School pranks
I still can’t help laughing as I reread some of these. While I know that a few of them caused my teachers to suffer, caused some damage to property and also distracted my classmates from their studies, I believe that they are a part of history that has some value. There is the risk that some people my copy my actions and cause further damage – there is a risk in everything in life. There is also the possibility of some people being inspired to create pranks which are less destructive than mine after having read this wide variety of pranks, or to invent some constructive actions of their own instead.
As a young child, my mother kept me under strict control.
However when I was sent away to boarding school, I enjoyed being able to do all sorts things that I thought, at the time, were fun and exciting.
We did not have ball point pens back in those days. We used a pen and ink. Each desk had an ink well. I enjoyed putting things in the ink wells. Chalk tended to have an interesting effect on the writing. Detergent would make the ink run, so I sometimes put it in many ink wells in the classroom.
Some teachers would wear a black gown. I enjoyed flicking ink on to the back, but got caught out because I was laughing at all the blue dots on the back of the faded black gown that the teacher was wearing.
I liked annoying the teacher. I arranged a system for making a clicking sound on either side of the classroom. I installed some concealed wires from my desk to two electro-magnets. One each side of the classroom. Each electro-magnet had a bottle top beside it so it would click when I touched the wires to a battery under my desk. I would click one side until the teacher started heading in that direction. I would then click the other side. I eventually lost interest, as I never even got close to getting caught.
I did not like learning French, so added an “e” to the end of the teacher’s name where I had to write his name on my French exam paper. He said that even though I might not know much of the language, I did know how to change the name to the feminine in French.
One lunch time, I arranged the portable blackboard so it would fall if the teacher attempted to write on it. It caused much commotion in the classroom and I was not singled out for punishment.
I prepared the chalk by painting it with varnish and letting it dry for a few days or put staples in the chalk to make it not write on the board.
I put chalk in the grooves of the blackboard duster so it would leave chalk marks on the board in stead of cleaning it. I don’t know if the teacher knew that I did it, but he sent me to see the vice principal when he saw me laughing.
There was the trick of balancing a bucket on the top of the open classroom door so it would fall down when the door was opened further or closed. I thought of the idea of placing a chalk box on the ventilator on the wall, so when somebody yelled through the ventilator, the chalk box would fall on the teacher when he slammed the ventilator shut. I collected as much chalk dust as I could. I cleaned the blackboard dusters and ledges in all the classrooms and got a lot of chalk dust, which was added to the sawdust that the blackboard chalk was packed in. It did not work. The chalk box completely missed the teacher when it fell. In fact I don’t think the teacher even noticed it. He did however notice me laughing and I was sent out of the classroom.
One of the legs of the teacher’s table was loose, so before class I took the leg off and left the desk prepared to fall when the teacher placed anything on the table. I did not think the prank was successful because the punishment I received for damaging school property was severe and the reprimand that I received from my parents was too.
In the boarding school there was a dormitory at each end of the corridor. After lights out, those of us in one dormitory would create a disturbance until we heard the footsteps of the master on duty. We would then be quiet and those in the dormitory at the other end of the corridor would become noisy. Except when one particular teacher, when he was on duty, took of his shoes and walked silently along the hallway. He walked in his socks so quietly that he caught the culprits. The next time he was on duty, one of the boys placed several drawing pins on the corridor floor.
After lights out I enjoyed the challenge of not getting caught as I sneaked out of the dormitory and started one or two marbles rolling down the stairs and then quickly went back to bed. I did that on several nights until the evening that one marble went really well and hit the headmaster’s study door across the hallway at the foot of the stairs. It never occurred to me that the headmaster could possibly be in his study late in the evening. The headmaster insisted that the person responsible owned up, or everybody would be on detention on Saturday, so I said that I was the one who did it.
At lunch one day, I emptied the salt from the salt shaker in to the sugar bowl. I did not realize that the kitchen staff emptied all the sugar bowls in to a large container and washed all the sugar bowls. The next morning, some boys and a few teachers noticed the taste of salt as they ate their breakfast cereal. The teacher at the end of the table that I was at made me have all my meals outside the dining room for the rest of the year. He said he noticed the salt shaker at my table had sticky finger marks on it.
