art prank / replacing old sockets with new ones

Roy R. Behrens, Deplorable Strikes ©2004

Jeffrey Vallance, quoted in Pranks, an edition of Re/Search (February 1988), p. 115—

One day I walked around the Museum looking at paintings and noticed that underneath them were all these wall sockets. So I bought a number of wall sockets and painted stupid little scientific scenes on them, like microscopes and dinosaurs and cows and slabs of butter. I showed up at the Museum in a janitor's outfit, with a name tag and a toolbox, and started replacing the old wall sockets with my new ones. I had friends in the hallway who would whistle every time a guard came near—then I'd go somewhere else. Sometimes I had to move furniture out of the way, and if ladies would be sitting down I'd have to say, "Can you please move? I have to fix this wall socket." Nobody caught me. I sent out a bunch of invitations, just like a real show, and people came down. I made up some nicely illustrated programs, and sent one to the Museum to tell them about my project. I thought I'd get some sort of reaction...but I never heard from them...they hushed the whole thing up, and the wall sockets remained there for about two years.

more info

have shriveled testicle from mumps / can't marry

Roy R. Behrens, Levitation © 2004

Danny Ballow, quoted in Elizabeth Stone, Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins: How Our Family Stories Shape Us (New York: Times Books 1988) p. 208—

It began with him [my father] telling me about how he had the mumps, and then leaps forward to my parents' courtship by mail when he was in America and she was still in London. He told me that during the course of the correspondence, he wrote, "I think I have to tell you something. I have a shriveled left testicle, and I can't marry you because I'm not able to have children."

He sealed the letter and mailed it, and then he thought, "Oh no, what did I do?" He went to the mailbox but the postman had already come and taken the letter. So he went down to the central mail office in Brooklyn...and they said, "Well it's somewhere in all these sacks." My father said, "I've got to get it." And he went through the sacks. I have this image of my father going through millions of letters. And he found the letter! He tore it up, and he didn't send it.

the professor cannot meet with his asses today

Digital Montage [detail] / Roy R. Behrens

Ralph Oesper [referring to the 19th century Scottish physicist Sir William Thomson] in The Human Side of Scientists (Cincinnati, OH: University of Cincinnati Press, 1975), p. 181—

One day, because of an engagement elsewhere, he posted the following notice on the door of his lecture room: "Professor Thomson will not meet his classes today." The young men decided to play a joke on their beloved teacher, and one of them carefully erased the "c" so that the note read: "Professor Thomson will not meet his lasses today." They then left. The class gathered the next day and anticipated that the professor would make some suitable remark about the altered notice. He came slightly late, but obviously he had already seen what they had left. The notice of the day before had been changed once again, and this time by the professor himself. It now read: "Professor Thomson will not meet his asses today."

Postscript: This reminds me of those rare occasions when, as a university professor, I was too ill to teach. Sometimes (oh, surely not always!) I would post the following note on my classroom door: Class has been cancelled. Professor Behrens is il[sic] today.