My high-school physics teacher, let’s call her Ms. Smith, was a good sport. A five-foot-nothing Canadian Trekkie,1 during my senior year she had a class of 24, 22 of whom were boys. So she sort of had to be able to roll with the punches.
We weren’t bad kids, not by any means. We liked to joke around with her, but we weren’t mean and we didn’t grind class to a standstill (usually). What we really liked to do was make her laugh. There was nothing a class clown loved as much as getting your teacher to join in with the fun, even temporarily. Being able to crack that professional demeanor with some well-timed, good-natured quip or prank was always a major win. And even more when the teacher was female. Don’t ask.
I wish I could remember more specifics. It was a long time ago and my memory is bad on the best of days. I do visibly recall a few of video projects where, as long as our videos contained the required and accurate scientific information, we could present it in any way we wanted. One project, the physics of movies,2 found a group of guys and me explaining whether stunts and scenes The Matrix and Mortal Kombat were physically possible or not. Another was a song we wrote about lighting. I write more about this in my book Dreamers & Misfits: The Definitive Book About Rush Fans, if you’re interested.
The point is that this was all good, clean fun. Hijinx. Trying to make the most out of, let’s face it, a boring situation to a bunch of 18-year-old young men. That Ms. Smith was such a good sport indicates to me she understood the challenge facing her and I’d say did an admirable job of meeting it head-on.
Like I said, we weren’t bad kids. Just rowdy.3
I love stuff like this. I love merrymaking. As an adult, I still do. Sometimes the best reason to do something is because it’s funny. I took my son to a Patriots game during a blizzard back in January. The Jumbotron kept showing young, usually jacked, young men between 18-24 with their shirts off, flexing and cheering in the bitter cold.4
My son’s buddy at school, for a brief moment, got the Wikipedia entry about Canada to say “Canada doesn’t exist.” Why? Because it’s funny. That’s all the reason you need.
Sometimes the best reason to do something is because it’s funny.
Remember goofy online trends like planking and owling? Of course, they weren’t male-only, but women like hijinx too. Planking and owling were just ways for young people to get a few laughs. They didn’t hurt anybody. They were the phone-booth-stuffing or flagpole-sitting of the 21st century. It’s something to liven up a boring day. It’s a bit of color throwing into a drab, drone-like routine. That it confounds adults is the majority of the appeal.
Why do the young like to prank so much? What am I, a psychologist? No, I am not. But do you know who is? The internet.
Check this out (emphasis added):
Psychologists have studied pranks for years. Humor, in general, is good for us.
Neuropsychology research has shown that laughing improves well-being
Humor and laughter release endorphins and oxytocin, neurochemicals that are associated with happiness and social bonding. But why are practical jokes or pranks even funny in the first place?
From clinical psychology, a summary of research on pranks:
*Practical jokes are a subtle form of “play-fighting.” Jokes imply a sense of closeness or insider group feelings in the relationship. That is, you tend to prank those you believe you’re close with or can handle the joke.
* A good prank satirizes human fears or vulnerabilities, and is found in a wide variety of international initiation rites and coming-of-age rituals. The Daribi of New Guinea, for example, have children make a small box and bury it in the ground, telling them that after a while a treasure will appear inside but they must not peek. Invariably the youngsters succumb to curiosity, only to find a box of animal feces (research cited from the University of Virginia, department of psychological anthropology).
* The prank releases inhibition, liberating us for a moment from having to act “properly”.
* In psychoanalysis, motivations for the impulse to prank one’s own family or friends has been described as a subtle form of the desire to do bad things to the very people one claims to care for. It may be one of the modalities through which everyday sadism can manifest (i.e., potentially obtaining pleasure from hostile forms of humor, sarcasm, and practical jokes).
The section I highlighted is key to why I think boys and men like to joke around and play pranks on each other (I cannot and will not speak to female psychology). Dudes all know you prank and trade the harshest barbs with the people you’re closest with. I think this is why we liked to prank Ms. Smith. It was testing her, sure, but she passed. She was one of us. She was in the group. And she’d give it right back.
The latter part of this article, and please forgive that it reads like it was written by AI, hits some important points about hijinx:
When NOT to Prank:
Has the target of the prank stated they want this behavior to stop, or have they shown previous distress with any pranks?
Is the target of the prank a vulnerable person, such as a child, an individual with a mental disorder, or person with disabilities?
Could this prank in any way cause harm to a person, either psychologically, physically, or both?
Important considerations here. Speaking for myself, although the word “retard” was used liberally as an insult when I was growing to, we never pranked, bullied, or harassed kids with actual mental handicaps. We tended to be really nice to them actually and try to include them when we could. Picking on them was déclassé, gauche, infra dig, and so on—we were prank aristocrats. We had a noblesse oblige to others in our domain. Picking on handicapped kids was what the trashy kids nobody wanted anything to do with did, because that’s just mean, and meanness wasn’t our aim. The times in my life I was mean and picked on other people out of malice or spite are things I still think about as an adult and regret deeply. Better to be a happy prankster and not a mean one.
I sincerely hope this spirit never leaves our young people. We need to thumb our nose at authority from time to time because it’s a healthy release. And it’s premised on mutual respect. The reason everyone hates Neidermeyer from Animal House5 is because he can’t take a joke. He’s a brittle and humorless suck-up. Nobody can relate to people like that.
How about the scolds tone-policing everything from stand-up comedy to private conversation? The horror that anybody might make fun of somebody or some group viewed as a sacred cow is horrifying—“punching down,” they call it, which translates into “You can make fun of straight white men and Christians with impunity; everyone else needs to be screened for sensitivity.” Nobody likes these people. They need to learn to take a joke. If you’re going to poke fun at or mock or insult other people, don’t be shocked when you get poked fun at, mocked, or insulted in turn.
And when you’re in a position of authority, whether a parent or a teacher or something else where you’re dealing with young people, remember not to take yourself too seriously when they inevitably poke fun at you. There are times for being serious and times for having fun. Sometimes they can be combined. “Read the room,” etc. But do try to laugh at yourself every once in a while.
- Alexander
This is relevant.
I told you that Ms. Smith being a Trekkie was relevant.
It was hilarious though when she sent my buddy Tom to the back of the room for talking to much with the admonition, “Go sit in Siberia,” and then every time for the rest of the class when she’s call on Tom he’d say “What? I can’t hear you! I’m in Siberia! It’s cold back here!” Classic Tom.
All but one were white. Maybe it’s a cultural thing, or maybe it’s just because New England is like 90 percent white. Maybe it’s significant? Is this a white guy thing? Whatever it was, it was funny.
Have you watched that lately? It is not all that funny.
Back in my sub days I developed a rubric for when-not-to-prank.
In short, fair play. Continuing to pull a prank that the victim was completely helpless to prevent, causing him repeated bouts of wasting time, trying to put everything back together and get everything running again, was out of bounds.
There is a huge difference between the upper level watch sneaking down into middle level to trip out a critical piece of equipment, where he can get caught, and doing so repeatedly by reaching down from above with the broomstick
The latter may be funny once, but with almost no skin in the game or risk to themselves, very quickly becomes torment..
By contrast, repeatedly gravity-checking the lower level watches with buckets of water was deemed fair game. A little attentiveness on the part of the lower level watch made it fairly easy to dodge a bucket of water, and they had a lot of pressurized water with which to fight back.
A kindred spirit! If only everyone we joked around with, pranked, or verbally zinged understood just how much we love them...most of the time.