We were putting on a performance of The Phantom of the Opera. We had this brown piano to the side of the stage that during one act was a piano and during the next act was the Phantom’s pipe organ. We accomplished this by dressing the piano up during intermission. We’d constructed a black cardboard piece that fit over the piano and atop the piano placed a number of cardboard carpet rolls, cut to appropriate lengths, spray-painted silver and hot-glued together.
So the Phantom (my boyfriend-at-the-time, Danny), sits down at the “pipe organ” and proceeds to “play.” I’m not ten feet away, standing in the doorway that led to backstage, watching as best I can through a thin black curtain.
The “pipes” come tumbling down on Danny’s head. The audience bellows. The next thing I know, Danny’s yelling in anger. I cringe. Danny had a temper. But after waiting a moment, I realize he’s just playing his part – “Christine” had tried to take his mask off.
Until graduation, the Drama Club joke was…
O Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are falling.
Another good one with Danny was when we were both reading Dragonlance novels. If you are aquainted with them, you probably know that the gnomes in them have rediculously long names. We speculated as to how they came up with these names. We decided they relied on a system of…
Gnomenclature.
Which I realize probably isn’t really funny, but I still laugh until I cry when I think of that word.
That one and the one where that old fellow thought that the moose head on the lobby wall was saying, “I speak English veddy gooood–I learn eet from a booook,” because he couldn’t see the other guy crouched down behind the desk. Kills me every time I see it!
Ah yes, the trailer park…Pukka_Ag and I went to the same high school, you see.
But I think the best one happened outside the trailer park. It was an Episcopalian school, and during our senior year, the school finally got around to building the new chapel they’d been planning for years. To consecrate the new building, the entire school attended a drawn-out and really rather goofy ceremony which culminated in the bishop’s knocking on the door and saying, “This is my chapel! Let me in!”
At which point Pukka_Ag leaned over and whispered, “Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin!”
Of course the fact that we were in a solemn chapel ceremony and it would have been wildly inappropriate to start laughing out loud made it so much worse…
We had just arrived in London for a college class a few years back and leaving a pub walked past a 5 & dime store. In the window a small packet caught my eye and I stopped to read it. It was titled “Dr. Windbreaker’s Fart Powder - guaranteed to produce massive flatulence much to the delight of you and your friends.” Our mixed group all busted up laughing but poor Sarah, sweet petite Sarah, accidentally let fly with three rectal blasts from her entheusiastic guffaws. The first was bellowy and tugboat-ish, but the next two really tightened up as she realized what she’d done. That abrupt change in pitch sent us into even further histerics.
Ironically, that event helped break the ititial ice and we all became quite close later.
My friend and I were going home after buying some late-night snacks at a 7-11. As I was driving along, my friend noted that I had thrown away a cup (Kiwi Strawberry? yecch!)while I was in the place, a practice that the resident 7-11 employee will scold you for.
He said we needed to watch out for “The Slurpee Police”, at which point he sang, “SLURpee, SLURpee, SLURpee” as if it was a police siren (first syllable high, second syllable low, even adding the Doppler effect of them driving by!). For some reason, I started cracking up so hard, I nearly drove off the road. I sat in his driveway for ten minutes wiping tears away, calming down. I still chuckle whenever he talks about the Slurpee Police.
