HOW SHALL WE THEN PRANK?

         

 Wise people have often admonished, "write about what you know."  You may have noticed that I most frequently write about embarrassing screw-ups.  There is another topic I feel fully qualified to cover: the fine art of "pranking."

            Anyone can decorate a yard with toilet paper, or "fork" the front lawn of an intended target, and I have gleefully done both. 

         But the best pranks are 1. creative  2. funny to both the givers and receivers and 3. not destructive in any way.   I have to give mad props to my elder siblings for much of my education in the art of pranking.  One of my favorite recollections took place in Japan when my oldest sister who was already in High School and my slightly older brother who was in Middle School pulled a prank on Mr. Lady. Yes, that was his name.  He seemed to us to be the absolute stereotype of a British scholar, right down to the cardigan that he wore everyday.  I'm not sure about this, but it may have even sported patches on the elbows.  Shirley was the only one of us to actually have a class with him, and although she admitted later that he was a good teacher, at the time she considered that English class sheer agony. 

            Unfortunately for Mr. Lady, David (my brother) made a couple of interesting discoveries that Fall.  When he stepped out onto the roof that extended below his second story window, David realized that he could see through the windows of the high school classrooms several blocks away with a pair of binoculars.  This was great fun, because several teachers at The American School in Japan taught English as a second language on certain evenings in that building.  We could recline on the gentle slope of that roof and "spy" on the teachers!    

          There came a day when spying just wasn't enough.  But we had an amazing and harmless weapon at our disposal.  We had our father's disturbingly powerful strobe light often used for the filming of home movies.  I'm sure that no one under the age of 45 could possibly have any clue as to the horrific intensity of these contraptions.  I have no doubt that the energy required to operate these lights could have powered three small countries.  Most of the benchmark events of our family's life were accompanied by film of all of us squinting painfully into a camera that was accompanied by this tortuous device.  

          My genius siblings realized that the strobe light was powerful enough to shine into the window of the classrooms of the school like a giant spotlight.  Armed with the binoculars, and perched on the roof with extension cords hanging out of the window, they plotted their prank with the precision of an armed attack.  The moment Mr. Lady turned his back to the window to write on the chalk board, the beam of light would flood through his window.  In response to the light, he would turn around, but the “strobe fighters” would extinguish it before he could find its source! Their reward was great.  They could see the unflappable Mr. Lady becoming flustered before their eyes.  That was quite a prank.  I knew then as I sat on that roof top that I was watching greatness in action. 

                              They also modeled other minor pranks for my young impressionable brain.  I loved the time Shirley brought a needle and thread to school and surreptitiously stitched the sleeves of Mr. Lady’s cardigan closed as it hung enticingly on a coat rack.  To this day, I have to smile when I imagine him trying to put his arms through the cuffs.

          Usually a good prankster has to have a partner in crime.  When we moved to Abilene, Texas, my partner was Susan Parker.

  Our targets were usually the staff members of our church because we loved them.  In our twisted minds pranks = affection.  Examples of these little acts of love included the gathering of a couple of dozen tiny little frogs that we captured out at Susan’s farm.  We smuggled them into church on one of the many school days that we were supposed to be out selling advertisements for the school newspaper.  When the coast was clear we lovingly placed them into the top drawer of the desk of our Minister of Music, Tom. (If you ever read this, Tom, I’m just kidding, it was someone else).

        There were some great pranks at Baylor where my partner in crime absolutely was NOT Nancy Thomas who later became a judge in the great state of Texas.  Those were NOT our pledge uniform skirts hanging from the flagpole either!

         As a young single news reporter at KRBC back in Abilene, I found myself teaching a sweet class of young 8^th grade girls in Sunday School.  This is when I realized that it was time to pass the tradition of creative pranking to a new generation.  I asked my girls to begin collecting old newspapers.  When we had a huge stockpile, I tricked the Minister of Music (always a fun target) out of his house keys and we filled his bedroom from floor to ceiling with wadded-up newspapers.   I also bonded with my girls during our little escapade.  I learned that harmless pranking can be very beneficial to building relationships.

             You probably think that once I became a grown-up, I put away childish things.  You would be wrong!  One of my favorite bonding moments with a group of young women in my church in Columbia, South Carolina occurred when we took a pair of enormous novelty nylon granny panties (I’m talking about panties so large that my son was using them as a window covering), and hung them on a clothes line that we strung between two columns on the front of our pastor’s house.  

These are wonderful, constructive memories of church volunteerism.   As for other pranks….I cannot divulge them or our partners in crime (see Eli and Diane?  I can keep a secret!)

