TheOnlySaneOne, your stories are genius. I’m totally cracking up over here. 
In addition to the school swimming pool:
Lifting a car, belonging to a teacher, up onto the stage in the main hall. It was a mini and took quite a few a us.
Stealing a bed from one of the boarding hostels at the school and using a pulley to lift it to the spire on the main hall. Then just waiting
I am either being whooshed or I’m still tired.
I vote still tired. I just opened a page for dictionary.com, patiently waited for it to load so I could type in the words I must be misspelling, and proceeded to carefully type the word “dictionary” into the search box. 
What are the geese doing now, Clarice?
But seriously, you didn’t injure the geese, right? And how did you manage to transport the NiTriIo without it going “FOOP!”?
Nope, whooshed.
You went with the ole English spelling of Flavour. As any self-respecting American knows this is wrong.
Ah. I’m Canadian.
File this one under “senior pranks”. This story, and the links that follow, are all going to be cut-and-paste from my account on Everything2, where I’ve already told the stories as well as I’ll ever tell them. So, without further ado:
The Bell Tower overlooked my high school’s front lawn, where graduation was held every year, where many games of frisbee took place, where much nookie was had in the evenings, and this bell tower can be seen in the movie Dead Poets Society. It rings every hour on the hour, except after lights-out. Yes, I went to a very picturesque high school, and yes, it had (what we considered to be) draconian rules. In case you’re wondering, it’s in Middletown, Delaware, and it’s called St. Andrew’s. Anyway.
This tower has really only one way in, which is from the trash room on Voorhees Corridor on the 3rd floor. The door to this trash room opens inward to a blank wall, which will be important later. The left wall is lined with trash cans, and the right wall has two doors. One goes into the broom closet and one goes up to the bell tower. The tower door is locked both at the knob and with a Master lock, so it seemed hopeless that we (the students) would ever get in.
Except that Dan had a keyring. It had the number two key, which was a sort of skeleton key that was number two in the key hierarchy, and opened everything but the Virgin Mary’s chastity belt, the headmaster’s house, and the Master Lock. We didn’t ask him how he got it, because then if someone asked us, we’d be under the Honor Code to tell them. Plausible Deniability and all that.
So, we could get into the closet, but not the ladder, but that was close enough, because the closet had a crawl space that led to the ladder! Jubilation! Huzzah! Step one was complete–we had access.
Originally, of course, it was access for access’ sake. Having access, however, changed our viewpoint considerably, and a prank was devised.
The bells atop the tower turned out to be speakers, a big ass amplifier, and a timer attached to an audio input that ran to the carillon in the chapel basement. All we needed was to replace the input with something suitably rebellious and we’d be heroes. Dave made a tape of a few obnoxiously juvenile songs like “Asshole” by Denis Leary and “Closer” by NIN. Anything we could think of with foul language went on the tape. Someone donated a Walkman, and we jerry-rigged it with gaffer tape and hot glue so that it would never function as anything but a player for the tape currently inside it, and it would never stop no matter how much you pushed the other buttons.
Our student lounge had a stereo system provided for our class by the filthy rich alumni. At the playing of the National Anthem after our graduation, ownership of this equipment reverted to the class below us, who were, quite frankly, wankers. We needed a receiver to send signal to the amplifiers in the tower, so we did a few late-night stealth trials to ensure that we could retrieve this stereo equipment at will without security finding us. Then we put it back and waited for graduation week.
Meanwhile, other members of the conspiracy were hard at work on ways to glorify and enhance this prank. About a week before the big day, Ganley, Woody, and I took some wood from the theatre program’s tech area and dragged it into the woods. With what meager tools and hardware we could scrape together, we built a truss exactly the width of the narrow dimension of the trash room. We left it in the woods near a pothead refuge called Houses of the Holy, where we knew nobody would look for it, or if they found it, would be too high to disturb it or suss out its true purpose.
Someone bought a hacksaw and a Master Lock downtown, with the idea that we could replace the existing lock with our own lock; this would speed up our access later on, and slow down anyone else trying to put things “right” on Graduation Day.
On the big night, we waited for lights out and sent crews to borrow the stereo receiver, retrieve the truss, and assemble the monstrosity that was our hacked-together propaganda machine. When all the components were in place, it was nearly sunrise. To this day, I regret not climbing the ladder to watch the sun rise over the lake on the morning of my high school graduation. The old lock had been hacked away methodically all night long, and we finally broke it. Once the sun was up, the last one down the ladder pressed PLAY and set the timer for 1:30 PM, by which time we should technically no longer be members of the school (and therefore, not subject to school discipline). The padlock was slapped on the door to the ladder, and Dan locked it with his #2 key. The truss was brought in, leaned against the back wall, opposite the door, and a long thread was tied from its top crossbar to the doorknob. The door was pulled closed, and from out in the hallway of Voorhees, we heard a satisfying thud of the truss slapping into place. Dan locked this door as well.
