We had an ongoing thing in the school for a while. There were little slings around my friends' pockets at all times. Made them of 2,5mm insulated wire (that's 2,5 square mm section surface, which we already learned), made into a shape of the american football post, or roughly the Y. It would take one strand of rubber from an elastic band (usually from someone's underpants, or anyone who had a sewing machine at home, which wasn't rare). About 5mm of insulation was taken off the ends of the wire, the ends of the rubber strand was inserted into the plastic, then it was neatly placed back where it was. For the pellets initially rolled up pieces of paper were used, but then it became more popular to use pieces of bent wire, U shaped. It always hit you with the blunt side, because it didn't rotate, and the aerodynamics forced it that way.
I actually never had one of these. The guys would fire these at girls' legs, just to see them jump or twitch. It hurt a bit.
Then one recess one of the guys asked me what would happen if we stuck one of these pieces of wire into the electric outlet. I thought a bit (we already did learn the wiring and drawing house electricity schemata on our oto classes) and said it would just blow a fuse. The wire was still insulated, it was thick enough not to become hot. So it was tried out, and sure enough, the fuse blew. The janitor (who had a small apartment in the school's basement) replaced it soon enough. Then we did it the next day, then twice a day... it took a while until they caught us, and even that was because some sixth-graders couldn't hold their tongue. The story would spread, anyway.
Our big plan was to have the dark the next month, when we'd be in the afternoon shift, during the chemistry class. We were caught before the shift change. Our legacy is that for years after the power outlets in the whole building were covered with the allegedly childproof corks. You needed a key to open them, or a simple piece of wire. We didn't bother with those, we had our days of glory. I was sort of singled out as the "physics expert" and almost the organizer of the whole thing (even though I maybe did it only the first time).
At the end of semester, at the parents' meeting, Ivka has distributed a number of punishments (verbal only, i.e. just words on paper, and the dubious glory that went with it) and the decreased grades for conduct. Luckily, this was the autumn semester, so we all fixed these up (by doing nothing really nasty) by the end of the year, so our overall record was clean in the end.
Movies this month: "Georgie girl", "Sarajevski atentat".
14-X-2012 - 6-II-2026