The Great Prank of 2002
(This post was inspired by the word “superintendant” provided by Nate Lopez of Austin, Texas.)
This is a true story about a major prank I was involved in sixteen years ago. It was a prank that brought some of the best of Beverly High School’s class of 2002 together, and deeply infuriated the some of the school administration. While my role in it was small in comparison to the grand scale of the thing, and though I was not one of its masterminds, I nevertheless continue to come back it as one of the most fun, and thrilling, (And dare I say “proud”?) moments of my life.
Before I get started, you should know that I was eighteen when all this went down. I’m two days away from thirty-four now. So, you’ll have to understand than my memory of this may be fallible, or at least fuzzy. Names, details, and chronologies have been forgotten or confused, I’m sure. Further, this prank was already written about with much greater accuracy, scope, and I will say “verbosity”, back in 2004, by one of the prank’s architects, Trevor. You can read his account here: https://writeinthekisser.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/write-in-the-kisser-presents-pranks-but-no-pranks2.pdf . It’s a real humdinger. Here, however, I will only report on the events I was witness to first hand, and how they had an impact on me. Ready?
Contrary to the official stance of Beverly Public Schools, senior pranks were a big tradition Beverly High School. It was a last chance at leaving your mark, before heading on to college, or a career, or military service, or wherever. It retrospect, it was also a last chance for many of us to be real juvenile delinquents. I, myself, and many of the others involved were not known for being trouble makers. We mostly got good grades, and were the “please” and “thank you” sorts, which is ideal if you don’t want to be suspected of pulling a major prank. Previous graduating classes had released crickets in the school, pulled fire alarms, released a live chicken at a pep rally, and stuck a giant papier-mâché penis on a sign post in the parking lot. The best prank to date had been when the seniors stole some of the giant letter off the school sign, so instead of reading “Beverly High School”, it read “Beer High School”. Classic. But we had our sights set much higher.
Still, prior to the major events of Prank: 2002, there had been plenty of end-of-the year micro-pranks. My friend, Keith, had rigged up an old-fashioned school bell to a battery and a switch, and brought it in his back pack one day. At several points during the day he set it off between classes. It sounded enough like the actual bell that rang between classes, that it confused plenty of teachers and students into leaving class or lunch early. Keith had also recorded a comedic announcement, poking fun at the faculty, that he hoped to broadcast over the P.A. system. Tom, my neighbor from across the street, would later get arrested, briefly, for trying to patch into the P.A. system at night. It turned out okay for him, and I wasn’t there, so I’ll leave that story be.
I had come to be friends with some of the masterminds behind the major prank late in my high school career. I’d had a great and fun core group of friends up until that point, but these news guys were almost completely separate from that. One of them, Jeremy, asked me to be on a public access TV show that he and some of his group were putting together. Well, more accurately, Jeremy asked the guy I was sitting next to in French class if he would like to be on the show, and I was allowed to tag along. A year and a half, and four episodes of “The Barely Humorous Show” later, I was fairly tight with this new group of guys. Jeremy and Trevor, the two biggest masterminds behind the show, were also among the biggest masterminds behind the prank, and thusly, my gateway to being involved with the thing. They also became great friends to me. Incidentally, I’d continue to work with them well into that summer after our senior year, shooting a project that would be the half-hour-long culmination of a three part “Barely Humorous Show” segment, and a special effects extravaganza, entitled “Toast Dusters: The Movie”. Yes, our most successful sketch on the show was called “Toast Dusters”. Yes, it started out as a weird “Ghost Busters” parody. Yes, I played “Dr. Dirtyhands” , the evil super villain who was Hell-bent on making people’s toast…dirty. And yes, you can see the film in it’s entirety right here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WABzrdLYv_c
The episodes themselves, may be lost to the ages. But I digress. The point is that I was without my traditional group of friends on this one, and these guys, particularly Jeremy, had pulled me into a world of intrigue.