One Friday evening I glued the teacher’s chair to the floor. The glue had set very well by Monday morning. I could not help laughing aloud when the teacher attempted to move his chair, so I was sent out of the room and missed seeing how the teacher eventually did move his chair.
I enjoyed hearing what one of my friends told me about one of his classes. The students were being very noisy. When the teacher said “there is too much noise in this classroom” he had replied “Sir, will I open the window to let the noise out?”
I never seemed to have any success at placing drawing pins on the teacher’s chair. The drawing pins always seemed to fall off the seat or be found by the teacher before he sat down.
Each student was required to have their “record book” in class. We had to write our homework in the back section. The front section was marked with our class attendance, and any remarks about bad behavior were written in the record book by the teacher. If we got 3 marks for bad behavior in a week, we would get Saturday morning detention. As I had so many marks in my record book, I was warned not to get any more marks in it. So the next time the teacher asked me to get out my record book, I did. As the teacher approached my desk, I threw the book through the open classroom window behind me. I was sent off to the vice principal’s office. I did not take the caning at all well. I yelled and did not stand still.
I flicked a piece of butter at the ceiling of the study room one weekend, but the pat of butter stuck to one of the lights at the end of the room. Then on Monday evening during study, when the light started to warm up, the butter began to melt and dripped on to the teacher’s desk. I couldn’t help giggling and was punished by Saturday morning detention. There was a problem. I also had a Saturday morning detention for over 3 points in my record book. I thought that I would not receive my punishment, but it did not turn out that way. My punishment was put forward to the next Saturday. By then I had another Saturday morning detention, so after a few weeks, with a backlog of Saturday morning detentions, the teachers invented Saturday afternoon detention especially for me.
The next time I had placed a small padlock on my record book and left the key in the boarding house. That way the teacher could not write any marks in my record book. When I was asked to hand my record book to the teacher for him to put a mark in it, he saw the padlock asked me to open it. I said that I left the key in the boarding house. The teacher sent me off to see the headmaster, and I thought “at least I did not get another mark in my record book this time.” The headmaster looked at the record book and said it looked disgusting. He remarked that it looks as if a mouse had been chewing at the corners of it. I couldn’t help laughing, as I had nervously chewed on it while waiting to see the headmaster. The caning did hurt a lot, but I avoided getting another mark in my record book.
The school got a new headmaster the following year, and the new headmaster asked my parents to take me to a psychiatrist. I think the psychiatrist said that he did not think there was anything wrong with me, though he did tell me that I seemed to be trying very hard.
I was eventually expelled from that boarding school. My mother got me in to another boarding school, but it seems that my behavior did not improve.
The punishment that I got for some of my misdemeanors was that I had to write out one or more copies of the school rules. To make it more interesting, I would write them as tiny as possible. I used a fine mapping pen especially sharpened to an extremely fine point. When I was told that was not acceptable, I explained that the size of the school rules had not been specified, and that I had completed the task – all the school rules were there. I further explained that bigger writing would be an unnecessary waste of paper. On another occasion I wrote the school rules on a piece of wood. The teacher did not accept my explanation that paper is made from wood. I used mirror writing on another occasion.
I prepared for other times that would be asked to write out the school rules. I had already written out several copies of them. Next time I was told to write out a copy of the school rules, I just pulled out one that I had already done and immediately handed it to the teacher.
The school had electric bells to signal the times for class etc. I bent one of the wires back and forth enough so the wire broke even though it looked intact. We had no electric school bell through a large part of the school for a few days while the maintenance man puzzled over where the fault was.
In history lessons, I drew television aerials on all the pictures of old buildings in my history text book. It was not until I traveled overseas many years later that I found that some of those old buildings do have television aerials on them. The only difference is that European buildings have small UHF aerials, and I had drawn larger VHF aerials in my history book.
I liked making “bolt bombs”. A quarter inch steel bolt was screwed in to each side of a nut, with some match heads in between. When this is dropped from the top of the stairs on to the concrete below, it made a loud bang.
