I have seen the future.

I'm just going to destroy the universe now. Nothing personal, mind.

From:

theweaselking.livejournal.com

No, no, go right ahead. I quite understand.

From:

Already at 7 billion, 594 thousand, 220 names of God. Just over four and a half years to g- aw ... the Taiwanese intern just gave me 300 little stickers with cute puppies ... *is distracted*

From:

So I was at an estate auction recently (guy named Clarke; I guess he was a writer?) and I got this computer program that'll read off the nine billion names automatically. Problem is, it's all on cards.

From:

80, 51, or 96 column?

From:

80. Looks like early 1950s?

From:

The question above is an unfair trick question. Clarke wouldn't have kept the punch cards; He'd have written the program out in ink on a mnemonics tablature.
I had a mentor whose programs only ever got bugs when the cardpunch operator made a typo. That was hardcore.

From:

What if he had it punched, but chickened on running it?

From:

Possible. Possible.

From:

Any way I can help?

From:

torrain.livejournal.com

Oh yes, the pill brought in to the school by the unnamed student who *said* Redding gave it to her was prescription-strength Ibuprofen. And on the say-so of a student violating their precious policy, they strip-search a thirteen-year-old?

The bit about

A recently adopted school policy prohibited all drugs on school grounds, including any "prescription or over-the-counter drug" like Ibuprofen, except when specifically permitted by the school.

also leaves me vaguely wondering how, in the case of allowing painkillers for particularly bad cramps[1], they actually check to see that the drug-carrier in question is in a position to be suffering said cramps.

Best not dwelt on.
---
[1] If they don't allow these, then fuck them sideways with a chainsaw. Seriously. Ah, fond memories of limping down a school hallway bent in half...

From:

jsbowden.livejournal.com

You'll behave like the good little prole you are or you'll regret it, missy.

From:

torrain.livejournal.com

A life without regrets was probably really really boring.

From:

I had a doctor's note that said I could guzzle ibuprofen until my liver exploded if I wanted, but that didn't stop the occasional teacher on a power trip from hassling me about it. Until, one day it happened in the hallway between periods, and I said loudly "THESE ARE FOR MY MENSTRUAL CRAMPS. YOU KNOW, THOSE THINGS WOMEN SOMETIMES GET WHEN THEY'RE BLEEDING OUT THEIR VAGINAS.*" Jerkface teacher (male, of course) slunk off, and I never heard another peep from anyone about my Advil habit.

Of course, I was a senior at that point and would have happily waltzed into the principal's office and explained at length to anyone who wanted to listen, complete with visual aids. I wish I'd been self-assured enough to do something like that years sooner.

*Or similar. Probably more badly-phrased, but I distinctly remember the "bleeding out the vagina" bit.

From:

torrain.livejournal.com

> Jerkface teacher (male, of course) slunk off, and I never heard
> another peep from anyone about my Advil habit.

*glee!*

Kudos.

From:

I suspect that semester of blissful OTC pill-popping was less about me standing up for myself than about my mother having a reputation in two school districts for being a tireless advocate for her children.

"Was it the

kadath kid? Christ, Bob, just drop it. Her mother is insane."

♥ Mom. ^_^

From:

jerril

Teenaged-you wins teh internets.

BTW: My mind is boggled. It's ADVIL. Not a mind altering substance. Not addictive. Unless you've got a masochistic kid with a sensitive tummy who gets off on mild nausea, there's ZERO recreational value in the stuff.

From:

thette.livejournal.com

Your liver won't explode from ibuprofen, though your stomach might. It's acetaminophen/paracetamol that causes liver damage.

From:

unknownpoltroon.livejournal.com

whht if you blend with alcohol? I hear thats crispy fried liver.

From:

thette.livejournal.com

Paracetamol is bad for your liver. Paracetamol plus alcohol is really bad for your liver.

Ibuprofen is bad for your stomach. Ibuprofen plus alcohol is really bad for your stomach. No liver damage, unless it's a rare and idiosyncratic reaction.

