Something reminded me of a silly prank from Lakewood Junior High School. Ms. Marone, who taught English classes and the Gifted and Talented class, had managed to get the school to buy a brand new Commodore PET 2001 computer. Prior to that, we could only use a computer by going to the high school, which had Teletype terminals for the school districts HP 2000 Time-Shared BASIC computers. We could only use those when they weren’t in use by the high school students.

Having our own computer with a video display was wonderful, even though we didn’t have a printer and had to use cassette tapes for program storage. Ms. Marone would allow us to stay in her classroom using the computer during lunch hour, and Doug and I had great fun writing programs to solve math problems, and writing our own simple video games.

Somehow one day I managed to be bored. Perhaps Doug or another student was using the computer at the time; I don’t recall. But my attention turned to the saying spelled in big colored construction paper letters above the chalkboard: “MEET SOMEONE HALFWAY. TO COMMUNICATE IS THE BEGINNING OF UNDERSTANDING.” I decided to swap two letters, and see how long it would take for someone to notice.

That might have been interesting, but Doug saw what I was doing, and neither of us could leave well enough alone. We started swapping more letters, and the final result was “EMEE SOMTONE ALFWHYA. SO COMNIMUCATE TO THE BENIGNING IF NADERSTUNDING.” (I can’t believe that I’ve wasted brain cells remembering the details of such useless trivia!)

Naturally it didn’t go unnoticed very long. When Ms. Marone asked about it, Doug and I confessed, and offered to change it back. But she declined our offer, and it remained that way for the rest of the school year.

Perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned, but I haven’t yet figured it out.

Lakewood Junior High School has long since closed, but Ms. Marone now has a successful career as an author and lecturer.