July 5, 2018

"List of school pranks."

A Wikipedia article I'm reading as a consequence of the discussion of the idea of banning plastic straws, here, earlier this morning. The conversation turned to the disgustingness of paper straws, old memories of chewing on paper straws welled up, and I said "And that's how spitballing was invented!" If you got the paper to chew from a straw, the means to jet-propel it is right in your hand.

But oh! All those other pranks! Did you know all these? Example:
Kancho is a prank played in Japan; it is performed by clasping the hands together so the index fingers are pointing out and attempting to insert them sharply into someone's anal region when the victim is not looking. It is similar to the wedgie or a goosing. Kancho means "enema". In South Korea it is known as "ddong-chim" This prank is also played in Scotland, in this case known as a 'fishy' or 'jobbie jab'. In Brazil is known as Pula Pirata (literally, Jump Pirate), named after the name which the game Pop-up Pirate is known there.
The article ends with a link to "List of hazing deaths in the United States." That list goes back only to the 1800s. Here's something that happened at Yale in 1892:
A pledge was led blindfolded through the street during his fraternity initiation towards Moriarty's Cafe, a popular student hang-out. He was told to run and did so at top speed. He ran into a sharp carriage pole, injuring himself. He was rendered unconscious, but the injury was not thought to be serious at the time. He suffered an intestine rupture and died five days later of peritonitis.
Here's something that happened at the Loyal Order of Moose in Birmingham, Alabama in 1913:
Kenny and Gustin... were made to look upon a red hot emblem of the Order, then blindfolded, disrobed and had a chilled rubber version of the emblem applied to their chests, while a magneto was attached to their legs and an electric current was applied to them by a wire to their shoulders. The aim was evidently to make them believe that they were being branded. Both men fainted, but, as it was thought that they were feigning, the lodge officers did not stop the initiation until it was evident that the two were dying and the lodge physician was unable to revive them.

40 comments:

Paul Zrimsek said...

A Møøse branded mi sister ønce...

walter said...

"blindfolded, disrobed and had a chilled rubber version of the emblem applied to their chests, while a magneto was attached to their legs and an electric current was applied to them by a wire to their shoulders."
--
Shoulda just dropped televisions on them.

Achilles said...

Seattle has banned Plastic Straws.

And hands heroin needles out for free.


No Irony needed here.

The regressives are insane. Batshit insane.

Achilles said...

The good samaritan in Seattle will be the person that carries plastic straws with them and hands them out to fellow customers at restaurants.


The regressives are making new libertarians every day.

Anne in Rockwall, TX said...

Cripes!

All we did was bake the fraternity brothers brownies with ex-lax and then put plastic wrap over the toilet bowls and put the seats down.

Michael K said...

We had short plastic tubes to shoot peas across the room in high school. The tube, a "peashooter," was short enough that it was concealed by the hand.

Then, in mechanical drawing class, a room with about 60 flat drawers for drawings , we would set an alarm clock to go off during class and hide it in one of the drawers.

My jaw still pops from being slugged by Brother Kiley for one such prank.

It was a boys school and corporal punishment was the rule.

tcrosse said...

In High School I was made to sit still for hours on end in a stuffy room while adults lectured me with tedious bullshit. This went on for years. Then I went to College.

MadisonMan said...

My High school was build around a courtyard. As I recall, you could get in from one or two regular-sized doors. One from the library, one from the cafeteria, one from the Principal's office.

A couple years before me, a complete Car was placed in the courtyard as a Senior Prank.

Achilles said...

Rubber Bands and Staples.

The rubber bands got bigger and bigger.

There was blood. Sitting in the front rows was not hte best.

Eventually the staples were not structurally sufficient.

One day someone put a paper clip an inch into the wall behind the teacher in Home Ec.

We stopped after that.

Yancey Ward said...

The person responsible for the first comment has been sacked.

Achilles said...

3rd grade someone figured out a DC motor would scramble the TV.

After a couple substitutes had rough days we didn't get to watch educational movies anymore.

Fernandinande said...

Here is a lawyer who shot himself by accident and died while demonstrating to a jury how someone else shot himself by accident and died.

Michael K said...

Clement Vallandigham was the leader of the Copperheads during the war.

It was an appropriate end for him.

All we did was bake the fraternity brothers brownies with ex-lax

A couple of girls did that when I was in college. They were law students living in the same apartment building.

They baked us the brownies but I didn't get any for some reason.

tim maguire said...

Fernandistein, did he win? I want a lawyer with that level of dedication.

Anne in Rockwall, TX said...

Michael K, it was Sigma Chi at Kent State in the seventies. They were all stoned, they all had the munchies.

That might have made a difference.

Leland said...

I always thought it interesting when Frats thought they could good around hazing laws by having inductees drink large amounts of water instead of alcohol. The result, which can be found in Ann's link, two hazing deaths due to excess water consumption. These were not drownings.

Fernandinande said...

tim maguire said...
Fernandistein, did he win?


Yes! And it's an All-American™ story: the guy was acquitted and then also shot to death, but in a saloon.

