the Sixtieth Story

Our friend Dave had this thing called the Boognish. It was used as a nom de plume for pranks, and its face graced any number of unexpected places. Once, painted from edge to edge of a king size sheet, it was lovingly placed between the upraised arms of the field goal during the night before a home game. Several friends were in marching band, and thus got the full effect of this visage. It was beautiful. We felt like princes, or at least like rooks. It came down, but we were able to claim it and secret it away with the band uniforms. We decided we needed to recreate this wonder at the next away game. On the way, the bus stopped at a travel plaza thing for everyone to grab lunch, and our coterie snuck into the store, hoping to buy tape and rope. There was none. There were, however, furry handcuffs. I don't really want to think about the person who buys furry handcuffs at a truckstop, but we bought two pair. There were three of us- two gals and a guy, buying two pairs of handcuffs while grinning maniacally and holding a balled up king sized sheet. We made a fantastic impression. When we got to the game, though, there was a)no way we could hang the thing from the field goal without rope or a ladder, of which we had neither and b)no way we could be gone long enough to really fully pull the prank, anyway. We hung it from the back of the stands, instead.

The First Story

This one is brought on by a photo posted by a friend.
In high school, I played in the marching band. One year (was it freshman year?) we went down to Florida, and played in one of an infinite number of parades that go through Disney World. While we were waiting for the parade to start, in our New England wool uniforms, a whole cadre of Micky Mice walked by, in flying V formation, with their heads off, tucked under their arms. If you've seen these creatures, you know they are inhumanly tall- the actual people inside are looking out the bowtie. Thus, when they have the heads off their uniforms, they are, in fact, headless. There had to have been at least 15 of them, all bumbling by in military formality, carrying their heads. It was a crazily beautiful moment, and one I'll carry for a very long time.