Going Out in a Blaze of Stupid

Forty-one years ago, a group of male adolescents and I spent the night before our last day as high school students camping out in my rural Indiana school's parking lot.

Well... we didn't actually camp out. No tents were pitched nor sleeping bags unrolled. No fires were lit, except for a propane-fueled camp stove for some bacon and eggs in the morning. But oh, the havoc we wreaked.

• Using a couple pick-up trucks, we rounded up a few outhouses to decorate the school grounds.
• Also part of the decor was an eclectic gathering of For Sale signs.
• We took all the cement parking space thingies (they may actually be called curbs, but they're the individual ones, you know?) and put them in front of the entrance doors.
• With the remaining cement parking space thingies, we built a cabin.
• We found a couple old tires and ran them up the flag pole. Then Steve Z. shimmied up the pole and flipped a tire over the top like the world's largest ring toss. NOTE: Steve was probably drunk when he went up, but was most definitely sober when he got back down.
• Someone had brought an Army-surplus smoke canister, and about 45 minutes before the start of the school day, we hooked that baby up to a car battery and watched the smoke roll.

I've got to admit, the school principal, SexyLexy, was very good-natured about it all. His only communication to us about the whole evening was when he came out after 30 minutes of smoke screen activity and said, "Okay, men, you've had your fun. Now let's put that thing out and get to your classes."

Did I mention this was an Army smoke canister?

There simply was no Putting That Thing Out. We emptied three fire extinguishers and all of our bladders into That Thing and the smoke just kept rolling.

And then the wind shifted and blew the smoke INTO the school building. NOTE: We were kind of The Popular Guys when the evening started, but our approval ratings definitely hit a low mark as everyone coughed their way through the last day of school.