Mitch

By now, those who read this blog have figured out that my friends, family and  have had some experiences that are unusual. Today, I offer one of the most untypical adventures. The Book of Ecclesiastics says, “There is nothing new under the sun.” However, I cannot imagine that the following prank is something anyone, besides my cohorts and I, have done before or since.   

It was 1986 and I was hanging out a lot with Rick Criscione and Mark Thompson. I do not recall who it was that came up with the idea that was nothing short of brilliant, but I reckon that Mark and I jointly hatched the idea. 

Now, Mark and Rick went to and graduated from San Jose’s Yerba Buena High School in 1976. So, in 1986 they made plans to attend their ten year class reunion. They were talking about it one day and discussed the deadline for sending in their money, what to wear, etc. Because I had attended both the five and ten year reunions of Ceres High School’s class of 1975, I was regaling them with tales of how fun such reunions can be. At one point, I wistfully stated how great it would have been if we had all three had attended Yerba Buena so we could go to the reunion together.

Suddenly, a light bulb lit up our devious little brains. I COULD go with them by impersonating one of their classmates. Both Rick and Mark said they knew everyone they went to school with and they concluded they’d be able to come up with a person whose identity I could hijack. 

We sat down with their senior yearbook and started our search. The task was not as easy as it first appeared because at Yerba Buena, caucasian people like myself were the minority. Then, there was the challenge of finding a guy who was big and tall like me (or “high and mighty” as we are referred to in British big and tall clothing stores). As fate would have it, we found one guy who fit our bill and Rick and Mark did not remember him. So much for knowing EVERYONE in their school. 

The guy’s name was Mitch Cunningham and the resemblance was not very close. He wasn’t as big as me and I think he had blondish hair. We reasoned that many people change in the ten years after high school but this was really pushing it. I decided the prank was too good to pass on so we went for it. I mailed in my money for the cost of the reunion and identified myself as Mitch Cunningham. 

We spent quite a bit of time talking about it and how we would handle the inevitable threat of someone blurting out something like, “Hey! You’re not Mitch! He died in 1983 from a drug overdose!” Or, something to that effect. The scariest thought was that Mitch himself would show up and blow the deal. My plan was to lie and say, “I’m the REAL Mitch Cunningham!” Needless to say we were all pretty nervous about it, but, like I said, it was just too good to not try. 

A fourth guy, Rodney Williams, who had also graduated with Mark and Rick was let in on the prank.  On the evening of the event we all went to the Saint Claire Hotel on First and San Carlos streets to begin our night of lies and celebrating "our" ten year reunion. Woohoo!

I recall us approaching the sign-in desk and identifying ourselves. I was a bit worried because I thought there was a chance that one of the women handing out the credentials would ask Mitch why he had sent in two fees for the night. This didn’t happen and we all received our name tags. The other three guys had been very popular at school and immediately they were chopping it up with their classmates, most of whom they had not seen since 1976. Mitch, on the other hand, was being a wallflower. One thing we counted on was that since Mark, Rick and Rodney did not remember Mitch, that most others would also not remember him. I kept looking at the sign-in table to see if the real Mitch had shown up.  

Following are some of Rick’s memories of the night as well as his instructions to me on what to say and do in order to pull off the ruse:

There are three things I would like to add. First, the idea came from you and Mark because I remember you guys calling me up and telling me you were going to crash my reunion and you already had the idea of impersonating someone. Second, in preparation of handling someone who might say they never saw you around, you could tell them, "I was in vocational". In fact, you even used that line on Art Martinez. It was when I asked Art if he remembered you and he looked hesitant and acted like he didn’t recognize you, at which time you gave him the line about being in vocational. He seemed to accept it and moved on.  Last, I remember being in a circle of guys when Steve Ponder, the only person at the reunion that actually remembered Mitch Cunningham, said he remembered you with a puzzled look on his face and that's when you replied "Well, I put on a little weight". 

I do not remember many details of the night other than those offered by Rick in the above paragraph But here’s what I do recall. Most people did not remember Mitch. Several of them squinted at me and tried to see a Mitch who was ten years younger. One guy absolutely remembered Mitch and exclaimed, “Mitch! It’s good to see you again.” I think he even gave me a bear hug. At one point a group of eight or ten of us stood in a circle conversing. A couple of times, Rick or Mark leaned over and whispered to me something to say about a certain event like when Johnny Jones cut off his thumb in shop class or some such thing.   

The closest call of the night came later when we were circulating the room and talking to various people. One guy, Mike Curry, a tall African American guy kept looking at me and shook his head a couple of times as if he did not believe I was Mitch Cunningham. Well, he was right and he knew my name was Stan Faddis. Why? Because at the time this reunion happened, I was working in Juvenile Hall. Mike, a County Social Worker, had recently been hired at the Hall as a mental health counselor  and we had been introduced a month before. In that month, we had a number of talks about kids on his caseload, so he knew my real name. I quickly pulled him aside and explained what we were doing. He thought it was pretty funny and did not expose me for the fraud I was. 

We successfully pulled off the stunt and, to this day, are still full of ourselves for doing so. We had a blast and now we CAN say we all went to our class reunion. We talk about it sometimes and let others in our our little “secret.” In fact, we told the story to a friend of ours in our men’s Bible study last Tuesday and Rick suggested I put it in this blog. It has been 27 years since then and we never tire of rehashing it. I honestly believe that NO ONE has a story like this one. We are the one and only.