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• I had a Bible teacher who was really annoying. For what it's worth, I wasn't the only person who thought so; the man simply had no idea how to deal with high school kids. And he always came a couple of minutes late to class while he finished his coffee in the teachers' lounge. So one day, I took the chalkboard eraser and tossed it out the window before he got there. He seemed annoyed that there was no eraser, but didn't do anything.
  
  The next day, I came to class, and there was an eraser. An afternoon teacher must have gotten a replacement. So I tossed that one out as well.
  
  After a few solid weeks of this, I came to class, and there was no eraser. During class, the rabbi used his handkerchief to erase something on the board, so I raised my hand, and asked, "Rabbi, why are you using a handkerchief instead of an eraser?" He growled, and said, "The office won't let me have erasers any more."
  
  I was outraged. "What do you mean they won't 'let you'! You're a rabbi and a teacher at this school! That's terrible. I'm going to have a word with them!" I was out of my seat and half way to the door before the rabbi ordered me back to my seat. I turned, and said, "Don't worry, rabbi, I'll deal with this."
  
  I went down to the office and told them I wanted a chalkboard eraser for Rabbi N's classroom. They hesitated, and then gave me one. I went back up to the classroom, laid the eraser on the board, nodded to the rabbi, who didn't really know what to say, and sat back down at my desk.
  
  When the class was over, the rabbi disappeared quickly (presumably he needed another coffee), so I tossed the new eraser out the window on my way out of the room.
   
• This same rabbi's classroom adjoined the typing room, which, as a secular class, was only used in the afternoons. But one day, the afternoon teacher must have forgotten to lock the door, because it was open. And while the adjoining door was locked from the rabbi's side, it wasn't locked from the typing side.
  
  In the typing room was an old, black, AT&T telephone. With a dial. With a lock on the dial. Those of you who don't remember dial telephones may not know that you can put a lock on the dial that prevents anyone from dialing. This phone had such a lock. But I knew how to bypass the lock. See, if you rapidly hit the disconnect on the phone and release it, it's like dialing a 1. Twice in rapid succession, and you've dialed a 2. Ten times in rapid succession is a 0. This is called pulse dialing.
  
  Well, I used to sit in the far back of the class anyway, right by the door to the typing room. So before the rabbi got to class, I opened the adjoining door, put the telephone in my desk (with the cord still stretching into the typing room) and closed the door.
  
  In the middle of class, I used the pulse technique to call the office downstairs, and ask to speak to Rabbi N. They told me he was in class, but I said it was kind of important, so they said they'd send someone up to get him. I waited the amount of time it would take someone to get halfway from the office to our classroom, and then hung up. That's how we got 5 minutes or so without a teacher. He was a little irked and a little confused when it got back to the classroom.
   
• The same rabbi (we had a great relationship, he and I did) used to leave his briefcase on his desk when he'd go to get his coffee. Honestly, is that a reasonable thing to do?
  
  So one day, I extracted the rope pull strings from the windowshades, tied them together, made sure his briefcase was well closed, tied one end of the rope to the handle and one to the side of the window, and let his briefcase hang out the window. It was particularly fun, because the window looked out onto the school parking lot, and by the time the class was half over, we'd attracted a crowd.
  
  To give the rabbi some credit, he came in, saw that his briefcase was missing, and proceeded with class as though nothing was wrong. At the end of the class, when the bell rang, we all started to get up, and he barked, "Sit." So we sat. He said, "I'm going to get a cup of coffee. I expect my briefcase to be here when I get back." Well, you have to respect that kind of bravado, so we hauled the briefcase up and left it, unharmed, on his desk.
   
• The mistake was in thinking that every teacher would be such a good sport. We had a Hebrew teacher at the beginning of senior year who was shrill and unlikable. And while she didn't come late to class the way Rabbi N. did, she did leave her briefcase on her desk. So we tried the same thing.
  
  It didn't work out quite so well.
  
  She walked in, immediately registered the missing briefcase, and demanded that we tell her where it was. And maybe, had we been freshman or sophomores, we would have. But we just couldn't take it (or her seriously), so we told her that we had no idea what she was talking about. "What briefcase?" And before we had a chance to realize that she was not going to be cool about this at all, she'd stormed out the door and gone down to the office to get the new principal.
  
  While she was out, we pulled up the briefcase and put it in the closet. The principal stormed in, and did much the same thing she had. "Where's the briefcase?" When we looked confused about the missing article, he threatened the whole class with restriction. This, it turned out, was dumb. Because while we'd had such things as detention and even suspension before he joined us, none of us had any idea what "restriction" was. Not that it really mattered. He'd sort of made it impossible for us to give in by threatening us.
  