HONEY BUCKET BLUES

          One of the most pivotal events engraved upon my memory of the early years in Japan, did not actually happen to me.  The ripple effects of this incident reached out to a vast number of  us ignorant foreigners living in Japan at the time. It forever changed my perception of some of the most influential people in my life.  It is a story that you may not wish to read because I seriously doubt that you will be able to forget it, and if you are squeamish...let's just say it may bring to your mind images that you would rather not harbor. 
          Let me set the scene for you.  Japan in the mid-sixties was a place with a frantic pace of modern development at every turn.  A high speed rail system, sky-scrapers, Nikon, Sony and a multitude of other companies were growing at a dizzying speed.  But in odd corners here and there were still pockets of the old world.  One of these old world oddities was  "Honeybucket".  How do I explain this to you? A few

random farmers clung to the old methods of fertilizing their fields by contracting with collectors of human waste. This prized commodity was transported in covered wooden buckets.  It was not difficult to tell when the "Honeybucket" man was near because the odor wafted out in front of him like an announcement for what was coming. Occasionally there were just two buckets dangling from both sides of a wooden yoke. As he approached, the honey bucket man called out some sort of exclamation.  I never knew if he was trying to find a buyer for his unusual wares or if he was warning people of the stench.  Even rarer was the glimpse of a Honey bucket cart, where the hard-working transport man pulled an entire wagon full of these distinctive containers.

          This "Honeybucket" had to end up somewhere.  We discovered exactly where when we moved to Chofu, which was (at least back then) on the outskirts of Tokyo. Tucked among the fields of produce on the neighboring farms, were earthen reservoirs filled with "Honey Bucket" sort of like swimming pools where the farmers mixed their own concoction of waste, soil and mysterious liquids right in the ground.  The evil brew would crust over, deceiving the unsuspecting soul into thinking it was solid ground.

          As an adolescent, I knew that there was no one to be admired more than my big sisters and their cool friends. Shirley was the dark-haired beauty and Lynda, the gorgeous blonde.  They were never unkind to me (well....except for those times they told me I was adopted), but I was the pesky younger sister, so I rarely got to enjoy their adventurous escapades.  It seemed they were always doing something wondrous and exciting with friends who were laughing and having fun.
         One day Shirley and her friends Melinda and Barbara set out on one of their adventures. They were armed with one Walkie Talkie and Johnny and Billy had the other. The guys, being clueless about the interest of girls were merely concerned with testing the range of the devices, while the girls were more interested in spying on the boys. Johnny and Billy sat inside a "soba" shop (noodle shop) amazed that the wakie talkies were so clear when the girls were supposed to be at Melinda's house. Little did they know that the girls lurked right outside of the soba shop.  The girls were very proud of themselves until they realized that the guys were about to hop on their bikes and go to Melinda's house. They took off running to try and beat them there. They had to find a way to improve their odds, so they decided to cut through a farm field.  The girls saw a big concrete platform about the size of a king-sized bed and Shirley, who was in the lead, stepped up on the edge and ran around the outside perimeter.  This is where their stories differ a bit.  Shirley insists that she called out, "Watch out for the Honeybucket!", but strangely neither Melinda nor Barbara heard it. (Now is a good time for those of you with weak stomachs to quit reading) 
          Melinda, being a very practical girl stepped up on the block and started straight across.  She made it more than half way before she started sinking. That is when she realized that this was not a concrete platform at all, it was the crusty top of a pool of Honeybucket!  She sank to her armpits, and held the walkie talkie high above her head.  Now, where was Barbara? She was no where in sight! Barbara was shorter so she had climbed up onto the "platform" but her arms plunged straight through the crust and she fell in head first!  All the way in.
          Shirley was still balancing on the edge of the narrow rim around the cess pool when she saw the others splashing around in the Honeybucket.  Meanwhile, Melinda's life was flashing before her eyes, so she began yelling into the walkie talkie for help.  The boys heard the panicked cries, hopped on their bikes to rescue the girls that they feared were being attacked.  Barbara popped up through the surface and backed her way out of the crap and rolled to the ground, which unfortunately was actually a country highway.  Imagine the surprise of the truck driver who came to a stop when he saw what looked like a tree trunk that was slowly walking with its arms stretched out to its sides.  Add to that image, the intense smell that permeated from it!
            About the time Melinda was pulling herself out of the Honeybucket, Billy and Johnny arrived on their bikes.  Where were the attackers?  Why were the girls covered in brown gunk?  The Japanese couple who lived on the farm came outside to see what was causing the commotion.  The woman could not quit exclaiming, "Ara, Ara!" (loosely translated, "What the heck?" but she said it like, "What are you doing in my Honeybucket!?") Billy tried to reassure her by saying, "Machigaishimashita!" (They made a mistake!)  The woman kept her distance and no doubt drew some firm conclusions about the crazy foreigners.
           There are so many more interesting details left untold in this story, but let me close by explaining that this was the day that my Goddess of a sister became human to me.  I still admired both of my sisters, but somehow I realized that they were in fact fallible, and therefore even approachable.  I may have felt that Shirley was more approachable, but apparently that was not the reaction of others as the word spread at school.  The girls were the brunt of a silent and humorous campaign.  When they were seen in the halls, the kids would scoot to the other side, as though driven by the smell.  
          Now every year or so my sisters and I try to get together for a sister trip.  We still like adventures!