UP A ROPE

Click here to return to the main menu.

One of the most astounding scientific phenomena is the ability for the collective intelligence of a group of guys to be WAY less than the sum of their IQs.

I can offer numerous things to prove my point, from bachelor parties to Congress. But it’s always nice when you can experience it firsthand, in a micro chasm of guy-based stupidity.

It all started a few days before Halloween. My neighbor and I were talking, and one of us casually mentioned how it would be cool to run a line from his house to my basketball goal, and have a ghost slide down at trick-or-treaters. (Response from female readers: “Why?” Response from male readers: “Or, you know what else you could do…”)

So naturally we started exploring those other options. The deal was sealed, however, when my neighbor said, “I have some rope.” We had the tools. We had the lack of good sense. It was time to create.

Oh, perhaps I should mention that this was about 9 pm at night, when sensible people were settling in for the evening.

So he brings his rope out, and we decide that the best bet would be to hook the rope over a V in a tree, and then haul a ghoul 25 feet in the air and drop it down to scare trick-or-treaters. We had long-since abandoned our first plan, and had actually gone through seven or eight before deciding on this one.

We both made several attempts to put the rope over the tree, all with no success. On what would be my final throw, I landed just short of my destination. But when I pulled the rope, I got nothing. The rope went taut, the tree swayed a little, but the rope was there to stay. I had managed to get the rope snugly secured in a crook in the tree, making it useless as a Halloween prop and a bit of an eyesore to boot.

We reviewed our options on retrieving the rope. The most important thing, of course, was getting it down before any wives saw us. Had we been making a list of important things to remember, safety would have been around 11^th.

We tried numerous twisting, whipping, and swirling motions to get the rope unstuck. No luck. I tried to climb the tree, but after realizing I was no longer 11, I decided that was a bad idea. We then decided that the most sensible thing would be to throw the OTHER end of the rope through the V, at which point we could pull it from the other side, and it would glide free. Never mind that we were unable to throw the first end through without getting it stuck.

We needed a weight for the rope to assist in the throw, and I was pretty sure it would be frowned upon to use the cat. So I found a softball, duct taped it to the rope, and we proceeded to waste a good 30 minutes of our lives throwing it into the tree.

About that point, a teen-aged neighbor of ours strolled up. “You guys ought to get a ladder,” he said. Foolish kid. He didn’t know what he was talking about. There were dozens, possibly hundreds of additional options of failing to get the rope down.

I’m guessing he went inside and told his parents what was happening, (“Mom and Dad, you know our really dumb neighbor? He’s at it again.”) because his father was soon outside, 22-foot extension ladder in tow. Sure enough, the ladder approach worked, although I firmly believe that the 17-year-old merely stumbled accidentally upon the approach, and that he didn’t actually know it would work. Plus, I am sure that we would have gone to the ladder eventually, probably after purchasing a monkey and trying to train it to climb the tree for us.

Once the ladder was in place, one might think we were smart enough to count our losses and move on. One would be wrong. With the addition of a tall ladder and another guy mind, our possibilities soared. We could access every tree around! We could hook up an infinitely elaborate system now.

Eventually, we tied the rope between two trees, about 20 feet in the air. We attached a metal hoop to the middle, and threaded the rope through that. From there, we rigged up the top-half of a mannequin with a costume (yes, I have mannequin halves. What about it?) and tied it to the rope. From there, I could lurk in the darkness and shoot the mannequin out of the tree when unsuspecting children darkened my walkway, giving them a well-deserved scare.

When it came time for action, I am pleased to say that the contraption performed to perfection. I got an ear-piercing shriek from the first group. I was careful only to scare the older kids, although I did mistakenly traumatize one three-year-old princess, for which I apologized profusely to her father.

I would definitely consider the whole thing a success. I am looking forward to next year, when we get even more elaborate and more detailed. Of course, first I need to figure out how to get down this year’s decoration. Maybe I should go ask my neighbor for help. The 17-year-old, I mean.