Scandalrama
I’m not going to try and mention every JSA “scandal” (so-called, apparently, because they were “scandalous”) ever in chronological order. Instead, I’m going to subject you to the “highly literary” stream of conscious method of talking scandalshop.
The earliest scandal I recall with clarity, though I know it wasn’t the first one, is the notorious bathroom scandal. Late one night, three somebodies (female somebodies) snuck onto the guys’ hall (an illegal act in itself), into the bathroom (off the charts illegal), and taped up construction paper signs in each toilet stall, shower stall and along the back wall. Most of them quoted the highly quotable Lloydel: “Ah, that’s right, boil it off . . . who needs that skin anyway?”
The next morning no one would claim responsibility, but we all knew who it was. First of all, they had all but signed their work. One of the nonLloydel-quoting signs was a drawing of a red 3-ball (as in pool/billiards/whatever). Wendy had a major 3-ball fixation. Whenever anyone was shooting pool, she would remind him or her that whoever sunk the 3-ball would win. When she herself was playing, she went after the 3-ball with a desperate urgency.
Another nonLloydel sign was a big five-pointed star with the word ”STAR” written in it, with smaller five-point stars surrounding. Emilee had made no secret of her thing for stars. From Day 1 we knew that with Emilee, it was Nuns, Fudge and Stars (not necessarily in that order).
As if these signs weren’t Pink Panther monogrammed glove enough, there was the additional fact that I had seen Emilee, Wendy and Lindsi on our hall the night before.
Jeff and I had been sitting in our hall, on the floor, by the middle staircase deep into the night, discussing things of True Importance. In the center of the long halls on each dorm floor was a door that led out to the central staircase. It was by this door we sat. Jeff sat back to the wall that had the door, while I faced him, my feet resting on the jamb. I was startled, mid-sentence, by a blinding flash of light that leapt to my retinas out of the blackness of the stairwell. Scared the crap out of me.1
There were two subsequent flashes. Each time I leapt up and ascended the stairs to try and catch the demon who was doing this to my poor, bleeding optical nerve (I knew it was bleeding because the whole world seemed to be filtered through red), but I had no luck. Finally Jeff and I left, but we were sly and I got a picture of Lindsi as she placed the final, trophy sign on Lloydel’s door. That time, the flash scared them. Serves ‘em right the dirty little . . . .
They asked Jeff and me to keep mum about it. I promised I would unless people figured out who it was anyway. I knew this was a safe promise to make, because by the time I got to breakfast tomorrow, Jeff would have told everyone anyway. And I was right. He did.
The next bathroom scandal was Vaseline everywhere, and it really ticked me off. As men’s floor janitor, I refused to touch it. It was removed that evening by service project, and no, I don’t feel guilty about not just sucking up and doing it myself. I guess I’m not charitable enough.
The next construction paper themed scandal was inflicted upon me.
I still have no idea who it was, but I awoke one morning and fish were hanging from my door. Bug-eyed cartoon fish, in every color, dangling from string, blocking the way out of my room. “Something’s fishy, Theric,” a sign read.
The fish were of a style SaraAnne drew, but they weren’t quite like hers. In fact, she seemed displeased with the plagiarism. No one ever admitted to it; I never found out. But it’s indicative of the cruel, cruel jokes we played on one another. Oh horrid existence! Not fish!
Moving on, it was two fine young ladies named Jenn and Shalayne who performed one of the most clever scandals. They stole laundry from Jay and Greg and then manufactured packages from the USPS to stick the laundry in, careful arranging pieces of old packages to flawlessly resemble something newly arrived from beloved parents. At lunch, after Jay and Greg happily discovered they had received packages, imagine their surprise at the contents.
“I thought I brought this!” Jay said.
I pulled one over on Shalayne once. Shalayne, you must first understand, is an incredibly kind, trusting, guileless and pure person. A cynic might call her naive, but that’s a cynic.