I found one of the light bulbs in the boarding house had blown. I took the globe out and drilled a small hole in it. I filled it with water and replaced it in the light socket. But it did not do anything that evening. The next day, I added some salt into the bulb, and that evening the master on duty got very upset about that globe that was dripping water.
Every evening, each of us had to do our homework at our desk in the supervised study room. One cold evening, I was noisily crumpling up a piece of paper. The person who was supervising grabbed the piece of paper from me and threw it in to the fireplace. About 20 minutes later there was this loud explosion from the fire. We were asked “who was responsible for that?” Nobody said anything. The matter started to become serious as the master on duty was about to go and contact the headmaster. I meekly put up my hand and said “Sir, you know that piece of paper you took from me.” Fortunately that was the end of it. Nothing more had to be said. I did not even have to explain that that crumpled piece of paper contained a cork, and embedded in the middle of the cork was a starting pistol blank. I think that was the best prank I ever played. I was never punished for it.
In the winter, the teachers and senior students in the boarding house all had their electric radiators on in the evening. The load was too much and it blew main fuse in the boarding house. I thought it was the best time to have a power blackout – during study. I made a few attempts at intentionally creating more power blackouts, but each of my attempts failed.
One time there was a plague of moths. I caught dozens of moths. My bed had a tubular frame, and I removed one of the plastic caps and put each moth that I caught down the tubing of the bed head. One evening another boy took the cap off and put a lighted firecracker in, and then there were bits of moth everywhere.
In class, I found a chair which was starting to fall apart. So I used it, and with a little encouragement from me, it collapsed noisily in the middle of a school lesson. The fall did not hurt much, though it was a bit of a surprise for me to land on a pile of pieces of broken chair. The teacher seemed to have assumed that the chair had accidentally broken.
I did not like spending my money on telephone calls to my parents. I wondered if I could make my calls cheaper. The telephone systems were not as automated back then. To call from a public telephone, I would have to ring 0173 and an operator would ask me to insert the coins before she would connect me. The normal long distance operator number 011 could not be called from public telephones. I thought about how I could call 011 from a public phone, and avoid having to insert coins. I thought of the idea of dialing an outside exchange and then dialing 011 So I dialed 78011 (78 was the number for the Frankston area exchange) That did not work as it was the wrong area. I then tried 783011 as that would get me 011 in the Melbourne area. It worked! I could make my long distance telephone calls for the cost of a local call. I was so excited that I told some of my friends. Some months later, one of my friends was caught on a fifteen minute call to Sydney. He hung up immediately, but the person that he had called was still on the line, and gave the details of the person who had called. I remember being called into the headmaster’s study and being questioned by two detectives and an engineer from the telephone company. They wanted to find out from me who I had found out from about how to make the free telephone calls. They did not believe me when I told them that I thought up the idea myself. The headmaster knew me better. When the people from the telephone company asked the headmaster what they should do about me, he suggested that they give me a scholarship. The others who had made free calls were caught, as they had all made their calls from the one public telephone and there was a record of all the calls. But I always made my calls from different phone booths, and did not pay for my calls. Within three days, it was no longer possible to make long distance calls by dialing 783011
I found out the telephone numbers of some public telephones. I would ring from another public phone that was far enough to not be easily noticed, but near enough to see from a distance. I was surprised to find how often somebody would answer. I tried to ask the person to insert coins and press button A, but I just burst out laughing every time I tried. I got another boy to do the speaking for me, and somebody actually inserted coins as requested!
I often avoided paying my tram fare. I did not pay my fare to the conductor, and if ever a ticket inspector came on board to check the tickets, I would start searching through my collection of dozens of used tickets as though one of them was a valid ticket.
The boarders all had to go to church each Sunday. One day, I brought my stapler with me, and stapled through the wire to the loudspeaker. I enjoyed not hearing the sermon, but a couple of weeks later was shocked to hear how much trouble one of my teachers went to to find the fault and also replace the amplifier which had ceased to function as a result of my stapling.
