Projects part 2

Sorry I knew that I had posted part 1 of this thing and didn't do part 2.

My third and last prank, I think in a way it was my masterpiece and in a way it was one of the most tasteless things I had ever done. Actually no, I had done pranks that were more tasteless (like getting my friend drunk and molesting him, or what I did to my sister's hippo).

We were doing John Steinbeck's "The Pearl". One of our classroom assignments was to do a newsletter based on the book, some sort of a fun thing to do to make sure we understood what was going on in the book.

Now naturally since the book is an allegory for people in the ghettos who become crime bosses because of the lure of money, that story had a very high death rate. Back then (this was sec 1) my mind was already as warped as it is today. I felt that in order to do the story justice there had to be an obituary page.

This was not the first time I had gotten into trouble because of an obituary page. We were required to decorate our exercise books for History, and it was around the time of the first Iraq War. (Actually I don't know why you call it the first Iraq war when there was the Iran-Iraq war in the 80s but nevermind.) I cut out an obituary in the papers of some guy who had a moustache, crossed out his name, and wrote "Saddam Hussein" over there. Yes, yes, I know, I have an uncanny ability to sniff out the most offensive thing and do it.

Anyway one of the people who died was the baby kid of the main character. I was wondering where to get a baby's photo for the obituary, when I chanced across my classmate's yearbook photo. Now this is a fairly geeky looking guy (he's happily married now but he still is geeky looking) and his photo was hilarious, it had this rabbit in the headlights expression about it. So I thought it was perfect: funny looking, and the look of somebody who died without knowing what the hell was going on. It was funny, and it made the rounds, and there was a lot of mirth all around at first.

Unfortunately that guy was also fairly sensitive about being picked on, first thing. I went up to him to apologise after that, and he punched me in the stomach. He was close to his mum, second thing, and last of all it was hungry ghost festival. So as expected his mum blew her top and threatened to report me to the principal. I got very scared because at that time I still believed that there was such a thing as a permanent record. (Well you know if there are some of you ISD folks out there reading this blog maybe you do have my permanent record and please leave a comment so that I can contact you. Thanks!) One of my classmates told me "don't worry we'll stick up for you". I thought that was a nice gesture. This same classmate also enjoys making fascist salutes in class so I guess he appreciates my sense of humour. (He's in the foreign service now so I guess he's not making fascist salutes anymore, I hope.) Years later smloh told me that the obituary incident was the first time he had heard of me, and he was like, "what a cool guy, I must get to know him!" So it wasn't all bad.

We Chinese believe that you should do things that increase your social stature, not only because it is good for you, but also things that increase your social stature are likely to be of benefit to other people. I sometimes find that in a small way making bad jokes accomplishes this although of course there are better ways.

In the end the principal took the fairly lenient view that it wasn't a matter worth making a fuss about. I was let off with a scolding. But I think that in real life things are a little different. In real life you can get away with cheating and stealing, occasionally with murder, but there are certain people out there you shouldn't really offend.

It is not true to say that I meant to do him any harm, but also not true to say that I didn't mean to do him any harm. What is true is that I didn't care either way, so I guess I was wrong in that sense. But I'm sorry, it was just too funny to pass up. I selected him because of his funny stunned look, and not because I wanted to put him down, although it's understandable he didn't see it that way.

I became a good friend of the victim after that but recently we drifted apart.