Whether it be factual or just rumors, every high school has a story of someone doing something outrageous that has stood the test of time. Sometimes it is a good deed but oftentimes, it's shockingly dumb behavior that leads to someone becoming a school legend.
All content has been edited for clarity.
Legitimate Hero
“When I was in eleventh grade, a guy a year older than me, in grade twelve, saved a grade nine girl from being abducted by her estranged father in the school parking lot. Her dad hadn’t been in her life for years and had previously tried to take her from her elementary school. This being her first year in high school, I guess he tried again.
The twelfth grader heard her scream as her dad tried to force her into his car and he ran over and got involved, apparently punching the dad before the dad got back in his car and sped off.
The guy was a legitimate hero at the school.”
Gym Teacher
“Our legend was actually the gym teacher. He became a legend by getting hit by a bus, getting up, getting on the bus, and asking if everyone was okay.
The man would get to school early each day and do a run down the two-mile stretch of road that the school was on. That’s also where he got hit by the bus. He was an ex-marine so he was already a bit crazy. But the thing that surprised me the most was that he wasn’t hard on unathletic people as long as they tried in his class and gave an effort. He would even go out of his way to encourage those that tried to do better without denigrating them. The lazy ones on the other hand he had a dislike for. He was a tough coach but many looked up to him.
He ended up getting fired about five years after I graduated because he was caught soaking raisins in Tito’s and eating them over the course of the day. Never change.
I still can’t believe he’s gone though. The man was the terminator.”
Free Kelly
“There was this girl ‘Kelly,’ who was very tiny, quiet, and seemingly well mannered. She was a very unassuming girl. I don’t think anyone knew who she was as it was a big school until she was walked off campus by the police for stealing the credit card information of fourteen students and going on a shopping spree.
She disappeared for a year before somehow being allowed back in for her senior year. Instead of being a pariah, this girl somehow became a meme.
‘Free Kelly’ posters would pop up with her mugshot on them, her name was incorporated into chants used at football games like she was a weapon that could be used against the opposing team, and she was at the top of everyone’s party invite list.”
Pop Quiz
“Our history teacher was ex-military, and he was absolutely jacked. Like this guy would bike ten miles every morning to school, kept an ab roller in his classroom, would eat salads and beans for lunch every day, the whole shebang.
Anyway, one day he gave our class a pop quiz.
‘Jeff,’ the strongest, biggest guy in my class, went up to him and asked, ‘If I punch you in the stomach and make you flinch can the entire class get a hundred on the quiz?’
My teacher took him up on it. He prepared himself, and Jeff absolutely drilled him in the stomach.
Our teacher did not flinch.
We still had to take the quiz, but Jeff went down in history as the guy who punched a teacher, and the teacher went down in history as a guy you don’t want to mess with.”
Hot Dog Costume
“It’s pretty stupid but a friend wore a Walmart hot dog costume and for some reason, everyone thought it was funny, started chanting hot dog kid and he won the best Halloween costume award of that year.
The next year, he wore a penguin costume and as he stepped up on stage he ripped it off to reveal the hotdog costume underneath. Everybody absolutely lost it. Sadly, we had a rule that you couldn’t win two years in a row so while he didn’t get the prize we all knew who had the best costume that day
That is how the legend of hot dog kid was born at my high school.”
Fake Accents
1. “In ninth grade, one of our teachers got sick so we had a substitute. This kid just started talking in a strong Spaniard accent, like super well and convinced the teacher he was from Spain. And he talked this way for three months. It was hilarious.
When another kid tried talking as a Spaniard too, he got really upset and accused the other kid of mocking his culture, etc.
Then when the year ended, we had to do a presentation and our teacher who got sick came. So the kid just nodded through the whole presentation while his group mates talked. It was hilarious.”
2. “A buddy of mine went an entire semester in one class only talking with an Australian accent. He made up a whole backstory of being from Melbourne, too, and how his parents shipped him to the US to live with family since he was getting in with the wrong people in Melbourne. It was incredible.
