Things Your High School Principal Probably Shouldn't Do

A while ago, I was watching an old episode of Saved by the Bell. I'm not really sure why I felt the need to add the "old" as there hasn't been a "new" episode of SBTB in, oh I don't know, 17 years. (THAT CANNOT BE RIGHT!!! Except that is, if you don't count the New Class, which I don't.) Anyway, I was watching this episode, and I thought how incredibly inappropriate it was that Mr. Belding, the principal, was hanging out with students talking about his and their love lives! Now I know it's all fiction, but still I got a little laugh over it because I remember growing up watching the show thinking, "That is what high school is going to be like!". Except I didn't take into account the fact that I would go to an all girls Catholic high school that was run by nuns so most of that stuff would most likely never happen. Oh, and the fact that it would never happen no matter what high school you went to. But that is neither here nor there. Anyway, it got me thinking about all the things Mr. Belding did that no high school principal would ever be caught dead doing. Or if they were caught doing it, would be fired immediately.

• Moving from Indiana to California with some of his students. Ok, so this is not technically what happens and most of you are probably scratching your heads, but before there was SBTB, there was Good Morning Miss Bliss which has Mr. Belding, Zack, Lisa and Screech. When the show moved to NBC, they scrapped the rest of the characters, kept the four and moved them to California. I just think it's odd they all moved together...
• In the above mentioned episode, Mr. Belding gives Zack and Slater love advice and then when they "lose" their mates, they form some sort of guys club which includes having Mr. Belding hang out in Zack's room while the order pizza and talk about girls. Very odd. I do believe that if this really happened, the principal would probably be facing some jail time.
• In the episode, The Surgery, Zack hurts his knee when he runs into Mr. Belding (add it to the list of far fetched). Mr. Belding feels awful for "hurting" Zack so he promised to make it up to him, by taking his math take home test for him. Um, what? I don't know of any teacher let alone principal that would find this to be acceptable behavior. Aren't the adults supposed to be charge here? I guess at Bayside High that was never really the case.
• During, Student Teacher Week, the kiddos get to take the place of the "adults" and take over as teachers. Kelly gets to be a history teacher and Zack gets to be the principal. One would think that they would just get to hang out with the teachers and principal, but this SBTB! Zack has full authority as principal and Mr. Belding lazes around the school like a student. In fact, he pretty much refuses to help Zack in a sticky situation because he wants Zack to learn to be an "adult".
• In a late episode during what I like to call the "Unexplained Tori Years", Mr. Belding's wife is pregnant and allows the gang to throw her a baby shower during class time. Again, what principal is so close with his students that they know his wife and want to throw her a shower, more importantly during school? What about the other kids who still had class weren't they jealous?
• In another episode during the "Unexplained Tori Years", the school is left with a sizable donation from a deceased alumnus. Rather than making the decision of what should be done with the money, Mr. Belding allows the girls and guys to face off against one another to see which gender's sport should get the money. They have all kinds of challenges all in order to see who gets the money. Now, I went to Catholic School. Catholic School runs on sizable donations, and I can tell you that never once, did my principal ask what I wanted to do with the money? I'm just saying...

And I'm sure there are many more instances of the lovable Mr. Belding doing being so principalably (yes, it's a word), but this is a good start. The unbelievable nature of most of the episodes are just another reason to love this goofy show.