We returned from a somewhat rain-truncated early morning walk and watched the rain falling on the back deck with a sense of detachment while sipping our morning coffee and snacking our way through some fruit and whatever we were able to scrounge that might pass as suitable for breakfast.

After posting photos of today’s dawn and dogs, I was enjoying a New Yorker column by Calvin Trillin, “Some Notes on Funniness/Lessons in humor, from grade school to Johnny Carson.”

He started the column with an description of his years as an “insanely well behaved” youngster (something I could easily say about myself), and the subsequent unleashing of his inner humorist when Trillin found his voice mocking an authority close at hand, in this case a teacher who Trillin describes as “a rather pedantic and self-important man, [who] was droning on about a passage in Psalms.”

The result was predictable. “The class exploded with laughter,” Trillin writes about his own contribution. “The teacher simply exploded. I was ejected from the room.”

Trillin then wondered: “Was I then transformed into the class clown—the kid who sneaks a whoopee cushion under the pad on the teacher’s chair and is regularly sent to the vice-principal’s office?”

That simple question hit me like a slap on the side of the head as I flashed back sixty years–yes, 6-0 years–to that moment in my 8th grade classroom at University High School, sometime in the 1960-61 academic year, when I dropped a pool of fake rubber vomit on the floor next to my chair and then slumped down, face down on my desk, moaning quietly as if I had been suddenly taken ill, while those “in the know” stifled laughter and waited for our teacher to take the bait.

The target of our adolescent humor was one of our student teachers for the semester, a foreign student who I recall was from Indonesia (although that could be a trick of memory). The school, which functioned as a teaching laboratory for the University of Hawaii College of Education, subjected a succession of aspiring teachers learning to practice their chosen craft with a group of smart and generally well-behaved students with a mildly rebellious minority, of which I was one. I never really thought of myself as the “class clown.” I considered my role somewhat differently, a sometimes “wise-cracking meta-critic” perhaps, finding different ways to tweak the silliness of authority figures.

I recall the teacher as being quiet and friendly, a little stiff, perhaps a little intimidated, but trying very hard and quite earnest. I can’t say why we picked on him for this little prank. Perhaps there was no reason. I don’t recall thinking it was malicious. It was just, well, funny. Of course I couldn’t keep my eyes closed and peeked, opening one eye to see what was going on, and almost laughed out loud as he somewhat hesitantly made his way along the aisle through the middle of the classroom, wastebasket and a crumpled sheet of newspaper in hand to take charge of cleaning up the “mess.” As newspaper hit fake vomit, the pent up laughter in the room was released. I hope he laughed, but I just don’t recall what happened at the actual moment of discovery.

I’m pretty sure the faux vomit was from Pop’s Novelty Shop downtown on Alakea Street, a source of endless amusement. Should I be surprised that modern versions are still available, even from Amazon?

What I don’t remember is who put me up to it, or at least who had egged me on or signed on as co-conspirators. And I don’t recall whether there were any repercussions as a result of my disturbance of the morning’s good order. At this point, I don’t recall any.

Perhaps one of my classmates will recall a little more about this incident.

Years later, I recall seeing a small article about the teacher, probably in a UH alumni newsletter of some kind. He had gone back to his home country and apparently excelled, returning to Hawaii as a government or university official, or so the story in my head goes. Perhaps by that time I felt a twinge of regret, so I wrote a quick letter saying I remembered him and had appreciated him as a teacher. Some time later, I got a gracious reply. I am quite sure that the return letter is saved somewhere in my stored boxes of assorted personal and political “stuff.”

That little coda seems like a long way from the original humor theme, but I suppose that’s just the way it works out sometimes.