In kindergarten the sequence of punishments was as follows: the first time you did something bad, you got a warning. Next time...
In kindergarten the sequence of punishments was as follows: the first time you did something bad, you got a warning. Next time you got a time-out. Followed by another warning, then another time-out…and then, if you still broke the rules after two warnings and two time-outs, you got sent to the principal’s office.
This reset every day, and the kindergarten school day was about 4 hours long, so it was rare to even make it to the second warning. Nobody ever got in enough trouble to get sent to the principal’s office, but the looming threat still remained. There was nothing listed in the sequence of punishments after the principal’s office. It was the Great Beyond.
So one day curiosity got the better of me and I decided I would find out what happened at the principal’s office. I knew I’d have to get in trouble five times, but I didn’t want to sit two time-outs. 10 minutes is eternity when you’re five. So I tried to think of something I could do that would be bad enough to bypass all the boring punishments and get me straight to the principal’s office.
I think I tried yelling insults at the teacher first, and that got me a warning and then time-out #1. But I was able to bypass time-out #2 during recess when I walked right out of the playground, crossed the street, and walked back. And I remember having second thoughts as the teacher marched me through the hall to the principal, but it was too late.
My discoveries were a disappointment. A secretary handed me a stack of papers and asked me to count them while some other school employee called my parents. At the time, I thought I was helping them do important clerical work. In retrospect it was probably a punishment.
I didn’t even get to see the principal.
in one of my kindergartens – i tended to get kicked out after a few months, for reasons which will soon be obvious – they had a reward system that was like, if you behave you get a star next to your name on the board, and if you get ten stars you get, idk, a piece of candy. this is how they explained it. if you get ten stars.
so every day i’d get exactly ten stars and then act out as much as i could for the rest of the day, and eventually one of the teachers asked my parents and they asked me and i was like
they *said* ten stars
they changed how they explained the system after that
I got kicked out of a few preschools but stayed a whole year in Our Lady of Mount Carmel kindergarden (afternoon session)
apparently once when I was sent to see the principal I just walked into his outer office and sat down and started playing on the computer there and when his secretary asked said Miss [Teacher] sent me
another time I went to the outer office and asked to use the bathroom (doors from there and to the main hall) and just turned the sink on and left and told Miss [Teacher] that yeah, I went to the principal’s office
apparently once I stuffed paper towels into all the toilets in the main hall bathrooms for the hell of it
Up through around seventh grade I misbehaved enough to get sent to the principal’s office at least twice a day. Got expelled from a ton of grade schools.
oh but what got me thinking about this was they introduced a system just for me with print-outs of train cars for every day and they’d give me pluses and minuses on the car as the day went on
and it was minuses for like not putting up with kindergarteners, and kindergarteners are insipid so fuck’em
and also I got sent to some therapists and one was like “oh instead of picking at the dry crust of your lips you should put Vaseline on them” and no, that was wrong, and one was like “oh, when adults say things you don’t follow you should say ‘excuse me’ and not ‘what?’”, and no, that was wrong
that was a major theme of my childhood, a succession of adults posed as authorities that I had to calmly but firmly correct that no, they were wrong