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.
