People Are Remembering the Wild Black Market Their Friends Ran at School

I went to a correctional boarding school called the Advent home for about 6 months, and there was a huge market for food. The place enforced a completely vegan, low to no sugar diet on us. It was bad. Kids made candy by cutting open tubes of tooth paste and letting it dry.

There were two spots where we could get good food on campus. A closet where they kept snack foods like chips and granola bars and fruit snacks that they served (to the parents) when parents came over (once every 3 months).

This closet was largely inaccessible and so someone only ever got food out of it twice, once when a staff member accidentally left it open, and another time when 4 kids stole a car to run away; they broke into the closet and stuffed a duffel with food before leaving.

The other spot was inside the staff section of the actual school building. The staff got free sweetstuffs from a local Panera bread. They kept it in that building under lock and key. However, I was a pretty well behaved kid there, and managed to land a cleaning job in the school.

While cleaning the staff building, I'd get a fresh trashbag and stuff a few sweetatuffs in it (cookies, cinnamon rolls, that sort of thing), making sure to not take so much that it would be conspicuous, then tie it off and toss that bag into the larger one where I collected the all the schools trash.

Afterwords I'd finish my rounds in the school and throw the trash in the dumpster and go to req. Finally, I'd notify one of my dorm mates of the cache in the dumpster and have them act as a gopher for me to get it out of the dumpster and into the dorm (so as not to risk getting caught myself), and as recompense I'd give them a piece of the haul.

Most of the time I'd just keep whatever I got, but sometimes I'd trade it for regular foodstuffs that I liked, such as tortillas, or the chocolates out of the special k that was sometimes served (usually just 3 bowls of the stuff at breakfast, first come first serve.

Everyone else got to eat plain Cheerios or whatever garbage they had). I also gave it to one of the student dorm leaders as a birthday gift once, because he'd had my back on multiple occasions before when other kids were bothering me. There were a few other items that people tried getting their hands on (like weed), but food was always the biggest item for everyone.

Username: GuessImScrewed

We werent allowed to make lunch trades in elementary school. We did it anyway but made sure the teachers werent watching or that hey were busy, sometimes sending a student to go distract them while we made the trade.

What ended up happenning, however, was the eruption of a lucrative trade market for what seemed like our school kid version of gold. My mother was a very unhealthy im her dining habits. She still has a tendency to over eat and eat fast food way too often. But she also has a tendency to go on this unpredictable health kicks. And it was on one of these kicks that she bought me what would turn into my lunch room gold -- Baked Cheetos.

Yes my dear redditors, baked cheetos were first seen as an oddity. But after sharing one or two it soon became a hot commodity. I could buy anything with a bag of baked cheetos. Gummies, candy, jello, pudding, other chips. Hell i bought a whole sandwich on a good day.

Unfortunately, my lucrative trade empire was defeated by a single boy by the cursed name of Andrew (thats right, i remember). You see, Andrew had caught onto my game and soon started to bring his own variety of baked chips to the lunch trade market. He also had a tendency to always get a 2nd pack of gummies by lunch time and would use them to help sweeten the deal with his baked chips. This started a heated trade war as more members were involved, trying to compete in this new market.

Luckily, the teachers caught onto our black market before the war got too hot (by the end i had been one of at least 5 baked chip traders). As punishment, we were now personally monitored by the principal herself and anyone who was caught trading would be punished by no recess and having to eat lunch the next day in the principals office -- a grim fate myself a few other traders would experience soon after.

Username: DJ-Gonk

Back in elementary in the early 2000s Pokémon was at its global heights. The movies, the games, the merch and of course, the cards. At school everyone from first graders to eighth graders, and even the high schoolers next door, were crazy about the trading. And not even playing the card game, just the trading.

Cue my intro, a fairly inconspicuous middle schooler who didn’t have access to all the packs and booster sets that all the other kids had, because I was one of the poorer kids. Even though I was able to go to a fairly prissy private school, my parents sacrificed a LOT for our education.

And that meant there wasn’t much money to go around for any extra luxuries, such as Pokémon cards (we live in an island nation where everything is imported, so anything apart from certain food items come at a premium).

I managed to collect a few basic cards, cards that kids didn’t want, like energy cards, trainers, and some basic Pokémon, circles and diamonds. I would take my slowly growing collection to the little kids, grades 1 and 2, and trade with them by selling the idea of my quantity for your one card that I really like. And so from a quantity of fairly worthless cards i was able to trade up for a few star cards, and even some holographics.

I slowly built up a collection that was half decent, I had maybe one or two prized cards. One of them being a Hitmonlee. Not ultra rare, but a respectable card. An older kid saw me with the card one day and he asked me where I got it from, I told him I had traded for it, and that I was building a rock/fighting collection.

I wanted to get a Machamp and Hitmonchan among others to complete my collection. Dude was like “hey I’m trying to do that too”, but probably only because I had just said that and it sounded like a cool idea. And then he’s like “what if I bought your Hitmonlee off you? I can give you $15.”

I had to rub my ears to see if I heard him correctly. (Just jokes I didn’t do that, I agreed right away). The kid was from a rich old money family here, and the money was nothing to him. For me on the other hand, I was lucky if I got any pocket money at all! So on that day, my career in hustling Pokémon cards was born.

This practice of going to kids with certain strategies, like my quantity for your one card, worked and worked and worked. I was making coin. I had many customers, some of which would go so far as to actually commission me to go find certain cards. This happened at a premium, but my private school clientele were more than happy to accommodate my charges, and I always delivered. Always.

I was raking in the cash. 12 year old me was buying toys for myself that I could never afford. My parents were asking me where I was getting the money, I was just telling them I’m doing some chores and stuff for kids at school... and they were cool with that! They didn’t think to even question my innocence one bit!

Then one day we started seeing these “Dark” cards come through, the Team Rocket Pokémon. I landed a relatively rare card, a holographic Dark Dugtrio, and sold it for $40 to that original customer, my first ever buyer. By now the dude had maybe thrown like $200-300 at me just for the cards and, unknown to me, his parents were starting to wonder where all this money he was taking to school was going.

So we made the trade on a Friday, the dude picked up the dark dugtrio and I took my money. I had a great weekend, spending said money on a Saturday afternoon movie or something, I can’t remember. Monday comes around and we’re back at school again, it’s recess. The dude comes up to me with a really sheepish look on his face, and he presents the Dark Dugtrio to me.

I was like “what’s this for bro?” And he said to me that I had to give the money back, and to take the card back. That his parents had told him to do this. They were also telling him that this had to happen for EACH AND EVERY TRANSACTION we had made.

He didn’t want to do this, and I could see he was pained by it, but his parents were not budging with it. It was so hard telling the guy “duuuude, i spent all the money. It’s all gone!” I told him there was nothing left. It was all gone. Needless to say, he was very upset and distraught.

The next day our parents are called into the school, and my parents are given this very unexpected news of my behavior. I am made to apologize to the kids I “ripped off”, I get suspended from school, and Pokémon cards are then banned from that point onwards at the school.

My mom was really disappointed in me, but she knew how hard it was with our finances so she wasn’t actually too hard on me. My working-class dad laughed it off and told me don’t worry about it, you and those kids will be fine. Just be careful about what you do next time! I thought they were pretty chill about it, but in hind sight I see that’s because money was actually really tight and they saw me being out there for myself generating income rather than just asking for handouts.

Lots of life lessons learnt through that experience, it’s something that is never going to leave me...And that was that, the rise and fall of the Pokémon card hustle.

Username: oceanbuoy90

Porn. I found BOXES full of porn mags up in the attic (this was maybe 1979?) and I would sell pages for $0.50 - to$1 (double sided!), centerfold for $3. Not only that I had "the goods" on everyone, including the school bully, for a while*. I once was a rich man...

So Bimmer was the school bully. He was an adult sized 6th grader, 3 years running. He would chase kids and knock them down flat, a game he called "smear the queer". The duty teachers were usually avoided, but sometimes he got in trouble...but if you were the kid who ratted him out (or were the one being chased when he was apprehended) he would save up special vengeance for you.

S0, I was frikken terrified of this brute, being a fairly small 5th grader. He loved to chase me, and would make fun of me for always talking with Selena and Sarana. (ah, Sarana. what fond memories... sorry that you turned out to be not so clever... She once told me "You now, Im just not a thinker of things!!" and skipped away..)

