Practical Joke #4

I was trying to remember when I first started practical jokes. Still don't know, but I remember one of my earlier ones.

In high school, we had a math teacher who was....a drunk. Literally. He shared stories of how his wife would get tired of him and make him sleep on the couch with his dog. He talked about his DUI arrest and that he had a probation officer to check with. He also didn't really pay attention in our class. He would stand at the chalkboard with his back to us and not really hear us whispering, giggling, and doing all the other things you do when teacher isn't looking.

I have to tell you about one of my classmates. He could draw really well. He drew a larger picture of Mr. B and made his mouth a moving part. Whenever Mr. B. was lecturing and not looking at him, J. would hold up the 5 inch replica of Mr. B. and move his mouth in tune to the actual lecture. Hilarious! I still giggle thinking about that. Or the flying bird. Again, J. made a bird (very similar to oragami) and rigged it up to a string hanging from the projection screen. The string then traveled from the projection screen across the ceiling to his seat next to the wall. He would then pull the string and make the bird "fly." Oh my word, many laughs in that class.

Or how about the day we decided to drop our books exactly at 10:55 am? Each of the 30 students in that class watched the clock and exactly at 10:55 am, we dropped out books on the floor. Or the day we had someone sharpening their pencil throughout the class period. When one student sat down, another would get up. We also had a day where we turned our seats around. When Mr. B. walked into the classroom, we were all facing the opposite direction.

Needless to say, we, high school students, had a grand time in his class. For anyone familiar with the TV show "Welcome Back, Kotter"--it was lived in my high school circa 1986.

Anyway, back to my original thought. Before there were personal computers with all the nifty stuff you can do, I had an electric typewriter. It had some grand features including various fonts and sizes. One day, my best friend and I decided to send a letter to Mr. B. This letter was to announce his winning a contest. I don't remember all the details but here's basically what we said. He had won first prize which was a one way ticket to Libya (some kind of conflict happened between US and Libya around that time) and lost the prizes of a new Spring wardrobe (he wore the same 2 suits all the time) and a new couch. He was to pick up his prize at his probation officer's appointment. He also had to know the password to pick up his prize. Password was "Le Petite Garcon"--which was the name of his dog.

The letter was mailed to his home address. Upon receiving it, he brought it to school to show the other teachers. We never found out if he laughed, rolled his eyes, or swore after reading it. I remember one of my teachers telling me about it. None of the teachers could figure out who did it, but they knew whoever it was had a computer. There were only a handful of people at that time that had computers so speculation on these people ran rampant. I was not one of them.