition has been dead ever since.”
via LyndzLyndz
27. Bullying Made A Medical Emergency Even Worse
“A girl had an epilepsy attack, and she lost control of her bowels.
Not a pretty sight. Mean Girls types made fun of her, and she transferred to another high school.”
28. Someone Was Still There To Call For Help
“Softball coach had a heart attack in the girls’ locker room two hours after practice.
Luckily, there was one girl still there to call 911 for him.”
via Mcshiggs
29. The Safety Lesson Ended In An Accident
“We had a woodshop teacher accidentally cut off three of his fingers in front of one of his classes.
Ironically, he was teaching about safety when it happened.”
via Final-Ad-2033
30. A Desk Thrown From A Window Hit A Student
“A group of kids threw a desk out the third-story window.
The desk crashed onto a girl’s head and broke her neck.
Fortunately, she lived.”
via siorys88
31. An Exchange Student Attacked A Teacher
“One of our Japanese teachers got stabbed in the back by a South Korean exchange student.
Apparently, he’d said some pretty insensitive things about North versus South Korea, and the next day, the student came to school with a knife.
Teacher was okay. Kid was jailed for 18 months.”
via Games__Franco
32. The Plant Across The Street Exploded
“Chlorine plant across the street blew up.”
33. A Fireworks Accident Changed Everything
“Coolest guy in school was an amazing guitarist, really good at fingerpicking, super lovely, talked to everyone. Even the teachers loved him.
He was in my homeroom at an Australian high school. He was older, but he used to let me sit near him sometimes.
One weekend, he went out with some friends to play with firecrackers. Firecrackers are super illegal here because of the bushfire risk.
Anyway, the guy blew all of his fingers on both hands off.
He didn’t come back to school for a few months, and then one day he came back, sat in the corner with a hoodie over his face and his hands buried deep in his pockets.
Never spoke to anyone again. Couldn’t play guitar, couldn’t even open a door.
So sad. We were all so sad for him.”
34. A Cruel Prank Had An Eerie Anniversary
“One of the guys at our high school thought it would be funny to pretend he had died in a car accident on a specific date. I’ve forgotten it now.
So he didn’t show up for class and had friends spread rumors right at the beginning of the day about it. People were grieving because he was a part of the popular group and just well-known all around.
So he walks in near the middle of the day, smiling and laughing. People were shocked but amused. Don’t ask me why.
A year later, exactly a year later, on the day, he dies in a car wreck due to him and three others crossing the border between states to get drugs. The girl driving tried to swerve due to an armadillo.
Out of the four people, he was the only one to die.
People thought it was him trying to pull the same joke that year around, but no.”
via Ab-Duck-Tea
35. The Principal Announced The Wrong Name
“In high school, two kids were both named Logan. Both last names were very similar.
One was popular, and the other was not.
Unpopular Logan was drunk and ran across a road in the middle of the night and was killed by a semi-truck.
The next day, the principal announced that popular Logan had died. Popular Logan was late for school. Everyone was very sad.
Then popular Logan showed up, and the whole school rejoiced that unpopular Logan was the one who died.
Was messed up.”
36. The School Gym Became A Place To Say Goodbye
“A sophomore, my classmate, dropped unconscious in gym class and was rushed to the hospital.
Three days later, they took him off life support, and he died from a brain aneurysm.
Edit to add: His funeral was held in the high school gym, and nearly everyone went.
Never in my life did I think I’d attend a funeral AT school.”
37. Three Classmates Died In Three Months
“In three months, November, December, and January, three guys in my graduating class all died.
One from suicide, one from a skiing accident, and one on the track at school.
It was extremely eerie and sad.”
38. A Missing Teenager’s Case Had A Tragic Ending
“So back in the early ’80s, a kid at our school’s older brother disappeared.
The cops searched the neighborhood and went door to door trying to find out what happened to him. Spoke to every kid in school in case they knew anything.
Wasn’t long before he was discovered to have been the victim of a serial killer.
He was only 16.”
via Warm-Cheetah3435
39. A Fatal Accident Ended Off-Campus Lunch
“We had off-campus lunch. You could go anywhere around as long as you were back in 45 minutes. It had been tradition for the school’s entire 60-plus years.
The entire mile or so surrounding the school had tons of small carryout restaurants.
My senior year, a girl snuck out of her middle school to come meet her freshman boyfriend. She stopped at one of the restaurants for ice cream.
Left the restaurant and stepped off the curb into the highway, directly into the side of an 18-wheeler.
Sixty years of off-campus lunch around that highway, and that was the first serious accident.
School banned leaving campus within days. The local businesses tried to come up with a compromise. I know they talked about shuttle service, a walkway bridge over the intersection. School refused to even discuss it.
We lodged protests, walkouts. Nothing. ‘One life lost is too many’ is what they kept saying.
Within a few years, almost all of those restaurants were closed and sat empty. The whole area around the school looked like a ghost town, which became the place to go for drugs.
Four years after I graduated, fifteen kids overdosed. Five years, and I think the number was closer to 50.
All because of one girl.”
via Think_Hall_7826
40. Someone Attacked The School’s Farm Animals
“My high school in Australia had agricultural learning, so we had livestock at the far end of the oval and some facilities.
In the ’90s, someone broke into the school and slaughtered all of the animals, ALL of them, and drew pentagrams and swastikas in blood all over the school.
Pretty historical event for that school!”
via spleen5000