But I digress... So bimmer was a good customer, except he never paid. Eventually, I threatened to rat him out to the principal for all the porn I knew he had in his backpack (because he stole it from me, don't judge... I was like 10 and not all that clever). He got really mad and threatened to "kill" me at recess. I managed to avoid him for the most part, but going to school became a daily terror.

So Anyway, I order some "smoke bombs" out of the back of a comic book. It says to allow 4-6 weeks for delivery...DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG 4-6 WEEKS IS? because I do. It's about 12 years, 3 months, 2 weeks, and 3 days, plus A WHOLE FRIKKING HOUR. So bimmer is going to "smear" me, the "queer" du jour, for fraternizing with the cutest girls in my class, again. I'm Running for my life, but this time I have a plan.

I run through the fresh snow to the little spruce forest on the far edge of the playground. Normally, this would be a terrible idea, because everyone knows that the forest is smear central...no teachers watching. I leap up and grab the lowest branches and scramble my way up the tree.

Bimmer is afraid (or can't climb) but you can't stay up there forever. He taunts me from below, spewing epithets and promising to significantly reduce my chances of procreation if he ever gets his hands on me.

This time, though, I am nervous, but not afraid. I have a plan. I light a smoke "bomb" with my forbidden matches, and I drop it to the ground. Nothing. Some orange smoke billows impotently from the little sphere, and bimmer bellows with laughter. "HAHAHA, what are you going to do, SMOKE me to death!!?? HA HA!!!!".

With the new understanding that smoke bombs were not really "bombs" in the conventional sense, despite being "bomb" shaped, advertised as smoke BOMBS, and the dangerous looking green fuze sticking out, the terror began to seep in. Indeed, I *couldn't* stay up there forever. And without Bimmer blown to bits, my testicles were sure to suffer a worse fate than a Muhammad-Ali punching bag.

I still had 4 smoke "bombs" though. and maybe, just *maybe* that one was a *dud*...so I lit another. I dropped it and braced for the blast. With my eyes closed, I heard the hissing... No explosion, but hissing...and screaming! I looked down to see Bimmer running around fitfully, smoke billowing from his neck, screaming, and trying fruitlessly to unzip his parka. The smoke bomb had fallen into his parka hood, and set it on fire! After what seemed like a half hour of shrill screams and agonized grunts, he managed to get the parka off over his head.

By the time all was done, he had lost all of the hair off the back of his head, and the parka was a smoldering mess. He also had pissed his pants, at least, and there was by now a huge crowd. I dropped down from the tree and was briskly escorted to the principals office, and bimmer was walked shamefully and stiff-legged to the infirmary.

I lied and told the principal that it was an accident, and I only meant to attract the attention of the "obviously blind" duty teacher. (I left out the part where I fully expected a hand grenade style blast to heft bimmer to bully heaven, you know, like in the movies.) after all, it was *kind of* an accident.

At any rate, I got off pretty much scot-free except for the matches, and bimmer came back a few days later with minor first and (small)second degree burns on the back of his head, along with a newly shaved head.

He never really got his mojo back though, from the humiliation. He did threaten to stab me with the smallish hunting knife that he often carried, but I brought a little can of lighter fluid and showed it to him the next day, and he never even looked me in the eyes after that.

Username: exosequitur

When I was in elementary school, I somehow managed to acquire the nickname of "booger picker". I think someone saw me do it once in front of the girls and just did the whole point and laugh so they all saw it. This was maybe third grade...

I was really upset because it stuck and I was now booger picker to literally all of the kids in class. My dad, ever so clever, said: "don't let them get your goat" on the ride home one day. He explained that the only reason it probably stuck is because I let it affect me. That, and nobody wanted to be near me so I sat alone at lunch. If I used a swing in the playground, nobody else would use it after me because it was dirty. This is Catholic school by the way.

So, I devised a plan that only a third grader could dream up: I started selling booger shields. They were magic auras of protection that warded all things booger. I granted a few for free at the beginning to gain a few friends. Since they were now safe from my germs, they weren't afraid to play with me. Soon, I was sitting at the cool kid table with all kinds of offerings at lunch and recess. Then things took a bit of a turn.

I'm not exactly sure when, but, I also came up with the idea of imaginary booger guns. Naturally, all the boys wanted the gun with which to terrorize the girls and the girls the shield because they were being terrorized by a mythical onslaught of booger germs.

Turns out, I had to start granting booger gun proof shields. And then booger machine guns to overpower them... and then machine gun proof booger shields. Things got a little out of hand. But, I definitely got quite a few Marvel and X-Men holograms (series one Silver Surfer and Wolverine were the ultimate currency). Since I was the only true booger picker, only my weaponry and shields were considered legitimate.

The teacher finally had to tell the whole class that booger shields and guns weren't real. And, even though they weren't real, they were also banned under penalty of detention. The whole booger thing went away after that.

Also, someone later stole my entire collection of holograms. I'm talking multiple complete sets of series one through three and X-Men. I still think about that book of cards.

Username: M7I7K7E

Grew up in Canada. For awhile in elementary at recess everyone would participate in this “ice-chunk-based society” where we built mini-igloo storefronts to sell our wares, which were chunks of ice carved into simple shapes, along with other random doodads.

One day, someone discovered a chunk of colored ice behind the hockey rink. Like a coconut-sized orb of blue food-colored ice. Well. At first that thing was the big bucks, then someone quickly realized they could chip it up into smaller chunks and sell mini colored ice chunks for a profit.

Colored ice became the new dinosaur-shaped ice. It was everything. You couldn’t just make it yourself and bring it in, no no. You had to discover it. Suddenly chunks of ice started popping up hidden in the snow all over the place.

Our pleasant bartering ice society became a mining town. For colored ice. People were hiring miners to dig for them. Tearing up yards of fresh snow. Heated debates were had around whether or not a chunk of ice was “real” (I.e. magical, or alien), or “fake” (made it yourself). All for colored ice.

The mining industry was plagued with violence and drama so I kept my distance. I made most of my ice building and expanding igloos and trying to carve the perfect ice hearts to sell and felt no need to diversify.

But eventually I would find one small chunk of colored ice in the snow I was digging into to prep for an igloo. I carved it into the most perfect symmetrical heart the world has ever seen. I kept it hidden behind the counter of my igloo storefront all winter, waiting for the perfect customer, telling no one so as to not get it stolen. I held onto it for too long, spring came around, and only a handful of people knew about the artifact before it melted with the rest of the economy. So it goes.

As a child I just figured colored ice was a natural resource like any other. Probably some magic at play. Perfectly reasonable. In retrospect it’s clear people were making colored ice at home, and hiding them in the snow when no one was around for kids to discover at recess.

Some of those chunks were huge so I imagine there were some adults or teenagers involved, which is probably the most wholesome thing ever. When I tell this story, people sometimes accuse me of making it up due to the extreme levels of whimsy and Canadian stereotype baked into this experience.

Reasonable. But to me and a school full of French-immersed Canuck children, it was the magic ice market boom of 2002.

Username: higgshmozon

When I was in middle school our neighbor was working at the local soap facotry. One ingredient of soap is Citrus Acid, the same sour stuff you find on sour patch kids. It looks like a white, kind of grainy, kind of powdery, substance. Think of a mix of powdered sugar and regular sugar.

Now Kieth, our neighbor, used to bring us 10 pound barrels of this every month. You may not think so, but it's really hard to eat through 10 pounds of that stuff in a month. My parents eventually got sick of keeping so much of it at our house. We were told to either find a way to get rid of it or they'd tell Keith no more.

So I hatched a plan - I split up what I had into different amount baggies. 2 tbsp in one. 1/4 cup in another, etc. I then started selling it at school. It was only a dollar or two for each bag, nothing crazy. But my God did I make bank. In the first month I made about $150. For a poor kid in the 8th grade, this was incredible.

Eventually some parents started to wonder what was happening to their kids lunch and snack money. One kids mother in particular was super tough on her kids. Adam, we'll call him, was eventually bullied by his mom into telling on my little black market. He showed her what he was buying.

Jump forward a couple days and I get called down to the principles office. I knew why, so I gave my Citrus Acid to my friend and headed for the office. Boy was I in for a surprise.

I walk into her office and there stands my mom, Adam's mom, the principle, and two police officers. My first thought was WTF are the cops doing here? My mom gives me a stank eye like I've never seen before, nor seen again.