From:

leighdb.livejournal.com

And on the say-so of a student violating their precious policy, they strip-search a thirteen-year-old?

Story time: When I was in first grade, my family moved across town, and so I had to switch schools halfway through the school year, from public to Catholic school. Adjustment difficulties, ho!

I had been at my new school for about a month, and still hadn't made any friends there, really, when this girl Joanna, who to my knowledge I had never said a word to in my life up to this point, went up to the teacher and told her that I had called Joanna on the phone last night and said all kinds of bad words.

!!!
Needless to say, this was so the opposite of the truth that to this day it blows my freakin' mind. I mean, seriously, WTF, over? I barely knew this girl's name, much less her phone number to be calling her up and chummily cussin'. I still have no idea what on earth motivated this Joanna chick to do this, unless it was some kind of proto-"hazing of the new girl" thing.

But that's not the best part! The best part is, the teacher then called me up to the desk and asked me if it were true, and when I said no, she refused to believe me, and started yelling and threatening me until I cried. Then she still wouldn't let up, until finally I admitted something I TOTALLY HADN'T DONE just to get her to leave me alone. I was seven years old, for God's sake!

And then I got punished for it. At the time, they were still allowing corporal punishment in the Archdiocese, and I got my mouth washed out with soap, and was made to "stand on the pole" for a week during recess (which was basically a time out where you weren't allowed to sit down for the entire recess hour). Lesson learned: teachers are assholes who cannot be trusted. Got it, thanks!

The moral of the story, teachers, is that even if you're not an evil sadistic bitch, SOMETIMES KIDS LIE. Sometimes they get other kids in trouble, just because they can, because kids are cruel.

So maybe you shouldn't berate and humiliate and punish one student simply on the say-so of another, hmm?

From:

A teacher once allowed me to lose consciousness in her classroom in the second grade because she didn't like me. I had complained of vicious headache, dizzyness, blurry vision in one eye, and was told to sit at my desk. I cried and cried and suddenly stopped crying.

My mother worked on school grounds, and had to come inside the school and walked past the classroom - this was after school hours. I was supposed to be on a bus back home. She discovered me while the teacher was grading papers.

The teacher had left me in the desk, unconscious, for two hours.

The teacher was an employee of the United States State Department; I was the dependent of a stationed US Army soldier.

She got jailtime.

From:

leighdb.livejournal.com

She got jailtime.

I should fucking well hope so!

Shit.

From:

peristaltor.livejournal.com

Wow.

From:

What exactly happened? I assume they got you to the post hospital/TMC, right?

From:

It was a fever and sinus pressure caused by some sort of infection. It cleared up. I was taken to medical care on base about twenty miles away.
I only remember being told that I could not go see the nurse, and that I was in a lot of pain. I don't remember waking up, nor the hospital. A lot of the details I related above were later provided to me by my parents.

From:

Fevers like that can get crazy-serious very fast. Jail was too good for them.

From:

hollowpoint.livejournal.com

Am I naive for hoping for an epilogue in which someone checks the itemised phone bill?

From:

leighdb.livejournal.com

A little, maybe. That would have been the right thing to do, but now that I think about it, I don't know that I even told my parents what had happened or why.

That's the thing that steams me so much about adults being cruel to kids in this manner; kids don't have the wherewithal to realize their rights to, well, due process are being violated. In my brain somewhere I was probably convinced that somehow the whole thing really was my fault, because why would a teacher say so if it wasn't true?

Grr.

From:

hollowpoint.livejournal.com

Yeah, I grok that. I imagine I'd have felt/done similar in that situation. I guess guilt can come pretty naturally when you don't entirely understand how things work.

From:

missysedai.livejournal.com

Oh, nuh uh. There would be individual suits filed against every single person who laid hands on my kid.

AFTER I laid a righteous beat-down on them.

(deleted comment)

From: