By Charles Coxe
Guest Writer
Okay, what the heck is wrong with you people?
Yeah, I’m talking to you, Lassiter seniors: In a few short months, your entire illustrious high school career will be the stuff of memory. What will you remember? The time you completely forgot to study for your geometry final and tried to avoid it by hiding in the elevator? The time you had the stomach flu and “didn’t quite make it” to the bathroom in time? The time Megan called you a “complete and total loser who still sleeps with his blankie” and dumped you in front of an enraptured lunchroom? No, you’ll eventually forget all of that, with the help of thousands of dollars of therapy, of course. (Except you, Megan—I will NEVER forgive you. But I digress.) What you’ll REALLY remember are the amazing senior pranks you pulled before you strolled out the door for the last time…except you haven’t pulled a single one. You guys are pathetic. Pardon my French, but D’où part le bateau? (Translation: “Where does the boat leave from?” Sorry, I don’t speak much French.)
Who am I to throw around such school-newspaper-censored diatribes? Well, by your standards, I’m an old man. A former Lassiter High School senior myself, I graduated in 1993. Now I’ve gone on to better-paying but possibly even more juvenile things, working at Maxim magazine for the past 6 1/2 years, where I’m now Executive Editor. But back in my day (dear God, I AM an old man…), we followed the tradition of senior pranks as if it were a hallowed religion, taking it upon ourselves to outdo the classes that came before us. Sure, I’m bragging, but our greatest hits included:
•The obligatory purchase of vast numbers of crickets and setting them loose in the gymnasium.
•The specifically Southern tradition of procuring a swine, greasing it up real good, and setting it loose in the halls for administrators to repeatedly but unsuccessfully attempt to tackle, with comic results on a par with the Three Stooges.
•Weekly Friday food fights in the lunchroom.
•Supergluing whole banks of lockers shut.
•The bad idea: Dumping a large amount of vegetable oil on the floor of Skylight Hall. Not only was it just a physical hazard with no creativity behind it, but it was easy for the perpetrators to get caught, as they found it impossible to run away on their oil-slicked floor.
•My personal favorite: The night before second semester (when students would drive in early the next morning to locate their new numbered parking spots), we went around both the front and back lots and painted black over the numbers. The next morning, the lot was a hopeless traffic jam as no one had any clue where they were supposed to park, and classes had to be delayed to accommodate it. It was a work of brilliance, and I’m proud to take responsibility for it. (That’s right, Officer Pelfrey! Whatcha gonna do about it now, big guy? Huh?)
But I’m not really here to gloat. I’m here to help you, the class of 2004, rise up and take the cake as the best pranksters in the history of Lassiter High School. A tough task, to be sure, but the good news is that you guys still have over three good months to put every previous class to shame, both in quantity and quality. Here are a few ideas. I’m not saying you have to do them all, I’m just putting them out there. Some are easy, and some are quite a bit more involved. Just don’t tell anybody you got them from me.
•On February 23rd, all seniors run a lap around the school between 1st and 2nd period.
•On March 5th, everyone set their watch alarms and cell phones (and any battery-powered travel alarms) to go off at precisely 10:14 am.
•Whistle the first ten notes of “It’s a Small world After All” every ten minutes. I guarantee at least one teacher will go insane before the day is through.
•Along the same line, repeat the following conversation 10 times with the same teacher:
“Do you hear that?”
“What?”
“Never mind, it’s gone now.”
•Buy or create a set of small round stickers with numbers on them. Then go into the elevator and carefully re-label the buttons according to a plausible but incorrect schema. While you’re at it, switch the “Door Open” and “Door Close” buttons, and replace “Emergency Stop” with “Shear All Cables” or “To the Batcave!”
•When no one’s looking, remove the paper tray from a photocopier or laser printer and, with a red marker, scrawl the word “Satan” on several sheets at random. Reinsert tray.
•Procure a parrot or cockatoo and train it to say “Little Jimmy’s been bad and needs a spanking” or “There are no time outs in the world of professional wrestling” or “Pat Sajak is Lord.” Then release said bird in skylight hall, and let the endless squawking announcements begin.
•Print up 50 flyers: “Free Pizza! Just come to Principal Carter’s office today between 3rd and 4th period to fill out a five question survey.” Paste them all over the school.
•Secretly hook your teacher’s computer power cable up to a clapper. Just as he/she’s finishing typing up the next test, slap your hands together.
•Write the word “TAG” on a sheet of paper. Walk up to a random senior in the hall, hand him the paper, say “you’re it,” and run. This should continue all day.
•Underclassmen are so exhilarated by the prospect of free food, they’ll eat anything. So head to the lunchroom, set up a small table, and under the pretense of having a bake sale for a student organization or running for some ridiculously transparent resume-padding student council office, set up a platter of your own homemade goodies: birdseed bells, dead “candy” grasshoppers, pork fat, globs of peanut butter wrapped in fish skin…you get the idea. Don’t forget the frilly toothpicks. Feeling truly adventurous? Take this to 11 and commandeer an entire lunch line for this purpose.
That should at least be a good starting point for you. Use your imagination, keep the pranks funny and creative, and you’ll do just fine. And remember, despite what you get told when you inevitably get called down to the principal’s office to account for your prankster behavior, you actually WILL amount to something someday—you know a former Lassiter grad who does this kind of stuff for a living.