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The original was posted on /r/maliciouscompliance by /u/joaobalaya on 2024-10-23 08:59:54+00:00.
I'm a middle school teacher, and one of my seventh graders is an ADHD kid with a heavily active imagination. He loves working with his hands, so he is always cutting up paper, braiding yarn, etc. We always encourage him to clear his desk for class and at least try to keep the clutter away, and he always does it happily, although he sometimes has a little back and forth. "Student, let's start the lesson? Put the yarn away" "oh it's not yarn, it's technically nylon cords, so I can keep doing it, right?" This is always light-hearted and in no away aggressive, he knows he is being pedantic, it's just for fun.
Preparing for his responses, I always try to find a way to phrase my sentences in a way it will be hard to counter and yesterday it backfired.
He was messing about with paper and he told me "teacher, today you can't tell me to stop cutting paper, because I'm not cutting, I'm just folding" and he had a huge amount of folded pieces of paper on his desk.
So I said "very nice, student! So will you please stop manipulating paper so that we can start the class?" And smiled victoriously at him.
Little did I know, he looked at me and "what did you say? Stop manipulating paper?" And IMMEDIATELY proceeded to put away his notebooks and textbooks. I knew I had been cooked and just told him he had outsmarted me again. He kept at his desk doing nothing for like a minute and then he laughed it off, winked and got his stuff back on the desk, no folding paper anymore.
I love the little dude and I cherish these back and forth we have