Graduation came and went uneventfully, except for a moment around 1 PM when someone mentioned that the bell tower’s timer might be “plus or minus 15 minutes” because he had been more or less completely inebriated while setting it. The ceremony went until 1:28. About ten minutes went by with general merriment and relieved looks–no matter what happened now, short of a fire or some other really Bad Thing, we were off the hook.
And then, with a loud squeal, some static crackling, and the music began. It was glorious. Profanity blared across the world, courtesy of the most recent graduates of this august institution. From here on out, I have to admit that I was not present, but my retelling of James’ words will have to do.
Maintenance, in true Groundskeeper Willie fashion, realized too late that a prank had been pulled. Two of the staff, previously collecting chairs from the lawn, sprinted upstairs. After unlocking the door to the trash room… nothing. The truss held. Bad words were uttered very loudly. They went downstairs to their golf cart, drove across campus to their tool shed, and retrieved a circular saw, with which they removed the door from its hinges. Recall, of course, that the door opened inward, so its hinges were out of the way of mischief – their solution was essentially to saw the door off of its hinges! The door was kicked down, and the keys for the Master Lock were found. Their lock, however, was now in Noxontown Pond. The new lock was removed with the circular saw–the hasp that the lock was in was simply removed from the door, violently. By the time they reached the top of the ladder, they were understandably pissed off. The first maintenance man up the ladder ripped the entire audio behemoth from its moorings and tossed it down the twenty foot shaft. The Class of 1997’s (yes, because now they were the seniors – and it was theirs!) stereo receiver became an expensive and fast-moving paperweight, and a good time was had by all.
postscript: about a year ago I went to an a cappella party with the Johns Hopkins Mental Notes after an alumni show. It had been almost eight years since I graduated, but here’s the kicker. My username is the nickname I went by in high school, and was also a friendly stage name I used in the Mental Notes. At the party after the show, a girl who had been in the audience came up to me and said, “You’re Jurph, right? From St. Andrew’s?” I admitted that I was that same Jurph. She laughed and said, “I can’t believe it’s really you! My roommate will be so jealous.” It turns out her roommate at JHU went to St. Andrew’s, and the girl to whom I was speaking went to one of the big New England schools like Andover. Apparently this tale is slightly famous within the boarding schools of the northeastern United States, and I am now something of a minor celebrity, both for helping with the prank, and for bragging about it online.
My friends and I spraypainted “69” 6-7 feet high on the outside brick wall of the high school. It remained there for several years. 
We also filled the principals office with live chickens.
Nobody “official” ever figured out who did either one.
Transported while wet, nitrogen tri-iodide is slightly more stable. Slightly. Very slightly. ut whne you are in high school you think you are immortal. We scattered the goop on the ground in the nature reserve behind the physics lab. The geese pecked at it, and got a face full of bang! Probably gave thme a complex, but we hated those geese. They always went bonkers during an exam, honking and flapping. Made it very hard to concentrate.
Other stunts: I was tangentally involved in the stunt that involved breaking into the girl’s locker room, opening all the lockers with a pilfered master key, swiping a crapload of bras, and then stringing them 30 feet in the air between the palm trees lining the mall through the center of campus. With captions commenting on size and amount of padding.
I remember throwing lit bottles of gasoline off of my friends garage.
I also remember getting drunk and saying “I’ll drink that for 5 bucks!” I woke up the next morning with $20 more than I had the previous night and a wicked hangover.
We did every crazy thing with cars imaginable.
Real crazy thing: some of our friends drove up beside us one day trying to spray a fire extinguisher into our car. A car came over the hill the other way. We were forced off the road and the car flipped over throwing 3 of us (including me) from the car. From the skidmarks, the cops estimated we were going about 65 mph.
I can name like 8 guys I was friends with that were in cars that flipped over in high school. None of us were seriously hurt, though there were kids every year in my high school that died in stupid car crashes.
We raced cars on impromptu drag strips. We also just raced point-to-point sometimes, trying to pass at crazy places, or cutting corners across lawns. We drank and drove. We pulled e-brakes willy-nilly at lots of speeds. We drove cars while on acid. We did “stunts” in snowy, icy parking lots. We towed behind bumpers. We surfed on the hoods and the roofs.
That’s what rural kids do.
