You will find short stories on this site. Most are autobiographical. Some are fiction.

A SENIOR PRANK

It started with a short case of Olympia beer, six high school senior boys, and one dog. I don’t recall how we got the beer, but I do recall that we didn’t know where to drink it. After considering several options, we settled on Tom’s family farm. We drove into the hills west of Eugene. Turning onto their private road, we passed the farmhouse and parked near the barn. We walked up the unpaved farm track to a field overlooking the scrub oak landscape of the Southern Willamette Valley. We enjoyed that late afternoon in May 1957, lying in the grass, talking about girls, telling old jokes, and drinking our beer. We would be graduating from high school in a little more than a month. We had enjoyed many good times together over the past three years. The sun slid behind the hills, and a chilling breeze drifted up through the trees and across the fields toward us. It became too cold to stay on the hill. We walked down the hill to seek shelter from the wind in the barn.

The barn was stacked with bales of hay, on which we reclined to continue our conversation. In this quiet time, my dog “Sassafras” discovered that mice lived in, under, and between the bales. We were infected by the excitement of my dog, and joined her in the hunt. Rolling bales and grabbing scurrying mice, was great fun. But activity was cut short when we were confronted with the question, What does one do with a wriggling mouse once it has been caught? The farmer’s wife had kept one-gallon-size mayonnaise jars on a windowsill in the barn. These large lidded jars were a perfect place to put mice. Using two of these jars, we resumed rolling bales and catching mice until we had filled the two- jars with mice and straw. There were easily 30 mice in each jar.

It was becoming dark. We needed to be heading home. But we had two, one-gallon mayonnaise jars of mice. This is an inspiring thing. What could we do with them? Many ideas were tossed out. We can’t just let them die in the jars. We can’t dump them out after having had so much fun collecting them. Then someone meekly said, “We could let them go in the school cafeteria.” Once it was suggested, it was immediately adopted as the plan for a great “RF” (Rat F***). Luck would have it that half of us had first lunch and half had second.

My Chemistry class was on the second floor of Eugheh High, overlooking the cafeteria wing. While the teacher was engaged in a lecture, all hell broke loose below. It was an enormous ruckus of screams, yelling, and shrieks coming from the open cafeteria windows. The students in our classroom, rushed to look out of the windows to see what was happening below. I looked around to find that I was the only one still seated at my desk. I jumped up and ran to the window too. Though I knew what was happening, I had to act like it was a surprise to me as well.

“Mac”, “Crow” (Jim Heldman), and Tom had been successful in letting their mice go in the cafeteria during the first lunch. It had been a raucous success. When the class period was over, the halls were filled with talk of mice being let loose in the lunchroom. Some of the kids expressed regret that it had not happened during the second lunch when they would be there. I said nothing but proceeded to the parking lot.

The three of us who were to liberate the mice during second lunch met at my car to distribute the mice. We put them in brown paper bags similar to the ones kids use to bring their lunch from home. We had about ten mice each. As we headed down the long corridor to the cafeteria, we could see that there was a cluster of students at the door waiting to enter. The faculty had given up their lunch break and were stationed, in pairs at each of the cafeteria entries. They were there to be certain that no mice were taken into second lunch. We had lunch bags, like so many other students. We held up our bags and smiled at the teachers. We were not given a second glance as we entered the cafeteria.

The lunch room was organized in three rows of twelve-foot-long tables. The most popular girls of each class, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, sat at their own table. We had decided that each one of us would sit at the table next to one of these girls’ tables. I sat at the table next to the senior girls. Once everyone was seated and eating. We were to open our bags a little so mice could get out, and slide the bag of mice under the girls’ table. After sliding my bag under the girl’s table, I put my head down as if dozing. In fact, I was watching the bag. I counted the mice as they emerged from the bag. When eight had scurried out, I shouted, “Look a mouse.” At about the same time, the other three bags of mice in other areas of the cafeteria were also scurrying out of their bags. The students looked down, and it seemed as if the floor was alive with running mice. There were shrieks, many students climbed onto the tables. Others, excited that they too were able to enjoy a release of mice, began yelling, throwing food, and mice. Faculty and students ran around trying to catch the mice. One girl who had caught a mouse brought it to a male teacher. He had a terrified expression and backed away. It became a food fight. It was no less than sublime chaos. As for the mice, most of them were tossed out of the cafeteria windows into the unmaintained fields surrounding the back side of the school.

Afterward, we spoke quietly among ourselves about the great success of what we referred to as “The Mouse-a-roo”. Spring progressed with thoughts of graduation and Summer vacation. The memory of the “mouse-a-roo” faded. That is, until one afternoon, two weeks before graduation. I was sitting in debate class when an announcement came over the school PA system. It echoed through the empty corridors. It was the voice of the vice principal sternly stating, “Would the following students report to the principal’s office. The list included all of our names. As I walked to the office, I thought, “The jig is up.” We were assembled standing in front of Principal Dean Mickelwait’s desk. Ray Hendrckson, the vice principal, stood behind the principal. The principal, a dour individual in the best of times, had on his most stern face as he proceeded to berate us for causing a riot and putting fellow students in grave danger. As he spoke, describing all the risks to students and the building that we had caused, we could not avoid seeing that Ray’s face was contorting in an attempt to avoid smiling. We were inclined to laugh also as the principal made a school prank sound like a school bombing with fatalities. But we could not crack a grin. We had to stand there looking ashamed. The strain of seeing Ray’s contortions, together with our trying to act contrite, was torturous. The principal finished by condemning us to “INDEFINITE SUSPENSION”. We left the school and gathered at the local A&W root beer drive-in. We laughed about our shared experience of trying to keep from smiling during our excoriation. We also shared our concerns about missing exams scheduled for the following week. We worried that we may not be able to graduate.

Our parents were called in to “Have a talk with Principal Mickelwait.” I later learned some of the parents, including my mom, berated him for overreacting to a harmless senior prank. After two days of unscheduled vacation, we were all readmitted to finish the school year and graduate on schedule.