Another Sunday, on returning from church, I found a piece of ice along the way. I brought it with me to breakfast, and placed it in the coffee pot. The coffee was always cold, so I used the ice to prove a point and explained to the woman in charge of the kitchen that the coffee was so cold that it had ice in it. She would not believe me however, and she insisted that somebody had put the ice in the coffee pot.
One day when I was sent out of the classroom because of my behavior, I occupied myself by making a hole in the brick wall outside the classroom. I continued on other occasions and within 2 weeks, I had removed one brick and made a small hole in the second course of bricks, through the mortar between them. One lunchtime I straightened out a wire coat hanger and poked it through the hole. In the classroom I attached the rubbish bin to the end of the wire. After lunch, when the teacher was in the room, I pulled the wire several times and enjoyed hearing the sound of the rubbish bin clanking up and down the wall inside the classroom. I laughed when I heard the laughter from the room. I was very disappointed to have missed seeing it for myself. I was particularly annoyed that my parents had to pay for replacing two bricks in the classroom wall. I had only removed one. Somebody else had later removed the other brick and I thought that it was very unjust that my parents had to pay for both.
I did not like the boarding house master. I collected all the old keys I could find. I collected dozens of them. I attached a tag to each with the name and address to return them to, and saying reward if found. The name on each tag was the name of the boarding house master. Unfortunately his address as shown in the telephone directory was incorrect, and as I had used that address, the prank did not work very well. Somebody else was annoyed instead.
I wrote a story about our commerce teacher. I was surprised to find that he had a good enough sense of humor to be able to read it without getting annoyed at me. One example of that teacher’s own humor was before the end of year exam, when he told us that if our balance sheet did not balance in the exam, he may still consider passing us if we pinned the difference in cash to the corner of the exam paper. Maybe he, unlike some other teachers, actually has a real understanding of life in the real world!
I really enjoyed physics. One of the physics experiments was supposed to teach us about wave motion. We used a ripple tank, which was a pane of glass with a wooden frame mounted on a stand. The frame was to be filled to a depth of about quarter an inch (6 mm) of water. I found out in the experiment that by carefully choosing a rubber stopper which was too large for the drain hole in the frame, I could spill a lot of water on the floor. I was even able to have the physics teacher spill more water on the floor as his attempts to make the stopper remain in the hole failed.
We also used springs for demonstrating transverse wave motion. I postulated the theory that light was not transmitted as waves or particles, but was transmitted as springs. Light was generated in light bulbs, which I noticed had a coiled filament, light bounced off objects, just as the waves in the spring did. The physics teacher totally ignored my suggestion.
I enjoyed studying velocity and acceleration. We used little carts which we loaded with one or two bricks, and measured their velocity and acceleration. I carefully chose the cart with the most friction in its wheels, and the most uneven bench. Instead of fudging the results of the physics experiment like most other students did, I was able to show that I got up to 80% experimental error. I also repeated the experiment with 3, 4 and 5 bricks before being told by the physics teacher that he had clearly told us not to use so many bricks.
Chemistry was fun for me. When I accidentally spilled some sulphuric acid on my chemistry prac book, and it caused part of two pages to disintegrate. I wrote it up as an experiment. As I did not have many of my prac experiments written up, and this was the best written one that I had done, the teacher actually gave me a good mark for it.
I liked having keys to many of the doors at the school. Whenever I was lent a key to open a classroom or other door, I would make an impression of the key in a piece of putty, so I could copy the pattern by filing a key blank to the same shape. I eventually made a gauge to measure keys with, which was a quicker and easier method of making keys.
I noticed that the trains had an automatic brake trip. It is designed to be activated by a signaling arm beside the railway track if the train passes a stop signal. I placed a brick on the railway crossing in a similar position to the signal arm, and the next train passing through came to a screeching halt. I was surprised how well that worked, but thought that could endanger people’s lives and did not do it again.
I went out to the beach with some other boarders one Saturday. They went to binge on alcohol, and I went as the sober one. Somehow we all got back and I don’t think anybody was caught. It was surprising as they had a lot to drink. Maybe most had vomited it all up so were not so much affected.
