When getting the bombsquad called to school was a badge of honor

Murilee from Jalopnik sez, “After reading your post about the candy-ass school VP who freaked out over that kid’s science project, I remembered my own similar experience in high school (’75 Ford seat-belt buzzer hooked up to batteries and put in a locker, which resulted in school evacuation). This was in 1983- before a handful of terrorists defeated us- which meant that A) my life wasn’t ruined, B) I didn’t have to get ‘counseling,’ C) it wasn’t a national news story, and D) everyone thought it was pretty funny the next day.”

Naturally, it didn’t take me long to discover that 8 AAA batteries in a $2.99 Radio Shack holder will provide sufficient current to run a ’75 Ford Elite seat belt buzzer all day long, and- in the mind of a 17-year-old under the influence of certain evil corruptors of youth just across the Bay- there really aren’t too many mental steps between this realization and the idea of placing a battery-powered Ford seat belt buzzer in a high-school locker with the power switch in the ON position. BZZZEEEEEEEEEEEP!!! It’ll drive everyone crazy! Ho ho!

So, a few hours later I’m in physics class, having already mostly forgotten about the maddening Malaise soundtrack issuing from my junkyard pal’s locker (I could never remember my own locker’s combination, so I stashed it in my friend Scott’s locker), and my classmates notice some sort of commotion in the street outside. Cop cars all over the place! We’re all crowding for a look out the window when several APD officers come into the classroom and ask the teacher to identify… me! Oh, shit! I get not-quite-frogmarched out of the room, it being clear that I’m in Big Fucking Trouble, and as I’m contemplating the reality that every wholesome Duran Duran-listening, lip-gloss enhanced girlie in the school will consider me a totally, radioactively untouchable, criminal for the rest of my high school days and probably- if I don’t go to college in some other state- well beyond that, and I’m probably going to have to answer a lot of very pointed questions from the kind of humorless Authority Figures I dreaded most, it occurs to me that perhaps this whole hassle might have something to do with my harmless seat belt buzzer prank.

How My Youthful Junkyard Scrounging Habit Got My High School Evacuated By The Bomb Squad

(Thanks, Murilee)