What's the baddest thing you were accused of when you were little,but didn't do?

[Biggsy]

Smashing the church hall windows.  All I had actually done was toss an apple core over the wall.  I still feel the injustice!

[Tourist Tony]

Assaulting a girl. Police round the house, whole shebang. I did hit the girl, as she and her five friends attacked me, simply because they felt like it. I was taken to hospital; no police spoke to them. On average they were a foot taller than me.
Still rankles.

[Kathy]

Oh gods, where to start? Well, just about anything which Nutty did which our Grandmother blamed me for, though the worst one was when he slammed the garden gate into our cousin's head, giving her concussion and a lump the size of an egg on her head. Apparently I shouldn't have encouraged them, so got punished.   

Otherwise there was the time Sarah at school hit Paul McQuire (a most unpleasant boy who almost certainly deserved it), he thought it was me and punched me, a fight began, and I got blamed for the whole thing. 

[Kathy]

Of course, those weren't particularly bad, I just felt the injustice strongly. The worst accusation was me (aged 16/17) being incorrectly blamed of going through everyone's private things - letters and such. The person accusing me had quite severe cancer in the brain at that time so the accusation wasn't entirely bad (though at the time I cried a lot) but I think some family members still don't trust me even now. 

[CAMRAMan]

Three of us used to hang around together one summer. The younger was a Leeds fan at the time - during their 70s successful period. We made a throwaway joke about it being bad luck. Anyway, later in the week we were mucking around by the canal when Leeds fan fell in. I didn't push him and I'm fairly sure my other mate didn't. We took him home & his sour-faced mother gave us a look that could have killed. It was a canal FFS, only about 3ft deep.

Despite Leeds fan'd protestations at our innocence, his family blamed me/us and it still pisses me off.

[mrcharly-YHT]

Vandalising the school.
Over a period of weeks, the school had a series of break-ins, loads of smashed windows, a cool-drink machine blown up etc etc.

Despite my living 25miles away with no transport, the deputy head accused me of being involved and demanded I hold out my hand to be caned. I went for him with his blackboard ruler.

[Kim]

Substance abuse.  Repeatedly.  I was a somewhat odd child, and my biological parents had been heroin addicts, so it was the first conclusion that got jumped to whenever something needed explaining.  This is probably a major influence in my decision not to drink alcohol.

The one that really bugs me was the time when I was about ten: the bathroom light fitting was faulty, so as an interim measure we had a camping gas lantern on the window sill.  The ignition flints were a bit well-worn, so there was usually an epic fireball when you eventually got it lit.  On this basis, I had moved the cans of air freshener that normally lived on the window sill to a shelf on the landing, where they were safely out of the way, before lighting it.  My parents were convinced that I had been sniffing the propellant, and confronted me about it.  As a naive and highly allergic ten year old, this was the first time I'd encountered the concept of solvent abuse, and was thoroughly confused. "Why would I want to do that?  It would make me sneeze!  And even if I was, I'd have the sense to put it back where I got it from so you wouldn't notice."

Thus began a lengthy career of self-incrimination by application of the "If I'd committed that crime I'd have done it this way..."^[1] defence.  



_{[1] And on a couple of occasions the "Wow, that's a fantastically clever crime, I wish I'd thought of it." defence, which is even worse.}

[Quisling]

At primary school I was dragged before the Head and given a right nasty telling off for bullying another child. They then wheeled in the other child so I could apologise to him, but he at least had the nuts to tell them that he must have got the wrong name.

The Head said fair enough and sent me on my way with no apology, even though I was nearly in tears. He clearly thought I was so evil and intimidating that the victim backed down when faced with the bully.

I still remember the injustice of that. Not the false (but not malicious) accusation, but the Head's inability to apologise even though he'd given the nth degree to the wrong kid

[Tourist Tony]

Kim
With a psychotically dreadful fear of needles, a passionate hatred of smoking, a fear of being out of control of myself in public and a tendency to a splitting headache at the slightest whiff of co*a*ne, I am reasonably safe from that sort of abuse!

[Kim]

At primary school I was dragged before the Head and given a right nasty telling off for bullying another child.

Ah, that reminds me.  I was once part of a group who were hauled in and given the lecture for throwing stones.  I hadn't (on that occasion, at least) thrown anything, though I had been hit by a couple, but without injury worthy of teacher involvement.

Our punishment was to be banned from PE for six weeks, and to spend the time in the library reading books of our choice.  I considered this to be such an epic win that I easily overlooked the whole injustice aspect, and indeed seriously contemplated further serious crimes for the purpose of achieving similar punishments in future.

[tiermat]

At the age of 7 I was accused, and summarily found guilty of, stealing from my parent's friend's shop.

My punishment was to bake some cakes and take it to them, even whilst protesting my innocence...

[ravenbait]

My parents dispatched me to boarding school when I was 15 on the basis that they would prefer me to have the opportunity to go to Oxbridge and that was incredibly difficult on Scottish Highers at the time. Having failed to get into the School of the Atlantic, I won a partial scholarship to go to Millfield. Thus commenced two of the worst years of my life, starting with a ridiculous accusation that should have told me what to expect:

My mother had packed me off with a cardboard box full of goodies, presumably to make me think I was off to Mallory Towers rather than a hive of snobbery and boorishness in Somerset. Contained therein, along with the Scotch Abernethys, the multipack of twixes and the happyfaces, where four 2l bottles of Irn Bru, which at the time was not available in Englandshire.

