Urban Cow Tipping

Urban Cow Tipping by Rocky

The best practical joke usually involves two things, imagination and nerve. I have always been gifted (or cursed) with a vivid penchant for wild and absurd ideas while my best bud Egbert had all the brass in the world. We were driving around bored one Friday night (as teen-aged girls do) when Egbert lamented that we should do something crazy since our last practical joke was now fading into memory. We had used permanent marker to change a speed limit sign from thirty, to eighty at the city limits. The offending sign had been quickly replaced but not before it had made the front page of a small local paper; with the caption 'This is a little fast don't you think?'

We happened to be driving past a theater and I looked up at the marquee to see what was playing, when an evil little idea tiptoed across my mind. "We could change the sign at the theater." I said with out inkling as to how we could get up to the high marquee.

"Oh hey! That's good." Egbert said, sizing up the situation. You could almost hear the little gears a cogs whirring as she evolved my hair-brained idea into our next escapade. As it happened the sign had a large transformer in front of it so that left us with an additional eight feet to the glowing letters that announced this week's feature attraction. "I bet I could reach the letters if I had something to stand on." Egbert was very tall for a girl her age; she stood just under six-feet tall in her stocking feet. "Pop crates!" She crowed. We worked a small grocery and had access to dozens of the plastic containers that housed soda bottles.

We drove around the block one more time to be sure exactly what letters we had to play with and went to the house of a friend who lived nearby to hatch our plot. Later that night armed with inter-locking plastic crates and the boldness of youth we pulled up beside the theater. Where Egbert was tall and slim, I was short and stocky and boosted her up onto the transformer with ease. I passed up the crates to my partner in crime and then stood watch as she teetered about on the crates, and changed the innocent film title into something much more innocuous.

Over the next few weeks' filmgoers were invited to ' COME NUDE' and 'GET LOADED HERE' also the coup de Gras, 'KILLER FART' all lit in their splendor on the large sign.

After that we tired of the sport. Returning the remaining left over letters anonymously through a friend of a friend who worked as an usher at the theater. Who informed us that the manager had almost had kittens and kept a posted guards until two-am each night waiting to catch us never thinking anyone would have the nerve to do such a deed while the theater was open …we did though.

Twenty years later, whenever I pass by the Plaza, I can't help but smile and remember Egbert risking life and limb on a rickety perch inviting film patrons to "COME NUDE." I wonder if anyone took her up on it?

Back