Hilo Days: Those Are NOT Balloons

This is a story taken from my now-defunct website, Hilo Days. It’s one of those stories that could become legend, if only those who came after us in school perpetuated them. Unfortunately, the incident was probably forgotten.

That’s okay, at least I’ve kept it alive for a while.

Rubber Heaven

Mrs. Chock was supposedly one of the strictest teachers in the seventh grade.  A Hawaiian lady who had married Chinese (I think), she taught English and was quite adamant about us not speaking pidgin in class.

She and I got along quite well — in fact, most of us Riverside School graduates did well in her class, since after all, we had been selected to Riverside on the basis of our English in the first place.

Some of the students who came from other schools did have a rough time in her class.

So, the inevitable happened.  Mix together a strict teacher, a bunch of hormonal young boys from public school who weren't exactly her favorite students, and you get a lot of pranks.

One of the boys had gotten hold of some condoms — we called them "rubber cocks" in those days.  It's anybody's guess where he got them, because back then, they just weren't displayed in the stores.  You had to ask the pharmacist for them in person.

The rascal blew up three or four of them — they are quite elastic and do get quite large — before class, and put them in Mrs. Chock's closet.  Unfortunately, she didn't go to the closet that period, but we learned the results second-hand from the class two periods after us.

As the prankster had hoped, Mrs. Chock opened her closet and the inflated condoms came floating down on her head.  The class had erupted in laughter, and Mrs. Chock demanded to know who had booby-trapped her closet — she was certain the culprit lurked among them.

Of course, they didn't know anything about it, and since nobody from our class was stupid enough to tell her, Mrs. Chock never discovered who the guilty party was.  But some of us know.  And we'll never tell.