Boyish Prankery

Marta was wondering earlier this week about pranks, harmless or funny or otherwise. Coincidentally, at about the same time that she posted that, I received a funny reminder of a successful but harmless prank I’d been involved with from years ago. Thought I’d share the story with you (even though some of it, in retrospect, will embarrass me and make me wish that some things weren’t true).

Some background:

I attended a small high school in southern New Jersey in the late 1960s. Most school dances, at least back then (what do they do now, anyway?), were held in the gym, suitably transformed into romantic wonderlands by crepe paper and complicated lighting. But in our junior year, the prom — the Big Event — took place at a popular club some 10 or 15 miles away. Called the Latin Casino, it was a big deal, with big-name entertainers on the calendar, and at the time our prom took place the big name was big indeed: The Supremes, with Diana Ross.

So yes, we always got a rise out of telling people that we’d had The Supremes — The REAL Supremes — at our junior prom. We always got a rise out of that, even if we hadn’t gone to the prom ourselves. Which was the case with Yours Truly and most of his friends, none of us having yet fully (or at all) emerged from our cocoons of bachelor-boyhood.

(To be fair, it was a plain old economic calculation, too; two tickets to the Latin Casino cost a heck of a lot more than two tickets to the RHS gym. You practically had to believe you meant to marry the young lady in question.)

So that’s the background story. Now scroll the calendar forward, not quite a decade…

At this later time, I’d boomeranged back home to my parents’ house after the collapse of a first marriage and the crash-and-burning of a first career. I’d stayed in touch with a few of my friends from the old schooldays, though — friends who still lived in the area — and I was sitting with a couple of them one evening, playing cards probably. We’ll call them Tom and Jim (although those are not, ha!, their full names).

We were talking about The Old Days and the people we’d known. We’d look at an old yearbook, say, and we’d see how somebody we’d been secretly crazy about had signed her picture something like “Please keep in touch!” or “Gonna miss you!” (Or the real killer, “Wish I’d gotten to know you sooner! Love ya!”)

In the years since, though, we hadn’t kept up with what was going on in almost any of those sentimental folks’ lives; and while we really couldn’t have cared less about catching up with everyone whose name we remembered, we could rattle off a list of a dozen, two dozen we really would like to catch up with.

I don’t remember the sequence of the conversation, exactly, but Tom and I started riffing on the idea of getting a head start on the traditional tenth class reunion, which would be coming up sometime in the next year. (Jim may have gone to the fifth, but I’m sure Tom and I hadn’t.) Wouldn’t it be funny, one of us said, if somebody suggested a NINTH annual reunion? Wonder who’d come to that? Wonder who we’d INVITE in the first place?

And then we stopped wondering and started to seriously consider it…

Jim thought the idea was entertaining, but — as with many of the ideas Tom and I had — he was skeptical about the actual prospect of acting on it. If I’m not mistaken, the word “assholes” may have entered into his assessment. He washed his hands of participation. But that was fine with Tom and me, who just soldiered on alone.

At the time, Tom still rented a mailbox at the Post Office in the old hometown. We decided to use that as the front for what we quickly named the Ninth Annual Reunion Committee. (No, we weren’t unaware of the acronym’s other significance at the time, the late 1970s. We just thought we’d have more fun pretending not to care.) But the real problem would be finding the people we wanted to “invite” to this non-existent event.

(Yes, non-existent. We wanted to know, looking back on it now, how many of those people we could have gotten in touch with even if we didn’t have the courage to act on the knowledge. The word “assholes” rather figures in my own retrospective analysis.)

Nothing like Facebook then, of course, and no Twitter: no Web. No personal computers. About the only recourse we had to finding our very select audience was the phone book — and the knowledge that even if our friends had moved away, their parents still lived locally. So we made up our mailing list — including Jim, of course — as best we could, and sent out a typewritten letter over the Committee’s generic signature, asking who’d be interested, what everyone was currently up to, and so on. We told them we had some big plans, to be revealed in our next communication, but insisted that they send no money just then. (We may have been assholes, but we weren’t stupid enough not to care about real mail fraud.)

And then we waited.