Then on the last day of class, he spoke in his normal American accent. The poor teacher was so confused.”
School Statue
“My brother ran into the statue of our high school mascot with his truck at night. He knocked the bulldog off its platform then threw it in the back of the truck. It ended up in a pond out by our house.
My brother, who was a massive wallflower in school, never told a soul until he mentioned it to me over some drinks in our thirties.
No one ever knew who it was but it was a big deal and I remember tons of allegations, accusations, and rumors as to how our mascot disappeared. Never in my life would I have ever suspected my brother.
It was legendary in my eyes.”
Gas Leak
“We had a carbon monoxide leak at my high school one day in which the entire school was evacuated to the football field. The leak was taking so long to fix that eventually, local news cameras started showing up.
At about the three-hour mark of waiting on the football field, one of the seniors ran unclothed across the entire length of the football field, in front of the entire school. He ran straight at the cameras that were pointed at the field, hopped the fence, and ran across a busy intersection without any clothes on.
One of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. Every single person, including the teachers, was laughing hysterically.
The kid became a legend that day for sure.”
Bathroom Breaks
“We had a teacher who was infamous for not letting you go to the bathroom no matter what. I mean so much so that if you accidentally started to go in class, she would make you wait. This happened.
So there was a girl who we’ll call ‘Katie’ in class, who tended to be a bit of a troublemaker. Katie hated that teacher because she had begged to go to the bathroom and got shut down every time.
At the end of the year, Katie asked one more time to go to the bathroom, the teacher said no. Katie asked another time five minutes later. The teacher said no again.
Five minutes after that, Katie asked again but said that the teacher was not going to like what happened if the teacher didn’t let her go. The teacher hit the roof and said that if she said one more thing, Katie would be sent to the principal.
Katie shrugged and said ‘This is on you, then,’ and urinated on her seat, right where she was.
The teacher sent her to the principal, who called her parents, one of which was a urologist. Her father yelled at the principal. The teacher ended up in deep trouble. According to other kids, she never denied another kid the bathroom again.
Katie was a legend.”
McLovin
“When I was a junior in high school, the wrestling team would hang out in the bathroom at lunch and pack lips in the stalls. There was a kid who was probably on the spectrum who would also hang in the bathroom every day and eat his lunch there so we befriended him and tried to give him some banter.
I went to a midnight screening of Superbad and the first time McLovin came on the screen I was like, ‘Oh my word, that looks just like a slightly skinnier version of (stall kid).’
So the next day at school I saw him in the hall and during our usual daps, I was like, ‘Hey it’s McLovin!’
That caught on and for the rest of his time in high school, everyone called him McLovin. He really liked it. Then he was voted prom king as a Senior.
Hope you’re well, McLovin.”
Basketball Game
“My friend ‘Dean,’ was a pretty good basketball player in high school. One night at an away game against one of our bitter rivals, he was in a pretty intense battle under the boards with their big guy. I kept seeing him pull his shorts up and getting in the kid’s face.
He came over during a time out and said to me, ‘If that guy pulls my shorts down one more time I am going to knock him out.’
Well, true to his word, next time under the opponent’s basket he was asking for the ball and suddenly his shorts got pulled down far enough to show the jock. He turned and hit the other kid so hard the first thing to hit the ground was the back of his head. The place went nuts. People were rushing the court trying to get to Dean.
The head coach from the other team finally got to him from behind and grabbed his jersey. Dean knocked him out too. Once we got the melee under control they were carting the head coach and the other player off the court. Dean was standing there with his jersey top ripped in half. He was still in fight mode.
I grabbed him and dragged him into the visitor’s locker area. He was still really hot when our coach came in and asked what happened. He told the coach why he hit the other player but had no good reason for knocking out the coach other than getting caught up in the moment. Needless to say, that was the end of Dean’s high school playing career.
