My kid got into trouble at school today - Page 2

I spent some time in the "Special Chair" in Pre-K for patting Miss Maria (my teacher) on the ass on a few occasions. Luckily, all my teachers up through HS encouraged my drawing during class. I ended up getting a full ride to art school.

Oh man, that games was aces. None of us were sitting down on our bikes at the end of that.

We had two variations of this. "Butts Up" = you faced the wall, police frisking style. "Nuts Up" = you faced your assailants like a man. Then shrieked like a girl.

Tennis balls? Didn't any of you get into a rock fight?

What were your rules? Ours were you threw one or two tennis balls against the wall. People played for the rebound. If you touched the rebound and dropped it, you had to sprint for the wall. Everyone would try to peg you with the tennis balls. If you reached the wall before being hit, you were safe. If you were hit, you had to stand against the wall while the person who pegged you got two free shots. Ah, good times.

I gave up on this game the day that some of the meaner, corn-fed hick kids decided to start using a golf ball.

I'm glad I did, because one of them was sent to an Alternative Education Program about a week later for cracking a kid's eyesocket and damn near blinding him.

Well, sure. But then we had to run down into the sewers where we did battle with a clown-spider.

That sounds horrible.

Same exact rules.

We used bottle rockets, fired out of PVC pipes we grabbed from neighborhood construction sites. Our own personal bazookas.

Yeah, but we also used to have firecracker (real ones, not the ones they sell here in the States) fights. Now those were fun.

One blew up in my hand one time and had to go to the hospital.

I got paddled for a rock fight in 5th grade. Looking at what my little brothers go through... yeah, my generation got to be much more violent. I also got paddled for suggesting a classmate stick a metal pin into a light socket to learn about electricity. He met my learning objective spectacularly. I'd probably be prosecuted for attempted murder for it nowadays.

YOU!!!

Kids today don't get to have any fun.

King of the Mountain, on top of a giant snow pile, all of us beating the shit out of each other. For no reason whatsoever.


Looking back, I did play so many violent games as a child that I'm surprised I haven't grown up to be an axe murderer.

I had a teacher in third grade who had a big refrigerator box in her classroom that she cut the top and bottom off of, stuck a desk inside, and called it "Jail". Even had little barred windows drawn on it with the word JAIL taped up over the entrance. Got put in there once for talking out of turn in class, and while I thought it was kind of cool to be put someplace where I couldn't be bothered for a little while, my parents went kind of ballistic over it.

Ah, yes. Our summer variation on this was King of the Island that was played on this giant circular raft we floated around the pool. Picture 6 or 7 kids furiously fighting for possession of a float while drowning one another and knocking into the walls. Outstanding stuff.

Being huge fans of "Calvin & Hobbes", we also used to play Calvinball. This would inevitably degenerate into something like Smear the Queer with tennis rackets and wiffle ball bats being used on the "It" man.

We had the same rules, except you got to choose between 3 throws facing the wall, or one throw facing the firing squad. My old house was this monster two story, on a corner, and wide as hell. We would play all the time since we had the entire street plus the side of the yard to use. I loved the kids that would turn around to see if you had the ball from the rebound they dropped. If you didn't hit them right in the face you weren't doing your civic duty.

I remember playing jart wars once. ONCE.

The hell you say!

We had this evil, huge, hillbilly looking woman who was a "cafeteria monitor" when I was in 6th grade. It was her job to make sure that the kids didn't make too much of a ruckus while eating I suppose. She was uber mean and continually berated the kids just because she could. No one liked her, not even the teachers who would bring us to lunch. She got really sick and they forced all kids to sign a get well card. I refused to sign it on the stand that I really disliked her and didn't want her to get better (mind you I was 11 or so). So a teacher literally walked me over to the card by my ear and made me sign it. So of course I wrote "Glad you're sick because we don't like you" on the card which got me in a whole heap of trouble. Well worth it.

As for Dodgeball, I loved double-dodge where there was an "out" team behind the core team. If you got knocked out you went behind the other team's line and could catch the ball. Added a ton of strategy as we played with two balls. You could purposely miss or throw over an opponent to your team on the out line and could then use the other ball to get someone stuck in the cross-fire. Loved dodgeball, loved it.

it was one of those things that seemed like a good, fun idea at the time. After dodging falling lawn darts for a few minutes, sanity prevailed.

