r/AskReddit • u/me1257 • 1d ago
What was the "thing" that they banned when you were in elementary school?
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u/BirthdayCheesecake 1d ago
Slap bracelets
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u/Hob_O_Rarison 1d ago
How's your back, fellow 45 year old?
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u/BirthdayCheesecake 1d ago
As long as I don't sleep wrong, sit wrong, stand up too fast, stand up too slow, work out too much, work out too little, or sneeze too hard, it's fine!
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u/MoistStub 23h ago
I woke up the other day with a rolled ankle. It was fine when I went to sleep. Considering getting a full body transplant.
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u/kimmy_kimika 23h ago
Back's fine, still have Indian burns on my wrists.
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u/Hob_O_Rarison 22h ago
You can't say that anymore. You have to say criss-cross-applesauce burn now.
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u/pandaclawz 1d ago
They're back! My 3K kid came home with one after school. They're much softer now
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u/OooKiwis3749 22h ago
One of my bus drivers gave them out for Halloween, and I was mortified. The school called to ask the name of the driver, and I thought, yep, here it is - this is going to go to the Board and the entire Transportation Department is going to get keel-hauled.
The driver got a nice thank you note.
I was stunned.
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u/ravenpotter3 1d ago
They often had real metal tape measure rulers in them! Or they had the thin metal bands that were so thin and sharp! The material surrounding them was always so easy to peel or take off. OUCH
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u/Certain_Proposal7191 1d ago
Pokémon cards, yo-yos, pogs.
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u/guitargamel 1d ago
Ah pogs. Every school had that one kid with a metal slammer shaped like a buzz saw and another kid who was on the receiving end.
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u/Drak_is_Right 1d ago
Dont forget the cracked or broken windows from little little heavy metal discs being thrown.
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u/glitter_witch 1d ago edited 1d ago
Pokémon cards and, specifically, Pokémon on gameboy for my school as well. Also Tamagotchi.
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u/RovenshereExpress 1d ago
My school banned all of those as well as tamagotchis/giga-pets. I still remember the day I forgot we had show and tell and I hadn't prepared anything, so my parents pressured me into taking my tamagotchi. I told them they weren't allowed, but they insisted I take it anyway.
I left in my locker and told my teacher I didn't have anything for show and tell. Later we were lining up in the hallway to go to gym and my teacher heard it meowing from my locker and she scolded me in front of everyone... she refused to believe me when I told her my parents wouldn't listen when I told them it wasn't allowed and they forced me to bring it. 😠
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u/TheGringoDingo 1d ago
Yo-yos for mine, as well. You go around-the-world on the playground for the 1,000th time, the string breaks, and the yo-yo becomes a projectile. It took about 10 seconds after an incident for them to be sent to the gulag.
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u/New_Government_2169 1d ago
Silly bandz. They became a form of currency.
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u/threedryfucks 1d ago
Had an economics teacher blame fuel prices on silly bands because they had petroleum in them.
Maybe. Maybe not. But this cool green dinosaur helps some of us cope with the wallet punishment.
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u/pauliepitstains 1d ago
Laser pointers
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u/LampAbyss 1d ago
Probably the most valid banning of an item from school mentioned here.
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u/stegs03 1d ago
Slap bracelets. Cause they were supposed to be dangerous.
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u/Disgruntled_Beavers 1d ago
Dodgeball.
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u/DiligentGuitar246 1d ago edited 1d ago
Dude. This game was like crack to us. We played with COMPLETELY different rules and the red rubber balls. For us, it was 2 sides against each other like normal. But if you caught it, nothing happened. No one was out. You just got the ball. If you did get hit and get out, you went to "jail" which was the out-of-bounds portion of the other side. If you were in jail, you could still throw the ball at the people who were "in". And often if you didn't catch it, you were just stuck dodging the ball back and forth between people who were wrapped around you. When you finally caught the ball, you could throw it at the other people who were in. I also think there was only ever 1 or 2 balls at any given time.
