In case you weren’t aware, sniffing Sharpies is gross. It’s also cause for suspension from school if you attend Adams School District 50 in Colorado.

That’s what happened to eight-year-old Eathan Harris, who colored a small area of his sweatshirt sleeve with Sharpie and smelled it periodically during class. His reasoning?

“It smelled good,” Harris said. “They told me that’s wrong.”

School administrators, however, suspended him because “smelling the markers could make him high”—and they also removed all other markers from school premises to prevent this from happening again. Never mind the fact that a toxicologist with the Rocky Mountain Poison Control Center confirmed that getting high by smelling Sharpies is an unfounded theory.

This is all very alarmist and nanny state-y. (It’s Friday and I’m making up words. Roll with it, please.) But my question is why the hell was this kid smelling a Sharpie? I can think of few things that smell worse than a Sharpie. And you can’t even get high! I mean, at least when I was a kid we had markers that made you light-headed and actually smelled good—cherry, blueberry, black licorice (although that one smelled more like death doused in motor oil and sprinkled with battery acid, now that I think about it).

Anyway, my point is that this is insane on two levels: 1) the obvious alarmist aspect of it, and 2) the fact that this child actually thinks Sharpies smell good.

It’s a crazy world we live in.