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Sir John Hargraves's Mischief Maker's Manual advises its readers that secrecy is of the utmost importance in planning any prank. "When you're preparing to plant four hundred pink flamingos on the front lawn of your church," Sir John points out by way of example, "the urge to tell someone will be overwhelming. Learn to resist this temptation." The reason for this dictum should be fairly obvious: whoever you tell will equally tempted to share the secret; thus every additional person who knows about the plan increases exponentially the odds that when you arrive at midnight with your hatchback full of flamingos, you will find the pastor standing on the church steps with his arms crossed across his chest.

The Manual is silent on the question of taking credit for one's handiwork after the fact. Of course, secrecy must be preserved in the immediate aftermath of most pranks. But certainly after some time has passed -- and perhaps you are respectably settled a thousand miles from the scene of the crime, or drinking with strangers as you hitchhike through Europe -- it will be safe to boast of your flamingo triumph.

In the case of mischief performed at the end of a school year, the statute of limitations generally extends no more than an hour after the last bell.

I bring this up because that last bell has rung at last. The diplomas have been irrevocably issued; the final transcripts have been sent; and the staff (bless their souls) have all gone home to collapse for the summer. And so it is, a mere week after the events in question, high time to explain how it was that a locker full of ping pong balls came to be emptied all over the third floor hallway during peak pre-lunch traffic.

Who, us?

The idea actually occurred to an unnamed member of the family nearly two years ago -- unnamed because nobody can agree on exactly who it was. Back then we never got farther than looking up "cheap ping pong balls" online, ordering a gross of them, and stowing them in the back of the closet -- but that was far enough to ensure that as the last days of Josie's middle school career ticked down, she had the requisite materials on hand to fulfill the dream. It didn't take our crack team too long to devise a plan for gaining access to the upstairs hallway at a time when it would be safely deserted, or to work out the Newtonian principles involved in getting 144 orange and white ping pong balls into a blue locker and shutting the door. By seven a.m. on Monday, all was in readiness.

It was somewhat unfortunate that the ping pong prank, originally conceived in an innocent spirit of callithumpian amusement, had now, due to a marked deterioration in the prankster's relationship with the authorities at her soon to be alma mater, taken on a dangerous edge. In fact, there was a very real possibility that if the culprit were identified, she would not be permitted to walk across the stage at graduation that night. (I will not go into the details of this deterioration, except to say that in a mostly understandable effort to exert much needed control over a sometimes difficult group of adolescents ranging from the smart-alecky to the truly troubled, said authorities had adopted a hard-line, no-tolerance system of arbitrary regulations more suited to an understaffed DMV office than a progressive alternative school. These rules were in several cases enforced without explanation, flexibility, or compassion, and my efforts to run interference on behalf of a child who would have benefited from all three can only be described as a Mama Grizzly Fail. I can only hope the folks in charge learned half as much as I did.)

All we could do, as we watched our Mischief Maker troop off to school, was to advise her to cultivate an attitude of cheerful acceptance of any consequences that might befall her that day.

As the hours ticked by without a call from the school office, we parents reminded each other that no news had to be good news. Surely if we were going to have to bail our daughter out of jail, someone would have alerted us by now? At 3 pm we could contain our curiosity no longer.

"It went fine," we were told, when we finally reached the prankster and her brother. Not satisfied with this description, we pressed for details, and received the following:

The ping pong balls went everywhere, exactly as planned, causing much mayhem and merriment. Amazingly, the trick of having one friend open the locker and keep walking, and another friend nudge it shut when the resulting chaos was at its peak, had actually worked to conceal the source.

The only people who were not utterly delighted were a handful of teachers -- one of whom was heard to announce, "That was disruptive and dangerous!" Ms. Katherine, long one of our favorites among the staff, apparently rolled her eyes at this. "No, it wasn't. It was FUNNY."

Ping pong balls found their way into every corner of the building. Older kids were stomping on them; younger kids were collecting them. When a friend triumphantly showed Simon an intact specimen from the gym, it took all of his self-control to feign ignorance about its origins.

