LSD Seniors Go Out with a Roll!

When superintendent Bill Prickett challenged his Louisiana School for the Deaf (LSD) Class of '99 to a battle of water balloons, he got a big surprise. The seniors, rising early for their class trip to Disney World, paid a 4 a.m. visit to his office.

Their mission? As Louisiana people say, they "let the good times roll."

A cake looks forward to the "water war."

The students' good time was rolling toilet paper. Up, down, and around. They rolled it-or unrolled it-over everything in the office.

The next morning, when Superintendent Prickett arrived toilet paper bedecked every exposed surface. It lapped around his chair and slithered across the desk. It encircled the telephone. It ventured across the floor. It stretched up and over the file cabinet, and rebounded for another lap across the floor to the table by the window.

"This is war! " proclaimed Superintendent Prickett.

Calling his staff together, he plotted revenge.

He decided to get some Super Squirters.

"No, we are not telling the students about the change! " he said. "They are graduating; they have to learn to be prepared for everything! "

He admitted that the seniors managed to swamp his office with white paper without messing up anything. In fact, all of his papers and folders remained in the same careful piles where he had left them.

Superintendent Bill Prickett suits up for revenge.

"A pretty neat job," he said in an unguarded moment.

Afraid that even Super Squirters wouldn't vanquish the seniors, Superintendent Prickett planned flanking movements, roles for calvary, infantry, and spies. Other administrators, finding their own offices similarly decorated, were quick to join him.

When the war came, graduating students faced off against teachers, staff, and administrators. Water, cheers, cries, and signs splashed cheerfully across the lawn in front of LSD. Clothes got soaked. Hair got wet. People fell down. Spirits stayed high.

In the end, it proved a battle where all proclaimed victory- had a lot of fun.

"The 'water war' was a wonderful experience, 11 reflected Superintendent Prickett after he dried off a few weeks later. "The seniors got to let off some steam and expend some of the energy and excitement. The staff got the opportunity to let the seniors see a side of them students seldom see. We wound up feeling much closer to each other."

It was spring, 1999.

The rest of the nation should have been so lucky.