“What Was ‘The Incident’ At Your High School?” (65 Answers)

If you can remember your high school years vividly, it's most likely that besides jocks, raging parties and short-lived crushes, you also remember incidents that stuck in your mind like chewing gum under a school desk.

From flushing down a cherry bomb in the girls' toilet to someone going into fisticuffs with the principal, there are legends that are still being hush-hushed inside your former classrooms. And so, when someone asked the good people of the internet to share their iconic school stories on r/AskReddit - wild, hormone-fueled tales spilled like fruit punch on a sweaty prom night.

#1

My highschool 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.

Image credits: ASemiAquaticBird

#2

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.

Image credits: Sea_Ganache620

#3

In high school Two kids 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 k**led 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 all school rejoiced that unpopular Logan was the one who died

Was f****d up

Image credits: AggressiveSmoke4054

#4

A sophomore (my classmate) dropped unconscious in gym class and was rushed to the hospital. 3 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 damn near everyone went. Never in my life did I think I’d attend a funeral AT school.

Image credits: DisappointmentToMost

#5

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 won't let him.

Image credits: YouCanDoThings

#6

The female assistant principal lifted the skirts of girls attending a dance to make sure the students were not wearing thong underwear.

Edit: occurred 2002. School is in San Diego, California

Image credits: lostmonster

#7

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. Him 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

Image credits: Transdevil23459

#8

1982, rural Indiana.

Someone went into the bathroom, lit a cigarette, and stuck the fuse from a quarterstick/m80 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.

Image credits: NonsenseImFine

#9

a girl had an epilepsy attack and she lost control of her bowels. Not a pretty sight.

Mean girls type made fun of her, and she transferred to another high school.

Image credits: StuntCockofGilead

#10

A group of kids threw a desk out the 3rd story window. The desk crashed onto a girl's head and broke her neck. Fortunately she lived.

Image credits: siorys88

#11

Someone brought their capybara to school and it ended up becoming class president

Image credits: Europa_Gains

#12

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 vs South Korea and the next day the student came to school with a knife. Teacher was ok. Kid was jailed for 18 months.

Image credits: Games__Franco

#13

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 wifi (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 class work) 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.

Image credits: Sitting_In_A_Lecture

#14

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.

Image credits: BazookoTheClown

#15

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.

Rumour 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.

Image credits: Eloisem333

#16

Here's how senior year worked - classes finished 2 weeks before exams started. Exams went on for 2 weeks. Then 2 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 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 am, 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.

#17

In the 5th 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 - 1 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 students parent’s 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 12:30am. This took place in the late 1980’s in Roswell, GA. at Mimosa elementary.

The same year, the same P.E. teacher taught our class to juggle. Within 3 months, she started a juggling club in which I was a member. We eventually had a choreographed routine, with music, printed ‘Mimosa Jugglers’ tee-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 3 apples while taking a bite out of one - it was a crowd pleaser lol.

#18

My high school had a lot of pine trees in the front grounds, with an adjacent area of open lawn and low shrubs that sloped down to the main road in front. The word spread like wildfire between classes one day that two senior students were engaging in coitus on the sloping grass area during class time, hidden from the school area but in full view of cars driving past. Some of these drivers called the school to complain, and three teachers were sent out to locate the two students and enforce decency, so to speak. I never heard later what happened to the two students involved.


Edit: 'Coitus' used as substitute for 'having sex', bonking, doing the horizontal tango, etc.

#19

We had the states (probably all of the US) largest sting operation in our school. It began with 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 under cover cop was trying to buy drugs in 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+ 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 what ever police office was acting like a parent. Apparently he was told to start trying more in class.

Pretty funny for those not involved.

#20

School officer k**led himself at home. The day after the news made its way around school some kid wore the Marilyn Manson shirt with a cop putting a gun to his own head.

Another kid at my school tried to put a goat curse on a teacher. He was later on a Sally Jesse Raphael episode in full goth talking about how he shaves everywhere but his head.

Not my school, but one in the next district had the s*****e that the song Jeremy by Pearl Jam is about.

#21

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 2nd period an announcement is made telling everyone who was in the caf 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 f*****g time getting there and we didn't leave the school until 6-7pm. 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 2-3pm 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

Image credits: Lyn1987

#22

S**t bandit. He would s**t in lockers and teachers desks and leave the note "If my demands are not met, the S**t 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.