The principle starts talking. She's going on and on about how disappointed she is in me, how she's never seen this before, etc. I'm obviously confused. Finally one of the Cops, officer Jeff, cuts in. He says that they know I've been selling cocaine to the other students and he's there to arrest me and my mother.

My mom, now beyond pissed, lays into me. I deny it. I confess everything about my little black market and tell them exactly where my stash was (with my friend Phil). The other cop walks down and grabs Phil, ensuring he doesn't empty his pockets.

When he gets there they search him, find my Citrus Acid, and put it down on my principles desk. My mom bursts out laughing. I've never seen nor heard her laugh so hard in my life. She stands up, looks at the cop, and says "Does that look like cocaine to you?"

He says it does. She's shocked. She asks him to taste some. He refuses. She _insists_ he tries some, promising up and down it's not cocaine. He again refuses. This goes on for like 5 minutes.

Eventually my principle steps in, reaches into the bag, takes a pinch of the Citric Acid, and drops it in her mouth. This wasn't a small pinch either. And remember, this Citric Acid was the pure stuff. Not mixed with anything. No other candy to lessen the sourness.

Almost immediately she makes the good 'ol sour face -- but worse because she was not expecting it to be sour. She looked at the cops and said "Yeah that's not cocaine. That's a warhead". She later told us she was expecting to either get high or for it to be sugar but she didn't want me to get arrested if it actually wasn't cocaine so it was worth the risk.

After a couple day investigation to prove I never once claimed it was drugs when I sold it, everything was let go. The cops delivered pizza to my family as an apology (yay small towns). Adam's mother? She never said a word. Never once apologized for accusing me, and by proxy my mother, of selling cocaine to middle schoolers.

We eventually donated all the Citrus Acid we had to the culinary teacher who used it for many years to help teach her class to make candy. And that's the story of how my little 8th grade black market nearly landed me in juvy back in the mid 90s.

Username: [deleted]

It all started in 5th grade. Minecraft was very popular at the time, so me and this girl decided to “mine for ores” on the playground. We found some pretty cool red shiny rocks. After a pretty big stockpile of red rocks had been gathering, it had drawn some kids’ attention and they wanted some of the rocks.

At first we were giving them away, but as more attention grew, we saw a demand growing and we decided to start a trade. People could have our red rocks if they gave us some other rocks.

(We were the only ones with access to the red rocks at the time.) Soon competition arose, and red rocks were not wanted anymore, however, a new trend grew. Whoever had the most rocks, of any kind, was the coolest.

So with that in mind, me and my friend got to work. We set up a huge mining operation near a bench were we found loads of rocks. After a long 15 minutes of mining, we had quite a collection growing, and we needed a place to store them. So under the tallest slide, we made a vault. We dug a hole to rival the Grand Canyon. And we piled our rocks in, filling it only slightly. We covered the top with wood chips and left.

A week went by of us stockpiling our rocks. We were by far the richest kids of rocks at the school. Other kids envied our massive collection of rocks. People were taking out loans: we give them rocks, they’d give us back some in the future.

By the end of the week we had several alternate vaults near the slide. The mine near the bench had been drained and we had opened up private ones farther away, paying other kids with rocks to mine rocks for us while we ran the bank, and payed another kid to guard our mines from other kids trying to leech off our success. Kids lined up under the slide to trade rocks or take out loans. We thought we were unstoppable. But all good things must come to an end.

The teachers soon began catching on. They noticed massive holes popping up all over the playground, and every day, kids would come in from the playground covered in dirt from handling rocks. They banned all mining operations for the rest of the year.

We weren’t worried. We had enough rocks to last us for the rest of year and still had kids that owed us for taking out loans. But with mining operations closed, many could not pay back their debts. We let this slide. But without more rocks coming in, no loans could be made.

Remember, the more rocks you had, the cooler you were. With everyone stuck in their current ranking, people began to not care about rocks anymore. There was no strive to get richer. People moved onto other trends, and we were stuck looking like morons with huge pits of rocks.

And thus, we decided to cease operations. We stole everyone’s rocks with little retaliation, gathered them in our vault, and said goodbye. We covered up the vault one last time, and the great rock saga was over.

Me and the friend attempted to start a candy trade in 6th grade, but no one was interested. One day, we decided to go back on the playground and check out the vault. Sure enough, under the wood chips, was a huge pit of gravel stones. We chuckled, covered up the wood chips, and walked away.

Rumors have popped up that some of the vaults have started to form sinkholes, they are just that: rumors. Me and the friend have grown more apart over the years, but we still remember the great rock saga.

Me and her pioneered some great stuff during fifth grade, but that’s another story. I just wanted to share the time we started our own black market. With rocks.

Username: jamesswinehart25

Our school, we weren't allowed to leave at lunchtime. More for the safety of the neighbourhood than our own. The school dinners were terrible unless you just a plate of chips (fries for the uncultured) so usually 15 minutes before lunch the texts would go through to those of us that had phones to each class, asking what the order was.

We had a full on squad including backups and apprentices yearning to belong ready to do the run to the butty shop. We're talking big greasy barms with bacon egg sausage all the usual heart stopping stuff, dirt cheap.

This wasn't a cakewalk. Teachers always stood at the gates, and also occasionally patrolled the streets themselves especially if there had been any trouble (vandalism, fighting, suicide) that week. Getting caught at best meant we got our money back at worst our butties would be thrown away, no lunch if that's all you could scrap together.

Truly it was tragic if they got caught, and well performing "celebrity" smugglers that werent caught would take the more popular kids orders, other kids might have to try out a newbie or a smuggler that got caught recently.

The fascinating thing was how it evolved organically. A couple of trailblazers realised they could jump the fence at certain unwatched areas. They had the glorious butties and told their daring tale to other kids. Those kids slipped them money to grab them a sandwich, and when they sat there in a classroom playing cards and a kid shows up, drops a delicious sandwich on the table and walks away all the others are gobsmacked-how did you manage that?

A few years of this evolved into ordering, money lending and favours, favourite smugglers, an ever evolving game of cat and mouse with the teachers etc. We brought on younger kids, who I'm assuming brought on their own apprentices who did get a cut of the spoils just the infamy.

Prices were never really gouging, generally enough that everyone in the enterprise got a free lunch. At its height, at least when I was there 3-5 kids would be making the run with about 8 sandwiches delivered each, we'd have the orders called in and often the butty would be delivered faster than if you stood in line at the school lunch counter.

Other kids would try and compete but they never touched our organisation skills, they didn't call ahead with the orders, they got caught more often, they didn't have the couple of rich kids often willing to chip in a quid or two when a friend was short. If anything these freelancers picked up the slack of kids we didn't trust enough to be part of our operation, so they never competed at all.

All in all it was good fun, sitting at a table playing cards when a frantic kid calls saying he's seen someone get caught, having to reroute the others to pick up the extra sandwiches, making sure the caught kid got someone's packed lunch as a booby prize etc.

Then getting back to the card game which other players tsk and say what a shame! That guy had potential, tall, a quick fence jumper and good on the more technical escape routes but we all mentally add a black mark against his name, half because of his faliure and half because he'll be in the teachers sights for a few weeks now.

In writing it out, we had a mafia-lite organization running food in a prison like school system! I'm sure I've romanticized a lot of this but it's very close to the truth believe me, and all a good time looking back.

Username: KruppeTheWise

When I was starting my equivalent of the junior year of high school, this new guy arrived to my class (we had one assigned class per year) . And after a couple of weeks when he felt comfortable around the things worked, he started to smuggle plenty of 12-packs of doughnuts every day, carrying them in the kind of handbag you would carry to a gym. They would all sell out almost immediately. We had three breaks on a normal day; two very early on of only ten minutes to catch a breath between classes and a long one at the end.

Well this dude left the classroom each time the 10 minute ones started to go sell to the younger classes, since most hadn't had breakfast and were to lazy to walk and buy some food. The thing was that the school strictly prohibited any sale of anything, you could only buy food or anything from the cafeteria. So he would constantly avoid teachers that could take away his food, or better said, his profit.

It wasn't long until he became sort of infamous as "the donut guy" and it got to his head. For starters, he got his goods from a factory-store where he knew a guy who sold them cheaper for him, but he overpriced them even for the standard price.

Soon enough he started to arrive to the school with a suit like he worked in wall street or some shit and would constantly take "important phone calls" in the middle of a lecture. He almost always left early so that he could sell more and plenty of times he came back to the class to boast about how he humiliated another person trying to sell food.