Oh, also, it is important for later irony to know that at the time of the prank, the superintendant of Beverly Public Schools, we’ll call him “Mr. L”, had generously guest starred on “The Barely Humorous Show” earlier that year. The sketch consisted of Mr. L secretly setting up lame pranks around the high school, and then triumphantly shouting “Boo-ya!” when they worked. Classic high/low status stuff. Getting him was hilarious, and coup for “The BHS” ( purposely an acronym for both Beverly High School, and “The Barely Humorous Show”. I know, I know). Anyway, back to the meat and potatoes…
Weeks before graduation, there was a constant buzz around the school, particularly among the “BHS” crew and their associates, as to what our big prank would be. One idea was to send three greased up pigs running through the school. They would have the numbers “1” , “2” and “4” painted on them. That way, even after all three pigs were captured, people would still be looking for the fourth, nonexistent, pig. Another idea was to bring a horse into the school and lead it upstairs. “Everybody knows that horses can walk upstairs, but can’t walk downstairs, so it would be stuck up there!” I’m sure there were some fun ideas that didn’t involve livestock, but I don’t remember them. Thankfully we didn’t have access to these sorts of animals, because in retrospect, those ideas seem pretty cruel.
The best idea was to sneak into the school at night, and move every single desk in the school out into one hallway. I liked this plan for several reasons. First, let’s talk about the scale. Beverly High School was home to approximately five hundred students, and even more desks, at that time. Moving them all would be very impressive, disrupt every class, block an entire hallway, and be an mighty sight to behold, indeed. Then there was the bad-assery of sneaking into school at night to take on such a gigantic task. The mere thought of that made me feel like a secret agent, specifically Ethan Hunt from Mission Impossible. But the part of the plan that I liked best was that it didn’t harm anyone, and didn’t cause any actual damage to school property. All it did was disrupt. While some teachers and custodians might be annoyed at having all of the desks moved, I couldn’t imagine any one actually getting too upset about it. Oh, how naive a thought that was!
On the night that this was all supposed to go down, my stomach was in knots. As I mentioned before, I was not the trouble-making sort. And I certainly wasn’t the “sneaking-out-of-my-parents-house-in-the-middle-of-the-night” sort either. But I did know exactly how to do it. My parents house was, and is, a split level. One of my brothers and I shared a bedroom on the ground level, which had a sliding door leading directly out to the back yard. An easy escape route! There were only two obstacles to consider.
The first was my brother. Since we shared the room, there was absolutely no way I could sneak out, and then back in later, without him being in on it. We didn’t always get along very well, so I wasn’t sure how he would feel about keeping my secret, or worse, covering for me. My parents were incredibly strict back then, and I was sure the punishment would be severe should I get caught. Shortly before bed, I approached my brother with what I intended to do. His initial reaction was great surprise. And I may have imagined it, but I thought I also sensed a twinge of admiration. This sticks with me because even as the oldest of my four siblings, I always felt like the black sheep. Rarely did I ever feel respected, let alone admired, by any of them. So this was nice. As I remember, he agreed to keep his mouth shut, but that he wouldn’t lie for me if confronted. That seemed fair.
The second obstacle was the sliding door itself. It was fairly loud, and my father, who slept one floor above, is a famously light sleeper. For example, if I were to walk upstairs during the night, there was a good chance he’d wander out of his room in his underwear to see who was moving about. This meant me sliding the door open, half an inch at a time, and stopping each time, to listen for anybody moving around upstairs. Once outside, the process had to be repeated in order to shut the door, all while my brother watched from his bed.
When the door finally closed without incident, I took a second to just stand there, in the dark of my back yard, listening to the bugs chirping. I was in it now. Thoughts of my brother double-crossing me, specifically by locking the slider while I was gone, came and were immediately pushed aside. No time to worry about that now. It was time to get to the rendez-vous point.
I didn’t have a car, and the high school was several miles away, so we had arranged that Julie would be picking me up. Julie had used to tie my shoes for me when we were little, and we had recently rekindled our friendship. I was much better at tying my shoes now, but I couldn’t have her picking me up anywhere near my house — my dad would certainly hear any car pulling up. No, I had needed a landmark to meet at, and there weren’t many in my little corner of suburbia. So, I had instructed her to pick me up a block from my house, in the Ryal Side Liquors parking lot. Let me be clear: my plan was, as an eighteen year-old kid, to stand in an empty liquor store parking lot, at midnight on a school night, by myself, and wait to be picked up. Not conspicuous at all! Worse, it would be another two years until I got my first cell phone, so I just had to wait and trust that should be there. To her enormous credit, she was right on time.