I was much tamer than a lot of the guys I hung out with, though I did drive my car off a road one time while trying to go too fast around a corner and got stuck in a ditch on a guys front lawn. The guy had a back-hoe in his back yard and he towed me out.
[Hijack]
Is this the same Gord who later ran a video store, and is now in Korea?
[/Hijack]
I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Jeez, the only thing I ever did was scrawl “Death to the Administration” in 6-inch high letters on the walls of one of the stairwells at school. What can I say? My friends and I took A Tale of Two Cities just a leetle too seriously. 
Oh, and we stole a fire extinguisher one time (one of the old-fashioned water-filled ones), but lost our nerve when it came time to actually do anything with it.
And we uprooted the “No Parking; Violators Will Be Towed” sign between two of the wings of the school, hauled it into the calculus room during lunch, and modified it so it said (IIRC) “No Barking; Violators Will Be Toad”, and put it back where it went.
Pretty lame, really, but we thought we were funny.
On Wednesday of our second week in the ninth grade at St. Michael’s, Wolfie brought a firecracker to school. We were the last two to leave the boy’s bathroom before classes started, and he showed the firecracker to me in there. This was not just any firecracker. It was a large, ash can shaped, silver one. The kind with the fuse coming out from the middle instead of at one end. It was an M-80. Not the wimpy M-40’s that you can buy at fireworks places around the 4th of July. No…An M-80 is intended to be set off by professionals at a fireworks show.
Wolfie wouldn’t sell at any price, wouldn’t talk trade; nothing. Then, just as we were leaving the bathroom, he said, “I’ll give this to you if you’ll set it off in class this morning when Sister leaves the room.” The M-80 and a rumpled book of paper matches changed hands.
In the hour between the start of class and Sister’s break, I thought of nothing but the firecracker. I took the matches out of that shirt pocket so I could have an unobstructed view of my prize. At some point during this hour I ceased to possess the M-80, it possessed me.
Sister took her break, and everyone started the usual sighs and shuffling of feet: Except for me. I got up, walked to the front of the room, and carefully placed the firecracker in the middle of Sister’s desk. With calm heart and steady hand, I struck the paper match, touched the flame to the braided green fuse, and then dashed back to stand beside my front row seat.
It was never intended that an M-80 be detonated inside of a building. The open windows rattled, and would probably have been blown out if they had been closed. The concrete walls vibrated briefly; kind of shivered. Papers from Sister’s desk floated about the room, some still in full sheets, some torn, and some blown into pieces the size of confetti, so that there was a sort of ticker tape parade look to things for a time. A thick cloud of smoke first filled the room, then slowly drifted through the open door and into the hall. My classmates were all standing beside their desks, not saying anything, but performing a strange type of dance: Bouncing up and down with a toe-heel, toe heel action. Possibly this dance was to celebrate the fact that, for a few moments at least, this morning had not been totally boring.
Soon there were many shouted questions out in the hall. Nuns running everywhere! Chaos!
Mother Superior came into the room with Sister, and the first thing said was, “Who did it?” As no answer was provided, a quick clean up job was done to clear out paper scraps and other debris.
A more serious round of “Who did it’s” followed. We were privileged to hear a dissertation on the subject of how whoever did this should confess, since God already knew anyway. This producing no results, the class was instructed to close their eyes and anyone who knew the identity of the culprit was to raise their hand. I didn’t raise my hand, but I guessed twenty or so hands would be raised. To my astonishment, it soon became apparent that no hands had been raised.
A young priest arrived, and the next twenty minutes were consumed by small groups of boys being escorted to the boy’s room by the priest and similar sized groups of girls being escorted to their bathroom by Sister. This continued until the entire class had a chance to “go”. The purpose of the escort service was to ensure total silence and lack of communication among the students. We were instructed to use this precious time to Examine Our Consciences.
Next a new tactic was introduced. Sister walked from desk to desk passing out a small square of paper to each student. We were to write the name of the guilty party on the paper, fold the paper and place it in a basket that Sister would walk up and down the aisle with. Thus those truthful and “good” students could be anonymous and still remain in a state of grace, basking in God’s favor by turning in the sinner.
I doodled on my paper, giving the appearance of writing, folded the paper and dropped it into Sister’s basket when she passed by collecting. From my limited view at the front of the room, the few others I could see had been busy writing on their papers. Mother Superior and Sister went out into the hall to peruse the small squares of paper, while a young sister was left with the class to insure continued silence. I figured that the discovery phase of this deal was about over. Then, to my amazement, the two returned from the hall red faced and furious. The entire class had been doodling on their papers!
Mother Superior took the floor next, revealing that Jesus, the Virgin Mary, and many of the Saints were now frowning on the ninth grade class of Saint Michael’s School. These entities were very disappointed.
