My brother the Loan Shark

Today when I was bringing the kids home from school, we somehow got on the subject of school pranks.
I was explaining to them that they were never, ever to pull a prank at school.
However, if you could think up a really good prank, and get someone else to do it for you, that's a totally different story ;0)
In Jr High, I was very quiet and shy. I would usually sit somewhere in the middle of the class, not too close to the back with the rowdy kids, or too close to the front where I might have the chance of getting called on more often. Right in the middle where I could blend in and not be noticed. There was not a teacher in the school that would believe that I would have ever been involved with a prank, and that's just the way I liked it.
One day in my algebra class, we had a substitute teacher, and I was more bored than usual. I got to thinking about how funny it would be if the whole class got up and did something at the same time. I leaned over to the kid next to me and whispered, "What do you think would happen if you passed around a note that told everyone go get up at exactly 10:13 and sharpen their pencil?"
He thought for a moment, then scribbled out the note on a piece of paper and handed it to the kid next to him.
At exactly 10:13 everyone got up and stood in line by the pencil sharpener. Even the kids writing with pens came too.
The teacher was confused, and told everyone to quit goofing off and go sit down. We got a good chuckle out of it. (For some reason that sort of thing is hilarious to a 13 year old)
Another time in the same classroom (no sub this time) our teacher left the room to deliver something to the office, and I quietly suggested to my accomplice that we turn all the desks around to face the other direction.
When the teacher returned, he walked in, thought he was in the wrong classroom, then walked out again.
Another time when he left the room, someone locked him out. This time it was not my idea, but it was funny. I'll never forget the faces he pulled at us through the little window in the door.
"Come on guys, pleeeeaaaase let me in!"
He was a good sport about the whole thing. He even pulled a few pranks on us, like the time when he didn't come back after Christmas vacation because he quit his job.
We had a new teacher who looked like Grizzly Adams who spent the entire first class teaching us that "There is no such thing as a free lunch". I'm still not sure exactly what that had to do with Algebra.
No Jr high school discussion would be complete without mentioning my brother. He was a very enterprising young man. He always had some sort of plan to make money.
When JR was in 7th grade he asked my mom to teach him how to make homemade suckers. He made a batch of suckers and took them to school the next day and sold them for .25 cents each. He sold out the first day, and used the proceeds to buy more ingredients and sticks to make more suckers.
JR kept this up for several weeks, and I was amazed at how much money he had. It always seemed that he had more money than he could have possibly made from his sucker making business.
One day the doorbell rang, and there was a little seventh grader standing there.
"Can you give this to your brother please?" he said as he handed me $2.25.
I took the money in and handed it to JR. "How many suckers did he buy?" I asked.
"Just one."
One? For $2.25?"
"Yes" he said "When someone wants to buy a sucker, but doesn't have the money, I tell them they can have the sucker today, but tomorrow, they need to pay me .50 cents. If they forget the next day, then its .75 cents, the next day, a dollar."
Basically, he was charging 100% interest daily, and the stupid kids were paying him!
My brother the Loan Shark.
Jill