Paul Mac said...

Should paper straw of today be judged by those of the past? In most areas we have made huge advances. Confer, humanprogress.org, why not here?

I don't know if we have or not, I'm just raising the consideration. I'd be interested in anyone who does know or have a way to show. Are paper straws today any better than those of the past, if not why not? If so, why so?

todd galle said...

My fraternity didn't haze. Mid-80s, small PA college. We had chores, but no more than any other member really, and had to learn and be able to recite the full name, hometown, major, and two facts about each brother. I can still remember some today. Later, after I graduated and was on the board of directors of said fraternity, the college determined that our twice weekly study hall for pledges constituted a possible 'hazing' situation. Studying in our dining room with upperclassmen who can assist was objectionable.

Humperdink said...

Living in rural PA, a friend told me their class walked a cow up the steps to the second floor of their high school and left her there. Apparently cows are reluctant to go down a flight of steps.

(Could be an urban ... er .... rural myth)

rehajm said...

Mynd you, møøse brands Kan be pretti nasti

mikee said...

The purpose of hazing is to find the person who says, "Go fuck yourself, you do it."
And then they don't get hazed, usually. If you ever find yourself being hazed, as the "new guy" or for a membership initiation, remember that phrase above. Use it immediately if somebody stupid orders you to do something stupid.

A fish (freshman) Cadet at Texas A&M died of heatstroke in August 1983. He was being run around outdoors in August with all the other cadets.

It's all good fun until somebody dies, right?

wholelottasplainin said...

When we were kids, paper straws came wrapped in a thin tissue sleeves. (I think McDonalds still provides them that way.)

At the movies we would open one end of the sleeve, then dip the other end into something really sticky (like half-chewed gummi bears).

We then blew hard through the straw at the open end, propelling the sleeve to the darkened theater ceiling, where it would stick and hang down like a tiny white stalactite, illuminated by the film projector.

David Begley said...

Academy Award winner Alexander Payne - like me - graduated from Omaha Creighton Prep. I don't recall any organized senior prank in my class (in part because the school was hit by a tornado) but Payne pulled one off. He arranged for a fake Western gunfight in the school library. That is unthinkable today. And rightly so.

Bay Area Guy said...

"It is similar to the wedgie or a goosing."

The "wedgie" was a good prank in junior high. We actually called it a "Snuggy." You grasp the top of your target's underwear, and yank hard, which squeezes the private parts, causing yelps of delight and/or pain. It also causes one's underwear to get stuck up in one's booty crack.

It's kind of an application of Bernouli's equation re pressure/volume

Yes, we were pretty gross at age 11, but at least we never did this to the girls.

The "Atomic Snuggy" was when you pulled the underwear, as high as you could, stretching the whitey-tighties until they ripped. Sometimes, you could actually lift up the kid by his elastic underwear band. Typically, that would garner much laughter.

Generally, we didn't do this on weaker, nerdier kids, but mostly on each other. There was a general sense, back then, to only "pick on somebody your own size."

It is remarkable that any of us, grew up and found wives. Videotapes cell phones back then, woulda been pretty explosive.



Hagar said...

My hometown grade school was a 4-story wooden building with coke fired stoves for heat in the winter. We once got in early and filled up the stove with the coke and placed a handful of shotgun shells on top. It got exciting when the heat reached the shells.
The 4th graders had a young teacher who irritated them by rapping them across the hands with her wooden pointer, so they climbed up the outside fire escape (just steps anchored into the wall with no cage) to their 3d floor classroom and broke her stick into pieces and stuck the pieces back together so that the stick fell all apart when she picked it up.
She got the point and quit rapping them with it.

Leland said...

My fraternity didn't haze.

I saw this and immediately thought; "yeah, based on your standards for what was considered hazing at the time". Then I got to: the college determined that our twice weekly study hall for pledges constituted a possible 'hazing' situation. So yeah, you know that already.

And then later, we get to mikee and his comment about Texas A&M. Well, I was a member of that cadet corps 20 years later. Running in August is something we still did during Freshman Orientation Week, because it is part of military training. We are even tested after that first week, and if we can't run, and do other various physical activities in the heat or rain; then we could get cut (although after the first week, you'll likely just get remedial PT, which is even more running in September). So it is part of a "right of passage". It also part of reasonable physical conditioning. Hazing really isn't a bit of a trick to define.

I think mikee knows this, or a least he knows what a fish is. So perhaps he thinks I'm not informed to the highest degree of accuracy and thus should hesitate to participate in the discussion.

langford peel said...

These pranks are half a fag kind of bullshit that only shit head college boys are interested in. Witness that it usually involves putting something up someones ass.

Go out and get a job you pansy ass cocksuckers.

todd galle said...