Another round of notepapers was passed out. The results were again negative: Nobody had told!
I was now not only astounded, but also puzzled. Why were these kids doing this? I know that I would have not told on anyone else, but my primary motivation would have been in the joy of frustrating the authorities. I knew that many of my classmates did not share these types of feelings.
There was a brief pause while the Pastor was summoned. Father took a more direct approach to solving the problem: Dire consequences would result if the culprit were not discovered. The class would be escorted to the lunchroom and straight back in total silence. Afternoon recess would be canceled. If three o’clock came and the guilty party had not been identified, we would just sit until all students had at least one parent present. Then, great issues would be discussed.
Father also warned that God himself was beginning to be distracted from his great tasks, and even now might be casting a disapproving eye in the direction of Saint Michael’s.
Like most people that talk extensively, Father had revealed more than he had intended. It’s not difficult to develop a counter strategy, when you know the enemy’s plans. Now I had a time schedule.
Lunch period at Saint Michael’s usually meant gulping down whatever food was offered as quickly as possible and dashing out into the courtyard for the ten minutes or so that remained before classes resumed. This brief period after lunch was the only free time in the day, when we could sort of hang out and socialize.
With my classmates doing what they were doing for me, there was no way that I was going to deprive them of their only happy time in the day. I decided that I would surrender myself one minute before lunchtime.
After Father finished speaking, another round of notepaper was handed out, the papers were again collected and examined in the hall.
This time Mother Superior returned to the room with the glint of triumph in her eyes. She walked over to me, grabbed my ear and said, “Come with me!”
Somebody had caved. Now I wondered who?
I was placed in a small room with a small desk, waiting until my grandmother could be summoned. Regina came, bearing personal possessions from my desk. She placed these items on the desktop, bent over and kissed me on the cheek, incidentally revealing an excellent shot of her impressive cleavage. She whispered to me, “That was cool. And Jasper is the one that told on you. Nobody else would have.” Dumbfounded by this kindness from a girl that I had considered to be the most nerdy of nerds, I could only whisper, “Thanks”.
My grandmother arrived, papers were signed, and my emancipation from the Catholic School system was completed in short order. All-in-all, it was well worth it.
Man, that big honkin’ firecracker was a BOOMER!
So, did you get the girl after your performance? And is it true what they say about Catholic school girls?
John Carter and Jurph, I am in awe. Congratulations to you both on jobs well done.
Don’t recall ever seeing her again, although the pleasing image lingers yet.
[Kipling] I never can tell 'till I’ve tried one, and then I am apt to be wrong…[/Kipling] Come to think about it, they’re very much like public school girls. 
Um, gee, thanks! :o
Lots of explosives. Someone (not me or a friend, but certainly memorable) filled a condom (all the way) up with acetylene, tied it off, and then attached a bunch of toilet paper to it as a crude fuse, which was lit in the metalshop. Windows (and an assortment of smaller items) were damaged. No one was injured.
Myself, I used to like to make crude homemade explosives. Sometimes I’d get “fancy” and use saltpetre and charcoal, but mainly I got a lot of mileage out of plain ol’ matchheads. Picture a Black Velvet tube filled up with a mix of whatever the hell I could get my hands on. A single bulb from one of those old flip flash cartridges served as an igniter. Those puppies were taped up tight with just the leads sticking out. Wrapped and wrapped with electrical or packing tape.
We’d get the word out and sometimes a huge audience of small people were present for the detonation. Usually nothing was damaged. A couple of overripe jack-o-lanterns were blown to hell. Still, it’s pretty fortunate that nobody got hurt/deafened/thrown in juvie. Some of those were pretty spectacular. And loud? :eek:
Probably the worst thing that we used to do was to rig piles of dogshit in high-traffic areas with “boomers” (small firecrackers) fitted with improvised delays on the fuses. We got covered in crap enough times ourselves that the karma is probably pretty much balanced, though.
We went to a very large house party that was also a birthday celebration. Five of us snuck into the parent’s room to find a quiet place to get high. The birthday cake was kept in the same room and it had ‘Happy Birthday Honey’ written in cinnamon hearts. I found a bottle of prescription dog laxatives that were very similar in size and color to the cinnamon hearts. Well, the devil made us switch every 3rd or forth candy with a dog laxative. We were laughing so hard that we almost shit our pants in unison.
Hilarity ensued when the birthday cake was served. People were either enjoying the sweet cinnamon hearts or gagging at the chalky dog laxative. Everyone at the party was too drunk to really notice that something was going on. Weeks later there were reports of chronic diarrhea but no one was ever wise to our nasty practical joke.