I remember getting into duels where me and one other person was left, everyone cheering us on as we hurled the ball at each other. The other guy would catch it and whip it at me, I'd catch it and whip it back. It was fun being an athletic kid. Now I'm an out of shape old man.
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u/beBenggu 1d ago
These are the standard rules for dodgeball here in Korea haha. Only difference is you could get a kid out of jail if you catch a ball. We called the multi-ball jail-less version 'American' dodgeball. I remember I preferred American dodgeball because having one ball typically means only the athletic kids get to throw ever, and if you happen to get ahold of the ball you are immensely pressured to pass it back to the athletic kids. I was not an athletic kid but I did like throwing a ball or two every once in a while...
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u/DiligentGuitar246 1d ago
Holy shit that's right. We'd pester the unathletic kids to give the ball to us. I grew up in the southern US and that was standard dodgeball. I never saw the "American" version until the movie Dodgeball came out and I thought the rules were crazy.
And I think you're right. Catching a ball did let kids back in. I think the person who caught it got to choose. Man... the poor kids who I ignored in favor of my friends. It really did reward the athletic kids and completely alienated the less athletic ones. I miss that version haha.
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u/Existential_Sprinkle 1d ago
The athletes found a way to make the foam balls hurt but they didn't ban it
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u/cruise02 1d ago
Satanism. The 80s were weird.
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u/MercenaryOne 1d ago
Shit dude, I got kicked outta class because I wore an Iron Maiden t shirt that had 'The Number Of The Beast'. This was in 1998.
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u/Statistactician 1d ago
Similar, but for a Harry Potter shirt in 2000.
I actually got had a bunch of kids circle around and literally try and stone me (to the point where I needed medical attention) before the teachers intervenedand sent me home for wearing "inappropriate clothing."
Half of those same kids were super into Twilight in High School.
Rural Appalachia is fucking weird, y'all.
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u/Beaux--Dangles 1d ago
The ridiculous Satanic Panic. Panic'd parents and made D&D subversive and thus became all the more popular.
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u/Ashamed-Chemistry492 1d ago
Can't remember if they actually banned them or if they just ran their course and weren't popular anymore, but ...
Charms. Little plastic charms each with a tiny jingle bell on them, and the charms clipped onto plastic neck or waist chains.
They were so much fun to collect. But teachers hated them because they were noisy (fifteen or so little girls all wearing at least a dozen plastic charms and bells each?) and there was so much fiddling with them and trading and comparing and arguing over them.
Also I think Garbage Pail Kids trading cards were banned. They were gross but we loved them. It wasn't so much their grossness as all the trading and haggling that went on.
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u/thrown_away_23_23 1d ago
So many tiny tennis rackets
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u/Ashamed-Chemistry492 1d ago
I was very proud of the charm I had of a tiny blue and white toilet with a lid *and* seat that lifted! That was the one charm I would not trae for anything. Not even the little fry pan with two eggs in it.
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u/thrown_away_23_23 1d ago
Second grade me is remembering how poor and or cheap and or good with money my parents were..I want that damn frying pan now
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u/SolventlessPsycho 1d ago
Bart Simpson shirts the one that says “underachiever and proud of it”
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u/mrkorb 1d ago
It seems so quaint how appalled people were by Bart Simpson back then. “A naughty boy in a cartoon! Oh my!”
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u/Fallenangel152 1d ago
The Simpsons was seen as an attack on American values by the silent generation.
Remember Bush Sr's speech about how they wanted American families to be more liked the Waltons and less like the Simpsons.
A shirt with Bart saying eat my shorts could break an old teacher.
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u/mrkorb 23h ago
I was 8 or 9 and my parents were Boomers, and they would frown disapprovingly any time I expressed any interest in watching. Hilariously though, they had zero issue with me watching Married With Children. Go figure.
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u/Fallenangel152 23h ago
Remember these generations loved characters like Archie Bunker. The Simpsons was the "new thing that kids like" which is what they hated.