On my second day I was called to the Housemaster's office and told I was about to be suspended. I'd been there less than 48 hours and had barely stopped crying at the thought of having to spend a further ten weeks there. What could I possibly have done to warrant suspension?

The Housemaster took one of my bottles of Irn Bru from his desk and pointed to the tagline that said "Scotland's other national drink." On the basis that Scots were alcoholics, apparently this meant that my fizzy orange pop must contain alcohol and alcohol was forbidden. Hence suspension. I had to go through the ingredients list with him before he was satisfied and he did not apologise.

More than 20 years later I wonder if he meant it as some form of joke, to break the ice and make me feel relaxed. If he did it didn't bloody work.

Sam

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

I was punished for writing "Hissing Sid is guilty" on a wall in our house with felt tip pen. My truthful protestations that my brother was the guilty party were ignored because nobody believed he could have spelled "guilty" correctly.

It still rankles, even though my mum has apologised.

[clarion]

I was punished for all sorts of things my sister did.  Hard to say which was the worst...

[Jaded]

I was punished for all sorts of things my sister did.  Hard to say which was the worst...

She was, obviously.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

Causing trouble in the language lab.  If you got the switches in a certain position there was loud feedback.  Some people were mischievously doing this and the teacher decided to pick on me as the culprit.  Being a late developer I was pretty nearly the smallest in the class back then so I guess an easy target.

It's marked me for life, I've never been any good at languages since.

[Kim]

I was punished for writing "Hissing Sid is guilty" on a wall in our house with felt tip pen. My truthful protestations that my brother was the guilty party were ignored because nobody believed he could have spelled "guilty" correctly.

*recalls $kid in her [now known as year 8] class getting a detention because the teacher discovered that someone had written "$kid is gay" on one of the desks*

Some people have no common sense.

[David Martin]

Stealing starters from teh fluorescent light fittings. Our somewhat rundown school had a lack of these so some of us had acquired some, me from home, others from other lights, so we could get light in the classrooms.

When they called us on it I protested vigorously. At first they refused to believe me saying that nobody has such things lying around at home (they had obviously never met engineering families before).

Eventually they relented.

Other strange things for which I was punished. 'being in a room without permission' after being thrown in there through a window.

..d

[Kim]

Stealing starters from teh fluorescent light fittings. Our somewhat rundown school had a lack of these so some of us had acquired some, me from home, others from other lights, so we could get light in the classrooms.

I was the sort of kid who could be relied on to have an assortment of starters in their pocket.  I once got a half-arsed telling off from my physics teacher for climbing up to the roof of the lab to replace a knackered one, because the flickering was doing my head in.  I suspect it was doing his head in too.

[nicknack]

Not something I didn't do but somewhat excessive punishment. I got caned for throwing a snowball at a tree. I was about 10.

[Adam]

At school, one classroom had a white board with marker pens rather than a traditional blackboard (this was a long time ago, in 1975).  There was a weekly roster as to who was responsible for ensuring the water bottle dispenser was kept topped up, which was then squirted onto the wiper thing so the board could be cleaned. 

One day, I saw the bottle was empty and even though it wasn't my turn to fill up the water bottle, I headed off to the toilets to fill it up, and on the way, the boy whose turn it was, spotted me, and said he'd do it instead, so I threw it maybe 5 feet to him. 

This was seen by one of the teachers, Mr Cousins, who didn't believe I'd volunteered to fill it myself, despite the other lad confirming my story, and said I was lying when I said I had decided to fill it myself, and that I was merely playing around with the bottle, so the bastard gave me a detention. 

I complained to the Head, and he agreed with Mr Cousins, even though I'd pointed out the inconsistency, that if I had genuinely been playing around with the bottle, why wasn't the other boy given a detention, as I'd thrown the bottle to him.

I didn't bother volunteering or helping out any more after that (changed schools as well, but that's another story).

[barakta]

Accusation: Hitting my maternal Grandpa on the head with a plastic lemonade bottle when I was 14...

Actually happened: Grandpa hit me around the head and body several times (and broke a hearing aid connector in the process) with the lemonade bottle because he overhead me telling my grandma I'd call childline as she'd moved to hit me because she was losing a verbal argument.

The bit which REALLY rankles is that this has become a family joke "hahaha barakta hit grandpa with a lemonade bottle" and they refuse to realise that actually it was extremely traumatic AND I didn't bloody hit him.  If i had I probably wouldn't be so pissed off that he attacked me!

[Sergeant Pluck]

Sending an obscene Christmas card to the headmistress. Caned for that.

[robbo6]

Was accused of piddling on the class usual victim's head. It wasn't piddle, it was water out of the toilet bowl. The telling-off from the teacher was devalued two weeks later when she was in the court where she was usually a magistrate being convicted of shop-lifting a packet of biscuits from the Co-op.