Upon entering the car, Julie informed me that we would be meeting up with the rest of the seniors at the Burger King parking lot on the highway, and await further instruction. When we arrived at Burger King, I was shocked to see what must have been at least half of the Beverly High School class of 2002 loitering loudly, and dressed mostly in black. How had all of these people snuck out? Were they all going to sneak into the school? The answer turned out to be “no”. In fact, on that night, none of us would.
Word was that the police were somehow aware of our intention to pull off a prank at the school that night, and that they were on their way to Burger King at that very moment. I’m not sure if someone at Burger King warned us, or if we had an informant inside the Beverly Police Department, or what. Supposedly somebody had access to a police scanner. Who knows? We quickly resolved to relocate to another parking lot…somewhere. I can picture it in my head, but don’t remember where exactly it was. Our caravan would relocate several times that evening, as news would reach us that the police were on their way to each new spot. We could only spend so much time in one place before we risked being busted up. But at the same time, we wanted to stay in each place as long as possible so that everyone could get there before we agreed on our next location. It was sort of like that episode of Battlestar Galactica where the fleet has to jump every so many minutes before the Cylons show up. Of course, that show didn’t premier until a year later.
Now keep in mind, many of us did not have cell phones, and the first smart phones were about four years away. So there was a lot of us in the dark, relying on word of mouth communications from those who were “in the know” that evening. Each time we “jumped” our numbers decreased substantially. This was partly because people were giving up, and partly because some of our cars were getting pulled over. To make things even worse, there was news that a few drunken seniors had been caught vandalizing the school earlier in the night. This especially pissed us off because not only had they alerted the police to our plans that night, but they had also smeared our good names. One of the main points of choosing this particular plan was that it didn’t cause any property damage. We had just lost our moral authority.
At some point, we all came to the obvious but painful conclusion that fifty people weren’t going to sneak into the school while police cars were actively waiting for that to happen. While it had been a thrilling evening, we were all a little bummed that we had missed out on our shot at a historic senior prank. We’d certainly never be able to assemble such a large group of students again.
The next day was full of stories of everyone’s wild night. These featured many near escapes and run-ins with the law. One guy, Brendan, has been hid inside the school for hours the night before. Part of the plan was for him to hide inside the school before it closed, and then let us all in under the cover of dark. Except we never even got to the school, so he’d been in there by himself, getting spooked for hours before finally leaving. He supposedly got so scared of being heard moving around school, that he eventually removed his pants, to avoid any swishing sounds. I have to imagine that getting caught while not wearing pants would be way worse than getting caught with pants on, but hey, I wasn’t there.
Days passed, and high school life went on. There was prom, and senior week, and graduation to think about. But a few people couldn’t let our prank idea go. Jeremy was, of course, one of them. One day, just before getting picked up from school, Jeremy pulled me into a group out in the school parking lot, and informed me that we were going to try again that night. I was surprised by this, as I had not heard anything about this. That, according to Jeremy, was the beauty of it. This would involve a much smaller, and more manageable, group of students. If they moved forward…was I in? I was thrilled to have received this insider information, and told him that if they did indeed move forward, they could count on me. But they would have to call me at work.
At the time I worked concessions at the North Shore Music Theater. Once again my stomach was in knots. As I baked pretzels and bagged candy, all I could think about was the possibility that I would be infiltrating the school and rearranging the décor later that night. But, I was still a bit skeptical that after everything that had already happened, this prank was actually going to happen. So, I was thrilled when my boss told me I had a phone call.
It was Julie on the line. We were doing it. She would pick me up in the liquor store parking lot again at midnight. Sweet.
“You’re going out again?!” my brother exclaimed. This time he seemed absolutely incredulous. Yup. The same rules would apply. I had already escaped and returned in this way once before, so this part, at least, was a lot less nerve-racking.
