Bonfire of the... Oh, the Vanity!

Last night was the school's annual Reunion Week (note: they're too good to call it Homecoming, like everyone else) bonfire. We typically mount an effigy of a rival's football player on a metal stand and pile wooden pallets under it. This year, there was a slight change.

The local paper interviewed students for an article about the rivalry. One student thought he would be clever or funny or cute or something and said, "We're going to run them off the road." Well, that sounds vaguely threatening but innocuous enough to you and me. However, I was told that, about this time last year, a female student (I inferred from the rival school) died in a car wreck after running off the road. Now two boys have been suspended, an apology has been issued to the parents of the dead girl, and the effigy (whom I have named Charlie) could not be displayed.

We did burn him, however. We took him off the stand (naturally, the administration didn't tell us of the change until after he was mounted and we had piled 1/3 of the pallets beneath him), took the stand away, then repiled the pallets, with poor Charlie in the middle of the pile. (One of my guys said 170 pallets, but he might have been rounding up. I counted 164.) Apparently, the absence of a dummy was supposed to be punishment for the students.

Other than that, things went off without a hitch, and all that's left is today's clean-up.