Stories
Stories
My Greatest Prank
By good luck, I came to be the brother-in-law of Ron Eriksen. Also, during the Depression of the 80’s and by good fortune, I came to be a commissioned sales associate of John Sommers. That these two good-natured men of jovial dispositions should become mock adversaries through my introductions and manipulations was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. Here is how I cast them in starring roles of my MGP.
During a trade show in Houston, Texas, I assisted John in presenting and marketing machines and software. We had experienced a long day of frustrating sales presentations that resulted in zero sales. The show closed at 5pm, and since my brother-in-law, Ron, lived in Houston, earlier I had invited him to the show, although he and John had never met.
Ron arrived at the show when John was busy with a potential customer and I was not. I knew introducing Ron could wait until John finished with the prospect, so I proceeded to demonstrate the equipment for sale to Ron. Soon John finished and approached while my back was turned. I know it “looked” like I was “pitching” a customer and John, ever hopeful, took the situation for just that.
John quickly introduced himself, hoping to assist my potential sale. When Ron and I caught wind of John’s misunderstanding of the situation we “winked” each other. I continued to do the full demonstration of the machine and software. Meanwhile, Ron became a skeptical and most reluctant buyer.
With the conversation bogging down, Ron must have sensed he had overdone it and decided to up the ante and said, “John, I could actually use four of these type machines”. That was all the motivation John needed.
John saw an opening. “The Show is closing soon, so let’s catch Happy Hour at the bar. How about joining us, Ron?”
Ron and I could hardly maintain our composure to continue the prank and swallow beverages simultaneously. Finally, John caught on and we knew the prank was over.
“You know, Ron, I’m thinking you’re full-of-bull”, John said. Then he bellowed to the waitress, “no more drinks this table.”
We all had a good laugh at John’s expense, and he still paid for the drinks. John had a history of pranking others and seem to appreciate a “good con”. That would be enough of a story, but we were just getting started.
My sales work with John Sommers continued for several more years while Ron Eriksen continued to join us for many Happy Hour times, and John endured the retelling of his victimization by us. Somehow between all the snarky remarks, John blamed Ron entirely and my co-conspiracy was forgotten. I could not stand by and let Ron have top billing.
John must have reached his “choke point” because he attempted to enlist me in his plan for a retaliation prank on Ron. John’s long-running aggravation with life was his short stature and baldness. Just his luck that both Ron and I had abundant and wavy hair, also we were much taller.
John picked on Ron particularly for his heavily styled black hair and accused him of wearing a toupee. He confronted me for the “truth”.
“How about it? Ron wears a topper, doesn’t he?” John asked.
“It’s obvious, if you study it,” I said. “You are one of the few that called him on it.”
“I oughta’ pull that fake hair off and show him up for the imposter he is,” John said.
"I would not blame you,” I said.
A week later, all three of us were having dinner at Steak&Ale in Houston. The meal was excellent and the beer cold. But John had aimed subtle critique at Ron all night, especially his hair, mentioning things like the “rug”, artificial flowers, the color, toupee, instead of taupe, and saying it “wigged him out”. Ron didn’t take the bait and ignored it all.
When Ron left for the restroom, John looked at me. “See how smug he’s playing it. I oughta’ just excuse myself and when I walk behind him, I’ll grasp his pompadour in front and his hairline in back and lift the toupee off his bald head."
“Yeah,” I said.
Ron returned and hardly seated when John made his move. He leaped behind Ron and announced to nearby tables that this man was abandoning artificiality and coming out. whereby John began tugging on Ron’s hair, which did not budge because it wasn’t a toupee, it was real hair.
John released his grip—front and back and blushed crimson. Ron and I had another big laugh at John’s expense, although he didn’t pay for the steaks or drinks.
I had never said Ron’s hair was artificial, but I had not disagreed with John’s assumption that Ron wore a toupee. And now John suggested I “owed” him to get even with Ron.
Now we approach my last effort to bring the Saga of Ron and John to finality. I admitted to John that I was to blame for my allergy to the truth about Ron’s hair. I apologized for egging John into “taking action” and embarrassing himself in public.
“But,” I said, “it is not the time to retaliate and may never be.”
“Why not?” John asked.
“Because when I confided in Ron that you were convinced, that he wore a toupee and would likely yank his hair, in public, to prove it—I also told Ron that…that you wore an artificial eye.”
The End, maybe
Clifton Nixon, June 22, 2021
A Funny Story About a New Activity I Once Tried
Between my twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth birthdays, my job consisted of languishing in the accounting bowels of a huge Houston oil corporation struggling to learn all I could without getting famous for the wrong reasons. While trying to socialize and get known, one recurring question kept bothering me.