  The threat ante was raised progressively from a week of restriction, to "How about 2 weeks? How about 3? How about the rest of the school year on restriction?" Lame. So he started for the door, saying, "Everyone come with me." So we all started filing out, obediently. I was the second to last person out the door, and the person after me opened the closet, grabbed the briefcase, tossed it onto the teacher's desk, stuck his head out into the hall and gave one of those wicked loud two finger whistles, and shouted, "Hey Rabbi!" So we all went back into the room, and he immediately lost any respect we might have had for him by forgetting he'd said anything about restriction.
  
  On the other hand, the Hebrew teacher refused to have anything to do with us, so we wound up in a jury-rigged "Jewish philosophy" class instead.
   
• The clocks in our rooms were built into rectangular boxes that contained speakers so that they could make announcements from the office. My English teacher junior year (who was one of my favorite teachers, but after all, was still a teacher) was a trifle deaf-ish. And my best friend had gotten a digital watch for her birthday (still a big deal back then), which had an alarm that beeped a high pitched beep. I borrowed it, set it for midway into the class, and put it into the clock casing, which for some bizarre reason was not locked against such usage. It did liven up the class a bit.
   
• When it came time for us to hand in our senior yearbook quotes, I picked one from Lazarus Long: "Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense. Hurting yourself is not sinful -- just stupid."
  
  Well, this was an Orthodox Jewish high school, even if I wasn't religious myself. And I probably should have known better. I handed it in to the English teacher who was the yearbook advisor, and the next day, she told me that the principal (Rabbi Restriction) had cut it.
  
  I was incensed. To me, at age almost 18, this was nothing less than full-blown censorship. I went to the principal's office, full of righteous indignation, and had it out with him. He told me that the quote was a direct attack on Judaism. I denied it (ah, youth). Eventually, he probably just wanted me to shut up, so he agreed that if I were to drop the middle sentence, about "invented nonsense", he'd let me keep the quote. Coming from 45 years old and Orthodox, I'm impressed with his flexibility. At 17 and difficult, I felt like a victim.
  
  Turns out the principal's last name began with a B, and I was one of the few people in the school who knew that his first name in English was Eric (he went by his Hebrew name, which is what everyone else knew). So I told the English teacher I wanted to change my quote, and submitted "Big brother is watching you. -Eric B." I knew that most of my fellow students knew neither that the principal's name was Eric nor that George Orwell's name was Eric Blair. But it suited my sense of sophomoric whimsy. I was in Boston, on the Harvard Model UN, when the quote crossed the principal's desk. I'm told that he was seen striding down the hallways looking for me with blood in his eye and evil smelling smoke pouring out of his ears.
  
  Needless to say, I didn't have a senior quote.

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The clocks in our rooms were built into rectangular boxes that contained speakers so that they could make announcements from the office. My English teacher junior year (who was one of my favorite teachers, but after all, was still a teacher) was a trifle deaf-ish. And my best friend had gotten a digital watch for her birthday (still a big deal back then), which had an alarm that beeped a high pitched beep. I borrowed it, set it for midway into the class, and put it into the clock casing, which for some bizarre reason was not locked against such usage. It did liven up the class a bit.

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This is non-school related, but Lisa's story reminded me of some other prank shenanigans. When I worked at Starbucks, a much-loved supervisor got transferred to another store to be the ASM. Our store had those lovely ceiling squares like they have in schools that allow easy access to, um, whatever is up there. Before his last closing shift, he rounded up about ten of those timers we use for the coffee and milk, set them all to different times during work day, and spent some time hiding them around the store in the ceiling squares. Obviously, we spent most of the next day running around with a ladder trying to find them whenever one would go off.

Now that I think about it, it actually wasn't all that funny.

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Originally posted by Katarain:
My husband did something as a kid that would have gotten him expelled in this day and age. He took a grenade that had been hollowed out, threw it across the classroom yelling "fire in the hole!" and dived behind his desk.

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Originally posted by aiua:
Junior year my English teacher had us memorize the first few stanzas of Canterbury Tales, in Old English, one line at a time. We covered his office in post-its with variations of "wan de la prilla." No one actually knew how it was spelled.

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Originally posted by Orincoro:

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Originally posted by Katarain:
My husband did something as a kid that would have gotten him expelled in this day and age. He took a grenade that had been hollowed out, threw it across the classroom yelling "fire in the hole!" and dived behind his desk.

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He might get a prison term today.

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For Sale: Large home, well stocked library, full kitchen, workout room, full garage, home theater, and large back yard. For details call Bill or Tom (the first names of the principal and vice-principal) at--(School phone number).

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