Being awkward in school was the norm for most of us, but some hid it better than others. There were definitely those that stood out of the crowd and marched to the beat of a different drum. These misfits and weirdos might have been teased, but at least they won't ever be forgotten.
u/mensaboy67 asks:
What is your 'weird classmate' story?
Her Favorite Class Is Purr-sian Hiss-tory
GiphyShe thought she was a cat. She crawled around on the floor, meowed, and purred. Teacher allowed this, and I didn't really care because she was still "normal" besides the cat thing. It got really weird when my friend suddenly screamed "Ow, F---!" followed by the girl going "mew" from under the table . She bit his leg. AFAIK, she has no problems, just likes being a cat.
It's All Greek To Me
We had a guy at my high school who was...a little socially inept. He would walk through the hallway with a sharpened pencil extended in front of him like a spear and say "Make way, make way, mere mortals!" whenever he would walk to class. He also got in trouble for looking up "porn" on the library computer. Of course, actual porn sites were blocked, so he "researched" pictures of Roman and Greek statutes of nude women.
Hungry For...Knowledge
GiphyDear god. I have a great story.
I moved to a new state my sophomore year of high school. I, obviously, didn't know anyone so I had no idea what kids were considered weird. In my first couple of weeks, the kid that sat behind me asked if I could get him a tissue. The box of tissues was on a window ledge right beside me, so I oblige and hand him one. Then I hear super loud "NOM NOM NOM NOM". And this guys straight up, DEVOURS, this tissue. He just looked at me and smiled, I looked around the room and everyone was staring at him...
Bee All That You Can Bee
This is actually less 'annoying-weird' and more 'I-am-in-awe-but-also-confused' kind of weird. In grade 4, there was this boy in my class, he was cool, he was obsessed with tanks, and loved to draw them from memory during class. I was a girl, and the other girls thought it was weird that I wanted to hang out with a boy, but the girls were jerks, so I didn't care.
Anyway, once during lunch time, he told me he was a bee whisperer, and told me to follow him. There was this big bush full of pink flowers in one corner of the school yard, and it was full of bees. He puts his finger near the bush, and one bee lands on his finger. He tells me the key is to be gentle, and make them trust you by not being afraid.
He then picks a flower that one bee was sitting on, and slowly folds the petals into the middle and pinches it between his fingers, essentially trapping the bee. He then puts the flower, with the bee, in his pocket, and we continue building stuff out of sticks.
Then recess is over, and in the middle of class, he taps me on the elbow, opens his pocket, and lets the bee crawl out. I just watch, as he lets the bee crawl over and between his fingers, until one girl nearby shrieks "James has a bee!"
The teacher looks up, and in a bit of a panic, demands he let the bee go outside. He does, just walks outside with the bee just sitting in the palm of his hand.
That was the first and last time he ever showed me the bee thing, and he moved away at the end of that year. I'm naturally skeptical, and maybe my childish wonder at that time distorted my memory somehow, but a part of me still believes that the King of the Bees is out there, somewhere.
Furry Weird, Indeed
A girl I went to elementary school with used to think she was a dog. She would act like a dog; panting, barking, licking her arms, etc. We were all kids and it wasn't frequent enough for it to be weird but one day she comes up to me as we're putting away our backpacks on the hooks and sticks her tongue out to reveal a glob of her own hair on her tongue. She then goes "shhhhh" and walks away. I will never forget this. We actually became closer acquaintances in high school later on but I was too embarrassed to ever bring it up, mostly for her.
Now That's A Plot Twist
GiphyI unenthusiastically attended my 5 year reunion because a few of my friends I hadn't seen in forever we're going. Several cocktails in, a bunch of people were sitting around swapping gossip about what had become of the oddballs from our year. This one guy says "I heard this one girl from our class got in to porn and is, like, a crackhead now". My interest was piqued, since hardly anyone from our small town ever did anything with their lives other than get married and have babies, so I asked for details. He told me that this girl had somehow gotten in to fetish bondage and stuff-and he knew it was true because someone sent him a link to a site once. I asked him if he could find it, and after some drunken phone searching he found the email and clicked the link. "Okay, well, I was close, it's just a picture not a link to the actual porn, but that's what he told me." I took the phone, enlarged the picture- a girl with an eyes-wide-shut style eye mask on, smoking a cigarette, wearing a leather corset and fishnet stockings, one stiletto heel placed in the back on a kneeling "slave". I sighed and gave him his phone back. "Josh, are you sure she's a crack whore porn star? And not just like, modeling in an essentially PG-13 fetish photo shoot? Maybe because she, I don't know, majored in Art like an idiot and couldn't get a real job right away???" He stared at me with dazed, drunk confusion...not connecting the dots. "Never mind. Cool story. Great seeing you!"
Forget Truth, Just Dare
This guys at my school would literally do anything you dared him to do. Slap a kid with a slice a pizza? Done. Take a dump in the urinal? No problem. Take his shirt off in the middle of the cafeteria, pour milk on himself while screaming? Easy.
I talked to him a couple times in classes that I had with him and he actually seemed fairly normal. He doesn't have any social media so idk how he is doing currently. He was a strange anomaly.
