at primary school
The headmistress had some weird ideas. In assembly, she would scan the entire school, about 150 of us, to see who had a twinkle in their eyes. If they did, it meant that they had had enough sleep based on some arbitrary bedtime rules. One 8 year old actually got told off in assembly for not having said twinkle because he had 'clearly stayed up past his bedtime watching Jaws'. She said that late nights will lead to imbecility and eventually madness and blindness.
She also decreed that the boys' fringes must be above the eyebrows. Any longer and it will cause a squint.
I don't know where my twinkle came from because I never went to bed before 10pm
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Sat 15 Jan 2011, 22:50, 2 replies)

Perhaps their parents told her?
She may have been acting on behalf of parents who were at their wits end because their child didn't go to sleep until too late for them to have sex.
Vaguely related: it's odd that nowadays they think that too much sleep is a problem and that 6 hours is a good night's sleep to have.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Sat 15 Jan 2011, 23:52, closed)

My headmistress tried to do a lie detector test on the lot of us
the juniors were age range 8-11 and someone had scrawled 'shit' on the boy's toilet wall, using the artistic medium of, erm, Shit. So all the boys .in the year range were lined up along a wall to have an Irish nun of fearsome reputation interrogate us one by one, by staring them in the eye and asking softly 'Was it you?' (with the righteous wrath of God barely contained, by proxy, behind her eyeballs) until presumably the miscreant cracked under the forces of fear and guilt.

I don't know who actually got done for it (if anyone) but as these things go, the rumours flew that it was actually a boy A.T. who people considered dirty and so it was most likeley probably him. Mob justice for all at 9 years old.
( Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Sun 16 Jan 2011, 1:38, closed)