Now, forty-two years later, we still talk about it. When we had his ‘celebration of life’ this past March I was asked to tell the story. The whole place was roaring with laughter.”
Goose
“There was this one sophomore who had a goose for a pet. He lived kind of close so he could walk to school, and he would always let his goose walk with him. We all called him ‘Goose,’ and he was a really nice guy to hang with, even the teachers liked petting his goose.
One time, he was at school when one of the teachers who wasn’t chill with his pet came out and started yelling at him about the goose. He got detention somehow. The next day, the same teacher wasn’t in class and we all knew what happened to her.
We found out at a small assembly at the end of the day that Goose had let his goose run around the classroom last night, and apparently, the teacher was still there grading and got a beak to the head. No one messed with him for the rest of the school year.”
Chocolate Salesman
“A guy in my graduating class sold chocolate bars all through high school to raise money for his Boy Scout troop. Everyone had his cell phone number. You could be in the middle of class, text him your location, and he would sneak into the class with a chocolate bar any time of day.
Our graduation ceremony was super boring until his name was called. He got up on stage, reached into his pockets, and started throwing dozens of chocolate bars in the crowd. It was amazing. It also made the principal furious for some reason, which made it even better.”
Staff Coffee
“During the last week of my senior year, I noticed that the school would order commercial urns of coffee for the faculty. They would regularly hire the same catering company that provided meals for students.
Early in the morning, the workers would unload the premade coffee urns by the cafeteria entrance, and leave them unattended while they carried food items into the kitchen. It was a perfect opportunity to mix in a few bottles of odorless, tasteless, extra-strength laxative. Almost everyone in the school staff would drink the coffee!
A few minutes into the beginning of the first period and most, if not all adults, would have a near-simultaneous case of explosive diarrhea. Needless to say, it was my favorite day in high school. No one knows it was me, yet every student remembers that day fondly.”
Float Trip
“We had optional float trips planned the month before school started again while it was still hot out. They didn’t cost anything other than stuff you had to bring (if you didn’t have a tent they would buddy you up with somebody that did) so the attendance rate was high because it was actually pretty fun. It was a way for new students to form a bond with the returning students. There were about 120 people in our high school at the time, as we were part of a small private school, so it wasn’t too unmanageable.
There was a kid who, as a running gag, would wear the same tiny leopard print speedo every single year and it would get a ton of laughs. On the trip going into his senior year, the chaperones half-jokingly announced that Speedos were not a permissible form of swimwear on this year’s trip as, though it was hilarious and well-received by all, they showed a little too much cheek.
He showed up in breakaway pants that year and tore them off to reveal the now-famous tiny leopard print speedo one final time and everyone went absolutely nuts.
They shrugged and basically gave him the green light as it was the last time in four years of attendance that the famed exotic speedo would get the laughs.”
School Fire
“There was this one kid at another school who became so notorious that it seems everyone in the area had heard at least a few tales of his antics. When I finally met him in person, I found out that what was told was less crazy than reality.
The big one involved lighting his school on fire. He was putting together set pieces with the drama club, and they had gotten to fooling around, as you do. He had a lighter, because reasons, and they were improvising flame throwers with the cans of spray paint. Then they got to thinking how it would look on a wall. Things get carried away and he ends up lighting a panel that was still coated in fresh paint. And it starts to spread. And he got that all too familiar feeling when a harmless bit of fun goes wildly out of control. The fire spread so high that it was now lighting the curtains.
The handheld fire extinguisher does almost nothing to slow the spread. At this point, one of drama students runs to pull the alarm, and everyone evacuates. The fire department (fortunately just a block away) comes and secures the stage. Luckily the fire hadn’t spread into the rafters, and he is saved from the fate of burning down the school.
The craziest part, though, came when he was to be disciplined. Usually, these kinds of things end with expulsion, but the whole staff at the school liked this kid so much that they all fought for him, and he only ended up with a brief suspension. I think like a few days or a week. Unbelievable. Because the word of mouth said he was expelled, or transferred to the juvenile delinquent school, or that he had to move.”