#23

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

#24

My high school had a riot and there was and still is a picture of my principal choking a student.

Image credits: NomadFourFive

#25

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 ~ had friends spread rumors right at the beginning of the day about it ~ People were grieving because he was apart 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 boarder between states to get drugs - the girl driving tried to swerve due to a 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.

Image credits: Ab-Duck-Tea

#26

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 has the most participation would be the winner. (Sophomores wore red, Juniors wore white, and Seniors wore black.) People would get VERY into it - dying 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...

Image credits: LyndzLyndz

#27

In 3 months November, December and January 3 guys in my graduating class all died. 1 from s*****e, 1 from a skiing accident and 1 on the track at school. It was extremely eerie and sad

Image credits: MisanthropicEmpath

#28

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 & 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.

Image credits: Malicious_Tacos

#29

Cheerleader getting suspended leave for flashing her boobs during pep rally. I was in the pep rally. I missed it.

#30

Chlorine plant across the street blew up

#31

Not my high school but one near me, someone got access to all the monitors in the school and just blasted p**n, video and all. Was wild.

#32

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

#33

Shortly after I left my school, one of my old teachers had a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized.

#34

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.

#35

The senior prank. The school had just poured thousands of dollars into a remodel. New entrance, New Steel welded sign and all new parking lot/entry way. Two months later, weeks before graduation, the sign of the school was rewelded to say So Long and a chemical was poured on the new entry way that read "F**k *name of school*"

Edit: there was much debate about whether this was seniors from out school or seniors from a rival school. New security cameras had been installed but they only sort of identified one of the seniors. The kid denied it as he was on the basketball team and had a lot to lose

#36

the only thing I can think of was when during the sports area makeover (that also happened to be during our mock exams) they found 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 1000 years

#37

my HS wanted to be inclusive, made gender neutral bathrooms, obviously people started f*****g in the bathrooms.

#38

When I was a junior in high school, a kid in the grade below me set our school on fire and successfully burned down a big part of it. It happened in April the Monday after prom. He got caught cheating on the standardized tests that the state of Texas required us to take at that time, and this is how he chose to retaliate for not getting to finish his test. We had just taken the tests, and they were all in the front office waiting to get shipped to the state. Therefore they all burned and we had to retake them.

#39

A lad leaned to far back on his chair and split his head open. Everybody in the UK knows about it, apparently.

#40

Girl drunkenly fell asleep in a guy's parked car. Woke up in passenger seat and needed to take a s**t. Couldn't figure out how to get out of the car? So ended up s******g in the car. And then ran off. Very good looking girl but couldn't bring her up without someone saying she s**t in a car.

#41

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 phys cat carcasses out overnight on the upper floor (they thought the cats would rot despite being preserved with formaldehyde, to b show how dumb these people were), and generally f****d the place up. School had to replace the gym floor. Theatre club had to redo some props and costumes, which is extra s****y because the play that year was I Never Saw Another Butterfly... A story about the f*****g Holocaust. And they ONLY destroyed the Jewish character costumes, but not the two SS officer costumes that l 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 cams 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.

#42

We had a woodshop teacher accidentally cut off 3 of his fingers in front of one of his classes. Ironically, he was teaching about safety when it happened.

#43

Some kids lit a battery of fireworks inside the hall beside the cafeteria in my high school (Norwegian equivalent). Most people realised it was fireworks, but there were some students who were refugees from war-torn countries who were genuinely terrified.

#44

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+ 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 18wheeler.

60 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, walkway bridge over the intersection. School refused to even discuss it. We lodged protests, walk outs. 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 OD'd. Five years and I think the number was closer to 50.

All because of one girl.

#45

Which one do you want? Our senior T shirts were literally “the incident” from each year.

Freshman: Older HS kids are having a party near the end of the school year, get busted, one tries to run from the cops and crashes into the electrical transformer in front of the school giving everyone 2 days off.

Sophomore: Some moron stole 3 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. Others kids saw it and by the time I arrived (free period first period so I didn’t have to come to school until period 2 senior year) the school was surrounded by police officers and news copters and I was yelled at to “go home”. 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.

#46

My school has a kid nicknamed the “Study hall stroker”. Self explanatory.

