In 5th grade my teacher showed the class some antiques and one of them was a poison ring. We had to choose an antique to write a story about from the perspective of the item. I was fascinated by the poison ring and wrote a story about how the poison ring convinced multiple women to poison their husband with arsenic (I think I had just watched Arsenic in Old Lace) and the story ended with the ring trying to convince the wearer to kill their husband.
I thought it was a very good spooky story. My teacher thought it was concerning and referred me to the school counselor. I wish I still had a copy.
Your teacher is lame. I wrote an internal monologue of a psychotic person who ended up jumping off a bridge to prove he could fly and for the rest of her career, my teacher used it as an example of the genre every year.
I wrote a story in 6th or 7th grade about a kid who was granted a wish from a well where he would have what ever he wanted, but he couldn’t get rid of it. I don’t remember much else from it, but the teacher picked it to read to the class.
Obviously contrived, and I had just read thinner. I don’t remember how it ended, but I know I called it in. It was the first time I passed in an unfinished paper, stapled a blank page to the back of it & ripped it off to get an extra day.
Both my parents were teachers; retired now. They saw a huge change in kids through the 2010s. My dad's last year was 2020, which was a huge body blow. They weren't going to hold an in-person graduation, but he was the commencement speaker, and the kids rallied to have it held in a ski resort parking lot so they could send him off.
The people he keeps in contact with say it's gotten much worse. So much AI, so little interaction; no joy in the little things that used to get engagement; lack of empathy or ability to connect w/ or even believe in history, etc. IDK, I think we are heading into a really rough decade, come 2030
In 3rd grade we had to write a St Patrick's Day story. I forgot about it and in the last minute took a King Midas story we had read and made him king of the leprechauns and everything he touched turned green, and added some lines making fun of how dumb I thought the story was.
I thought for sure I was going to get in trouble for plagiarism then the teacher proudly used it as an example of parody and I was like "y...yeah that's it 👀"
Oh you reminded me of my teacher keeping my poster board as an excellent example for when we did that report about a U.S state. I was so proud, my poster looked so good :)
I want to say they were randomly selected? Because I got South Carolina lol, I lived in California. I have always been a curious kid and maybe picked a state I knew very little of.
Yeah she's lame as hell. In 9th grade I wrote essentially fanfic of a smut fanfic I was obsessed with at the time for my health class (probably only vaguely related to the topic we were supposed to write about) and I at least got a B-. 😭
In 7th grade I wrote a story which involved a guy buying marijuanna and/or pills from a sandwich cart. I say ‘pills’ because I remember my joke in the story about 288 being “too gross”. The teacher critiqued the story and commented that there were other things to write about, and why did I pick drugs? But that was all. It was inspired by a movie I had seen during the summer, where Cheech and Chong were selling their goods via an ice cream truck.
They then moved on to their next venture, selling authentic Cherokee hair tampons. By the way, Cheech and Chong was their stage names, their real names are Chief Running Pinto and Carlos Ramirez.
In a similar vein, I once got a 5 day suspension for writing an essay about how I didnt have any heros because everyone was a piece of shit. Specifically for saying that anyone you look up to would let you down, such as Bill Clinton and Michael Jackson (allegedly). The guidance counselor told me he liked it. ¯\(ツ)/¯
I can’t imagine reading that and wanting to suspend the kid. Honestly it shows much greater depth of thought to have challenged the subject matter rather than just listing off a bunch of good qualities of some chosen person. Also it sounds a bit like a cry for help which should obviously be handled with care.
I love it, it sounds like a paranormal entity is within the ring. It's super cool! I was sent to counselors my own fair share for things I had written as a kid. It's a shame you don't have it anymore.
I once had to write a story about a holiday. I picked hannukah and wrote how it brought families together to play with fire. My teacher said she was supposed to report me for my story hut wouldn't because she was worried I'd get expelled.
Where do they think the light comes during those 8 days of light? And fat chance some kid isn’t going to play around with the flame of at least 7 of those lights.
We all have a little bit of pyro in our souls as kids. Some of us carry the love of pyro into adulthood. I live in Florida, and if the temp gets below 70 degrees (yes… 7-0) you bet your ass that there will be a fire burning in the fireplace when I come home from work. Nothing sooths me more than staring at burning logs.
It wasn't like I said it brings families together to burn down the neighborhood or something violent. I simply said it's and important holiday in the winter that brings families together to play with fire.
Man, I'm watching supernatural right now and that's a potential plot line. Your teacher's lack of understanding creative works is concerning for someone running a creative writing exercise
We had to write a story about time travel. I wrote a story about big game hunters being eaten by dinosaurs. Same deal, parent teacher conference. Parents were utterly bewildered and thought the story was good.
Finally someone who can relate with my 5th grade injustice!
We had an assignment to write a scary short story. Apparently they were expecting something like "I went to get a cookie from the jar, but they were all gone! Oh, the horror!" But I heard horror, so I wrote horror. I wrote a story about a couple in bed hearing a noise downstairs. The husband goes down to investigate and doesn't come back. The wife goes to investigate, finds the front door open and peeks outside. We jump to the perspective of the police investigating. They find the bodies of the couple and no sign of anyone else having been there.
I was referred to the school counselor. My mother was called in for a meeting and she was not pleased with the school admin. Lucky for me she's a reasonable woman with no patience for bullshit and her response was essentially, "You asked for horror. He wrote horror. What the fuck are we doing here?"
What the fuck kind of story did she expect you to write about a poison ring exactly? She provided the items! There's no happy nice story about a poison ring 🤣🤣🤣
Maybe she wanted more backstory about how the husbands were definitely evil and deserved it and the wives lived happily ever after with their cats. Or something.
In 6th grade we had to write a ten page story about anything. I had recently gotten into the Mage Knight tabletop game and my favourite armies were the Black Powder Rebels and Atlanteans because they both had mechanical robot golem. One side had steam spraying cannons and the other had flamethrower. Apparently when you're 12 and start describing what happens to a man's flesh when hit with steam vs fire, it's not "creative" and "well researched" it just means you don't get to read your story to the class and have to see the guidance counselor.
Not trying to one up but I wrote a story based on the instructions of, "Write anything that is interesting."
So back then I was into anime and mythical monsters as all chunni teens were and wrote about a guy with saiyan powers fighting monsters like Hanivers (https://monsterinmypocket.fandom.com/wiki/Haniver) and a bunch of other monsters with kung fu and energy blast.
The teacher thought I plagerized the whole thing and gave me a 0. He did apologise later of course but it was still funny. I really shoukd have went into writing as a profession.
I think back and am glad my teacher “got” me. In hs, I loved writing and music. (specifically Stephen King & Pink Floyd) For our fiction writing class final, I worked non stop and wrote a 20 page story about murdering my stepfather and ending up in a mental institution heavily medicated. Rather than turn me in, my teacher read it to the class. 🤣
Check out Evil in Me by Brom! There’s a similar artifact in it that causes lots of creepy/malevolent occurrences. Incredibly captivating book, I also love Slewfoot by the same author
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u/radial-glia 7h ago
In 5th grade my teacher showed the class some antiques and one of them was a poison ring. We had to choose an antique to write a story about from the perspective of the item. I was fascinated by the poison ring and wrote a story about how the poison ring convinced multiple women to poison their husband with arsenic (I think I had just watched Arsenic in Old Lace) and the story ended with the ring trying to convince the wearer to kill their husband.
I thought it was a very good spooky story. My teacher thought it was concerning and referred me to the school counselor. I wish I still had a copy.