By Syed Arif Hussaini

November 18 , 2005

Practical Joking: The Sport of Creeps?

 

Wouldn’t you call the person a creep who added a couple of bikinis to the bundle of clothes donated for the victims of the earthquake in northern Pakistan? Or, how else would you describe the teenagers who covered (papered) the tree with toilet paper in the lawn of an elderly, fragile couple for the simple reason that they had omitted to buy sweets to offer the neighborhood kids on Halloween night?
Such practical jokes are, to say the least, quite cruel and certainly in bad taste.
Driving in Europe, I saw an arrow pointing in the wrong direction and following it I reached a tunnel on the top of a hill. Emerging out of it, I found another arrow pointing in the very direction that I had come from. Underneath the placard was scribbled, “Go back where you came from, hope you enjoyed the mountain drive - ha, ha, ha”.
The impish dexterity of an infantile person cost me a couple of hours extra drive. It was a practical joke I could neither enjoy, nor condemn outright.
In a college lavatory, scribbled on the wall in the front was “Look to your right”. On your right was written: “Now, look to your left”. On the left side was scribbled “Look at the message on the back wall. Written there was: “Why are you wasting time looking here and there. Keep looking in front of you till you are done.” I thought it to be a clever and enjoyable joke, one emanating from a sharp, entertaining mind.
When Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, practical jokers thought it to have been discovered for their benefit. It has been used to make some believe that they have temporarily lost their marbles. For instance you call a stuffed shirt, Bill Strong:
You: Who is this?
Mr. Bill Strong: This is Mr. Strong speaking
You: He is not here at the moment
Mr. Strong: Who is not there?
You: Mr. Strong is not here.
Bill Strong: But I am Mr. Strong.
You: Sorry Sir. Mr. Bill Strong has just stepped out. Shall I ask him to call you back?
Mr. Strong: Listen, you idiot. I didn’t call any Mr. Strong, you called me. And, I am William T. Strong.
You: If you will let me have your number, I shall ask him to call you back.
The stuffed shirt, Bill Strong, becomes really mad and bangs down the receiver.
Here is another very popular practical joke. A group of friends are making a night of it in a restaurant. They pick the pretentious Mr. Banavati White for their victim. At two in the morning, a call is made to him.
‘Is Joe there?’
‘Joe who?’
‘Joe Black’
‘You have the wrong number’.
‘Oh, I am sorry’
The group waits 15-20 minutes, long enough for Banavati to get back to sleep, then another one calls and asks for Joe Black. Banavati again explains that the caller had a wrong number.
Another interval and another call. The calls continue till Banavati is totally incensed. Then the final call is made.
‘Banavati’
‘Yes’, almost exhausted, ‘this is Banavati’
‘This is Joe Black, Any calls for me?’
Here is an interesting one about the wrong number.
A very old lady’s voice comes on the line:
‘Is that you Johnny?’
‘No, it is not Johnny, it is Fanny. I think you got the wrong number’
‘If I have dialed the wrong number, why did you pick it up?’
Brian Hughes, a wealthy manufacturer of New York of early 20th century, used to play practical jokes on a large scale. He would spend as much as it took to make his story look quite feasible. He would distribute banquet tickets to banquets that were never held. One evening he left a kit of burglar tools and some picture frames lying on the steps of a museum. The next morning, the museum was in tumult as guards and directors alike raced up and down the corridors to determine which masterpieces had been stolen.
He gifted to a historical society a property that he called the mansion of a royal family from Europe. It turned out to be a shack worth a few dollars, inhabited by hobos. The society returned the favor in the form of a plot of land in “the high-society section of a metropolis in Connecticut”. When Hughes went to the place, he discovered it to be the location of a lunatic asylum.
A dreary play was being staged decades back in which the third act curtain rose on an empty stage. The telephone on the stage kept ringing and the actor who had to pick it up had missed his cue. Finally Bob Benchley, the eminent writer and humorist, spoke up for all to hear, “Why doesn’t somebody answer that? I think it is for me.” The next day a critic wrote: “The only amusing line in the play was spoken by Bob Benchley, who, unhappily, was not in the cast.”
Life would be quite dreary without humor. For, it adds color to life and reduces the pangs of adversities. I, for one, would not therefore tarnish all practical jokers as creeps. But, the compulsive practical joker, like the one who donated bikinis to the women of Kashmir exposed to the severe winter of the snow-clad highlands, is indeed a creep. But such creeps are few and far between the truly entertaining humorists. While the good-intentioned humorist endears himself to those around him, the conceited, compulsive practical joker earns the hatred of all and affection of none.



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