“What’s your handicap?”
I thought they had me confused with another guy in the Accounting Department. He drove a car with a handicapped license plate and placard on his windshield. But no, they were talking about golf. Handicap is a way to compare golfers, your “established number of strokes over/or over par”, par being the preferred total number of golfing strokes for the entire course of eighteen holes.
To increase my circulation among company employees, I decided to learn golfing. Easier said than done, but I needed lots of practice—not to embarrass myself. Somehow, I missed the memo about taking golf lessons, which should have been primary. Anyway, I went the practice, practice, practice route—not realizing that I was learning it the hard way and wrongly.
For instance, I bought a set of used golf clubs complete with a brand-name golf bag on wheels, full of new and used golf balls. I completely missed using only clubs that were sized for my body type. That meant my body adapted to the clubs not vice versa. Developing a consistent golf swing seemed important to get off the tee on the first hole, but how? I remained convinced it was only a matter of practice, but how can you correct what you are doing wrong, if you remain ignorant of what that is?
Nevertheless, I persisted and played only with relatives and friends to limit the spread of my humiliation. This ego protection locked me into being only with players as unskilled as myself or worse. Thusly, my extremely limited golfing ability moved towards the outcome of getting me through eighteen holes of golf without breaking clubs, windows, or frightening other golfers into calling for my removable from the course. But I never got good at the sport, except at cursing it.
Finally, unknown to me, the last day of my brief golfing career arrived, but it developed slowly like an avalanche. Three witnesses played in my foursome, my stepdad and two of my friends from high school. They have long ago given up retelling about how I came to give up golfing because listeners never believed their story, anyway.
I managed to get off the first tee with a long, very low line drive, called a “worm-burner” that quit rolling somewhere in the distant rough grassy forest. I might need a search party or a Sherpa to find it.
My threesome all hit decent if not lengthy drives within or near the fairway. I wished my ball had been radioactive or glowed enough that I could find it without a Weed Eater. As I ranged further out of in the rough weeds, I smelled something awful just after I pulled my golf bag over the carcass of a dead skunk.
I left the bag behind briefly and lined-up my next shot back to the fairway and towards the number one hole. My scorecard showed eight shots for a three par hole—I am already five over par. Plus no one will walk behind me pulling my contaminated golf bag.
At the second tee, I hit a short drive that followed the fairway, everyone else landed further down the fairway, also downwind of me, which brought complaints that my golf bag was “breaking their noses.” I don’t intend to prolong this essay with a hole-by-hole replay, that would be overkill in a tearful drama.
Somewhere in the next few holes of golf, my parked “away” golf bag was impacted by an errant ball from another golfer on an adjoining hole of play. He did yell, “Fore”, which is golf shorthand for “duck and cover.”
The intrusive and misguided golf ball smashed into the zipped pocket of my canvas golf bag with a resounding “whap!”
“Your golf bag is bleeding,” one of my buddies said.
Sure enough, a dark stain spread across and down the bag’s pocket. I approached with caution, held my nose, and unzipped the pocket. Inside I found a broken flat glass bottle of reddish hair tonic, apparently secreted by the former owner. The tonic smell complimented the dead skunk aroma with a stronger and less woodsy fragrance. Anyway, I continued to pull the bag along with a fully extended arm.
The next hole, I have lost count, had a tee off on a cliff over a wide creek bed, with briar covered slopes steep enough to slide down—the actual hole, flag waving, across this great divide on a distant plateau. The idea was to hit the ball over the chasm to the other side. After five of my tries all fell into the creek bottom before reaching the other side, I decided to run downhill and consider hitting one up and out of the sandy bottom.
While I contemplated my strategy, my partners saw me appear to be break-dancing as though I had ants in my pants. Which I did because I was standing on a red ant bed and they were stinging me. My wheat jeans fit so tightly that I could not evaluate how infected with ants I was. In my torture and frustration, I ran into the ankle deep creek. That caused the ants to merely crawl higher on my body.
In futility, I decided to roll in the grass at the top of the slope to dislodge the ants. By now my shoes had sunk into the “quick” sand of the creek, so when I extracted my feet and made a run for it, one of my shoes stayed behind. I didn’t return for it.
With my golf bag and what remained of my dignity, I then raced for the club house. One of the club porters sprayed my stinky bag and then searched it. Inside, where I had never looked, he found: a map, a bus schedule, a compass, and an array of used golf balls—one with roofing tar on it. I had bought second hand equipment from some would-be golfer worse off at the game than me.
The End
Clifton Nixon, September 07, 2021