I wanted to take a photograph of a flying saucer. I took a cup and saucer from the school dining room, and arranged for one of my friends to take a photograph of it as I threw it across the school oval at dusk one evening. I also did a picture of a flying cup, and after gluing the cup to the saucer, photographed the flying cup and saucer.
I used that cup and saucer successfully in the dining room since they were well glued together. It was best with a little coffee spilled in the saucer so if the person who ended up with it did drink from it, the contents of the saucer would spill on him.
At the end of my last year at boarding school, I helped plot the disappearance of the boarding house door. I unscrewed the hinges, and removed all the hardware from it, and some of the other boys took the door away and placed in somebody’s neighbor’s back yard. I left all the door hardware in a small cardboard box where the door was taken from. I was not the one accused of that prank. The boy who was accused made an honest attempt to find the door, but the best he could do was to leave a card in the headmaster’s letter box saying “Sorry, unable to locate door. Merry Christmas” and signed his name on it. At an old boys dinner a year later, the headmaster said “…and we have a new door now. And it is a better one.” I think I really still owe the school a door.
My pranks did not stop when I left school.
I glued one of my workmate’s coffee cup to his desk.
I altered the wiring in somebody’s television to make the picture upside down.
On new years eve for several years I would set off a loud explosion in the city. When I let it off in a quiet part of the city, I would hear the sound of the police siren shortly after. Other years I did it in the noisier areas of the city. I heard only a few comments but the crowd noise made the explosion less noticeable so it was not so much fun.
I drilled a tiny hole in my friend’s wine glass. He thought it was a fun trick to play on his friends, seeing them unexpectedly spill a little as they drank. However after ending up using that glass himself a few times, he smashed it.
I made a left handed cork screw. Hardly anybody seemed to be able to uncork any bottles with it, yet I had no difficulty using that corkscrew. I laughed as I watched somebody attempting to use it to uncork a wine bottle after they had already had a few drinks.
One day my soft drink went completely flat. I only left the can on the railway track for a few minutes, but when I picked up the drink after the train had gone past, it was absolutely flat.
I tied knots in my daughter’s spaghetti so she could not slurp it.
I put somebody’s computer mouse in a mousetrap
I wanted to make some pie on ear headphones. I never managed to manufacture them, but did take a photo of a mock up of the concept.
I did something that I had wanted to do for years. It was a hot day. I purchased an umbrella, a battery powered water pump and some plastic tubing. I then set it up with a battery, a 5 litre container of water and a push button switch. With the water bottle, battery and pump in a small backpack I walked along some crowded city streets with my own rain falling from under my umbrella. I had lots of fun. I enjoyed hearing people laugh. Some of the comments – “What the!”, “Look at that”, “Looks cool” I had a ball.
Some other people’s pranks.
During a mathematics lesson about probability, one girl was asked by the teacher to give an example of a probability.
She answered “An example of a low probability is the chances of what we are learning in this lesson being useful to me in my life.” I particularly like her answer. Not only did it satisfy the teacher’s testing of her understanding of the subject. It also honestly communicated her opinion.
One of the boys managed to make a terrible stink in the chemistry laboratory with some of the chemicals. The chemistry teacher closed the windows and went outside the room, leaving all the boys in the class room to experience the smell.
The word “exhausted” reminds me of one school sports day when somebody put apples in the end of exhaust pipes of some of the spectator’s cars.
Some young people were having a scavenger hunt. One group was to find “un piece du fromage.” They did not know much of the French language, and thought the item was a piece of frontage, so took some palings from somebody’s front fence.
One young girl attempted to put laxatives in her school teacher’s coffee, however her teacher did not drink it.
Somebody removed the wheel nuts from his teacher’s bicycle.
A group of boys carried their teacher’s car and placed it between two trees. The front bumper was against one tree, and the back bumper was against the other tree. I don’t know how the teacher got his car out.
I still laugh as I read these, even though I am somewhat aware of the problems our pranks caused for our teachers, most of whom really cared about teaching us.