My best friend when I was in high school was Mary. She lived down the street from me. We did everything together. Looking back I don't remember who had the Great Flamingo Roundup idea.

The Great Flaming Roundup idea consisted of us going around Galesburg and confiscating pink flamingoes and placing them in the front yard of our art teacher who DETESTED pink flamingoes. We thought this would be a hoot.

Soon the night came that we were going to do this. I had my parents' big old Buick LeSabre. We had taken the light out of the trunk so when we would open the trunk to put the flamingoes in, there would be no telltale light showing what we were doing. From house to house we drove. Quickly snatching the offending birds, often times ending up with rain water trailing down our bodies. The large trunk of the car got filled quickly with pink bodies and metal stick legs. The last house we visited was this lady who was crazy about the color purple. She wore only purple. She rode a purple bike. Even her hair was tinted purple and this was at a time before punk. Anyway we grabbed two of hers and went over to our art teacher's house. We filled his front yard up with these pink fiends. Giggling the whole time.

We could hardly wait until Monday's art class. Finally we were sitting in his class. Our teacher came in. Sat down. He was a large man. Tall and body shape wise. He had longer black and grey hair. He wore a goatee before it was the thing to wear. He had a pair of black glasses.

He surveys the class. Slowly his eyes sweep over the class, landing on me. Slowly and deliberately he moves his glasses down to the tip of his nose so that he can peer over the edge of his glasses.

In his deep deep voice he says quite pointedly...
"Someone... has thrown up pink flamingoes all over my front yard. Someone... had better clean their mess up before I arrive at my adobe this evening. Imagine my surprise when I opened my front door to collect my Sunday paper and I am greeted with this horror. I clutched my heart and staggered backwards. I could hardly retrieve my Sunday news. I shut my door to this monstrosity which had better be removed should that someone... want to pass my class and that someone's... father not be notified of this caper."

Barely able to stifle my laughter, I was only able to nod in understanding.

Mary and I went after school to collect the flamingoes. We hid them in her garage. A couple of nights later there was in the paper under lost and found, the purple lady had placed an ad requesting the return of her flamingoes. Perfect. Mary and I made two tags that said "We are sorry we ran away. We hope you don't mind but we have brought some of our friends home with us" and attached them to two of the flamingoes. Later that night we put those two in the front and the rest of the flamingoes behind them in the purple lady's yard. What a surprise she would wake up to in the morning!