What I Really Learned in School

What learning and knowledge do we bring home from school after we graduate? Do we really learn anything useful during the time we are wards of the educational system for the day? Why does glue taste like rice? How come compasses are dangerously sharp when the safety scissors can't negotiate construction paper?

I took a long personal inventory, and discovered that, why yes, I learned quite a lot. Mostly from what my classmates heard from their siblings, and things we found out on our own. Because I am condensing over a dozen years of experience and history, it was not an easy task to compile these nuggets of wisdom. Putting this list together took almost all four quarters of a professional basketball game, and stopping to pay the pizza delivery person at halftime.
Some you may recognize from your own years at elementary, some from high school. Here is what twelve years of school will teach you. And yes, there will be a test at the end of the chapter.

-Never put your mouth directly on the water fountain.
-Teens are the oldest, tallest people on the planet, and therefore the coolest. Grownups and teachers simply don't count.
-You can't get through an entire school year without someone vomiting in the classroom.
-Gettting stabbed in the hand with a sharp pencil will leave a green dot there forever.
-School nurses are expected to fix everything with a cup of ice.

-Anyone who sits in the center seat in front is automatically the Teacher's Pet.
-Unless you agree to distract the teacher while your friends goofed off in the back row.
-If you touch the kid with cooties, you are going to have to marry him or her.
-At least one kid is going to be designated "Gross Girl" or "Booger Boy". They will one day marry each other.
-Pop Rocks and soda consumed together will make your stomach explode.

-Tetherball should be considered an Olympic sport.
-So should "Steal The Bacon".
-If you drink lemonade and swallow the seeds, they will sprout in your stomach and grow branches out of your nostrils.
-No one remembers the first ten constitutional amendments, but everyone will help you remember when you peed in your pants during class.
-No one remembers the last ten presidents, but you still tell everyone about meeting the kid with the hilariously obscene last name.

-Slim Jims and Snickers can be used as currency.
-Homework copied in different handwriting can be exchanged for extra cash.
-People with glasses are smart. Not just cross-eyed.
-To become the valedictorian, your name has to be unpronounceable.
-To become merely an honor student, your parents have to be doctors or something.

-Every school has a mysterious, empty room where some teacher or janitor died, but nobody could go in there to confirm it.
-Chocolate was considered more valuable than semiprecious stones, or stock in IBM. This myth turns out to be true.
-Girls will always mysteriously fall for the loudmouthed, disgusting jerk. Unfortunately, this myth also remains true.
-Staring at a pretty girl from afar will somehow telepathically give her romantic feelings for you as well.
-Your lab partner either never wants to do anything, or is that foreign genius kid that did all the work for both of you.

-Playing a musical instrument is cool, as long as it's something electric. Anything else is considered detention.
-Coffee tastes disgusting in elementary school, but suddenly becomes wonderful in high school.
-Field trips bring out the inner crazy person in each of us. Even the students.
-Dodgeball was a legal, school-approved environment to inflict serious, deliberate harm on your friends.
-So was basketball, but it has to be during gym class, because wearing shorts and tee-shirts ensured that your arms and legs were completely unprotected.

-Rope climbing supposedly separated the men from the boys. Instead, it unexpectedly separated your best friend from his shorts.
-Football gave the bigger, more violent kids self-esteem and higher self-realization as they stuffed Math Club members into the trash cans.
-Drama club was for really weird, spaced-out kids, or really hot chicks. Sometimes they couldn't decide for themselves which one they were.
-Lip Balm on the edge of a ScanTron test form will confuse the scanning machine into giving you an "A". I never dared test this one.
-There really is a ghost of a dead janitor/nun/teacher in the abandoned office, but you can't see him because you and your friends are too busy freaking each other out.

So stay in school, this wisdom may be of value to you. It took us years to find and learn. To this very day, students are still learning them, challenging and testing the theories, without asking any pesky teachers. They will try and educate you about science and grammar, but don't let that get in the way of your disovering the truths that are out there, like the ones listed here. There's nothing like finding out answers for yourselves. Except for the glue tasting like rice. Don't try it. Just take my word for it.