Scheme: The Chinese Handcuff Fiasco

As my son pointed out to me today, everything in the world to a kid can become a toy, and not just any toy.  Rather, a toy fueled by limitless imagination that when presented to other similar aged friends can become a contagion of fun or a contagion of wrong doings.

So when my father brought home a bag of postal bag ties from his job at the post office i was intrigued to say the least.  I marveled at my new found toy, running my fingers along it's jagged edge and peering into the tiny hole at the end which locks the bag tie securely.  Of course i had no idea what this tiny plastic contraption did but it obviously had a purpose as i scooped out hundreds of replicas it from within the bag.

Moments like this when a child is in wonderment at what he has found and needs to enquire about it are a devil's play toy for an adult when considering a reply.

"What are these daddy?"

"Chinese Handcuffs"

"How do they work?"

"Well put your hands behind your back with your two pinky fingers touching and i'll show you" he said.  So i complied willingly.

Seconds later i felt a tightening on my fingers as he wrapped my fingers with the postal bag tie and then voila! My arms were completely immobilized by this small contraption and i was instantly in love.  As he cut it off with his switch blade my eyes gazed over the enormous bag he had brought home and i began to wonder just how many of those things were in there.  Hundreds?  Thousands?  Millions?  To a 7 year old a million handcuffs is a possible estimation and the thought of having a million students walking around under my control at school was almost unbearable.  My fingers began to twitch with evil and i new the night would be so deliciously sleepless.  Tomorrow couldn't come soon enough.

But arrive it did and i woke up alone as i had always done when growing up.  My dad worked the night shift at the post office sorting parcel mail into the bags and usually didn't return until i was at school.  Thus the bag and it's contents belonged to me and me alone.  By the time i had finished packing my school bag the books were covered completely by the Chinese handcuffs and i darted out of the house and around the corner.

My dad always sought rooms for rent that were tied to the same block as our school.  It made walking home in the winter a breeze and allowed me many a time to outrun a school bully or two in a full sprint to my front door.  It wasn't even a minute into my dash for the early morning school yard that i came upon my best friend at the time Roberto Coletta.

Roberto was the type of friend you could count on to do great mischief with and i saw his eyes gleem when he found the contents of my school bag.  No words needed to be exchanged when i told him about my Chinese handcuffs, we instantly knew we had 6 hours and an entire school to arrest before the day was through.  We parted with each of our school bags half full and had to bide our time until recess.  Oh what a long 2 hours that wait was.

10:15am rolls around and we hit the school yard prowling like 2 wolves seeking prey.  Five minutes later we had tied and cut loose 10 of our friends each armed with a handful of the handcuffs.  Curious onlookers made their way back to me like i was the school Santa and for all purposes really i was Santa.  Standing there merrily handing out handfuls of my wonderful toys to anybody who asked.

At about 10:20 the school yard had sectioned itself off into little hives of activity, groups of 10 or so students in each hive looking at their local victim getting handcuffed then fighting for a few shards of their own handcuffs.  And so it went, like a viral contagion until with just a few minutes to go before the bottom of the hour and the end of recess we noticed that the massive school yard had nary a person left.

My first concern was that somehow i had not heard the school bell go off.  That would be like standing beside an ocean cruiser and not hearing it's foghorn but the sheer lack of bodies standing outside put the doubt squarely at the tip of my brain.  So inside i headed with my friend Roberto to find out if indeed we were late for class or not.

Bounding up the first set of stairs to get to the main floor is when we first heard the moans and groans of people as if we were running into an infirmary.

We slowed our bounding down to a crawl and peeked through the thick wooden doors that led to the first floor.  Standing in an endless row were all the students in the entire school it seemed.  Some sobbing, some shrieking and a few in absolute agony.  Scurrying to and fro attending to all the students was the entire teaching staff of General Mercer Public School and all with a look of terror on their faces.

Seconds later we heard the first ambulance arrive outside the front door directly opposite of where we were standing.  No sooner had the two paramedics arrived another amulance pulled up.  Followed by another and soon followed by a fire chief's car from the local fire station.

We saw this all unfold right before our very eyes as they took some students out to the ambulance holding their noticeably blue fingers in pain.

This was awful.

"Scissors, knife, who has either scissors or a knife" yelled out Ms. Risk the principal.  "Somebody go find more things to cut with, hurry."  Her wild eyes darted around the hallway almost meeting our hidden eyes crouching by the stairway door.

We backed out slowly the way a cat would gingerly step away from a greater foe and began heading back outside just as the recess bell rang.

The remaining students who had escaped being turned prisoner were lining up in the two lines we had always been instructed to do so in, it was just so noticable that it was as if the entire school was inside and we the only ones to be collected.  Also, the teachers who assembled the lines to return back inside were noticeably absent, no doubt attending to the student casualty line inside.

Then suddenly the doors burst open and two teachers had one of our friends Luigi in tow by his ear.  He was holding the evidence, about two handfuls of our Chinese Handcuffs and we began to edge back towards the end of the line ready to make a bolt for it.

"Them!" we heard Luigi cry out and almost a second later one of the teachers had reached out and grabbed us by our ears as well.  Like two fish on a hook we were dragged back in through the doors, up the stairs, past the line of students in agony and directly into the principals office.

Moments past by and finally Ms.Risk strode into her office with who i think was the fire chief behind her.  For certain it was the same man who had arrived in his red fire house car, he with his silver hair and grey moustache, his perfect uniform and all his shiny buttons adorning his shirt.

"What ... did ... you ... do" she spoke at us with deliberate pauses as to let the severity of each word smack us proper across the face.

Roberto my Italian friend spoke first as he tended to do.  "It wasn't meant to hurt anybody we were just doing it for fun" he exclaimed.

"Doing what for fun?" the fire chief answered back.

"Putting on the Chinese Handcuffs."

"Excuse me?" they both said in unison with eerily similar baffled looks on their faces.

"His dad, he gave us the Chinese Handcuffs for us to use, it's his fault."

Great, Roberto just bought me at least twenty whacks on my ass that night, keep talking hotshot I thought.

"These" said Ms Risk holding one of the Handcuffs by it's head as though she were holding a dead mouse "are not Chinese handcuffs, they are ties for very big bags."

He lied.  Goddammit he lied to me.  I remember i couldn't get over that that was the first time my dad had outright lied to me.  With stunned disbelief i contemplated the meaning of this.

"But they worked so well?" was all i could blurt out of my mouth with a whimper of sadness.

"Well of course they worked, they are meant to tie big heavy postal bags and not the tiny pinky's of every boy and girl in our school."

Followed by the obligatory question always asked of me when i was young, "Well what have you got to say for yourself?"

It was a simple answer that i think captured the essence of my scheming mind which would blossom in the years to come.

"Can we do it again if we tie it looser?"

Years later when i was nearing my last year in that primary school Ms Risk would pull out index cards filled with all my accumulated misdemeanors every time i was sent to her office.

She would always recite all my wrong doings back to me, and always saved for last "and of course how can we forget the Chinese Handcuff Fiaso?"

Yes, how can we forget about it indeed.