When I attended Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Fort Benning, Georgia, one of the things my class became known for was pranks. Let me explain that. The pranks pulled before were junior league, but we upped our game exponentially. My class got bolder and bolder as time went on. By the time we reached senior phase, my class had organized class pranks against the Teaching, Advising, and Counseling (TAC) officers on a regular basis. Our favorite target was the senior TAC. The senior TAC was our favorite target for pranks for several reasons. First, he was so high strung and so easily rattled. He let every little thing needle him and bother him. We exploited that weakness and used it to our advantage. Second, he was a red-haired, freckle-faced person who wore his emotions on his sleeve. What do I mean by that? That is an excellent question. Thank you for asking. Whenever our needling was getting to him. He would start to turn red. The angrier he got, the redder his skin became. I should mention here that not only was his face freckled but so were his arms. I’m guessing his whole body was freckled. I can’t say that for certain because I never saw his whole body partial or wholly naked. But certain inferences can be made in cases like this. Okay so where was I, oh yes, not only did his face get redder, his arms also started turning red. And we didn’t even need the sun to help us out. All we needed to do was to piss him off. And that was pretty easy to do. When you take 170 children (yeah, we were all grown men and women, but still children) constantly driving you batty, it’s pretty easy to get pissed off. Third, he had a lot of exposure to us because, during the senior phase, more and more events required his presence. The more he was around, the more opportunities we had to set him up. You could say that hunting opportunities always seemed to present themselves to us. It’s not that we considered them hunting opportunities, but we did consider him a target. A target of opportunity. A prime target of opportunity. And we always took the shot. One pet peeve that he had that always tripped his trigger was the little alarms on the watches. You know. The little chimes or beeps or bells that sound on the hour every hour on digital watches if that feature is enabled. The OCS policy was to disable the little chimes, beeps, or bells on the watches. When we knew that we were having a meeting with the senior TAC in an auditorium as a class, we would synchronize our watches and enable the chimes to go off five minutes after the senior TAC started speaking. The cue-chime was always the officer candidate company commander’s watch, which would chime three seconds ahead of all of the other watches in the company. So, just as the senior TAC heard the first chime and started to unload on whomever the culprit might be that had his or her chime set, all of the other chimes would go off in the auditorium in synchronized harmony. Then, the senior TAC would boil to a degree of red that could best be described as beet red. You see, one person he might be able to punish by doing push-ups in the auditorium. But the whole class. Not likely. Candidates one, senior TAC nothing. Another prank we loved to orchestrate was the group hat trick. The group hat trick only worked if everybody in the entire class participated. Here is how it worked. Every candidate in the company chose a favorite hat or beanie or head covering that was their go-to hat, beanie, or head covering when not in uniform. For example, my favorite hat was an old train conductor hat. You may have seen train conductors and train engineers wear one in movies on TV. The hat was gray with blue and white pinstripes running the length of it, and it was pleated on top. It wasn’t important what the hat, beanie, or head covering look like as long as everyone wore one. The trick was to conceal the hat, beanie, or head covering on the uniform until the appropriate moment when the hat trick would be sprung. That trick was usually sprung when we were called to attention at some point in the schedule of events while we were in the auditorium. His face when the haberdashery was opened was priceless. The final prank was the I, state your full name, prank. That prank only worked during the graduation practices and at the actual graduation. When the senior TAC started to read the Oath of Commissioning during graduation, the first line included the words, “I, state your full name,” to which the senior TAC would add, “please repeat after me.” So, it went something like this. The senior TAC would say, “Please repeat after me. I, state your full name.” Of course, the expected result was for each candidate to repeat, “I, Wright Masters (or whatever their name may be).” Yeah, well, that’s what they expected. That ain’t what they got. Remember, they were dealing with a bunch of mischievous children. Dare I say conniving, evil, wicked, mean, and nasty children. Please don’t walk on the carpet with your shoes on, children. Yeah. Those kinds of children. What they got was a unified class response, “I, state your full name.” After which the senior TAC promptly screamed, “Now cut that out. Let’s try this again. Repeat after me: I, state your full name.” To which we replied in unison, “I, state your full name.” Now we were starting to see that skin starting to simmer slowly toward a boil. Exactly what we had hoped for. The senior TAC slammed down his clipboard and said, “50th Company, you are really starting to piss me off!” Oh really? We hadn’t noticed. A few laughs and chuckles went up around the auditorium. Then, the senior TAC said again, “We’re going to try this one more time. And you better not clown around this time.” That almost sounded like a challenge. Now we had to clown around as well as screwing up the line. Okay. We could do that. How much longer did we have left on the training schedule for this event? Gee. All whole 15 minutes. We could do a lot in 15 minutes. No problem. Everyone looked around at everyone else and nodded. Then, the TAC said, “Here we go. Repeat after me. I, state your full name.” And then, we started acting all goofy and replied, “I, state your full name.” Finally, we had done it. The senior TAC had blown his top. He had turned nine shades of red and was flaming. He stormed out of the auditorium to get the commander. When the commander came in, he addressed us by saying, “50th Company, I understand you were giving the senior TAC a hard time. Is that true?” We looked at the commander with that telltale “who us” look. We all replied in unison, “Sir, no sir.” “Then, let’s see if we can get through this rehearsal. Repeat after me. I, state your full name.” After which, we all replied with the proper responses and we got through the Oath of Commissioning without a hitch. The commander looked at us and said, “I expect you to do it this way during the actual graduation.” But, of course, we just couldn’t do that. We had to do at least one ‘I, state your full name’ for the audience. It went over extremely well. The guests thought it was really funny. Well, I should be a little more specific. The civilian guests thought it was really funny. The military guests and dignitaries, not so much. Those were the major pranks we played during our tenure in OCS. They helped us pass the time and make light of what was otherwise pretty intense training, which kept said training from becoming just another exercise in futility.
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