Pregnant Classmate
“It happened when I was a sophomore in high school. One of my classmates was expecting and in her last month of pregnancy. The date was April 1st. We were sitting in history class and she started to breathe a little heavily and moan a little bit.
Our teacher was a single guy in his forties who seemed a little skittish and socially awkward. He looked over at the girl and asked her if anything was wrong.
She told him she wasn’t sure, but she thought maybe she was going into labor.
He turned pale and started to stammer and then yelled at one of the kids to run to the nurse’s office.
Another student reminded him that he had the intercom and should call the office.
He buzzed the office and told them to hurry and get someone to the class. He also asked them to call for an ambulance.
The pregnant student continued to moan but the moans were getting louder. With each moan, the teacher’s face got paler and he seemed more panicked. Two of her friends were holding her hand and telling her everything was going to be alright. Some of the boys turned their chairs around so they weren’t facing her. A few kids were talking about how cool it would be if she had the baby at school. A couple of kids got up and left the room.
It seemed as if time was standing still, but in reality, only a few minutes passed before the dean showed up with a wheelchair and the nurse. They put her in the wheelchair, tucked a blanket around her, and whisked her out of the room. The whole time she continued to breathe heavily with occasional whimpers and moans.
By this time, pandemonium had broken out and the teacher had no control over of any us from the class. We all followed behind the dean and nurse as they rolled her out of school. Then the bell rang to alert students to move to their next class. The hallways became filled with students and staff. The dean continued trying to plow his way through the melee.
Just as they got to the exit the pregnant student threw off the blanket and yelled, ‘Stop! April Fools!’ and started to laugh hysterically.
Well, the students went wild with cheering! The dean’s face turned red and he yelled at her to get into his office ‘NOW!’ The staff corraled us back into class and tried to salvage what was left of the day. Not much learning occurred as all students (and staff) could do was talk about what had happened. That day became legendary and was remembered for years.
I have a sister ten years younger than me who attended the same high school. She said the staff still talked about it years later every April Fool’s Day. They said this girl pulled off one of the best pranks that ever went down at the school.”
Long Hair
“During my senior year of high school, we got a new principal. He was very old-fashioned. This was in 1970 when most of the guys wore long hair. One Friday, we were given letters saying that as of Monday all boys must wear hair that did not reach the collar or they would be suspended
Thirty of the better-known guys in my class all came together and hatched a plan.
On Monday, I brought a lock to school and we commandeered an unused gym locker. We all took off our dress shirts and put on gym shirts, like basketball jerseys, and went to class.
Eventually, the principal got wind of this and called us down for a chat.
After yelling for five minutes, turning beet red, and looking like he was on the verge of a massive stroke he said, ‘Anyone who doesn’t immediately change back to their dress shirt is suspended.’
I said it was impossible because only one person knew the combination to the lock.
The student council president said that if we wore our dress shirts we would be suspended for long hair. The school newspaper editor told him it wouldn’t look good if in his first week of being principal he suspended most of the most well-known boys in the school. And to top it off, the basketball captain told him that if we were suspended it was already arranged that there would be a student walkout the next day
He told us to stay there and that he was going to call the head of the school board and when he got back we would be in major trouble.
We were unfazed.
Two minutes later, he came back and screamed at us to go back to class. Hair was never mentioned again.”
Superhuman Strength
“I knew a guy back in high school who was legendary for his physical strength but never used it to show off but rather to amuse and amaze the rest of us mere mortals. The one feat that secured his legendary status was his ability to walk upside down on his hands. He once went the length and width of the school and up and down stairs nonstop via a walking handstand.
This guy was not your typical egotistical jock though but was a brawny brainiac who only participated in one sport, wrestling, and I don’t remember him ever losing.
He was a legend, a class act who never lorded his strength or smarts over others.”