After lunch, as we were all waiting for Brother Dahl to come and start class, Virginia delivered a picture to Shalayne. It showed Shalayne sitting on the couch with a boy! And as if that wasn’t scandalous enough, he had his arm around her! Shalayne was shocked. She didn’t ever remember that happening! When was this picture taken!? It must have been during a split second of seeming compromise! How horrible! Thank you Virginia for giving this to me! I can’t ever let my parents see this! What they would think!
I interrupted this internal monologue to ask Shalayne what her parents' address was. She, innocent as always, told me. I wrote it down.
Now, a normal person would’ve looked at me slant-eyed and demanded to know why I needed to know. Not Shalayne! Not pure, sweet, innocent Shalayne! She assumed my motivations were as virtuous as hers always were. Heh, heh, hee. Foolish girl!
With my new knowledge, I reached into my bag to find my wallet. In those days, I always kept postcard stamps in my wallet, just in case I was suddenly overcome by the urge to mail someone a picture of a sunstone, I suppose. Meanwhile, the compromising photo was circulating, everyone expressing their surprise that such a photo existed and wondering when this seeming compromise took place. Finally I got my cloven paws on it. I affixed a stamp, wrote her parents address and the cryptic message, “we’re enjoying your daughter. Thanks for sending her to us. C. J.”2
I didn’t really intend to mail it—I figured the dizzy spell induced by the combination of stamp, address and message would be amusing enough. However. When others saw the fruits of my evil genius, they decided it must be mailed. Shalayne retrieved and guarded the dangerous photograph with great zeal, but somehow it was still stolen and mailed. I really, truly, honestly do not know how. Honest. (Really—this isn't some sort of jokey, overkill admission of guilt. I truly do not know.)
Poor girl lived in terror, awaiting the phone call from her parents. What would they say?! Virtuous Shalayne with a boy?! What would they say?!?!
Attempting to redeem myself, I told Shalayne that she should take charge of the situation. “After all, you parents don’t know who sent it. Tell them it’s your joke you pulled on them.”
Shalayne tried to psyche herself up: “Be in charge. My joke. I do the laughing. Be in charge.”
Shalayne expected some mocking when the telephone call came, but in fact, the photograph was taken extremely seriously.
“So, Shalayne. What’s this boy’s name? Is he going to come and visit us over the summer? Where’s he from?”
This threw her off again. “What? No! It’s not—! No!”
Sorry Shalayne.
It was after this that she and Jenn mailed Jay and Greg their laundry. They also did their laundry, if I remember right. They were such nice scandalmongers. But when the word is “scandal,” nice isn’t top priority. Therefore it wasn’t Shalayne, but Emilee who became the Queen of Scandals. And just like every good monarchy, after establishing itself, it must with stand coups and revolutions. The great threat to Emilee’s throne was a little El-Ed major named Heidi.
One weekend, a great tom turkey chased Emilee around (which is a great story, but one Emilee might not want me to tell you and besides which, only she can tell it to perfection). Not long after that, I ran into friend Heidi at the Liberty, Missouri Wal*Mart.3 Lots of us were at the Wal*Mart since it was right next to our hotel; it was early and we were bored. (Wal*Mart wasn’t terribly exciting either, so many of us ended up playing cards in the hotel lobby.) While walking around the store, Heidi had found something of great interest in the sporting section: paper turkey targets. She purchased a package of the realistic paper turkeys with the plan to cut them out and paste them all over Emilee's room in the JSA.
Cut to then: Emilee screams. She is very upset. Turkeys is taking things one step too far.
There was another time a bird made Emilee scream. This time however, it was a real bird—a dead robin. Someone put the robin between the STAR paper and a Boiling-Lloydel paper, stapled them together and left them at the center staircase entrance on the girls’ floor. Emilee saw it, assumed it was candy (an always dangerous assumption), ran back to her room with her entourage, opened the package, screamed.
I know a bit more about this, but you’ll have to wait and read Theric’s Big Adventure to find out what exactly. The point is (if we really must have one) that the JSA was quite the scandalous place, water gets hot, birds die and fish are very, very mysterious
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Thanks for revisiting Nauvoo with me. I would love to hear your thoughts.