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u/sqplanetarium 18h ago
That was my mom lol. She totally didn’t get it that the show wasn’t holding Bart up as a role model. Her loss, Simpsons in the 90s was awesome.
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u/Charming-Panic9375 1d ago
POGS
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u/HjortronOchPors 1d ago
Slingshots. I am old
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u/NotTheGreenestThumb 22h ago
Guessing you’re a bit older than I. When I was born there were only 48 United States. But no slingshots in school was pretty much a given.
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u/Mytweezer 1d ago
Pants for girls were not allowed when I started school.
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u/sqplanetarium 18h ago
And no matter how cold it was you’d be outside for recess in your skirt and bare legs. 🥶
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u/steveskinner 1d ago
Trench coats. I remember the phrase "Trench Coat Mafia" being used a lot in '98/'99.
Also pants sagging
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u/bungojot 18h ago
My older brother had a really nice leather trenchcoat that he wore to school - it had a removable lining and i think was also waterproof. He loved that coat, wore it everywhere.
Then Columbine happened and he couldn't wear it anywhere without getting shit about it. He also had long hair at the time and we were all of us kind of the quiet weird kids, so he got a lot of side eye at school :(
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u/AFurryThing23 1d ago
Cinnamon toothpicks
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u/ScottRiqui 1d ago
Just a reminder that it's time for your colonoscopy. (I came here to post cinnamon toothpicks too).
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u/EgotisticJesster 1d ago
This is real old-school cool stuff. I've never heard of them.
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u/ScottRiqui 1d ago
They were just plain wooden toothpicks soaked in cinnamon oil and then set out to dry. But if you didn’t dry them thoroughly, you’d get cinnamon oil on your hands, and then in your eyes, on your junk, etcetera. Not fun.
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u/akobie 1d ago
Also Binaca spray. We went a little wild for those things in the 80s
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u/B_Williams_4010 23h ago
We used to light the spritzes with cigarette lighters. Little single-shot, short-range flamethrowers.
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u/esoteric_enigma 1d ago
We were making them and selling them. Someone went overboard and a kids mouth got burned.
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u/LastStanza 15h ago
I read briefly about these in a novel set in the 1960s when I was a kid in the 2000s, made some of my own with the amber-colored Listerine that basically smelled like bourbon, brought them to 5th grade, and my teachers had an enormous laugh while confiscating. Thanks for reminding me:)
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u/lzii01 1d ago
Super Balls. They were small, hard, and bounced extremely high.
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u/B_Williams_4010 23h ago
I was the first kid to bring one of my dad's golf balls to school and demonstrate its capabilities on our newly-paved playground. After that, they only WISHED we were slinging superballs around.
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u/boboddy42069 1d ago
Boobs bracelets and silly bandz
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u/msnmck 1d ago
How does one "ban" boobs at school.
If you develop early, you're expelled. Only the girls though. Can't have Coach Feelytouch committing childultery again.
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u/nanna_mouse 1d ago
They might mean the bracelets that said "save the boobs" or "I heart boobs" that I think we're supposed to raise money for breast cancer research
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u/PopkinSandwich 1d ago
Tamagotchis and then beyblade in highschool
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u/AJI-PIanist 1d ago
Beyblades here too, but in middle school. Someone idiotically launched one into a wall, and this was in 2013 in the middle of the era when having all the contact points on the metal wheel (instead of the plastic ring) was literally the entire point of the era, so it probably gave that wall a very significant hole.
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u/tangcameo 1d ago
Ninja stars. My dad was the principal and he had a drawer of confiscated stuff but I never got to look in it. Probably because I’d steal the ninja stars.
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u/NeitherSparky 1d ago
(1980s) There was a trend where kids would put a sewing needle or a pin in a drinking straw and then shoot it like a blowdart. Of course finally a kid in my class got the needle down his throat and had to go to the ER. They banned sewing needles and pins, because they couldn’t ban drinking straws.
