Ooh - Tastes Like Chicken Soup! and other Practical Jokes

Like practically everyone else in the world I enjoy hearing a good joke and, when I can remember them, telling one. The problem is that most of the jokes I hear or remember are usually not only widely known but can also be found on hundreds of websites and would thus not meet the requirement that the material in the hub be original. So, for inspiration I checked the definition of the word joke at Dictionary.com on the web. Nine definitions were given with the fifth being practical joke which, instead of having a definition with it was linked to a separate entry which opened to a page reading:

practical joke -noun - a playful trick, often involving some physical agent or means, in which the victim is placed in an embarrassing or disadvantageous position. [Origin: 1840-50]

While I haven't played that many memorable practical jokes myself, I have seen and heard quite a few and have gotten quite a few laughs retelling them over the years. So, here are some of the more memorable ones, most of which I can't claim credit for originating, but am fairly certain that this is their first time in print.

The military is always a great place for practical jokes and many of my favorites come from the time I spent doing my required military duty after college and from tales I have heard from the experience of others in the military.

In a previous Hub entitled Don't Get Mad - Get Even I related the story about how my father, while serving in the Army during World War II cleverly reversed a practical joke that his barracks mates attempted to short sheet him. In that same Hub I also related a tale about a trick I played on a nuisance from down the hall in the college dorm I lived in and had a habit of just walking into any room where the door was open and helping himself to any food that was in there.

While in Air Navigation School at the now closed Mather Air Force Base in Sacramento, California during the Vietnam War all of our teachers had done tours as navigators flying missions in Southeast Asia. Many of the best tales of practical jokes were ones I heard from them.

Most of the troops in those days traveled to Vietnam by air being flown from Travis, AFB in C-141 transports. One of the pilots on the route had a trick he used to play to lighten the tension in the plane as it headed west from California toward the war. A couple of hours into the trip, the pilot would contact the crew chief in the back of the plane on the intercom and have him identify a green, newly commissioned Army 2nd Lieutenant among the passengers. Taking a couple of rolls of sturdy twine, he tied the ends to the back of his seat and then unwound the balls of twine as he backed out of the cockpit and down the aisle of passengers, stopping when he reached the designated 2nd Lieutenant. With the eagles associated with his rank of Lt. Colonel, clearly visible on his flight suit, the pilot would lean over and explain that he had to use the head (bathroom) in the back, and since the co-pilot was asleep asked the Army 2nd Lieutenant if he would mind holding the two balls of string, which were tied to the controls in front, and hold the plane on course for a few minutes. The 2nd Lieutenant knew it was a prank but he also knew that the proper response of a 2nd Lieutenant to a request from a Colonel was a simple Yes, Sir! The 2nd Lieutenant would dutifully take the balls of string and hold them tight until the Colonel disappeared. He would then relax and let the string go slack. Unbeknownst to the Lieutenant, the Crew Chief was observing in the back and reported the slack to the co-pilot who began to move the control stick to make the plane appear to be going out of control. The Lieutenant would instinctively pull the twine taunt and the co-pilot would stabilize the plane. After a few moments the Lieutenant would experiment by slowly easing up on one of the strings of twine. The action would be reported to the co-pilot who would begin to turn the plane in the direction of the taunt string. After experimenting a couple more times the Lieutenant would begin to believe he was controlling the plane. Once the pilot and crew chief finished laughing in back the pilot would stroll down to the Lieutenant, who was now hanging on to the balls of twine for dear life, thank him and returned to the cockpit with the balls of twine leaving the 2nd Lieutenant with a story to tell about how he once flew a C-141 from the back of the plane.

Then there was the joke the pilot of a C-130 used play on the troops they transported to and from battle zones in Vietnam. One route frequently flown involved a bumpy flight over a small mountain range. Along with his lunch, the pilot would frequently include a can of cream of chicken soup. On the return flight he would try to make the ride over the mountains as bumpy as possible. Before landing he would heat up the soup and, after landing, would pour the contents of the soup into an air sickness bag. After parking the plane, he would make himself look as disheveled as possible and stumble out of the cockpit assuming the look of a man needing to find a bathroom as soon as possible. The co-pilot would follow him out with the air sickness bag which, with a look of disgust, he would hand to the navigator who took it as delicately as possible and then handed it on to the nearest passenger with instructions to pass it back to the crew chief. Holding their noses, the soldiers quickly handed the warm bag down the line until it reached the crew chief. Taking the bag, the crew chief sniffed the contents, then stuck his finger into the bag, pulled it out, licked it and exclaimed Ooh! Tastes like chicken soup! At this point all of the passengers promptly lost their lunches, leaving it to the ground crew to come in and hose down the inside of the plane.

I got into a little trouble with my sister when I told the story to my father, brother, and brother-in-law during a family get together at my sister's home. While my sister, who over heard it thought it was disgusting, my father and the others had a good laugh over it. My then five year old nephew also thought it sounded good although he didn't understand the humor and didn't remember the whole thing, he did remember the Ooh! Tastes like chicken soup! punch line. About every five minutes for the rest of the afternoon my nephew would point his index finger downward, the bring it to his mouth as if he was going to lick it and exclaim Ooh! Tastes like chicken soup! much to my sister's disgust.

Anyone who has ever served in the military whose ranks are filled with conscription comes out having learned at least two very important lessons. The first one is Never volunteer and the second is You can never get in trouble for following procedures. This last one is very important in every government directed endeavor - even if you know that following the rules will lead to disaster, you will not be punished. But, if you deviate and show initiative and things don't work out perfectly, you will get in trouble. This theme is best illustrated in the novel The Revolt of Gunner Asch by Hans Kirst. In it Asch, a foot soldier in the German army in World War I takes initiative on a small detail and is reprimanded for not following procedures. He then decides to follow procedures to the letter and ends up causing so much havoc that the entire western front is in danger of collapsing. Officers and generals improvise as best they can and save the day. But, at the end of the day Asch is rewarded for following procedures and the generals receive letters of reprimand in their files.

Well I used this trick once early in my banking career. The government had come out with new rules requiring the reporting of loan applications. The rules required that applications be numbered and reported in the order in that order. However, they didn't realize that many loan applications tended to drag on for weeks or months while others received an approval or decline immediately. The Wang mini-computer system that I was using to track loan information and print documents had a 10 megabyte disk (which was huge for those days) and could not hold all of the information needed to produce this report as required. So, I studied the procedures and saw that while we had to report the loans in order but only after a final decision had been made, they did not specify that they had to fill a page. So I instructed my assistant to print completed loans and delete them whenever she began to run short of disk space. Since many pages of the report had only one or two loan applications listed the report grew to three binders, each about six inches in depth.

When the bank examiners visited and asked for the loan application report I handed him the first copy of the report, weighing about 4 pounds or more and watched his jaw fall. As he walked away I called him back and gave him the second volume. As he began to turn away again I called him back a third time and dumped the final volume on him.

Not only did this solve my problem of storage but, as the Treasury Department had issued the data requirements for the report at the last minute giving us no time to train people or put systems in place for data quality control I knew that there were numerous errors in the data. I also knew that the examiner would probably be too lazy to actually read the report. I was right, he didn't read it and, instead, wrote us up for not following the procedures. In a meeting with the examiner in by supervisor's office I pointed out to the examiner that no where were we required to fill a page thus forcing him to amend his recommendation to asking us to follow the spirit of the regulation in the future.