I got into Julie’s car, and once again, she filled me in. There was no news of police activity this time. We had likely caught them off guard. However, Julie would only be shuttling us pranksters, and then serving as one of the lookouts, just in case police should show up on the scene. She would not be entering the building with me. She would, instead, be dropping me off on Sohier Road, by the woods. Yes, the woods. Someone would escort me from there.
The woods thing had been part of the original plan, we had just never gotten that far. Some of the prank architects had cut a path through a small wooded area, down a hill to where the tennis courts were behind the school. From there it was a fifty year dash through the open to the back doors of one of the school wings, where students already inside would be waiting to let us in. It was likeliest way to enter the school without detection. I don’t remember who had waited inside the school this time, but I’m fairly certain it wasn’t Brendan again. Once was enough for him. Julie dropped me off on the side of the road, and immediately took off. There was nowhere to park here, and a stopped car would stand out as being very unusual. Some shadowy figures were gesturing toward me from the tree line. I went in.
It was dark, and flashlight use was being kept to a minimum, so it took a little while to figure out just who was there with me. The answer? None of my close friends. As we made our way down hill, and into further darkness, I began to worry that I would be working with near strangers all evening. Were these people I could count on to have my back if shit went down? We continued through the woods. The path was supposedly marked by tennis balls, but we were having a hard time locating them in the dark. We eventually bumped up against another small group ahead of us. That’s when I heard a laugh I’d recognize anywhere.
“Charlie?”
Charlie had been my very best friend since fourth grade. He was, and is, a big friendly guy who everyone immediately likes. He was part of my older group of friends, not the “Barely Humorous” crew. I had not spoken to him about the prank at all, and had no clue that he would be here. Yet, here we both were, surprised to see each other in the middle of the woods on a school night.
“Charlie, I’m so glad you’re here!”, I remember whispering.
“I’m so glad you’re hear too!” he replied.
Okay, so I would have at least one ally on the inside. And I assumed Jeremy and Trevor were around somewhere. That was good. We arrived at the Tennis Courts and flattened ourselves to the ground. We would run across the open space to the back door and knock to be let in. We were informed that we would be running across two at a time, so as not to attract attention, and if we did, at least the rest of the group could get away unseen. Charlie and I made sure to run together.
“Go.”
We sprinted across the open area as fast as we could. This was the most adrenaline inducing part of the entire affair. We had seen a pair get let in ahead of us, so we knew there should still be someone at the door. Still, I couldn’t help having the briefest thought that we’d get to the door, nobody would be there, and we’d just be standing there in the open with our proverbial pants down. Thankfully, this did not happen. A quick knock, and we were let in.
Being inside the school at night, with all of the lights off and no adults, was surreal to say the least. What made it down right spooky was that the halls happened to be plastered with streamers, balloons, and other decorations, that weren’t normally there. Those hadn’t been there during the day, either. Earlier that evening, while I had been slinging popcorn, much of the senior class had participated in a senior week hall-decorating contest. So basically, I had left the school at 2:38 that day, with it looking bright and normal. Hours later, I was standing in a shadowy funhouse mirror reflection of that same school I’d attended for four years. Did I say it felt surreal? Because it felt surreal.
All told, I would estimate that there about twelve to fifteen of us that made it inside the school that night. You’ll have to check Trevor’s account for names and accuracy there. But basically we divided ourselves into several small groups, each working on a wing of the school. Now, if you were to look down at the school from the air you would notice that the main part of the school was shaped like a capital “E”. The backbone was “G Corridor” and the three arms were “A, B” and “C” wing. Each of these hallways consisted of a different number of floors, starting at different levels. There was also a number of auxiliary wings (I assume D-F were in there, somewhere), that lead to the lunch room, music wing, auditorium, and various other places. There wasn’t much rhyme or reason to the place, making it a nightmare for scared freshman to navigate. The story was that the building had been designed by some acid junky in the fifties or sixties. I can’t confirm or deny this, as there doesn’t seem to be any information on it online. I wanted to include an aerial view of the school here, but I had a hard time finding any good shots of it as well. Suffice it to say that the building was quirky, and not well maintained. It leaked everywhere, and plaster panels from the ceiling often caved in. You would never know any of this now, because in 2011 the building was almost entirely demolished and replaced with a bigger, newer design. Driving by now, it looks absolutely nothing like the school I went to. And by that I mean it looks like planned-out and nice.
