Torturing Cousin Tim
Editors Note:  During the High School Years, our cousin Tim, stayed with us for one winter.  Tim stayed in the basement with Reggie, and we all got along, although Reggie had great fun tormenting Tim.  

One of the favorite things that Reggie liked to do, was mess with Tim’s cigarettes.  Reggie used to take toothpicks and jam them into the end of a cigarette, break off the toothpick and put this cigarette back into the pack.  Tim would end up smoking this cigarette and the taste would be horrible and he would realize that Reggie had tampered with the cigarette.  Reggie did not do this to every cigarette though, so Tim never knew which cigarette might be tampered with.  

Reggie repeatedly did this and it started to make Tim paranoid that his cigarettes were tampered with, because they usually were.  It got to the point where Tim would pick up his pack of cigarettes, Reggie would grin at Tim, and Tim would throw away the pack because he believed that Reggie’s grin indicated that the cigarettes had been tampered with, even though they hadn’t.

Reggie stayed in touch with Tim over the years and visited Tim and his family in Alberta several times.

Devious Prank on his good friend

... But there was one prank that I don’t think that I’ll ever top.  I used to hang around with my friend [Jay - not his actual name].  He dropped out of school in grade 9 or 10, but we stayed friends, even after this devious prank.  This happened when I was 16 or 17.  One day, I was reading a magazine and I saw an ad in the back from a guy in prison in the states who was lonely and wanted girls to write to him.  Now [Jay], as you know, can also be a girls name.

So I composed a two-page letter from [Jay].  I made it sound like I was a horny young girl without actually saying that I was a girl.  I told the guy that what I’d like to do with him when he got out and I signed the letter with X’s and O’s (hugs and kisses).  And off to the post office I went. I thought that [Jay] would get a letter from this guy in prison who wanted to fuck him and this would be pretty funny.  I could never have imagined what really happened.  You see, a few weeks later, the letter comes back in the mail marked “return to sender”.

[Jay]’s father picked up the mail.  He saw that this letter from his son was addressed to a guy in prison, and, justifiably curious, he opened the letter.  And, as it happens, my handwriting is very similar to [Jay]s.  So [Jay]'s dad reads the letter and he flips out.  “My son’s gay!  My boy’s a fucking faggot!” ([Jay]’s father was a macho guy, spent most of his time out in the barn fixing motorcycles).  He didn’t take the news well.  I hadn’t ever told [Jay] about the letter so he didn’t know what was going on and wasn’t able to put up much of a defense right away.  So after hearing about this, I told [Jay] what I had done.  He wasn’t terribly happy but he saw the humor in it.  He explained things to his mother, and after a few days, his mom was able to make peace with his dad and everything was ok.  But only for a while …

Because not long after sending the first letter, I saw another ad for a homosexual correspondence club – “Hmmmm ….”, I though, “What if …..?” So, I wrote another letter (from [Jay]).  In the ad, they asked for $5.00 for membership fees so I put in a five dollar bill.  Several weeks pass and, lo and behold, this letter comes back marked again, “Return to Sender”.  And again, [Jay]s dad picks up the mail.  Here we go again.  This time his dad totally loses it.  He goes to the liquor store, buys two quarts of whisky, and proceeds to get smashed, trying to drown his sorrows.  This time no-one is gonna convince him his boys not queer.  There’s a big fight at [Jay]s house which ends with [Jay] moving out and going to live with his older sister.  (I should also mention that [Jay] didn’t have any girlfriends, so this, I suppose, makes the situation a little more believable, and the $5 bill looked serious too).  It was about 2 years before [Jay] moved back home again.  [Jay] wasn’t very talkative about this.  Most of the info I got from his younger brother.