Hertzler Outpost

The other day Audrey asked me who my oldest friend was, the person I’ve known the longest. James is that guy. One of my earliest memories is him telling me he was three years old. He did so by holding up his first two fingers and his thumb, just like any child of European parents would do. My three year old thought was, “That’s NOT how you do three.”

This week he sent me an email with a link to the object of a prank we pulled in 7th grade; stink bombs. (You might want to skip this post, Mom.) I wish I had enough maturity at the time to enjoy all the great fallout from this prank, but instead I was just afraid of getting caught the whole time. Anyway, after James showed me the stink bomb I agreed to break it in English class. It STUNK, of course, so our English teacher went to get the Chemistry teacher to see what was up.

Mr. Petri, the Chemistry teacher, came in and gave us all a very serious explanation of what sulfur is, and the nauseating effects it can have on those exposed to concentrated amounts of it. Then he speculated that someone must have done this foul deed purposely. All eyes turned on Jerry. And since the Principal had accompanied the Chemistry teacher I was pretty much busted.

What happened next is not something I am proud of. They took me up to the Principal’s office and extracted a confession from me. Everyone has their breaking point. Unfortunately mine was not far under the surface. I ratted out my friend, James, as the source of the stink bomb.

It ended fairly well, though. They let us off without calling our parents since somehow the blame was distributed among two people. I’m not sure how that logic worked, but I didn’t spend much time trying to understand. This, I believe, is the first opportunity my parents have had to discover this event, so whatever arrangement I made that day proved effective.

And now that I know where I can buy more stink bombs……