I was tossing one of those handheld pencil sharpeners to myself in art class. The teacher game me a detention for the possibility of destroying school property.

During a group project, my friends and I were standing up and discussing how to build a model for our SimCity. Our teacher came by and asked us to sit down, so I sat down. My friends were looking around for chairs and I laughed because they all had chairs right behind them, it just looked comical. 2 minutes later my teacher comes back and slaps a detention slip in front of me, I asked why. She claimed that I undermined her authority by laughing at her in front of my classmates.

Both of these were at my catholic elementary school, 7th and 8th grade, respectively. My family still pokes fun at how I got in trouble for the sharpener, because I always have to be playing with something, but I still think about how insecure my teacher was for thinking we were making fun of her. I’m almost 25 now.