#47

There was a “poop-a-traitor” leaving smeared faeces around the walls in the bathroom. I found one and I’ll never forget, it was picture was of a flower and sun, drawn in poop. There were several incidents before the person was caught “brown handed” and several jokes about “code browns”

#48

The teacher who looked so much like a 70s p**nstar, did turn out to have made p**n in the 70s.

#49

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!

#50

So back in the early 80s a kid at our schools older brother disappeared. The cops searched the neighbourhood 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 ro have been the victim of a serial.k**ler. he was only 16.

#51

At the end of my senior year, one of the girls in our senior class got pregnant.

That's it. We were a magnet school full of nerds excelling in medical science and only 304 people in my graduating class. No one ever got pregnant in our high school before.

#52

My class had an anonymous blogger a la Gossip Girl who would target each of us in turns like spreading rumours about students and teachers and trying to turn friend groups against each other (this was an all female class).

Nothing too dramatic but we spent the whole year trying to figure out who it was (narrowed it down to be someone from our class and from band). In the end we gave up because everyone found her writing style so over the top and annoying and the lack of attention caused the blog posts to appear less frequently til it stopped altogether

#53

Coolest guy in school was an amazing guitarist, really good at finger picking, super lovely, talked to everyone, even the teachers loved him. He was in my homeroom (Australian Highschool) he was older but he used to let me sit near him sometimes. One weekend he went out with some friends to play with fire crackers (fire crackers are super illegal here because of the Bush fire 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. Couldnt play guitar- couldn't even open a door. So f*****g sad. We were all so sad for him.

#54

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 k**l the remaining 10 mins of lunch. One girl went through her desk and found her perfume and sprayed it once laughing that she was Mrs X.

Few minutes later Mrs X walks in, sniffs and starts looking around and 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.

#55

When this guy wearing a junior ROTC uniform hijacked a bus. I grew up in the hood, so when newscasters interviewed fellow students, all they did was clown on the guy. I was cracking up watching it on tv because media was trying to make it look like it had the same gravity as a school shooting but the students themselves treated it like it was hoodrat shenanigans.

#56

Bomb threat and armed police storming the building I think?

Also on a trip to Iceland, everyone got food poisoning and the teacher who was meant to look after the kids was out getting drunk and hitting on women at a local bar. He got in trouble for that.

#57

Softball coach had a heart attack in the girls locker room 2 hours after practice, luckily there was one girl still there to call 911 for him.

#58

Very hot, very much married teacher with 2 kids slept with a senior. He was already 18 so the whole thing got buried, she was fired and the story never really got out except for those of us who knew the guy personally. She had been flirting with him and communicating on the dl for most of high school but waited until he was 18 actually do anything.

#59

Two guys *swam* to school (it was located on an island) through the most busy commercial shipping lane on the continent.

#60

I was homeschooled and my entire existence was "the incident" lmao

#61

The vice principal looked over a boy's stall door to 'see if he was vaping'. He was not vaping. The VP did not get fired. They suspended the boy.

#62

Some douchebag fell down the stairs because he was high as f**k and he was never seen again.

#63

Nothing super exceptional. There wasn’t much crime or deviancy in our small rural town. The best one I can think of is when someone traced a massive c**k and balls onto the frosted games field. Of course, walking on frosted grass can k**l the grass so even after the frost melted there was a huge black d**k etched onto the field. The teachers were the sort who had a conniption fit if you wore a headband that wasn’t black or white, so of course they were APPALLED and DISGUSTED by the whole thing.

Also, the guy and girl (dating) who had three kids before they graduated was pretty impressive.

#64

3 younger girls (one of them was my classmate's girlfriend at the time) got trampled/suffocated to death in an overcrowded music venue. They let in close to 3000 people which was about double the place's actual capacity, but there were some other damning circumstances (they ushered people through too quickly as the doors were opened late, and apparently someone falsely yelled that someone got stabbed on one of the higher up floors which caused panic and people were trying to flee). I don't think my mate ever really got over it, but at least they cracked down on some places in the area and rules became stricter. Still too many s**t venues around tho.

#65

I think I went to a pretty boring high school. The only incident I can think of was a bunch of students rocked ian ice cream truck after school until it tipped. It was one of those little comically small trucks, and of course the goal was to tip it

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