I don’t know what the reasoning was behind this, but for some reason at my middle school, we had to “tread lightly” on the bleachers in the gym because there was a “mechanical mechanism” that could be damaged.

It was very strange and we got yelled at about it every single time we went into the gym…over and over again.

Rules can be weird…

Do you remember the dumbest rule that was enforced at your school?

Here’s what folks on AskReddit had to say about this.

1. Bad idea.

“We were all given these ugly planners at the beginning of the school year, with a few pages at the back filled with ‘hall passes’.

If you didn’t have your planner, or if all your boxes were filled, you weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom. And no, you couldn’t buy a new planner. Or borrow one from your friend.

The only excuse you had was if you had a doctor’s note, but no doctor is going to give a note for an upset stomach caused by the school lunch.”

2. What’s going on over there?

“In grade 8, we were banned from standing in circles at recess because of potential scandalous activity going on in the middle.

We stood in squares instead.”

3. Showed them.

“They banned the word snap, since everyone used it instead of sh*t.

So we all just started saying sh*t.

The snap ban lasted about 3 days.”

4. Kind of expensive.

“The $200 blazer was compulsory and we got detention every single day until we got it.”

5. Sounds fun!

“A girl and a boy couldn’t sit together.

The school employed “disciplinarians” to roam around the school and monitor this “activity”.

If found, you will get a reprimand, if found repeating the offence, you get sent to the principal office and if continuing, then eventually escalated to the parents, etc!”

6. Worried about your health.

“Middle School had banned salt and pepper from being used in the cafeteria, claimed it was too unhealthy.

Still sold Mountain Dew in the vending machines .”

7. I don’t think that’s a problem here.

“We couldn’t wear winter clothing (jackets, hats, gloves) in class because they were “gang symbols.”

This was a small farm town in Wisconsin. Besides obviously having no gangs, it was f*cking cold, even indoors, in the winter.

But clearly wearing warm clothing is something only gangs do.”

8. Very erotic.

“Our school banned hugging because it was “erotic.”

As you can imagine, the boys at school started giving each other very sensual high fives for the rest of the year.”

9. Ridiculous.

“No touching the walls.

They restored a building with historic value using, among other things, period appropriate paints. They then opened the planned primary school there and proceeded to try to get children to respect the restoration work.

So we had a few years of benches in the hallways being 10 cm from the wall and children being reprimanded for leaning against the wall before the faculty gave up.”

10. Come on!

“If you were involved in a fight, you got suspended. While it sounds reasonable, context didn’t matter.

I got suspended once not for throwing a single punch, kick, whatever. I got suspended because someone knocked the books out of my hand and when I reached down to grab them they punched me in the face.

I got suspended for walking down the hallway and unprovoked getting punched in the face.”

11. Really dumb.

“Can’t wear too many matching shirts because you could be a gang.

This was in regards to a kid with cancer wanting to make a bunch of shirts.”

12. Put on some clothes, mister!

“You got in trouble if you wore just a hanes white t-shirt after school because “you were in your underwear”.”

13. Banned!

“My high school banned t-shirts that had the cover of Rush’s album Signals, an album popular at the time, which features an image of a dog sniffing a fire hydrant.

They considered it scatalogical because the dog was about to pee on it. This struck the entire student body as extremely stupid, and roughly 1/2 of the student body picked a day to wear the t-shirt.

We won.”

14. Hmmm…

“In elementary, they banned running ENIRELY. No running on the playground either.

They also banned all ball sports, and would take your ball if you took it in from home, and they would put it in the gym cupboard to be used during PE class (Physical Education)

Keep in mind that these were 4-11 year olds, so everyone ignored the rules and so many were in ‘Detention’ (I’m not sure what we called it) , that they had to drop the rule and nothing came of that

But the second rule about ball sports? Well it turned out that one of the kids in the year below me had bought in a sighed soccer ball, by a really famous player, and the school took it and kept it.

We found out because there was a very angry mother screaming at the secretary that they effectively stole something that could be worth upwards of 1000$.

They obviously gave back the ball, and stopped stealing them after that.

Who would have thought that stealing from little kids was a bad idea?”

15. Closed!

“In my freshman year of high school we had a terrible vandalism problem, the bathrooms would be broken in various ways almost constantly.

In a stroke of pure genius, the staff decided that any bathroom that was vandalized would be closed for the week on first offense, the quarter for second, and permanently on the third offense.

They took back the rule after closing every bathroom on day one.”

16. Little did they know…

“Prom was a mandatory lockdown for the night in order to avoid students going to parties after prom.

Prom was held at various house parties across town instead.”

17. Terrible idea.

“In 6th grade they switched out all student chairs for large rubber stability balls.

There was a strict “no bouncing” rule.

It was a disaster.”

18. Gimme my purse!

“No backpacks to class, but purses were allowed.

Girls started carring around purses big enough to be considered a backpack, guys got pissed started carrying purses too.”

19. None of that.

“At a conservative Christian College, a group of us played “Age of Empires” one weekend.

They didn’t like it and called a meeting. All of  got misdemeanors on our records. There was nothing in the handbook about it being against the rules. The only person that didn’t get any punishment was the son of the president even though he was just as involved as the rest of us.

Was quite interesting explaining the write up on my record when I transferred. “You got a misdemeanor for what?!”

They made it a rule after the fact and did this several other times with things such as nail polish or radio control helicopters.”

20. Going a little bit too far.

“You couldn’t wear ANY kind of head items that were “gang colours” (red or blue) – this included hair bands, scrunchies, beads in your hair, ribbons – ANYTHING.

I got in trouble for wearing a blue hair band with white polka dots.”

21. Way to go, sir.

“We weren’t allowed to play tag football at lunch, only frisbee.

When I asked the principal what the difference was, he responded with a sarcastic tone, “A football is round and a frisbee is a flat disk.””

22. That is stupid.

“We had to wear belts.

Someone snitched that people weren’t wearing belts under their sweaters, and they actually checked and a bunch of people got detentions.

Stupid.”

23. Hypocrisy.

“My high school mascot was Daniel Boone holding a musket.

A kid wore a Guns n Roses shirt to school and was told he had to change shirts because of the pistols on the shirt. He pointed out the hypocrisy of the school mascot and they changed EVERYTHING. The mascot was switched to holding a flag pole instead.

Every instance of the mascot was changed from the multiple signs outside and around the school to the giant picture in the middle of our basketball stadium.

Holden, you’re a f*cking legend for this.”

24. What gang are you in?

“All the kids (6th or 7th grade) started putting pink laces in their shoes (don’t know why) but the school officials banned colored laces saying “pink is a gang color”.”

25. What a bummer.

“They decided everything bad happened in the last 5 minutes of lunch so it got 5 minutes shorter each year.

Any group more than 5 had to be up to no good, so no groups over 5.”

Now we want to hear from you.

Tell us about the dumb rules that your school had.

Please share them in the comments!