This is exactly right... my parents taught me the same thing about there being consequences and all that. Only "fight" I have ever gone in was when a kid decided to knock me in the head and run... and even then all I did was caught up to him and dropped him in the hall... never threw a punch and he thanked me that I didn't later that week... it was plenty to show him I wasn't gunna put up with it. When I went home I expected my parents to be mad but it really wasn't the case since I had to do something about standing up for myself.
Schools today are really brutal, there's always someone trying to pick some sort of fight and a lot of the time you can ignore it, but sooner or later you have to step up to the plate.
As for the whole thing with the calculator, we had to buy one too and I etched my name in the back and also wrote my initials in the battery compartment... also decorated the front cover with sharpie so it stood out...
It sucks that the school really didn't help you much...
Sometimes I wonder how teachers and the principals think so it was kinda cool reading both sides in the thread... gives ya something to think about.