Anyways, he eventually decided to branch out the goods, sell other things people would like, so, what did he sell? You might ask. Water filters. This dude really started to sell water filters like it wasn't insane and would answer calls in class to talk to buyers, the worst part is that he was doing good on that front too.

Anyways, on my senior year, he decided to make his master piece. His Mona Lisa. His Sagrada Familia. During the finals of autumn, he decided to sell "concentration pills". In reality they were ADHD pills, you know, those you shouldn't take unless prescripted, and even so, taken with a lot of caution.

Now, so far it had been pretty harmless, he sold stuff and made money, no biggie. But selling that has an actual hazard and people knew that, so no one bought any... Except this poor guy, who was very stressed out by a psychology exam and was SO desperate he gave them a try.

Turns out he was allergic to one of the components and in the middle of the final had to go to a restroom and puke his insides like a madman. After that, what I call The Kingpin of the Donut left the school.

He says that he got into a college but no one can confirm it. He said high school was useless for him and that he already knew all that we were seeing, but we all saw through his bs.

Username: SantyMndz

During elementary school, kids were dealing cards. Not just Yu-gi-oh and Pokemon,too. There were regular poker card decks, Uno decks, even anonymous Valentine's day cards, birthday cards, fake invitation cards to parties, and last but not least gift cards.

Poker decks were banned because the teachers thought we'd be gambling, even though nobody did that until something happened. Uno, Yu-gi-oh and Pokemon were banned because of fights that broke out after trades and matches.

The Valentine's day cards were for people who were pretty lonely, so they'd buy themselves one to cheer them up on Valentine's. Birthday cards were self-explanatory, last minute gifts. Fake invitations were self-explanatory, get yourself into parties without question. Gift cards were the most expensive, so not many people bought them.

There were even some people selling "rigged decks". For Uno it was two decks, a normal one and one filled with +2, +4, wilds, skips, and reverses. And I know this because originally I was the top Uno player until a later confirmed cheater knocked off that pedistle, and more cheaters started taking more top spots to the point that all the genuinely great players were considered now mid-tier nobodies. They even got comfortable with gambling amongst each other and encouraging people to bet on matches.

So I had a friend do some digging and we found out about the rigged decks in ALL OF THE GAMES, and about a rigged deck dealer. He let us buy one and gave us some tips on how to cheat in Uno. Once we saw the decks, my friend decided that we should play even dirtier.

We'd challenge some lower end cheaters to some matches early in the morning setting it up for afternoon. Then we'd have a friend steal the rigged decks from our opponents. Last, we'd get them to play with our deck,( also we split the 2nd deck between us two to ensure we both had a higher chance of winning, making it seem random.)

By the end of it, we got most of the actual pros in on it. Almost all of the cheaters rigged decks were "missing". All we had left was the OG cheater. We did the usual. Time comes and he asks for an all-or-nothing game or he not playing. We agreed. And long story short, my friend was the win and the cheater accussed him of cheating.

Phase 2 starts the next day and our thief friend starts to duct tape the decks with the cheaters' names on them at where we play Uno. When the players found, they were pissed and decided that the cheaters needed to be banned. Then the started to harass the rigged deck dealers.

Things started to fall apart. Other games were getting affected by the "Uno Cheating Scandal". Bullying cheaters and rigged deck dealers was rampant. It was almost like a war disguised as bullying. After that, so many bridges were that there wasn't many people with really close friends anymore.

Username: Avery_aviation7

Military boarding school. You. Have. No. Idea. The base currency was ramen noodle packets. Extra food in the dorms was strictly forbidden to be kept overnight, and chow was pretty early so you have all these teenagers with raging appetites and playing multiple sports not eating after 5 pm, they get hungry.

Having your parents send care packages usually resulted in some wannabe Full Metal Jacket scene where all your classmates suffer while you’re forced to eat it and then they beat the shit out of you later. Of course upper classmen would haze the shit out of freshman cadets for hiding food, and then do the same thing themselves.

Eventually you learned that if you kept them supplied they would look the other way. So stocking ramen and regularly bribing the next guy up just became a necessity for everyone.

With ramen came those portable water heaters. Anything to make water boil. I once started a science club for the express purpose of getting access to the teaching lab supplies, where I was able to steal an unused hot plate and beaker that became my hall’s clandestine ramen station.

Everything else kinda went from there. Enough ramen could get you a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of cough syrup to try to get drunk or a whipped cream container for huffing. Once you were able to earn Leave to go out on weekends, which usually meant being on the honor roll several semesters with no discipline actions, then your black market access really opened up.

People would either go to the really sketchy area in town and bribe homeless, or rich kids would hire taxis and bribe the cab drivers, to buy tobacco and alcohol. Entire weekends would be spent on unsuccessful convenience store runs. Since only a few honor roll students had Leave at a given time, it was a bottleneck on the black market and it ironically was probably the biggest drive for people keeping their grades up.

Bear in mind nothing on the black market had any value based on its actual retail price. Actual cash transactions were rare but sometimes I’d sell ramen for $3 or $4 each. Usually it was just more like 10 ramens for a cough syrup bottle, 50 for a bottle of malt liquor, etc.

I had a tough time in my early years but by the end of 10th grade I knew the system well enough to get upperclassmen to leave me alone. Even get my back on a lot of things.

I was always staying out of trouble and had high grades so I became a major player in the black market because I could get basic stuff most people on the outside took for granted - good razors, hair gel, twinkies, creatine, protein bars, playboys, beers, etc.

Eventually I had a bigger stockpile of ramen than I could spend so I just started stockpiling. And I had them all. Not just the ramen, but the rawomen, and the rachildren too.

Username: IsFullOfIt

When I was a kid (like 4th to 5th grade) we discovered that under the playground sand there was a layer of moist hard mud that we all dubbed “the clay”. The clay was very desirable.... and whoever controlled the clay controlled the school. Because digging holes so deep was dangerous the school made it against the rules, and so the clay was very limited in supply.

There was one corner of the playground completely covered by trees and was basically out of sight from the teachers. So my self and some friends started a mining operation that essentially guaranteed that we had complete control over “the clay” note it was called “the clay” not just “clay” my buddy and I were the mastermind and employed diggers to excavate the clay.

Their pay was they got to keep 1/4 of the clay they excavated and were allowed the privilege of excavating in such a prime and safe location. Either that or they could bring a pack of Pokémon cards or something of equal value and keep a fist full of the clay in addition to their pay.

To keep control, and keep teachers from finding out, we had a team of “tattlers” their job was to turn in other clay miners to the teachers. No one dared turn us in because it would mean the end of all the clay production. After almost two years, we realized that we were in the verge of being bullies because of the power we had gained. We had also virtually strip mined the prime mining location.

So we stopped. Many of my Pokémon cards that I have came from those days. When we stopped production, many other students attempted the same thing.... but because we had mined the safe spot dry, teachers rapidly shut them down.

The tattlers at that point took power on the play ground, using their in with the teachers, and their spy network they had established to gain dirt on other students m, to determine the games that were played, and who got to use the swing equipment.

These guys were all eventually suspended for one reason or another. No one ever questioned my authority or my group of friends who started the clay operation with me authority.

We were always above the tattlers and often intervened on other kids behalf against the tattlers, and actually near the end of elementary school did a lot to stop lots of other bullies from bullying other students.

Basically we did everything we could to prevent another the clay mine, and tattlers organization from popping up because we were all relatively decent and good kids that didn’t want to be bullies. Really messed up that part of the play ground.... they had to completely redo the whole play area because of those the clay days shortly after I went to jr high.

Username: [deleted]

In high school I was In communication media studies class. I was in charge of designing and printing tickets and passes for school events throughout the year. Even made it in such a way that it couldnt be photocopied.

(The scanners back then were garbage compared to today's tech) most events would have a limited amount of tickets availible to buy. i would always print a few hundred extra for me and my friends to sell off a few days before the event. We'd sell it at twice the price and then half off on the last day. I took a small percentage of my friends profits and we all made good coin after the show.

The best events were always the gymnasium events. Because of the legal maximum capacity (350 at my school), the tickets availible were always lower then the regular school events.
The ones who could attend were only the visitors from other schools and the classes with the highest class average (over all grades). Everyone wanted to go to these events because it was a great way to skip a few classes.

