Craziness en masse and high schoolers have gone hand-in-hand since the Great Sarsaparilla Kerfuffle of Umpteen-Lickety-Sixty.

The latest report of teenage weirdness comes to us from Cambodia, where a fainting spell is being chalked up to breath-stealing trees with murder in their bark. Reality, you just got Shyamalanized.

Contrary to everything you've learned in basic botany, the arbors of the world are out to choke us. Reports the Phnom Penh Post:

A day after 136 students collapsed at a Kompong Cham high school while standing at attention as punishment for not showing deference to the national flag, the local police chief offered a unique explanation for the mass fainting – trees.

"According to the hospital's analysis, the reason why the students fainted is [because of] the huge tree in the school compound and the farmland surrounding the school, which absorbed the oxygen," said Heng Meng, police chief of Chamkar Leu district, adding that the punishment could not be blamed as one of the teachers "also [had difficulty breathing] and felt dizzy" [...]

A doctor from the local hospital, Iv Then, said that based on his examination, the lack of oxygen was due to an abundance of trees, which trapped the oxygen, adding that the first four or five students fainted because they were standing under the school's large medicinal oil tree.

Fortunately for school officials, authorities have no "plans to charge the school director, because the incident was caused by nature." They'd be singing a different tune if those kids had easy access to lawnmowers.

[Via Fortean Times]