I went to Catholic school growing up and my school had a couple of odd ball rules that I still shake my head at all these years later.

I hadn't really thought about them in years. Until I saw this article on Buzzfeed entitled, "People Are Sharing The Strangest Rule That Their School Had, And I Want to Know What Those Principals Were Thinking."

The two dumbest rules I remember from Catholic school are, and this is grade school, is that the school had a no lunchbox rule. And that we all had to carry a specific type of bag during departmentalization when we got into the upper grades.

I got caught with the lunch box on the first day of school of second grade. I was just matriculating into the school. A hot September morning in 1979. Nancy, an eighth grader my parents had hired to babysit me, dropped me off at the doors where the second graders lined up. I knew no-one.

This short old biddy of a nun showed up. Led us to this old classroom where we put our stuff away. And that's where I get caught and told no lunchboxes were allowed. She was just like, how could I not know this? I don't know, I was 7. Did she think I was reading whatever the school's policies were as a second grader? It was just what I didn't need. I've always had some anxiety about new situations, that made it worse. I cried. She didn't like that I cried. My classmates made fun of me. And it was something that pretty much made me hate that school for years.

And even after attending school there for seven years, I never could figure out the no lunchbox rule. It never made sense to me.

We departmentalized in the junior high years. While public school kids attended a junior high school where they had classes in different classrooms all day long. We didn't do that. There were only about 70 us in each grade level. So when we got to the junior high years they split us up into some different classes for Science, Math and English.

Anyway, some kids would just try and carry their books and shove them under whatever chairs or desks we were using. Others would use backpacks, bookbags, whatever. And sometimes the books, binders, or bookbags would spill out onto the floor and annoy the teacher walking around while she lectured or while checking to see if your homework was done.

Asking kids to carry their books in a bookbag or back-pack doesn't seem that outrageous. What was outrageous was telling us what type of bag to use. And the bag the school chose was the dumbest ever. It was a blue rubber bag, open at the top, with a cloth handle. One that maybe a kindergartner or a primary school kid would use to take their work home. They didn't really work all that well for our books. The handle frayed. And frankly, we looked stupid carrying them from class to class.

My Mother thought they were the dumbest type of bag too. All of us kids came up with a politically incorrect name for the bags by today's standards. My Mother, who usually would shoot me the side eye or correct me for using such a name, just burst out laughing when she heard what we called them. They were that bad.

I guess compared to some of the rules shared in the Buzzfeed article, the dumbest rules I had to deal with could have been much worse. I'd like to know, did your school have any stupid rules you had to follow? Let me know by commenting here, or on our Facebook page. As that's today's question.

 

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