We used to play a variation of dodgeball, I think it was called "Herido" (wounded).

Same game but you take out body parts. You hit somebody's arm, they had to pretend to lose it (put it behind your back). You hit somebody's leg, they had to hop on the other leg. You lose both legs, you are a stump just standing there (kneeling) or start rolling.

You "died" by getting hit in the head or the chest.

Please tell me you didn't say "Now go make me a sammich!".

Most kids broke bones playing game in school. I never broke a bone growing up, but it was not from a lack of trying, I jusy have really tough bones. Smear the Queer and dodge ball were fun.

We used to ride around on our bikes and throw sandspurs at each other.

Another time, a friend who lived right across the street from me and I spent about half an hour throwing a steel-tipped pub dart back and forth at each other. My parents heard the repeated "thud" of the dart landing in the wood paneling surrounding our carport and came out to investigate. When they found out what was going on, I was told to stop not because I was in danger of being impaled, but because I was putting holes in the house.

We had full-one bottle rocket wars as a teenager that looked like the end of "Platoon." The air would be full of smoke, you could hear screams in the darkness and see rockets lying overhead. Then someone would run past you trying to escape from someone else. If you didn't move fast, you'd be the new favorite target.

We went out into the country at night, wore extra layers of clothes and goggles and shot bottle rockets and roman candles at each other. Even through the padding it hurt like hell.

My brother made a rocket launcher out of a steel pipe and a leather belt. He'd lay the bottle rockets over the edge so that the wicks stuck out and light 10-15 at the same time. He later blocked one end up with duct tape so that, if a rocket fell inside, the others would light it as they launched. (The belt was a sling so that he could fire it from under his shoulder.) Now that I think about it, I can't wait to tell his daughter this story.

We only did it a few times before we wised up. I wouldn't be surprised of some of those guys had post-traumatic stress disorder from our fights.

The worse thing I did was when I lived in Lake arrowhead, between 9 and 12, freestyle cliff climbing, no one died, but we all had a couple close calls.

Our version of King of the Mountain took place on 5 half buried tractor tires of varying sizes that we would jump back and forth on while trying to take out everyone around us. Good times.

Our King of the Hill took place on top of the monkey bars, with nothing on the way down but five feet of metal and the hard unforgiving ground.

I remember you.

wimps real boys uses their bear hand to fire bottle rockets

FUCK yeah.

That funny, all I remember is the fucking hard, hard, ground and trying to breath.

And if you try and tell kids today this...they won't believe you.

We used to call that game "Tag The Fag"...

God, when I was in grade school, we used to bring toy guns to school all the time!

The teachers even used to comment if one of us brought a particularly cool looking one.

I weep for the future.

EDIT: Nice one, Judas!

Monkey bars. Never could climb those things. This was translated into the fact I never could climb the rope, the poll or do a pull up.

Did they atleast allow you conjugal visits?
It's funny, because my parents took full responsibilty. "I learned it from watching YOU!" Ass slapping is a tradition passed down through the generations in my fam... as my daughter imitates already. Oops.
The PVC pipes weren't for protection... they were for accuracy.

The horrors me and my friends achieved with chemistry sets, lighter fluid, BB Guns, firecrackers, slingshots, etc. It's amazing we didn't end up in jail, juvie, or dead.

Yeah, but having bear-hands that shoot bottle rockets would be kickass.

I did that once. It may be badass, but it also causes badass burns.

Kickass indeed.

+ = KICKASS

Simple math really.

I'm just imagining kids with bear paws instead of hands running around shooting bottle rockets now. It's awesome.

Our mountain of tires were old car tires, so needless to say falling down involved a lot of cuts from dirty steel belts poking out. We healed quick, so no one cared. Good stuff.

I guess it depend how you hold them, I alway just got splinters.

In 4th grade, I got in trouble after a substitute teacher claimed I was threatening another student with a bomb. True story.

Three words for people who grew up in Texas and other regions in the South:

Spear grass fights.