Antics

Our professor is a good sport - and recognizes the stress of squishing 14 weeks worth of class into 2. At some point, the pressure will boil over, and better as juvenile pranks than other angst. Although I will say he did ask for it. After all, he's the one who told the stories of his student pranks - the ones that gave us better direction on 'how-to.'

So it was that when he entered the classroom today, all the chairs faced not the front of the room as they should, but the wall facing the door. And all the dry erase markers were just that - dry. Best of all was stuffing the piano with towels so that when he went to play a hymn by way of example, there came from the little upright not the chords expected but total silence. Nada. Nothing. Zippo.

Well, I'm sure he thought that was the end of it, but no, we had taken all the CDs from their cases and mixed them up. When he went to play #10 of Mr. Terfel's wonderful Welsh singing of All Through the Night, we heard instead some cacophony of shaped note stuff.

And finally, we managed to smuggle one of the nurses' dummies into the room and set it on a stool behind the door. Next time he had to shut the door because of cart noise, there she was in her plastic frozenness, perched awkwardly, staring at him. He at least had the decency of covering her up with a sheet.

He took it all in good natured fun, and smiled benignly when we read his "Freese-isms" - those quaint little sayings that are part and parcel of his vocabulary that are a tad amusing to anyone who did not grow up a Milwaukee Lutheran. Little lines like "O for crying out loud in a handkerchief" or "is the Pope Lutheran" and "you bet your lifesavers."

Not a bad way to end the semester!