practical joke for the practical nurse (long)

[waltappel 1]

What started out as posting a couple of funny stories seems to have turned into a series. In case you missed the earlier postings, here are some links:

"Maybe the greenies don't like it when you act like a fool...": A true story about just how stupid I can get when I'm really frustrated.
"More Stupid HumanTricks": A story of me getting stupid with some hot sauce.
"My Visit to a Bordello": Just like the title says...
"One more reason to hate the doctor's office": Nipple infections are not fun but can be funny.
"I am a bad man when I get bored": My encounter with a perv in a laundromat
"I am not a smart man when I'm drunk": A BASE site scouting trip gone bad.
"thoughtful career choices": Who says mental hospitals are not fun? (ME, that's who!!!)
"Glory, Glory, Hallelujah": Don't read this one if you are a homophobe.

Ok, so if you have read [I]any[/I] of my previous posts you know that strange things seem to happen all around me. This one was my fault.

"Your Honor, I am guilty as charged."

I previously mentioned my illustrious nursing career. I spent most of my career of seven or eight years working in institutions for the mentally ill or the mentally retarded. Considering my own rather warped outlook on life, I was a pretty good fit in both environments.

This story happened when I was working at a facility for retarded people. It was torn down years ago, but it was called Travis State School and was just east of Austin, Texas. Prior to that it was called Travis State Farm Colony and out of that came an interesting (read [I]sick[/I]) story that I [I]may[/I] tell sometime.

This incident happened in the early 80’s, which for some reason, seemed to be a glorious time for social engineering. One of the things in the human services field that made the 80’s so 80ish was the concept of “mainstreaming”. Mainstreaming was the practice of taking populations who had previously been hidden away from most of society (at homes, institutions, or wherever) and integrating them into the general population.

Sometimes it made a lot of sense and sometimes it didn’t. After all, there are some people who really should be kept away from the rest of society! Trust me on that.

So back to mainstreaming. I worked in a unit in the facility that consisted of eight buildings that were kind of like group homes. As I recall, each building housed around eight or ten clients. The idea was to transition them from an institutional lifestyle to a lifestyle that was much closer to the lifestyle of a halfway house out in the world so we could send them there. Some of the clients had jobs in “sheltered workshops” outside of the facility or other menial jobs. Others were in some sort of programmed activities or classes during the day.

They also had some unsupervised time in which they would walk around the grounds, visit with friends, that kind of thing.

So this setup for mainstreaming sounds good in theory, but by the time I got there they had pretty much run out of clients that had any chance of making it on the outside. Still, it was nice working there because these were the higher level retards and you could have conversations with them. That wasn’t [I]always[/I] a nice thing but usually it was.

This is a tangent, but I have always found it funny that the retards’ absolute favorite television show of all time was (are you ready for this?) “The Dukes of Hazard”.

Anyway, so you could talk with most of the retards and observe their behavior. Some of their behaviors really made me wonder where the hell they got that from. Actually, I felt the same way watching some of the staff’s behaviors!

So what does all that have to do with this story? Very little but it kind of explains why the staff wasn’t always busy. The retards pretty much took care of themselves and needed relatively supervision.

It was a perfect setup for getting kind of bored at work.

As I’ve said previously, when I get bored, it is a really bad thing. Here I was, working as an LVN, expected to at least [I]try[/I] to act like a professional and I was a little bored. Bad thing.

So I was bored one evening (I worked 2:00pm – 10:30pm) and I suddenly had the kind of inspired idea that makes life worthwhile. I thought of what absolutely [I]had[/I] to be the perfect practical joke for that environment.

My victim was a young black woman who had a level of emotional volatility that was extraordinary. To say the least, she was excitable. She was an early-twenties, petite young woman who was very quick to laugh, cry, get mad, or experience any other emotion with relatively little prodding.

She brought out my evil side when I was bored.

I got some apple juice and poured it into a urine specimen container. You can guess where this is going.

I asked her to come into the nurses’ office so I could get her observations on something.

“Hey, I just got this urine specimen from [name of a very drooly, nasty, disgusting retard] and it looks kind of weird to me. Does it look strange to you?”

I handed the “specimen” to her and had her hold it up to the light asking her if she saw any kind of weird shit floating around in it.

“No Walt, I don’t see anything.”

“I do, but that’s not all. It smells weird. Check it out.”

I was counting on the fact that nobody would be truly eager to smell piss and she didn’t disappoint. She unscrewed the lid and pretended to smell it. She had no clue it was apple juice!

“No, doesn’t smell weird to me.”

Here is where it took every fiber of my being to stay calm and keep a straight face to maximize the damage incurred.

“Well not only does it look and smell weird to me, but there’s one other thing…”

[I then downed the “specimen” in one big gulp.]

“It’s got the most fucked up aftertaste you can imagine,” I said with the demeanor of a medical professional.