(The event was always during normal class times during the day)
The tickets were only giving out the day of said event so it was hard to get a hold of one or even know what they look like. Unless you were me ;)

So I did the usual, few hundred extra tickets printed out and distributed among select friends, but since these tickets were usually giving out to select classes, we usually sell them for whatever amount we want. And guys that really want to go will pay whatever price. I remember the most I made at an event was about $2250. And for a high schooler it was a shitload. I did this for the last 2 years of high school and saved most

It wasn't all peaches and cream though. There was always competition, shitty competition.
They would have shitty photocopied tickets that would get caught and the security would get beefed up at the entrances that slowed everything down. No problem with my tickets though because there were "legit".

In the beginning of my last year the school started to catch on to what was happening. Someone squeaked and the school security and police officer got involved. We always had a game plan, alibis, and fail safe strategies in case they were close to catching us. The last year was a little harder to do. We just ended up selling off out of school or over email. But still made good coin in the end.

There was one time I was almost busted. It was after the last big event of the year and they called me in to the office and i was questioned for an hour about my whereabouts and the tickets.

I simply claimed I printed the set amount of tickets that day and the teacher that was watching could confirm it (I printed the tickets days before after hours when no one was around), I was sick for those alleged days (which I was, but I was selling at the strip mall across the street anyway), and that I heard some kid named "Jason"(shitty competitor) was selling the tickets.

In the end they got nothing but a name and let me go. Essentially pulled a Keyser Söze and disappeared into the crowd. I was never caught.

Username: smartastits

In my elementary school (strict private Catholic school) candy was the contraband of choice. Some kids sold gum but it was easy for teachers to spot gum chewers and that resulted in disciplinary action.

Discipline in a Catholic school back in the 80s was a holey paddle (filled with holes, not blessed by the priest), with your pants down, while bent over holding your ankles. Because my grandmother owned a snack bar, and I was the available free labor, I had access to a candy/snack wholesalers on occassion. I decided to try my hand at pushing a better product, plastic pixie sticks.

They were filled with flavored sugar and were an immediate hit. I think I sold them for a nickel a piece. Unfortunately for me, the other candy sellers were part of a large family and didn't like me interfering with their business.

Actually they were more than just a large family, they belong to a group known as Irish Travelers that were well known for scamming people for lackluster construction/handyman work or charged for work then split town without performing any of the promised work.

They allegedly travel around in large groups, hitting towns far enough away from their home town (locally called their village or camp) so they were nowhere to be found when people realized they had been scammed. I mention the group's methods to show these weren't just other elementary school kids, but kids that knew there was power in numbers and that they were not willing to share this market. At first I was threatened to stop selling my pixie sticks.

When I didn't stop, I got jumped and told again to stop. Then, I assume these kids were advised by other people, probably older brothers/cousins to physically take my stash of pixie sticks to stop me from selling them and improve their business. I was willing to admit defeat at that point. A pocket full of nickels wasn't worth the aggravation and potentially getting jumped again.

Unfortunately that wasn't good enough for them. They decided I was going to supply them with pixie sticks, and instead of paying for them, the pixie sticks would be payment to them to avoid future beatings. Of course I didn't think I could go to any of the nuns because I was involved in illegal activity myself by selling candy and I didn't have any older siblings or cousins to ask for help.

I also didn't have the money to keep them in pixie sticks if I wasn't making money from the sales so I was in between a rock and a hard place. I decided to turn the tables and fight some of the smaller guys, one on one before they ganged up on me in hopes of making things more trouble than I was worth.

The second fight I started got both of us suspended and I guess they decided I wasn't worth the trouble so when I came back to school they offered to finally leave me alone so long as I stayed out of the candy game.

I learned some valuable lessons from that experience, unfortunately none of those lessons were that selling illegal/black market products were a bad idea. I would eventually learn my lesson but I'm hardheaded and it took more than getting jumped in elementary school to get me on the straight and narrow. Who knew organized crime started so early?

Username: GhostFour

I’m a little late to the party, but my buddy and I sold those yellow LiveStrong bracelets. He ordered them off the internet (back in the days of dial up) 10 for $10 and we sold them for anywhere from $3 to $5, depending on if we liked you or not. Once you bought one you were in our gang, which we called “The Mafia.” The more bands you bought, the higher you ranked in the gang.

My buddy was the brains behind the operation and I, being a rather large kid who grew faster than the rest of the boys in our 6th grade class, was the muscle behind the hustle. We took our “gang” seriously, and if you weren’t in it, you were an enemy. We would target the rich kids and even extort them and threaten with the starting of rumors, or to expose some secret about them that we knew from hanging out with them (one example was a kid still had a bed wetting problem).

Many were terribly afraid of having their personal lives exposed, or were just a kid wanting to fit in, so we sold MANY bracelets. And once kids were in “The Mafia,” they were assigned tasks that helped us to sell more bracelets (i.e. extort more kids).

Looking back, I’m certainly not proud of the way we treated some kids and over the course of my later middle school and high school years I made it a point to apologize to each and every one of them.

Our business only lasted about a week before kid’s parents were complaining about them spending ridiculous amounts of money on our bracelets or that their children were being bullied or were bullying. Again, I’m not proud of the way we treated some kids.

“The Mafia” was dismantled from the ground up. Kids were being called into the principal’s office all day, until finally my buddy and I were called in. By the time we made it in there, the principal had a flow chart listing the ranks and responsibilities of everyone in the gang, with my buddy and I at the tippy top.

We were suspended from school for 3 days and sent to the alternative school for a month. The principal threatened with the classic “permanent record” routine and said that if the real Mafia ever found out, they’d probably come kill us. Being 6th graders, we thought our lives were over.

All in all we had made a few hundred dollars, most of which we paid back. LiveStrong Bracelets were banned from the school. We all were given nicknames by our basketball coach. My buddy was obviously called The Godfather. I was coined Luca Brasi (the enforcer/hired killer/bodyguard to The Godfather in The Godfather movie).

And that folks is how I learned about how traumatizing bullying can really be. From that day on I’ve tried to be kind to people and although I have bad days like everyone else, I look back on the days of The Mafia and am quickly reminded of the golden rule. Be kind to people folks, if you’re not and you have any shred of a soul, it’ll haunt you.

Username: RompingRillo

I used to sell candy from my locker in elementary school I quickly made a few hundred bucks with 0 idea what money was or how much I made, I just knew I liked making money. The whole thing started as a class project to "create a business" everyone else made pillows or other arts and craft I just bought candy from Sam's Club and sold it by the piece.

I sold mints, laffy taffies, gummy bear dime bags (just small bags lol), 5 Hershey kisses, York Peppermint patties, and a few other things. In between classes I would run to my locker and start peddling, I would pocket $5-10 between each class and like $15-20 during lunch, and then another $10~ after school was out.

I made like $40-50 in profit a day by going to school. The school caught on after about 2 months and shut me down. As I got to my locker my stash was all gone I assumed some kid stole it but it was only minutes later I was called to the principles office and was told to shut it down.

The funniest part of the whole thing was my classmate who I was partnered with tried Winklevossing me and tried multiple times to get half of the money I made post project. I split the profits from the first week because it was part of the project but once it was finished I refused to split. What makes the story even funnier is that he ended up investing a pretty large amount into bitcoin and made a fortune just like the Winklevoss twins. We laugh about the whole thing now.

The reason I didn't share the money was because the whole thing was my plan, I went out to get the candy, I fronted the money, and I did all the selling. He was just partnered with me by the teacher and he did not do anything except meet with me once in the beginning, stood in front of the class as I presented and pocketed the money at the end.

I did end up having a business partner who sold down the hallway, I supplied the candy and he sold it and got a cut. I was literally about to expand markets into the middle school in a different part of the building but my dream was shut down before it could grow into a true empire.

My parents were pretty proud that I made so much money all on my own and was annoyed at the school for shutting me down. I learned more from those months than I did from many years of school and many of the lessons I learned from this business I applied in my future ventures. The whole thing makes for a great story, maybe one day Hollywood will pick up this story and make a movie out of it.

Username: HandsyBread

Im pretty sure this was the 3rd or fourth grade .. I was really stupid. I used to come inside at recess, and steal all the blackboard chalk. I ground it up into dust and divided it into balloons. (I had no friends). When snipped open and thrown at something, a huge cloud of chalk dust would be released into the air.

I sold these to kids as 'bully repellants' for 50 cents or icecream or pop or something of relatively equal cost. It depended on the kid. There was one kid who I think had autism maybe...but he wasnt identified (my dad did daycare for teens with autism so I was around that a lot) and he got made fun of, pushed and hit constantly. I made a ton of them for him for free.

