Jokus Practicalicus (Part I)

Chapter One

There are a gazillion different tricks and gags, one might see played on people of all ages during one’s lifetime. Some are just plain lame. Others are pretty good. But, there are several practical jokes out there, that will stand forever in the chronicles of sheer brilliance and creativity. Jokes which cause one to stretch one’s imagination so far, that it is truly difficult to believe the jokes themselves, much less the accounts of them, are actually true.

When Jonas was in Grade School, he had his first encounter with a practical joke. It was when Joseph Wertz, a senior elementary student (the term ‘student’ is used very loosely here), walked up beside him in the hallway and, greeted him with, “Hey Egg-head, let’s be pals! I’ve been pickin’ on you way too long. It’s time we got along.”

And, as he left Jonas there clinging to the hope that a Grade-8 kid might actually want to be his friend, he slapped him on the back, almost knocking the poor little Grade-5 boy over. By the time Jonas had walked to the end of the hallway, where his classroom was located, he had been kicked in the butt maybe six or seven times at least. At that early stage in the encounter, Jonas was not able to discern any connection between Joe Wertz’s offer, the slap on the back, and the subsequent kicks he received in the minutes after the offer. When he walked past his teacher, sitting behind her desk, she stopped him, whirled him around, peeled something off of his back, crumpled it up, threw it in the waste basket and, with a gentle push on the shoulders, sent him on his way. Jonas wondered what had been on his back, but class was beginning so he quickly took his seat and the day began. Later in the first class-period, Miss Anderson was called out of the classroom. She had no sooner disappeared from view when Jonas popped up from his desk and made a bee-line to the trash can. He rummaged around inside, looking at each crumpled bit of paper therein. There were some math questions and the odd tissue, but not much else. Finally he came upon a squished-up message, written on yellow construction paper. A piece of Scotch tape still clung to the paper. When he opened it to read what was written, he saw the words, “KIKE ME!” He almost threw it back into the trash, because he wasn’t familiar with the word ‘KIKE’, so the note really had no meaning. But, he kept it instead and put it in his pocket. At the end of period one, he took the note to several of his real friends and showed it to them.

“What does this note say?” Jonas asked.

None of them could offer a guess, and so he asked Rodney, who was a special needs student who sat at his own special table by the back window of the room beside the special needs teacher. Rodney was thrilled that someone was asking him for help. He looked at the note and a smile shot across his bespectacled little face and he shouted out “Kick Me, Kick Me, Kick Me.” And, then he laughed and laughed – at the very thought of it, one would assume.

Jonas wondered, “How would a note like that get on my back?”

Then he remembered Joseph Wertz asking that they be friends and then sealing the deal with a crushing blow, fit to dislodge a jawbreaker candy out of any normal person’s windpipe. Joe, a request for friendship, a slap on the back, kicks in the rear-end and a note that said, “KIKE ME” – er, well, “Kick Me”. It all made sense now. . It was then that Jonas realized he had been had. Joe had set him up to be kicked - but, by not just anyone in the school. Rather, Jonas thought, Joe was actually a nice guy after all, because he had played the prank on him so that he would only be kicked by students who exhibited the same limited knowledge of the English language as him. He reckoned that things certainly could have been a lot worse.

Chapter Two

I have also seen older students painstakingly seal all of the items in the top drawer of the teacher’s desk with a thin piece of paper, then carefully tip the drawer and it’s contents upside down and then place everything back into the desk slot. The paper which sealed the contents was then carefully removed. The trap was set. As soon as the teacher pulled the desk drawer open, all of the contents would succumb to the affects of gravity and scatter all over the floor. This climax would occur much to the delight of the jokesters (and everyone else I suppose) and it would usually eat away at some boring class time while the teacher picked up the pencils and papers and staplers, etc. LOL, LMAO, LMFAO, HAHAHAHA.

Chapter Three

The next story is of a joke NOT invented by our Neanderthalic ancestors, but rather created by a practical jokester who has since become inducted into the ‘GAGS and TRICKS’ Hall of Fame thus making him eligible to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award in the process. The joke itself was credited originally to Mortimer Redekopp, a part-time auto mechanic, who one day decided to experiment with the re-wiring of a 1971 GMC half-ton truck. His efforts produced astonishing results. He took his ‘lab-work’ one step further and attempted to reproduce the results in a field trial. A friend of his had a similar model vehicle, so the next step was seriously simple. Mortimer waited until his friend had gone into the local pub one evening for a drink. While his friend was inside, Mortimer lifted the hood of the vehicle and located the wiring harness that came from the dashboard and through the firewall. Once located he separated the wire that serviced the turn-signal lights of the truck. He also found the wire that controlled the windshield wipers and the one that went to the horn. In each of these wires, he used his utility knife to put a small nick in the insulation around the wires. Just happening to have in his possession several lengths of connecting wire equipped on either end with alligator clips, he hooked the clamps to the bare spots on the wires and interconnected the signal lights, the windshield wipers and the horn.

Some time later, Mortimer’s friend, now having finished a sensible volume of lager, came out of the pub, got into his truck, started it, backed away from the curb and proceeded to head home. His route, as always, took him past the RCMP police barracks. Two of the officers on duty, were just getting into their vehicles as Morty’s pal turned left onto the street beside them. Because of the wiring connections Mortimer had rigged into his friend’s truck, not only did the signal light start to blink to indicate the turn, but the windshield wipers also assisted in the alert – as did the horn. With each blink of the lights, there was an intermittent accompaniment by the wipers and the horn. This naturally caught the attention of the police officers, so they got into their car and followed Mort’s friend. When he turned right at the next intersection, the horn and the wipers again heralded the turn. The driver had one more turn to make before getting onto his home street, where the same thing happened. At this point, the police officers, flashed their lights and pulled Mortimer’s friend over to the side of the street. Since they smelled liquor on his breath, they had a few more than one or two questions for the poor guy. After they had all checked under the hood of his truck, he was last seen getting into the back seat of the police car and heading back to the barracks to undergo a breathalyzer test. Mortimer’s friend did eventually pass the test and, he was taken back home. But the added feature of his (almost) arrest by the police was totally unexpected and, enough to push this practical joke from simply being ‘funny’, into the category of “Exceptional”.

To be continued in Part II . . . coming soon to VOCAL.