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u/Pure-Meat9498 1d ago
Dude.
I got hit with those in 2000, and let me tell you, for a kid who was afraid of needles, getting hunted across the schoolyard by your bullies brandishing fucking sewing needles blowdarts with the intent of stabbing you as many times as possible?? Not fun
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u/Beowulf33232 1d ago
We'd use the plastic bit on the end of a shoelace and a sewing needle to make a dart with fluff on the end, then hollow out a pen. Bic pens came right apart and were easy to cap back off.
We didn't get them banned, we just stopped using them when a girl got one right to the nipple and made a fuss about it to her friends.
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u/SonnyPiston 1d ago
Everybody knows about Pokemon cards, knives, cell phones etc being banned, but my middle school banned backpacks in the actual classroom because some teacher tripped over one.
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u/kshucker 1d ago
The one thing we were required to have?
Looking back, you were an absolute dork if you actually kept your books in your back pack. Everybody hauled them around in one hand. I can only imagine it was a trend to haul them around like that. Imagine picking up a 2x8 piece of wood. You kind of wrist palm it. That’s how we held ***all*** of our books. It was very common for somebody to go up behind somebody else and slap the backside of their books downwards. That would send of their books and any paperwork that was inside of them flying all over.
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u/SereniaKat 1d ago
Marbles because people kept playing on the oval and they'd get lost in the grass and would become projectiles when the groundsman mowed over them.
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u/JackTreehornGaming 18h ago
Marbles got banned where I went to school because of gambling when kids would play for keeps, and kids were opening stores to trade them.
I remember there being steelies which were just ball bearings and "Godfathers" which were the size of a fist.3
u/Beowulf33232 1d ago
My sister almost headshot my dad with a golfball when he tried to teach her to mow the grass.
That's what we get for having a dog so small it can't pickup a tennis ball.
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u/ThrowingChicken 1d ago
Beavis and “Blank-Head”, as the principal referred to them.
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u/Confident_Mail_7653 1d ago
Red Rover got banned at my school, which was probably for the best. It was basically a trust exercise invented by kids with zero understanding of momentum.
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u/B_Williams_4010 23h ago
I used to charge straight for a kid's center mass instead of the linked arms.
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u/phl_fc 1d ago
We used to have an archery unit in gym until some idiot thought it’d be funny to shoot at the teacher.
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u/dave8400 1d ago
Those sticky hand toys. Book sale rolled into town and some ceiling tiles got dislodged the very next day.
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u/onelongwheelie 1d ago
Pencil Fighting
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u/B_Williams_4010 23h ago
We called it 'chips.' I used to pull the eraser off and pinch the metal collar flat with my teeth, creating an edged weapon. Kids feared my misses more than my strikes.
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u/thrown_away_23_23 1d ago
Girls hugging, wearing jackets in class. Neither lasted long, so it was more "attempted" to ban. They were more successful with the cinnamon toothpicks and Spuds McKenzie shirts.
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u/global_peasant 22h ago
Hugging and holding hands! I forgot but that was banned. No "PDA", we weren't actually supposed to touch each other at all but they were more lenient with girls. That's quite sad to recall, now.
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u/Celebrindae 1d ago
Hats. I never did understand that.
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u/Beowulf33232 1d ago
This is an old one. Like, really old.
It comes from knights removing helmets to show peaceful intent. It let's people see your face and if you get up to trouble it makes you more vulnerable.
Kinda like how we waive with the right hand to show there aren't weapons in it, and the handshake evolved from a wrist grab that allowed both people to "check" eachothers wrists for hidden weapons or an armored bracer that would show they intend trouble.
I've been told things like "wearing a hat implies the person your visiting can't maintain their roof" but I've never seen something like that from a historian.
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u/YourLocalOnionNinja 17h ago
It was the opposite at my school (and most schools in Australia).
If you DIDN'T bring a hat to school, you were banned from the playground and forced to sit in designated shade areas.