The silence was profound at first, except for the chirping of crickets from Tom’s mailbox. And then all of a sudden the replies started rolling in.

Of maybe 15-20 people we’d contacted, some through their parents, we probably heard back from half of them. And you know what? They were all really excited. They wanted to know the details, wanted to know how they could help, wanted to know — especially — who exactly constituted the Ninth Annual Reunion Committee.

Then, finally, Tom and I were terribly embarrassed. I think we’d expected and maybe even hoped for skepticism — the whole idea of a ninth reunion seemed ridiculous to us, so it would certainly seem so to everybody else, right? But instead, we’d successfully hoodwinked nice, trusting people we honestly liked well enough to look them up after almost ten years. We couldn’t bear to break their hearts, and we couldn’t bear to carry the joke further. Cowards, we couldn’t even bring ourselves to reply. The RHS Class of 1969 Ninth Annual Reunion Committee sank beneath the waves without another word.

But, well — boys will be boys — we couldn’t resist just one more touch. We sent out one more letter, to one person.

Here are the first few paragraphs we came up with, details suitably blurred:

Dear Classmate,

Thank you for your prompt reply to our first letter.

As you can imagine, the excitement is beginning to build here at our N.A.R.C. office on Any Street in Hometown. We have set up not only the date (June 10, 1978) and the place (Ritzy Restaurant in Nearbytown), but we have also arranged an extra-special touch of nostalgia for our entertainment: Remember our Junior Prom? The place was the Latin Casino; the theme was “Candyland.” And the entertainment? That’s right — the Supremes! Unfortunately, Diana Ross is no longer with them, but we’ve succeeded in luring to Nearbytown for our reunion not only the remaining Supremes, but fellow Motown artist Gladys Knight!

How much is all this going to cost? Only $50 per couple — that’s right, only fifty dollars per couple! This cost includes not only entertainment, but a great meal besides! (Your choice of prime rib, beef bourgoigne, or Alaskan king crab.) And two glasses of champagne! (Sorry, but all other drinks are extra.)

We’ve noticed that quite a few of you are really moving up in the world. [various details obtained from replies to first letter]

And then we concluded:

You’ve all been very generous in offering your help, but we frankly have things running pretty smoothly. There was one area, though, where we thought we could use some help — finances — but one of you stepped forward and volunteered your professional assistance. Jim Lastname, former RHS tennis ace, is now an accountant [which in face he was, and is], and has offered his help with this sticky problem. So send your checks for $50.00 per couple by December 31 to: Jim Lastname, Address, Hometown NJ. Make checks payable to “N.A.R.C.”

Thanks again. We hope to be in touch with all of you again in a few more weeks.

Sincerely,
Ninth Annual Reunion Committee

As we learned shortly afterwards, this letter arrived at Jim’s parents’ house on a Saturday. When Jim read it on Saturday afternoon, he was profoundly hung over from a Friday night involving mass quantities of beer. His brother Dave was watching the expression on Jim’s face, and when he (Dave) read the letter he burst out laughing. “Ha ha, Jim! You’re gonna be getting so many checks!”

Jim himself, of course, at the time believed we’d sent the letter out to the whole mailing list. His eyes bloodshot, his brow furrowed, shaking his head, he muttered: “John and Tom. Those assholes…”

A few days ago, I received from Jim, via snailmail, photocopies of the envelope and the letter itself. (Which is why I could quote the whole thing verbatim above.) I grinned, and The Missus asked what it was.

“It’s a message from Jim,” I said.

“A message? What do you mean? What’s it say?”

“The message says, not in so many words, ‘John: You’re still an asshole.'”

__________________

P.S. The only high-school reunion I attended was the 15th. There, I ran into Len, who was there with his wife Denise — both of whom had been on the original invitation list, and had been among the enthusiastic respondents. I decided to come clean and asked him if the remembered the Ninth Annual Reunion thing. Sure he did. “Well,” I said, with what I hoped would be a charming scuff-my-feet embarrassment, “uh, Tom and I—”

“You!” he interrupted — practically shouted. “YOU guys?!?” He did not seem charmed. I gulped, nodding, and backed away, and haven’t talked to him since.