the sixty fourth story

The previous story was likely based on this one, in which I was only tangentially involved, and thus I am missing many of the details that would really make the telling worth the event.

I don't know how this started, but I do know everyone had water guns. There was an arms race that reminded one of the cold war- if one side got a supersoaker, the other would find a way to procure a supersoaker 500, and on up. There were folks involved that made no sense whatsoever- this war was not limited to the freaks and geeks- it was everyone. There were people coming in from out of town and doing drivebys in our dunkin donuts parking lots. No one was left dry. Alliances changed regularly, and with an alacrity that made it impossible for one to know if the car approaching was a friend or foe. It was best to simply leap behind the closest vehicle and hope to dodge the water that was quite likely to be coming your way. It ended as suddenly as it began, and I have no idea, really, what happened, except that for a few weeks, the world was tremendously exciting.

the sixty third story

Most of the real solid pranksters I was friends with in high school were either two or three years older than I. That meant that, my junior year, there was a gaping hole. No specific person filled it, but we did our best to keep up the tradition of pranks. For St Patrick's day, the fellow I was dating at the time decided we were going to stage the Catholics vs the  protestants. I sewed a huge irish flag (accidentally bigger than the US flag on the pole- whoops!) Very early, before classes, we snuck onto the campus, ran the American flag down the pole, clipped the irish flag right below it, and ran it back up. Then a bunch of folks stationed themselves at the front door of the school, handing out either a green or an orange sash to each kid who entered, along with a water pistol and the admonishion that the war would happen only outside of classes- all classrooms were to be considered temporary truces. And sure enough, we had a schoolwide water fight, with spies, and ambushes, and folks who "just happened" to have larger guns secreted away in their lockers. My memory is that no one got in trouble, but I could be wrong.