Anyway, we spent several hours carrying desks down and out of the wings, and stacking them in lower G corridor. We were careful passing by windows, and froze every time the headlights of a passing car shined through. We were constantly freezing to listen for sounds. Many of us were paranoid that a custodian might come to work very early. We decided to make sure we were all out by 3:00 A.M., regardless of how far along we were, to be certain we’d avoid this contingency.
The desks themselves were almost all of the sort where the table and chair parts are attached. These are awkward to carry by yourself at first, particularly down stairs. But after a short while, we all developed a rhythm. Grabbing the desk by the metal arm that attached the chair to the table section, and slinging that over your shoulder proved to be the least taxing method. Still after several hours of moving the things, dodging streamers and balloons all the while, we were exhausted. The original fifty plus person crew, assuming they could get into the school, would have taken this on easily. As it was, three o’clock was getting near, our skeleton crew was running solely on adrenaline fumes, and much of A Wing still needed to be de-desked. Some of us were ready to get the hell out of Dodge. Others, like myself, wanted to stay just a little longer. We were so darn close to getting every singe desk! If we all stayed, another half hour should do it! But our lookouts/rides were getting bored/tired. It made sense. They’d been sitting out there in their cars for hours.
A few people would stay behind and get as many of the last chairs as possible, but it was decided that I should go. I remember taking a minute to just stand and admire our handy work. At some point during the night, we had realized that there were more desks than could actually fit in Lower G Corridor. So, naturally we started stacking them. Now looking down the hallway, it was nothing but sea of desks. Almost the entire hallway was filled, and much of it stacked well above our heads. We’d main an entire major artery of the school impassible. This would take a lot of work to undo the next day. I wished I had a camera. It was an awesome sight to behold.
Naturally I didn’t get much sleep that night. The adrenaline rush lasted all the way through my mother driving us to school the next morning. There was no way that all of the desks could be out of the way by now. Walking into school was walking into chaos. The following is a scramble of information that I learned throughout the day.
Mr. L, the superintendant and star of our prank sketch, was spitting fire. He had gathered all of our class officers into the principle’s office to interrogate them about what had gone down in his school. Luckily, they had all been kept purposely in the dark for this second attempt, and had next to no information to give, even if they wanted. Plausible deniability, baby. Mr. L. also famously snatched a video camera out of the hands of one student who was recording the mayhem, and privately interrogated. Boo-ya.
Custodians had been at work since early in the morning slowly moving the desks back into the classrooms, so that school could begin, and so that Lower G could even be passable. They had apparently called in extra hands from other schools to assist in this Herculean task. We had made sure to write down the number of desks removed from each classroom on each classroom’s chalkboard the night before, to make this task easier. I thought this was considerate of us. Still, at least a third of the desks were still in the hallway, when I got to school. Several homeroom classes were recruited to helping move the desks back. Those of us who had been involved the night before, had to pretend we hadn’t developed an efficient method of moving the desks, so as not to raise suspicion with our newfound expertise. The entire school was abuzz with students asking who had done this, and pride welled up into the chests of those responsible. Most of the teachers were upset, but a few smiled and quietly admitted that they thought the whole thing was pretty funny. We were secret heroes! Like Zorro!
One unforeseen consequence of the prank, was that that days Memorial Day assembly was cancelled. A group of veterans had been invited to speak to us that afternoon in the field house, but Mr. L, and our Principal, Mr. F, decided that there was a huge security concern, and cancelled the whole thing. Some of the veterans, who I’m told had traveled some distance, arrived in uniform only to be sent away. This became a huge negative P.R. tactic used by the school administration against our class. “Today was supposed to be a day to honor our veterans and fallen soldiers, but the irresponsible deeds of the senior class has ruined that! Shame on them!” First of all, our prank had not affected access to the field house in the slightest. Second of all, if the administration had security concerns, shouldn’t they have sent all the students home as well? Being blamed for the cancellation of the Memorial Day assembly infuriated us. How dare they take our harmless prank, and use patriotism to condemn it. Nope, we were not having it.