Bullying was a problem at my school but I was more of a physical fighter than some kids my age, plus people avoided me because I was the weird kid who was always alone so I wanted to find a way to help other kids get rid of their bullies in a way that wasn't *exactly* physically violent... but was just more of a hilarious and effective way of publicly shaming that person as a bully.

Because if a person came inside from recess covered in chalk dust, it meant that they are bullying a kid in my grade and they would be made fun of for a day for being an asshole covered in chalk.

Unfortunately, the teachers began rallying together to figure out who the mysterious chalk theif was and why kids were coming inside covered in colorful dust and called 'bullies'by their peers, so they started waiting in classrooms to see who came in during recess. I got caught by my own teacher who was pissed but asked me what I was doing. I told her the truth, and she said if I stop now she won't breathe a word to anybody not even my parents.

I stopped an she didn't tell anyone but then the teachers got hardcore about bullying on the playground and I like to think I caused it. So I sold antybulling propaganda and weapons on the schools black market.

Username: black_morning

Test answers. There were these 2 girls in "upper comprehensive school" (i dont know the word) that i was friends with. They were on their last year, and apparently, they had this all planned out. They listed almost all of the test answers, or atleast some of the answers from 8th to 9th grade. They also had others help them from 7th grade.

And the test answers didnt really change in our school. I had been "sick" multiple times during tests, got my friends to say the answers, and got good grades.

So, we got test answers, and we got a school full of dumb people that dont give a fuck about their future. OBVIOUSLY, we should sell the answers. That was when i came in, and i started to advertise it. I first spread out the word to my friends, and slowly started contacting the "bad boys", and they were excited. We kept a list on who we told about it, just in case someone told on us.

We charged like 5€/test, and sometimes 3€. Everytime any class had a test, we would make a pretty good fortune. And that was a lot for my age. I took about 35% of the money we made, because i was pretty much taking all of the risks. I tried my best to make sure that nothing would lead back to the girls.

After like 3 months, the school finally caught on and changed the test answers. I dont really understand why it took that much time to figure out that the worst student suddendly went to the best in their class. We tried to tell them that try making a couple of answers wrong, but some people didnt listen. (we also had a 3 warning system, and if they were getting everything right, we would stop selling to them.)

After the school had looked into it, someone snitched, and i got a suspended for 2 weeks.
The girls were not caught, and teachers tought that i was the only one doing it. We made a lot of money, and its still the best thing i can remember about school. Kind of them to release me to the wild for 2 weeks, after i got the cash.

Username: CatHammerz

Oh my god, I’ve been waiting for a question like this. Kids at my elementary school sold a number of things under the administration’s noses. Lollipops and rock candy were the popular choices, while cake pops and rice krispy treats enjoyed a meteoric rise in 6th grade.

But one product trumped them all: my product. Monster. Kids at my elementary school routinely cleaned out the soda and Gatorade vending machines and were always looking for a caffeine fix. I brought a Monster to school one day to eat with my lunch when someone offered to buy it for $4. I liked that idea, but I wanted to drink it so I refused. The offer went to $5 and I gave it up. I realized then that I could turn over these energy drinks for massive profit.

I went to a Big Lots/Costco (I can’t remember now) and found pallets full of 30 packs of Monsters. I was looking at a gold mine. I picked a couple up and went to work. I only took two a day so whoever got to me first got the drinks.

I had made a healthy profit to that point, which pretty much all got spent on PS2 games. The teachers were beginning to get suspicious of all the energy drinks on campus and I didn’t want to get fingered by any of my clients. So I planned for one last job.

The track meet. I bought a trench coat with tons of pockets and I stuffed it with as many drinks as I could carry. I hung out by the baseball diamond where there were less people and people came and went, giving up their Lincolns for Monsters. I restocked at lunch time when my mom came by and delivered the rest. I went home with a wad of cash that day and called it a career.

We estimate that I made around $500 in profit, and it was by far one of the most interesting, exhilarating, and admittedly stupid parts of my life to this point.

Username: [deleted]

Not really a black market. My family used to take me to this Vietnamese mall in southern California. Great place with awesome smelling food and bootlegs as far as the eye could see.

Just like every other kid my age, I fuckin' loved Dragon Ball Z (DBZ) and I found this toy that was kind of like Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots but instead of boxing you had an arena stage these pegs on sliders and an assortment of miniature DBZ characters in battle poses.

To play with the toy you would put the characters onto one of the twi pegs and push a button on either side to make the pig move forward and twist so it looked like the characters were rushing towards each other and fighting.

Anyways, I loved this toy and I was having trouble making friends in school because I only spoke Vietnamese at the time. So I brought my toy over for Show and Tell Day and everyone had fun playing with it but you could only bring your own toys to school on Show and Tell Days so my popularity was only guaranteed on that special day... Until I found a windbreaker with a bigass chest pocket.

Every morning for a week I would wear the same bigass windbreaker with that bigass chest pocket and cram as many DBZ toys and the arena stage into it and go to school. And I would pull that shit out during recess and we'd have a DBZ fight club on the playground playset.

It started out as good ol' violent fun... until the bets started. I don't know who started it but I vividly remember kids putting down pennies and quarters and maybe even a dollar bill down on different DBZ characters.

Unfortunately, this all ended within the week and one of the playground monitors told me I couldn't bring that toy onto the playground (Probably because I'd probably lose all the pieces in the sand.) Anyways, that's how I started a playground fight club with included gambling in preschool.

Username: dannyrand

I ran a black market fireworks ring at my elementary school during 3rd and 4th grade. In Arizona during the 90s, there was a strict ban on fireworks. Over summer break, my family traveled through Idaho during 4th of July weekend and purchased fireworks. My parents found a nice dirt lot and made sure we blasted all of them off. Well, almost all of them.

I had absconded with a few of the medium sized ones and a decent selection of the smaller ones. Hid them under the car seats. For the entire trip back, I was sweating getting pulled over by the cops and thrown in jail and/or exploding the car because my mom would literally murder me. Made it back with no felony charges on my record and the family car intact.

The real issue was that I could not light them off without my mom finding out, and it was only a matter of time before she discovered my stash. Don’t know why I didn’t think about it before, but I wasn’t the brightest kid growing up. In my little 9-year old brain, I decided the best thing to do was distribute the contraband during school and maybe get some gum money out of it.

Now I wasn’t completely brain-dead, and knew my ass would be toast if the teacher saw me selling fireworks (because she would call my mom and I would die), so I had the great idea of taking staple boxes from a Costco-sized flat my dad had purchased so he would never have to buy staples again. Naturally, all the staples were buried at the bottom of the pseudo mine shaft we dug out back.

I gave two boxes of “staples” to the cool kid on the bus, and had associates of his asking for staples throughout the entire year. It was 50c a box and I never got caught.

Didn’t sell the entire load, so my brother and I took the remaining fireworks and exploded a coffee can in the desert while my mom was out of town. It launched about 12ft or so.

Username: dudewhattheflux

Since my high school had terrible lunch food, and a lot of people for whatever reason didn’t qualify for free breakfast or lunch, many of us (including me) had to resort to bringing food from home, or just being scammed out of our money with the expensive vending machine which in no way were nutritional or filling. Lots of kids resorted to selling chips, candies, gatorades and sodas, may have been counterproductive with the nutritional side but at least it was filling.

My school would sell significantly smaller bags of chips but the people selling would make their regular sized bags of chips the same price as the school’s, so obviously people went with the better option. But people started getting creative since lots of kids were getting caught, getting suspended and having the school threaten us saying by doing this then no one will get free lunch and our lunch budget will be cut. These kids moved on from candies, chips, etc to more homemade foods that can pass off as not selling but bringing food to friends. (They had duffle bags that were very noticeable when the bags of chips were heard so Tupperware, plates, tin foil, whatever in a backpack were not checked).

This guy in my chemistry class sold breakfast burritos. He had a backpack full of them, they ranged from just beams, potatoes, chorizo with eggs, and my favorite chorizo with potatoes. I assumed he at least had maybe over fifty cause the burritos didn’t take up much space since all they contained was the tortilla and whatever filling then wrapped in tin foil.

Every day, he would sell them and was out of them by third period. Luckily, I had the class with him first thing in the morning and sat right in front of him, so usually I got first dibs on whatever burritos I wanted. He sold them for a dollar and they were delicious.