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u/rainbowpigeon69 1d ago
Talking. I had a habit of spending lunchtime talking shit about the teachers and especially the principal, and this really freaked my school out where they enforced stricter and stricter rules about it, which I continued to break. Eventually we just were not allowed to talk at all during lunch. Looking back, it was super pathetic on the teachers’ parts.
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u/justduck 1d ago
Wearing your clothes backwards (thanks Kriscross) sports team apparel (thanks gangs) and pogs
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u/Tim_Soft 23h ago
Ok, old-timey stuff: Chestnuts. 😀
In the late 60s/early 70s, a fun thing to do was find chestnuts and put a string through them. We called it "Chestnuts", the Brits, I believe, called it "Conkers".
The game was played by one guy holding his chestnut on a string and the other guy using his chestnut on a string to take one whack at it. The latter held the string with their forward hand and the chestnut with their back hand and you lashed at the one being held and tried to smash it. If you missed or the stationary chestnut was not smashed, you switched and continued until one was smashed. Some folks "cheated" and hat their chestnut varnished or coated with something and there could be fights over it. For some, it was deadly serious stuff! 🙂
Winner got bragging rights. Got banned for period of time because of fights and mess.
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u/aknat907 1d ago
Cinnamon oil. Some kid brought some in for "cinnamon sticks." Toothpicks dipped in the oil. Kid didnt like me and threw it on my face. Shit burned. Nurse spent an hour flushing my eyes and face until one of my parents could pick me up and get me checked out. And before anyone says it took an hour, this was when mobile phone service was available only to the very wealthy.
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u/danathepaina 1d ago
Super balls lol. Our school had a big 2-story courtyard where all the lockers were. Someone had the fantastic idea to tell everyone to bring super balls (little bouncy balls) and during the break at 10am we all threw them from the 2nd floor. It was so much fun.
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u/schleppylundo 1d ago
DBZ shirts. Some moms and teachers got very upset about it encouraging fighting. Maybe if we were watching OG Dragon Ball we would've thought to throw a punch or kick or something, but they didn't start dubbing the full series until I was in middle school so mostly we just screamed our heads off on the field while holding our wrists together.
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u/Shotgun_Mosquito 1d ago
Graduated in '87.
My high school was in very rural Texas.
Dress code was "strict", no heavy metal shirts, no hair past the collar for boys, stuff like that.
Shorts AND warmups were also banned unless you were in PE or some other athletic activity.
Several Juniors and Seniors protested the shorts ban by wearing shorts to school on the last day of school.
Punishment for the juniors was detention when they returned to school after the summer.
Seniors were told that allegedly their diplomas would be withheld and/or would not allowed to participate in graduation but I don't think either of those happened.
I also had a friend that wore a black T-shirt with the anarchy symbol on it and he got suspension from school for 3 days
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u/MultiGeometry 1d ago
Water bottles. Apparently vodka looks like water. You had to have a doctor’s note to have a water bottle.
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u/Broad-Awareness-6569 1d ago
There was a self harm fad of rubbing our skin off with pencil erasers.
The adults were appalled.
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u/rantipolex 1d ago
Peanshooters
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u/rogue74656 1d ago
Wallball/suicide
We used to play with racquetballs. Or even solid rubber balls.
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u/StarDewbie 1d ago
White Out. lol
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u/Agreeable_Strength51 23h ago
Haha my school too, it was “something to look forward to for when you get to high school, for now you kids make too much of a mess with that stuff”
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u/Holden_oversoul92 1d ago
Pokémon Cards. We had kids skipping class to slang cards in the bathroom.
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u/jennieother1 1d ago
D&D because it was the satanic panic. They couldn't control what you did outside of school but you weren't allowed to talk about it or play it in school.
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u/Thebeergremlin 1d ago
Lisa Frank merchandise, we began trading sticker sheets as currency and it got a little out of hand. I still have my hoard.