That’s why, when the time of the assembly rolled around, much of the senior class, and even some underclassmen, did not proceed to their normal classes. Instead, we marched down to the field house, defiantly sat in the bleachers, and demanded that we still have the assembly. Clearly our newfound bravery from the night before, was now spilling out everywhere. It was glorious. Simply, glorious.
Eventually Principle F. burst into the field house. Ordinarily, Principle F. was a mild-mannered and generally well-liked kind of guy. But he had had a stressful morning. He was screaming.
“That’s it, you better get to your classes now, or there’s going to be NO graduation! No prom!…”
He quickly trailed off. He’d run out of things to threaten us with, and another teacher tagged in. Mr. F stormed out. This other teacher was much calmer. A diplomat.
“I understand that you are disappointed that the assembly is cancelled, but you really need to go to class. There can still be prom, and graduation, but you just need to go.” I like to think she was on our side. We eventually dispersed, but nothing was accomplished academically for the rest of the day.
My parents heard about the prank through the grapevine, and that evening, they asked me if I knew anybody who had been involved. Some of that bravery must have still been sticking to me, because I paused, and then told them I had been there. My parents’ eyes widened and they looked at each other for what to do. Clearly they had not expected this response from me. I was equally surprised that my normally strict parents just…let it slide. In fact, the only time they ever condemned me for sneaking out, was when they were mad about something else, and lumped that incident in for extra ammunition.
The local media was not so forgiving. Yes, that’s right, I said “media”. Both the Salem News and the Beverly Citizen would print several articles and editorials on the “Furniture Fiasco” in the coming weeks. Most of these were surprisingly harsh in how they condemned our prank. Hadn’t they realized that no property had been damaged? Hadn’t they noticed that no teachers, students, or animals had been harmed? Hadn’t they noticed that there was no vulgarity or targeted meanness attached to what we had done? If they had, it was secondary to their outrage over the issue of security.
The Columbine shooting had taken place my freshman year of high school. It was the first school shooting of it’s kind in the United States, and back then, people actually seemed bothered by this sort of thing. Little did we know these sorts of things would start to happen every week in the near future. Ah the naivety of youth! Naturally, the city was already putting a lot of pressure onto the school administration to prepare for, and prevent, that kind of violence. Of even more importance, was that the 9/11 attacks had occurred less than a year prior (I had watched the towers fall on an old TV that was wheeled into my sociology class). We were living in a new world of heightened security and paranoia. If a large group of teenagers could break into the school for hours at a time unnoticed, what else might we have been able to do? What if we had planted a bomb? It didn’t seem to matter that we hadn’t planted a bomb. People were just so outraged that we could have. This seemed insane to us at the time. But realizing how much pressure the school administration was facing in the area of security, I can in retrospect understand Mr. L and Mr. F’s enraged (and likely very stressed) reactions. All eyes were on them.
There was also the usual, “what’s wrong with kids these days” arguments, that every generation faces. “Why couldn’t these kids channel that kind of energy into pushing a lawn mower?” Well, were kids, that’s why. This was about leaving a mark. This was about immortality! I, for one, felt we were being judged far more harshly than preceding senior classes — who had done worse — simply because we had the burden of being the first post-9/11 graduating class. Trevor ended up writing a counter-editorial to the Beverly Citizen, defending out prank, and the responsible way we had gone about it. Having our point of view out there in print was a relief to many of us. I was heartened to learn that many teachers and parents also responded well to what Trevor had written.
In retrospect, I do sometimes wonder why we couldn’t have put some of our high-achieving, and in some cases, brilliant heads together and done something positive for the community instead. The truth is, I don’t think that thought would have occurred to us. We were high schoolers, and outside of that school, we didn’t see ourselves a people yet. This was a right of passage. Plus, you know, pranks are just more fun.
So that’s it. We did have prom. We did have graduation. But most of all, we had a great story to tell for years to come.