His mom made the burritos every morning. I enjoyed the burritos very much, everyone did. Barely anyone qualified for free breakfast and were given sugary options for breakfast if they did pay which most of the time tasted terrible so this guy brining is breakfast, he was a life savior and saved us $0.50 if we bought breakfast from the school.

They never had any hot food, just small stuff like a tiny ass cup of cereal, a small yogurt parfait, a chocolate muffin, and a really cold honey bun. This guy started bringing the burritos around November when it would get colder so we were dying to warm up (my school had no hallways just multiple buildings so we were cold af with no way make ourselves warm).

As this was first period, the burritos were hot and fresh, and cannot stress this enough DELICIOUS. We had actual nutritional, filling food when the guy started doing his business, and I will forever be grateful for that. It’s been like three years, and I’m still not over how good those burritos were.

Username: hearteyeskori

I was an expat kid in Riyadh in the late 80's and early nineties. One thing my dad used to do back in the day was make homemade wine from the "Roche" grape juice, water, sugar and brewer's yeast. We made it in 5 gallon jerry cans with home made carboys.

Well when I started hitting my mid teens it occurred to me I could do the same thing for me and my friends and throw some really crazy compound parties and make some side money. So me and my friends at the time went and bought the materials, put it together and then stole some brewer's yeast from my dad's collection.

We setup our homemade wine contraption in an abandoned mechanical building on the compound and waited the required thirty days for the yeast to do its thing. Now since we didn't have good filtration equipment the "wine" continued to ferment in the fliptop bottles after we bottled everything and the yeast we used was 22% so these carbonated grape juice wines were pushing insane levels of carbon and alcohol.

Like demented little dealers we threw an intro pay for a group of us at my compound and proceeded to get like 50 mid teens black out drunk. If we would have been caught we would have received like twenty lashes at chop chop square and then deported.

Thankfully we had someone watching over our shoulders and didn't get caught. From that point on we would bring two bottles to school and sell them for like a hundred riyals a bottle which is like twenty bucks. We would then throw blatant drinking parties with the friends we sold it to.

To this day I still don't understand how the muhtawa didn't catch us (religious police) and how all of our friends parents never ratted us out when they would come home stinking drink. Good times man...

Username: ManWhoKillMeWillKnow

I ran an illicit unfiltered internet cartel. This was back around 2001-2002 or so. The school had what was, at the time, considered high-speed internet - 2 FULL Mb of service! However, being a school, it was heavily filtered. No email, no non-academic sites, definitely no chat, etc. That's just how it was.

So, I took driver's ed my junior year. Before they'd ever let you out on the street in a 2000-lb death machine, you had to pass their 'simulator', which was a computer running a driver's ed simulator with a racing wheel and pedals attached.

So one day, I'm in the lab, having finished my simulator run for the day, and I noticed a sticker on the top of the computer tower. It simply said 'citylab7' one one row, then something else that I don't remember on the second row. To me, resident computer dork that I was, it looked like a username and password combo.

So I tried it as a login, and it worked. After tooling around in that account for a bit, I realized there was no internet filter on this account. I could hit Newgrounds, Ebaum's world, and all those other sites that never worked at school. Fucking jackpot!

I was in the library one day on Newgrounds when a friend saw what I was doing and asked how I got around the filter. Of course, I played it off by acting like some kind of l33t 4axor. That's when the idea hit me - I had been reserving this service for myself, but clearly there was a market for this.

So, I started a little business. $1 got you 15 minutes of unfiltered internet. for $5, your time was only limited by how long you had available until you had to be somewhere. Somebody would come up to me and ask for some time. I'd go over to the computer, log out the student account, then do some hackery-looking shit and log in as citylab7.

I only had three rules: No porn. It was too risky and nearly impossible to talk your way out of a teacher seeing that on the screen. You kept another window open with something schoolwork related open and ready to switch to in case a teacher or librarian walked by. If you get busted, you're on your own. Don't involve my name. You found it like this. You're a l33t 4axor. You made a wish upon a star. Whatever, just don't involve me.

Word spread. Business was good. So good, in fact, that I couldn't keep up with demand. Clearly, I couldn't be in the library all the time - I did have classes after all. So, I recruited some friends to handle demand when I couldn't be there.

I took a percentage of their 'sales', and in return, they got the citylab7 password. I didn't worry about enforcement or how honest they were or anything like that; after all, this wasn't a drug cartel, we were all high school students and besides, what was I gonna do, break their legs? It was all honor system.

It went great for a while. We were all rolling in snackbar money. But one day, I got called into the vice principals office. As soon as I walked in, he just looked at me, and without another word, said 'city. lab. seven.'

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK. Apparently, some dipshit had got busted looking at porn, then threw their dealer's name out there. The dealer rolled on me, and here we were.

So, as it turns out, by some confluence of dumb luck and really shitty security protocols, that account not only got around the internet filter, but was also a domain admin account. Even better, the school didn't have it's own domain - it was on the city's domain. So that account that kids were using to get on yahoo chat or play games on newgrounds or whatever, was a city-wide domain admin account that theoretically had access to taxes, city payroll, government records, etc.

They threatened me with all kinds of shit - expulsion, criminal hacking charges, etc. Finally, the school's IT lady made me an offer - show her how I got in, and they'd bust it down to a week of suspension and a year-long computer ban. I walked her to the driver's ed lab and showed her the sticker. I'd never heard her cuss before, but she dropped an "oh, g-d it" right there.

Since the way I got in was so stupid, they reduced the sentence further to three days of in-school-suspension and a two week computer ban. And that's the story of my rise and fall as the leader of a school-wide unfiltered internet cartel.

Username: thndrchld

I was the marble mafia kingpin in grade 5. Back in the late 80s, we used to play marbles on the playground. Dig a little hole, take turns flicking marbles to see who would get into the hole first. Winner takes all. It was a common game, and I was commonly average at playing it.

One day I tried to convince my dad to give me some money so that I could go buy more/better marbles to take to school. Instead, my dad built me a device that would unknowingly turn me into the don of the marble mafia.

He took a small rectangular piece of ply wood (about 40cm wide, by about 20cm high (15"x8"), and nailed a small triangular kickstand/brace to the back of it so it would stand upright. He then proceeded to cut out 6 little holes -- like archways -- into the bottom of the board in varying sizes.

The smallest notch was just slightly bigger than a marble. The biggest notch was about 3x the size of a marble. Above each hole, he used a permanent marker to write a number... He wrote a "6" above the smallest hole, and a "1" above the largest hole. The numbers 2-5 he wrote in corresponding reverse order above the other intermediary sized holes.

He then explained what I was to do at school the next day. Set out the board on a hard surface behind the school at recess. Take a piece of chalk and draw a starting line about 10-feet away from the face of the board. Tell the kids that they can roll their marbles toward the board.

If it goes into the biggest hole (the hole with the "1" above it), I give them back their marble PLUS one extra marble. If it goes into the smallest hole, they get their marble back PLUS SIX extra marbles. If their shot doesn't go into a hole (misses the board or hits the wood between the holes), then I keep their one marble.

My dad told me to let them play as much as they want, but that I had to stick to the rules and couldn't "be nice "and give anyone back any marbles that they didn't win properly. I asked him, "what if they win a lot and I run out of marbles to give back?" He said not to worry; "That will never happen."

Dad was right. That very first day I came home with dozens (maybe a hundred or more) marbles in the bottom of my backpack. My dad gave me an old 5L (gallon+) plastic jug with a lid (very similar to [this](https://nutritionsgalaxy.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/1252197.jpg)), so that I'd have somewhere more sturdy to store my winnings. I brought that board with me to school almost every day for the rest of the school-year, and almost every day I brought that plastic jug home full of marbles.

I had two close friends who I even "hired" as assistants at recess. They'd control the line of kids waiting to play the game, they'd distribute the prizes to the winners, they'd make sure nobody cheated, etc., while I stood behind the board like a carnival barker at a ring-toss game.

Each day I would "pay" my assistants with a ziploc baggie full of marbles. Every following day, at both morning and afternoon recess, there would be a line of kids waiting to play my game all over again. I have no idea where their supplies of marbles kept coming from, but I kept taking them. Gambling addiction is real, folks.

By the end of the year, I had several rubbermaid 50L storage bins full of marbles. I had extra plastic jugs full of marbles. Shoeboxes full of marbles. I had marbles stuffed into anything that would hold them. I had more marbles than I would ever need, or would even know what to do with. I suppose if I had poured them all out into a kiddie-pool, I could have swam around in them like Scrooge McDuck in his vault of gold.

