Practical but Cruel Jokes, by Ricky

I joined the Mormon Church in December of 1968.  Soon thereafter, I became friendly with the missionaries whom had taught me the pre-baptism lessons I needed for the introduction to Mormonism.  As a result, I was privy to some of their stories of missionary experiences.  I will relate two of them below.

Practical Joke #1

Mormon missionaries always come in pairs and are referred to as “companions”.  Such pairs share a modest apartment and are placed together for varying amounts of time before being split up and paired with a different companion.  Under these circumstances companions get to experience each other’s idiosyncrasies.

One such pair had the following habits.  One insisted on being the first one in the shower each morning.  The other had a pet gold fish and would always be the first to drink from the cold water jug upon returning to the apartment each day after being outside in the hot Southern sun.

One day, as a practical joke, the first companion secretly placed the other’s gold fish in the cold water jug before leaving the apartment.  As expected, the other missionary arrived home and grabbed the water jug and began to drink from it before he noticed the now dead gold fish inside.  Internally, he was seething with anger but did not show any outward signs other to acknowledge the “joke”.  But he was already plotting his revenge.

The night before an important gathering of all the missionaries in the district, when he finished his shower, he set up his practical joke.  During the week, he had purchased a pack of blue Rit Dye gelatin capsules.  That night he removed the shower head and put several capsules in the pipe.  Replacing the head, he then went to bed.  Getting up a little early the next morning, he informed his companion the he was going to walk to the chapel where the meeting was to be held and was leaving early.  Thus, he left his companion alone and departed.

During his walk, the gelatin capsules eventually dissolved.  When the companions met at the meeting about one hour later, the one companion said to the other after looking at him for a moment, “Are you feeling a little blue today, Elder?”  As you may expect, his companion’s exposed skin (head, neck, hands) was bright blue.

Practical Joke #2

This next story takes place in the panhandle of northwestern Florida.  A newly assigned missionary, called “Greenie”, was assigned to a companionship for a short time until he could be paired with his own companion.  The greenie arrived about two days prior to another missionary meeting which was to take place in the morning in Panama City.  It was necessary for the missionaries to leave early in the morning in order to arrive in time for the 7:30 AM meeting.

There were two companionships and the greenie sharing a car for the trip, 5 missionaries in all.  After about an hour of travel, the driver pulls the car over next to a field of watermelons and suggests that they go pick up a few for all the missionaries to eat after the meeting.  Everyone gets out of the car and the greenie says something like, “Isn’t this stealing?”  He is told it is okay, that it has been done before, and not to worry.  The greenie agrees to help.

Just as the greenie picks up his water melon and removes it from the vine, a young black man appears and demands to know what they are doing in his water melon field.  One of the missionaries pulls out a pistol and shoots the black man who falls down mortally wounded to all appearances.  The missionaries tell the greenie to get back to the car and start walking away down the road towards their destination while they stay behind to hide the body.

After hiding the body, the missionaries get back in the car and drive up to the walking greenie and pick him up.  They explain that this type of thing does happen occasionally, but no one cares because it was a black man, so don’t worry.  Of course the greenie is in total mental turmoil.

After arriving at the meeting and unloading the melons the missionaries attend their appointed sessions.  The greenie is then informed that they will be staying for regular church services.  Just before the services are to begin, a black family arrives and the greenie is startled to see the young black man who was shot and buried walk into the chapel.  The four missionaries with whom he rode then introduced the family and privately explained that they had set him up as an initiation prank.

Practical jokes may be fairly common, but most are cruel and not very funny.  I do not condone them because they usually result in escalating rounds of revenge jokes and can easily result in violence.

© 28 July 2014 

About the Author   

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

Do I Have Your Dutronic Veebleveetzer Transmogrifier? by Will Stanton

I hope that whatever idiosyncrasies I may have are not off-putting and that, perhaps, they even may be at least mildly charming. Throughout all the years of my life, I do not recall ever having met anyone who was not at least somewhat idiosyncratic. Some people were far more than that; some were downright strange. I think some of them really should have had help.

When I was in college (when was that, 1902?), I was living in a dorm my freshman year. Just in that one dorm, there sure were a lot of peculiar people.