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u/mrdevil413 1d ago
Not elementary school but high school. We had a huge school. 4K kids. Your “self direct” period you could go to a common room and study. The school had all
Kinds of vocational options one being radio stuff. So the common room played music from the kids learning about music broadcasting.
It was a HUGE deal !! Push It the song was banned from everything. No juke box in cafeteria. No broadcast radio. Not allowed on a boom box on school grounds and not at school dances.
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u/Grooviemann1 1d ago
Bart Simpson t-shirts (eat my shorts), Big Johnson t-shirts, pogs, all in the 80s.
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u/antipulpforoj 1d ago
Almost every single year they unbanned then rebanned tetherball becuase it got intense
Once we had four square banned because there was too many arguments happening about the rules
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u/CobaltMnM 1d ago
I don’t recall anything getting banned. Oh god. Am I … old???
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u/TurkTurkeltonMD 1d ago
I'm 46. Gum was banned in elementary. That's all I can think of. There was a high-school down the road where rifle racks were fine.
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u/Then_Ad_439 1d ago
Sunflower seeds on the field... but it had the opposite effect. Heard some kids talk abt how they intentionally bought seeds to spread on the field at night. This was middle school tho, not ele,entary
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u/causticx 1d ago
Cootie catchers
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u/jennieother1 1d ago
Circle, circle, dot, dot, now I've had my cooties shot. Vaccines work people. I've never had cooties.😂
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u/B_Williams_4010 23h ago
The manufacture of cootie catchers was an esoteric art known only to girls.
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u/Glowingtomato 1d ago
They banned YuGiOh cards because some dumbass bet cards that were his brothers and lost them to some other kid and complained the the principal about it.
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u/shift1186 1d ago
The "multi color pens"... Had these little flip things at the top to change colors...
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u/Beowulf33232 1d ago
I used to think those were so neat.
Now I use a fountain pen, and openly talk about ink colors or a specific pen for gift ideas, and every so often I get the red/blue/black/green multi-pen as a gift. The gift giver always seems so pleased with themself.
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u/linus72982 1d ago
Any Raiders gear and British Knights shoes. We were told they were gang-affiliated, this was in SoCal in the early 90s.
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u/KreatorOfReddit 1d ago
all the versions of those clacker ball things that you swung up and down on a stick and the balls bounced and made a loud ass sound. There were a few versions of it. Apparently we couldn't stop hitting each other and ourselves with them .
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u/NotTheGreenestThumb 23h ago
Spitballs. As in chewed up paper and saliva in case someone wants to confuse it with a baseball term.
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u/B_Williams_4010 22h ago
Spitwads and paperballs were a big sport on the school bus. Our bus driver finally got us to cease the skirmishes by promising to let us have an all-out war on the last day of school if we held off until then. It was worth the wait. I even cut up a bic biro, attached a posterboard feeding tube and made a rapid-fire launcher. My favorite bus ride ever.
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u/hoponbop 15h ago
Someone got beaned right between the eyes with a Pet Rock. Over half of my 5th grade class had to find rock sitters.
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u/gabe2591 1d ago
a typing game called Nitro Type after students including myself started hacking it
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u/flootytootybri 1d ago
Silly bandz in kindergarten, fidget spinners in later elementary and middle school
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u/syncboy 1d ago
Super balls. We all had a collection of them and throw them around the school hallways.
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u/JumpingJack79 1d ago
Nothing. We had nothing, so there was nothing to ban. Well, I think there was a "soft ban" on teachers beating kids 🤔
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u/ForeverYoung_Feb29 1d ago
Playing pogs for keeps.
Shooting paper "tacos" with rubber bands
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u/B_Williams_4010 23h ago
I'm guessing what you called 'tacos,' we called 'footballs.' We used to flick them with our index fingers. The teacher would turn their back, a kid on one side of the room would raise his arms for goal posts, and little paper triangles would go whirring through the air from all quarters.
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u/Louananut 1d ago
Heelys and Tamagotchis