My high school's teams were called "The Black Knights". Our mascot was a guy in a suit of armor, & we had a doppelganger of him in statue form, that sat in the front foyer of the school. It had been a proper standing tradition for each senior class to steal that thing, which had long been dubbed "Ted The Knight" Get it? Ted Knight? Caddyshack? (that's the kind of kids we were, Meatballs)
Anyhow, the prank tradition was to outdo previous stunts, meaning where they would end up finding Ted, after he'd been stolen for a while. The pranks were almost exclusively carried out by jocks of some ilk. One year it was the football kids, the next it was the baseball kids, etc...
My 1st year, he was found tied to the roof of a school bus. 2nd year, hoisted up the flag pole, but my 3rd year was the kicker, because we had a new principal. So when they found Ted at the bottom of the swimming pool, he was outraged, being kind of a dick to begin with, & this set him on the war path.
He threatened everyone who even thought about this prank, especially the athletes, as it was well known that they usually did it. He told them they'd be kicked off teams & suspended or worse, etc... So by the time MY last year came, no one had the balls to do it, & word got out that no one was going to, for the 1st time in many years.
To strengthen his point, the principle even relocated Ted from the foyer, to his office, which had a wall-sized window, overlooking the hall. Ted would now symbolically peer out from behind that glass wall. My friends were the band geeks, chorus geeks, theater geeks etc... We put on shows, marched in parades, played pep rallies, sporting events, filled trophy cases even. No one would ever suspect US angels, which is why we were the perfect culprits.
We hatched a year long heist, about half a dozen of us. It began with me & my friend Jim having a petition made to let us be the first class to have the drama club be allowed to read the AM announcements over the PA. We made it a little comedy show. We'd announce birthday wishes to teachers, when it wasn't their birthday. We'd spend about 10 minutes coming up with some gags with the stuff written down, & then we'd bring a couple fake news ones, just to take the piss. We were only on for 5-10 minutes.
It was all in jest, and none of it ever really crossed the line, because our real goal was to have access to the main office, which was adjacent to the one occupied by the principal, who would use this time to go get a smoke break, & probably because he didn't really care for our sketch humor.
That was our window. We waited until Valentine's Day, & when we came in to do our AM announcements, we brought candy & flowers, & heart shaped balloons. We gave robust Valentine's wishes to all the secretaries, & the vice principal, who were all kindly older ladies, & beamed with joy over this. It was just the distraction we needed, to allow two confidants to sneak into the principal's office side door & abscond with Ted.
They scurried down the emptied hall, while distracted secretaries chewed chocolates, snuck him into the auditorium, & promptly buried him under an entire prop room full of stage props, where he'd go perfectly unnoticed... for nearly 2 months.
No one could really say that we'd done it, because we had an air tight alibi, & no one ever thought to check the prop room. We studious school contributor types were the last people anyone would suspect anyhow. I was running a campaign for class president for god sake. No one even considered us
One night, after play rehearsals had gone especially late, & no one was around, we skulked through the dark, with Ted under wraps, and carted him off to the 9 hole golf course, that sat adjacent to our football field & track. We toiled into the night, burying Ted up to his neck in the sand trap, where he stayed, until mid-day of the next school day. It was then, from school windows, we could all see the groundskeepers driving him back in on their tool cart buggy, still wafting a cloud of sand & dirt from his hollow suit
There was even a rumor left behind that the dent in his helmet, that he sustained when we dropped him, was actually from a golfer's golf ball striking him, when he got found. Totally untrue, but totally hilarious, & that is how we achieved the best Ted The Knight theft ever. Leave it to the smart kids. I've often thought about writing this into a script or short story or something
Those are quite good!