Leland,
No, our frat was very explicit on the no hazing policy. At this time of day, I don't think it matters, but it was Alpha Tau Omega at Gettysburg College. While it was ATO National policy, I think our chapter adopted the no hazing policy due to earlier mishaps (drugs) and increased College scrutiny. I got far worse treatment in our ROTC courses in fact. It's kind of funny to think about what the College was up-in-arms about back in the Reagan years (besides Reagan of course). No study halls or push ups at frats, but we had a regular keg delivery from the local beer store, carried to our basement bar - and this was an on campus fraternity. When I graduated, my name was on the distributor's delivery list. I learned years later that my name had been used to buy over 2000 kegs until the vendor had to update their lists.

Bay Area Guy said...

In Boot Camp, by far, the greatest feat of hazing was when the Drill Instructor sent some of the unsat troublemakers to "Vietnam" -- whereupon they went to the showers, in full gear, with rifles, and all nozzles were turned onto max hot water, creating a big steam room. They had to then run in place (mark time), hoisting rifles up and down horizontally over their heads like push-ups.

He called it "jungle-training!" Probably, lasted only 15 minutes, but it wore those dudes out.

Hey, this was 10 years after the Vietnam War ended. Some of these recruits needed proper motivation!

I doubt, though, the military allows this anymore.

Leland said...

Todd,
I'm just afraid that "no hazing" is a perception these days. I get what you are saying, and I do think such a policy is a great stance to have. After all, strict induction standards, whether cruel or not, simply creates an environment that tends to shrink an organization over time. I was in a service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, and we had no hazing, and the "right of passage" was simply to perform 65 hours of community service in your first semester. We lost many an initiate with that standard. Oh, we also drank our share, but I hear the local chapter does much less of it these days in much the same way smoking has declined.

Still, I'm afraid to know what might constitute hazing these days. I can imagine someone getting triggered by having to memorize and recite campus history. For example, the inscription for Sul Ross that stands in front of the Academic building. I suppose noting that he was a "Soldier, Statesman, Knightly Gentleman, Brigadier General C.S.A. …" would be a trigger and considered hazing by the same type of person that wouldn't see a problem with throwing a TV out of a dorm window into a group of onlookers.

Leland said...

"jungle-training!"

"Make it Rain" had a different connotation to me in college. When told to "Make it Rain", you would dress up in PT gear, add on a trench coat, and then exercise indoors until the sweat started to collect on the overhead rafters and drip off. We all called that what it was "hazing", but many still did it anyway, because it was a great workout.

rhhardin said...

I took a picture of the oldest building on campus using a pinhole camera with photgraphic paper as film; developed the print, made a contact print of that, aged the print with rough handling and soaking in tea, and put it in the oldest book in the library.

gilbar said...

"Apparently cows are reluctant to go down a flight of steps. "
while on a (potential) incoming student tour at Montana State Univ, the tour guide told us that 'in the 50's' frat boys snuck (sneaked?) a cow up into the President's office; and that "Cows won't go down stairs"; so, they brought in an army helicopter, and (after taking off part of the roof) airlifted the cow out of there.
This made me think:
A) in Iowa, we would have taken the cow out in pieces
B) that this was where Animal house got the idea (where they used a horse)

I just did a short google search, for montana state university prank cow in presidents's office
And came up with NOTHING; so, either it was a myth; or there is a HUGE Conspiracy to hide this. And, if it was a Myth; there'd Still be google hits, right? The Total lack of evidence if PROOF of the Conspiracy

gilbar said...

IS proof

Also, Hell NO! I wasn't going to go to Bozeman; my friend Ben was thinking of going and i road tripped with

Michael K said...

that this was where Animal house got the idea (where they used a horse)

When I was at SC, the Sigma Nus shot a horse on the second floor of the fraternity house. Pledges with more ammunition than sense.

It was an awful mess. I was NOT a Sigma Nu. I was a Nu Sigma Nu, a medical fraternity that was a lot of fun.

Fraternities are not at all like they were. When I started college it was the cheapest place to live.

It looked more like the Animal House building.

donald said...

Man, they sure did wet that plate area down in Milwaukee. Do they do that all the time?

LordSomber said...

Darwin Awards go back as far as Creation.

todd galle said...

Leland,
Ha, yes! Our frat house was very North / South, probably not surprising for Gettysburg. We had brothers from Cowpens, NC (or thereabout) to Minneapolis (and our introduction to Prince). Our only inter-racial occurrence was when a Hindu went after a Muslim with a butcher knife screaming 'I will kill you a thousand times'. All ended well. Actually that was far easier to explain to the police than the Fleshtones burning out our fuse box at 3 AM. We compromised and they did an extra acoustic set.

wildswan said...

"The purpose of hazing is to find the person who says, "Go fuck yourself, you do it."
And then they don't get hazed, usually. If you ever find yourself being hazed, as the "new guy" or for a membership initiation, remember that phrase above. Use it immediately if somebody stupid orders you to do something stupid."

At the university I went to one of the guys said "Go fuck yourself, you do it." The guys took him out of town, pulled off all his clothes and left him on a rural road. That was a long time ago. Even then the women had nothing at all like that - mainly because the sophomore women in charge of hazing got bored with annoying freshmen women and went out on dates with their boyfriends. Scouts told us when the sadists were gone and life was good.