I thought she was going to have a stroke! She froze, probably very confident in the knowledge that she was in the presence of a psychopath.

After a suitable pause, I told her it was all a joke, but I’m not completely sure she ever really believed me. She never seemed to look at me the same way again.

Walt

[skydivermom 0]

That's my kind of stuff...but I could never keep a straight face lone enough to pull it off!

Mrs. WaltAppel

All things work together for good to them that love God...Romans 8:28

[waltappel 1]

Quote

That's my kind of stuff...but I could never keep a straight face lone enough to pull it off!

If you got bored, you just might be able to. Hopefully, though, you'll never get bored.

Walt

[BillyVance 35]

Nice way to fuck them brains up even more!

On a much saner level, my friend had a routine with his eyeglasses that always got me giggling every time he did it. His specs were the kind that you could bend every which way you wanted and it would snap back. So here he is, hold his glasses in hand and explaining, "you can't do this" then twists it around pretty good. Guaranteed faked out look from unsuspecting suckers...

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban

[1969912 0]

Waltappel,

Keep writing this stuff and keep copies to refine/edit. You have some great stories and possibly something to put into book form at some point. Most people don't bother to put their strange experiences onto paper, and many good stories get lost over time. Congrats for having the bollocks to share some of your experiences.

jim

"Once we got to the point where twenty/something's needed a place on the corner that changed the oil in their cars we were doomed . . ."
-NickDG

[SkydiveStMarys 0]

Oh God!!! Not again!!!!


Where are my Depends?!?!? Damn you! Walt!!!


Bobbi

A miracle is not defined by an event. A miracle is defined by gratitude.

[Ragnarok 0]

I did that once. But it was in front of half the shift - and 4 student nurses. You are right, it is hard to keep one's composure when you drink the thing.

Good story!

_________________________________________
Twin Otter N203-Echo,29 July 2006
Cessna P206 N2537X, 19 April 2008
Blue Skies Forever

[Lindercles 0]

There's nothing quite like fooling gullible coworkers while bored.
I used to work at a local burrito joint while in college, and you can only say "What can I do for you?" so many times a day before it begins to lose its meaning. You know, like when you repeat the same word over and over again and it just starts to sound weird.
One day, in the middle of the shift, I approached an attractive female customer and, completely involuntarily, I said "What can I do with you?" It was quite embarassing. I turned to see one of my female coworkers standing right there, laughing her ass off at me. Needless to say, the rest of the customer interaction was quite awkward.
Not even a week later I inadvertantly did the exact same thing to another female customer, only to see the same coworker standing right next to me, cracking up. Again.
Understand at this point that I have lived with many foreign exchange students and observed the way they speak. I had also just gotten back from a semester in Greece (which has its own stories) and made a genuine effort to speak their language. I have noticed that, when attempting to speak another language, prepositions can be very difficult, and tend to give problems to even the most advanced speakers.
So, at my closest convenience, and with the straightest face I could muster, I approached my coworker and said, "I really don't appreciate you laughing at me. I was born in Russia and English is my second language. I like to think I'm doing pretty well with it, but prepositions still give me trouble sometimes."
She totally bought it! Not only that, but she felt really guilty, which made it even harder not to laugh. We worked together in the same store for 3 more years after that, and I never did tell her the truth. Actually, I told her even more lies that she believed, but that's a different story.

[NWFlyer 2]

Reminds me of AP Biology, senior year of high school. We moved beyond the dissecting frogs and fetal pigs, into dissecting ... cats.

We worked in groups of three, dissecting these cats for about a month (let us not discuss the evil smell of formaldahyde in the classroom and the general stench after a few weeks of unwrapping and rewrapping dead cats in various states of disassembly ...)

At any rate, my lab partners were two football players. Bright guys, but also quite the pranksters. They brought the heart and kidneys to lunch and slipped them into the salads of unsuspecting (female) victims. They jump roped with the (extended) intestines. But the best day was when we were dissecting the rectum. Our teacher warned us that it was very likely there would be some fecal matter in the area.

Well, one of my lab partners decided to have some fun with this by bringing in a tootsie roll and having me play along. Places the tootsie roll in a clean pair of forceps, at which point I loudly and indignantly announce "Oh my god you can't eat that!" Of course, the whole class turns around and he says "Dare me to eat this!" After the appropriate level of excitement/distress is generated in the class, he of course pops the "shit" into his mouth. I think a couple people got a little sick. I, of course, pretended to be completely disgusted by this activity, knowing all along he was enjoying his chocolate.

Ah, good times.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." -P.J. O'Rourke

[1969912 0]

Bumping some Walt stuff or the new people

"Once we got to the point where twenty/something's needed a place on the corner that changed the oil in their cars we were doomed . . ."
-NickDG

[BillyVance 35]

That was a classic.

"Mediocre people don't like high achievers, and high achievers don't like mediocre people." - SIX TIME National Champion coach Nick Saban