That June when school let out, I lost interest in the marble mania and spent most of the summer adventuring around and exploring the woods with my friends. When the next year of school started, I ended up going to a different school and never bothered to resume the board-game.

I still played marbles that year, but only in the old-fashioned hole-in-the-dirt way. I had left behind the glory and the prestige of being the Marble Master. I returned to my roots as a humble marble player, and eventually -- hopefully -- faded into the obscurity of childhood legend.

Username: unittwentyfive

When I was in junior high it was flavored toothpicks. Cinnamon or peppermint. "John," the kid selling them, came from a really poor family that didn't care about their kids at all. The parents had the more kids means more money from the welfare checks mentality.

He made quite a profit on the toothpicks at 5 cents each. Nobody ever bought less than 5. In senior high he started his own meal delivery service. His last class before lunch was right by the cafeteria. He was always there early.

People who had classes on the other side of the school and couldn't beat the rush to the lunch line often had less than 10 minutes to eat by the time they waited in line to get their lunch. Then you had to try to find a place to sit if your friends didn't have the same lunch period as you did. They couldn't save you a seat.

So "John" let it be known that for 5 bucks a week, if you gave him the lunch token you had purchased that morning before classes started, he would get your lunch for you AND save you a seat so you could go straight to eating lunch when you got to the cafeteria. The lunch ladies knew what he was doing and would give him the trays on a giant baking sheet so he could carry four trays at a time.

I myself took advantage of this cafeteria concierge service. At 5 bucks a week it was totally worth it to not have to wolf down my food in a hurry, or worse , have to wander around the cafeteria like the lost souls in Hades...praying you could find an empty seat that the "popular" kids would let you sit at (even if you had packed a lunch.) Remember those a** holes?

Anyway, John was delivering meals and reserving seats for about 15 people. Each day. Five days a week. A lucrative little side gig for a high school kid in the 80's.

But alas, like most good things in life, the cafeteria concierge service was just too good for the high school world, and came to an end about 3 months after its inception. I credit the lunch ladies' discretion for it lasting as long as it did.

We all knew John would soon be taken down by the principal, and so for the last few days we brought in table clothes, placemats, wine glasses. and little vases of flowers for John's tables. Somebody brought in a recording of classical music to play, too. If cafeteria concierge service had to to end, then by God it was going to end on a high note.

But don't weep for John yet. Dry your tears. That's not the end John's story. Because he also had another side hustle. Remember the vintage dress and jewelry craze...Jessica McClintock anybody? John made it a mission of his to go to local garage sales and flea markets and buy up vintage jewelry.

He then sold it between the buses at the start and end of the school days. As prom got closer, girls actually made appointments to meet with him after school to purchase jewelry. He was the equivalent of a NYC street vendor hawking his goods in an Appalachian redneck paradise.

I often wonder what became of John. He was in the special education program, but was very well liked by almost everyone. That was a rare thing in the snake pit of popularity and personalities that is life in junior high and high school. I like to imagine he owns and runs his own successful business...or businesses... now. Because the school system seriously underestimated his smarts and business acumen.

Username: genghismom71

Snow blocks. I live in Montreal where there’s large amounts of snow during most of the school year. It used to accumulate in the school yard and would be plowed to the back to make room for the school buses that would park at the end of the day to pick up the kids.

After a couple of snowfalls, we’d end up with 6-10 feet high “mountains” in the back of the yard in which every grade would carve it’s own little spot. For each spot, specific groups would set up forts to defend and to act as HQs to regroup and plan attacks on other groups in the same grade.

Small territory wars would be fought during recesses and rarely, large scale grade-wars would erupt if alliances inside grade groups would be solid enough. Some grades would have early or late recesses, which were perfect moments to sabotage other forts. Surprisingly, there was never any outright destruction, only lots of holes and subtly removed snow to make the forts crumble when the owners would enter it.

To fuel all this, we would usually spend multiple minutes (precious minutes) carving up the compact snow with our mittens to form blocks of varying value. The more compact, the harder and longer it took to carve, but the quality would be very high.

There were hidden stashes of snowballs all around that you could run to and use if you were in enemy territory. Locations would be sold for varying heat resistant articles such as extra cookies during snack time and crustless triangle bread sandwiches.

There also were contracts signed for gameboy time in summer with the couple of rich kids who had pokemon. The weirdest was when we started using yo-yos as currency.

One day, our principal came out with a sturdy metal shovel and started carving up high quality blocks in a matter of seconds. The whole school yard went nuts and looked like a gaggle of fish when you feed them, running around widly grasping at anything and everything.

The Prime Blocks we’re mainly dropped and broken in the wild frenzy, but we picked up the Prime Pieces to kind of put them back together. Last I heard when I was in highschool (the World War Snow was my elementary years), some kid got his eye bruised by a peice of ice, which promptly exiled the Great Snow Mountains from allowed space.

Username: BlobLucky

Back in the 3rd grade, I had a friend who was super fidgety. Back then (2006-ish), fidget toys weren’t really a thing, or at least we didn’t know anything about them. To combat this, a kid started making this stuff called “flubber”, named after the 1997 film starring Robin Williams. It was essentially discarded glue stick ends coated and mixed with chalk dust to make a squishy grey blob that was kind of sticky but not super messy. It had the same consistency and malleability of boogers.

My friend could spend all day squishing it and it wouldn’t lose its “squishy ness”, but us being kids and flubber being basically trash and scrap pieces, he would lose it. Whenever he would lose it, he would just make more inside his desk during school and other kids started to take notice. Some would ask him for a blob and eventually he started selling blobs of flubber the size of a dime for a quarter.

This sparked an “industry” of kids who learned how to make their own versions using different brands of glue and colouring. Soon there were 4 established kids who were selling their own “brand” of flubber with different gimmicks like scented, coloured, extra sticky, or mega (this just meant bigger than a loonie).

“Crime” became a factor when glue sticks and chalk were disappearing everywhere across the school. The principal called a school wide assembly to talk about theft and how flubber would no longer be allowed on school grounds.

Kids started getting reprimanded and flubber was being confiscated left and right. Flubber was now contraband and the demand was sky high. Flubber prices skyrocketed to $1 per dime sized blob and all deals were done at recess in the bush at the back of the playground.

The “rich” kids would have a collection of every scent, colour, and size stored in a pencil box and would flex by switching flubber pieces every day. This flubber market continued for a few years with sales declining every year until we all grew out of it.

After this, home made fidget toys never really came back cause I think around this time fidget spinners were starting to gain popularity. But that’s the full story of how one kid lead to a school wide glue shortage and a flubber industry crackdown.

Username: snarcusan

Hockey cards. This was around the time that our country (Czech Republic) won the ice hockey tourney at 1998 Olympics and then 3 World Championships in a row, so hockey was at the height of its popularity in our country (and that's in addition to always being the most successful sport for our country's).

We used to have power rankings of hockey cards - normal players that we didn't know were the baseline cost, worth 1, goalies I think 3-5, Czech players or popular foreign NHL players like 2-50 (depending on how popular they were - Jágr or Hašek were worth the most) and then there was a special brand of cards (can't remember the name) that had like a solid metalic foil background and usually a very famous player on it and those were also worth like 10-50 times more than normal cards (they had 3 types that we counted as different tiers - blue background was the lowest, green higher and red the highest).

Now, we were obviously trading them between ourselves, but nobody really cared about having like entire teams or stuff like that, rather having the most cards and the most expensive ones, so we spent like grades 2-4 gambling for them. There were 2 games that we were playing:

First was a dice game - I don't know if it has any name in English, but in Czech it was (as I later found out) called "Mezi kozy" ("Between tits") - everyone would bet a certain amount of cards into bank, then we'd switch turn rolling - you'd roll 3 dice, you could then pick 2 of them, bet a certain amount of cards and roll the remaining die and if you rolled a number between the first 2, you'd take the amount of cards you bet from the top of bank, otherwise you had to add to the bank.

Rolling a triple would win you the whole bank. Since it was always no limit, this could quickly get pretty crazy, if one or more players always bet the entire bank and had to double it on losing...

The other game was much more about skill though - you'd play this on the school desk, both players would be on one side and would slide their card as far as possible without it falling down. Whoever was farther won both cards.

Username: gorocz