His Art Was A Stroke Of Genius
The weird kid in my graduating class always walked around with a sketchbook in his hand. He would draw graphic (yet very realistic) looking sketches of d*cks during class, and then somehow made them blend together into beautiful landscapes or works of art. It was like playing where's Waldo every time he showed you his sketches, except with d*cks. Other than that, he was quite a funny dude to be around and everyone in our grade liked him. Last I heard he got accepted into a well known arts school in the States, and is apparently flourishing there as an artist. I hope he's still walking the halls with his d*ckbook in hand and enjoying his little artistic life out there.
Nope, nope, nope.
GiphyI had just returned to public school after homeschooling for a few years (moved a lot during that time). First day in school and this skinny Grade 10 boy walks up to me and puts his finger on my arm, looking intently at me. I brushed his hand away, and he did it again, followed up by saying "I'm planting eggs in you". Nope. Nope. Nope.
Misunderstood But Still A Rock Star
I knew a guy who went to my college for a couple of years with Asperger's, who really liked rocks. He would occasionally approach me and start talking about them and I'd listen sometimes when I didn't need to go somewhere, but I also witnessed many times where people were unnecessarily mean to him.
There were some people that thought of him as a novelty and would feign friendship and feed him alcohol, just because they thought it was funny when he was drunk.
I wish I would've done more to help him out and stop them, especially right before he left. I went to the gym for a run and all the treadmills were taken, so I went to the indoor track that was hardly used. About 10 minutes into my run, he comes in with his mom and goes into the middle of the track with his mom. He starts showing her these various sword fighting techniques that he had learned, because apparently he was really into that too.
Then he notices me as I'm doing a lap and eagerly waves. I wave back and he motions me to come. So, I took out my earbuds and jogged over. He introduced me to his mom as his friend. I could tell it made her really happy to that he had a friend and he was really happy too. I had only briefly talked to him a few times, but I did my best to be as friendly as I could be. After a few minutes, I excused myself, saying that I had to get going, so I left.
That was pretty much the last time I saw him, because he left school shortly after. He was a really nice guy that most people just misunderstood and looking back I wish I had tried to get to know him better.
Eat It Up
He ate his vocabulary book at a rate of one or two pages a day throughout the school year.
The teacher sent him to the office so many times, but next class he was back at it again. He was so determined. I wish I'd asked why.
Not So Perfect Mrs. Darcy
GiphyOlder lady, let's call her Darcy, in a lit class. Randomly assigned to do a group project with her and about three others. Our topic (given to us by the prof) was the Industrial Revolution.
We quickly realize we can't trust Darcy to do any actual work. She just twists herself in circles trying to (and not) understand the project.
At mandatory meeting with prof to discuss our progress, Darcy gets herself worked up because she "can't understand" the topic. Prof asks why.
"Because I don't even know which countries fought the industrial revolution! How can I present on it?"
I side eye the professor thinking, look what we've been dealing with for weeks. I've never seen such a perfect deer in the headlights look. Prof talks us through breaking down assignment and we agree Darcy should just do the intro--easy peasy, right?
Apparently not. Another partner made the mistake of giving out her phone number and Darcy calls her at about 2 am complaining about how hard the project is and she doesn't understand. She ranted for over an hour, Classmate thinks she was drunk--now in my mind I call her "Drunk Darcy."
Day of the presentation comes and we're ready to be done with stupid topic and Darcy. Her intro is about five minutes worth of information about how only Europe had the industrial revolution because only white people were smart enough to invent it. We were mortified, and we still had to get up and present our info. That presentation was the lowest grade I got in the class, but the prof stopped doing group presentations after that.
For as long as Darcy was on campus, if she saw anyone in the group she'd corral them and complain about the group presentation topic. I learned to stare at the ground if I saw her walking around so we wouldn't have to talk. I'm glad she was trying to get an education, but oh boy did she always seem confused and overwhelmed
Albert
I use to go to school with this really big. strong, ugly looking kid, we will call him Albert, who would just go into rage mode in the middle of class for no particular reason and also was just a general weirdo even for my standards. His problems included
Choking a kid out in middle school for calling him fat
Bringing weird bagged food that stunk up the entire cafeteria
Screaming at a girl in high school who didn't say a word to him accusing her of saying he smelled and telling the entire class what a whore she was while throwing and punching things
Wearing a dog collar and exclaiming he was a furry to the entire school on multiply occasions (no seriously)
Explaining what BDSM is in graphic detail
and asking me many times uncomfortable questions about what I preferred sexually and if I ever wanted him to tie me up (I politely declined)
Albert was bi and loved announcing it to everyone he met
All By Myself
GiphyWe had a weird girl who would walk around talking to herself. When we were 8/9 and asked what we wanted to be when we grew up she always said she wanted to be an astrophysicist when the rest of us couldn't even pronounce that. In high school she was definitely more of an outcast. Super nice, on good terms with everyone, but always always talking to herself. It was a little unsettling, because we were a super tiny town and sheltered school so we all thought she was mentally ill. Like, she was having full own conversations with herself but muttered so you just couldn't hear what was being said, but her face was extremely serious.
Turns out she was learning Mandarin in her spare time out side of school. So all those times she was talking to herself she was really just practicing conversational Mandarin. She's going to a top university right now and just a few months away from completing her PhD, after which I believe she's neurosurgeon. She's still nice as hell.