The strangest one of all was the poor fellow who thought that he had traveled several times to other planets around the vast universe. I do not recall from his lecture in the student lounge exactly how he managed interstellar travel and certainly not just by himself. Perhaps it was through the use of a unique machine, the Dutronic Veebleveetzer Transmogrifier. Or, perhaps he simply could instantaneously zap himself from point A to point B anywhere in the universe without any danger or damage to his mortal self. That's a pretty good trick, if you can do that.

He adamantly did maintain, however, that he could prove his claim by demonstrating some of the powers taught him by aliens. One of the supposed powers that he had learned was the ability to walk through solid objects such as walls. I should not have to remind everyone that people, especially young thoughtless people, can find humor in the afflictions and misfortunes of others, and this was the case here. The laughing, jeering students demanded a demonstration, whereupon the fellow walked headlong into the cinder-block wall, knocking himself out. The students, thinking that they were quite clever, quickly picked up the stunned fellow and moved him to the other side of the wall. When the dizzy space-traveler woke up, he naturally was convinced that he had proved his claim. The students thought that this was all great fun, but I felt very sorry for the delusional kid. I hope that he did receive the help that he needed.

The dorm proctor apparently felt that at least a dozen of his charges were weird enough to house them all in a few rooms along one short hallway apart from the other students, rather like a psych ward. He did have one diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. I'm not quite sure how he made it into college or whether he actually remained.

It was Joe, however, that I'll mention next. He was one hunk of a masculine freshman whose natural, great physical strength usually was not noted because he looked so young. No one could beat him in arm-wrestling. He sometimes made money with that ability. He had a habit of traveling out of town to rural road-houses where the inebriated laborers liked to display their masculinity by challenging each other to arm-wrestling. Joe had perfected his hustler act, appearing to be innocent and losing some small wagers. Once enough beer bottles had been raised and enough cash had been placed on the table, Joe suddenly overpowered his very surprised, final opponent. Joe would do that hustle in each roadhouse only once. Scooping up the cash, he made a discreet exit before the mystified losers decided that they had been taken and became angry.

Then there was Ted S. I'll be mentioning him again in my October 28th reading. Apparently, Ted had developed several bad habits long before he became a freshman. One of them was a frequent overindulgence of alcohol, which I suppose was not too unusual for a party-school. What made Ted different was that he physically looked to be only fifteen, although he actually was eighteen; and he looked deceptively innocent. The trouble was that he lost all control when he drank too much. His distressed roommate finally had enough when Ted arrived back at the dorm room late one night and mistook the clothes closet for pissoir. The next day, Ted was moved to the weird ward.

The surname of one kid was Love, and he obviously thought that he was cut out to be a great lover. Although he was extremely cute and sexy and drove a Corvette, he was not quite so handsome as he thought that he should be. Being blond, he thought he should have a year-around tan, which is virtually impossible in that part of the country. So he spread generous portions of fake tanning lotion all over himself. We could spot him a block away because he was orange. At one-half block away, we could smell the lotion.

Sagmeister was probably the only true sex maniac I've ever met. He was a handsome twenty-something, but he really had a problem. I recall his standing in the lounge in front of a TV, talking with someone. A TV commercial with a pretty, buxom blond came on, which caught his attention. His speech slowed as his eyes became glued upon the delectable image. Then his speech trailed off completely and was replaced with loud, heavy breathing.

Sagmeister seemed to have a steady flow of guests to his room. As long as the guests were female, age did not seem to be a problem. I recall that, on one occasion, a pretty sixteen-year-old girl came out of his room and was wearing only a long, white, man's shirt. On another occasion, however, he linked up with the well known town whore “Black Julie.” She was fifty-five and not what one would call attractive. As a matter of fact, she looked like (as the Texans say) “She was rode hard hard and put back into the barn wet.” That did not seem to bother Sagmeister. I guess that there's no substitute for experience.

Now that I think of it, I am reminded that there were a bunch of other students with strange personalities. And now that I think of it, I guess whatever idiosyncrasies that I might have had just were not weird enough for anyone to pay much attention. Thank goodness for small blessings.

© 6 September 2013

About the Author 

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.