We came home from work to find crushed ping pong balls strewn all over the living room, along with several still-giddy young people and their belongings. We were informed that the seventh graders on Facebook were all abuzz about "the Great Ping Pong Ball Incident." All in all, it seemed like a solid case of mischief managed. 

Thus we arrived at graduation that evening feeling decidedly more cheerful than we had about many of the other visits we had made to the school in recent weeks. As we scurried in at the last minute we spotted the graduates, excited and giggling and dressed to the nines, lined up in the stairwell awaiting their grand entrance. We loved seeing them march into the gym -- some of them waving proudly at their cheering families, others smiling shyly at the floor.

High spirits and good cheer prevailed throughout the evening. Aimee, the math teacher, delivered a fine keynote speech -- all about middle school being a time when kids are trying on all kinds of different identities and personas, which can be confusing and stressful for everyone (but most especially them). I particularly appreciated the part about how you could be cheerful and friendly and prepared for class one day, and then show up sour and silent without your homework the next -- and she, Aimee, would still like you and respect you, and be ready to help you catch up when you were ready to try. (For the record, this was always true in math class -- thank you, Aimee!)

After the ceremony, the new graduates milled around -- eating cake, eyeing their shutterbug parents suspiciously...

...and bidding a fond farewell to pals they have known since the age of five.

Oh, we'll still see the members of the Class of '11 around the neighborhood (and on Facebook, of course). But they're all headed to different schools in the fall -- it's definitely the End of an Era! These kids have seen each other through lost teeth and Manic Panic dye jobs and growth spurts and changing shapes. They've gained insight into the lives and families of people quite different from their own. They've learned to forgive each other (and themselves) for things that happened years ago -- or last week. They've learned to stand up for themselves, and for each other -- to speak up when something is not right, even if it gets them nailed. They've learned to read critically, to write persuasively, to test hypotheses and to factor quadratic equations. They've been through some rocky times together over the years, but they've come out of it feeling truly united as a class. I'm pretty sure that's what they're going to take with them as they leave Orca and head off to high school -- and not all that dumb DMV stuff.

Simon found it particularly hilarious that the diplomas,

handed out with such fanfare, turned out to be blank pieces

of paper. The real ones were available in the hall later. 

Many thanks to the teachers and staff who have guided them along this crazy journey -- to the parents who have accompanied each other every step of the way -- and to the kids themselves for being your awkward, brilliant, sullen, silly, fabulous selves. We can't wait to see where you're headed next!


Epilogue

At the end of the evening, as I was helping stack up chairs, the principal came up to me and said, "Did Josie tell you what happened today at lunch?" Swallowing hard, I stammered out something implying that Josie somehow hadn't, and tried to look casually curious about what I was about to be told. "Well," Ms. Concie began, "Josie said a swear word in the lunchroom." She then went on to tell me the sordid tale of how my daughter got to spend lunch recess cleaning the cafeteria tables on account of having called someone an asshole when he said something flattering yet mildly offensive about her butt. 

When questioned later, Josie insisted that this had been a perfectly appropriate response on her part, and had successfully ended the unwanted interaction, which was really mostly a joke between friends anyway. (I was vaguely reminded of the time in seventh grade when a boy standing in line behind me at lunch reached under my shirt and snapped my bra strap, and I turned around and slapped him -- ending not only that unwanted interaction, but also his obnoxious habit of doing this to any girl he happened to be standing behind in line. There were no hard feelings on either side in that case either, as I recall.)

Certainly this isn't exactly the level of prandial discourse I'd hoped my daughter would be engaged in at this stage of the game -- and yet I found it difficult to muster up a truly persuasive display of maternal outrage. I think I did manage to convey my sincere respect for this cheerful, smart, heroic woman, and an appreciation of her commitment to uphold the standards of community decency. Thus we parted ways -- me humbled by the knowledge that she had spent something like 60 of the last 100 hours at the school (including what was ostensibly a weekend), and she blissfully unaware of the far more interesting offense my daughter had committed that day.