PREFACE:
Having spent quite a number of weeks recently in France helping to look after my mother-in-law who is ill, I haven’t had much time for writing, but on returning home I came across a story about my student days that I wrote last year. I though you might like to read all about it.
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When I was in university, one of the highspots of the year was “Rag Week” when we raised money for charity. A lot of students were involved in doing all manner of silly things in order to raise funds.
One of the regular items was the production of the joke book which meant collecting a large number of jokes, many of dubious quality, getting some of them illustrated, making arrangements for the printing of the book and then organising the sales.
There were six of us on the rag joke book committee, three boys, Jeremy, Kevin and Jack and three girls, my best friend, Emma and her friend Jenny and I. When we met for the fist time, we were glad we’d volunteered; they were great guys: good looking, hunky and with a great sense of humour and adventure.
We decided that we would all ask our friends, both on and off campus, if they could let us have some jokes and in six or seven weeks we had collected quite a good selection. We then pressed into service all our artistic friends and relations in an effort to get some illustrations.
At the end of two months we were ready to decide what would be going into the joke book. All this involved a lot of work and we had quite a number of meetings, usually in one of our rooms. Reading out all the jokes was hilarious and we had a fine time. The meetings tended to be very lighthearted and we got on well with the boys and really fancied them; they were really attractive and responded well.
After lectures one day, I happened to bump into Jack and he said, “Hi, Mel. We’d better have a meeting to decide who is going to print the rag book and how many we shall need.”
I thought that was a good idea so we fixed a date and I invited them all to my room for the meeting. We each decided to take a paste-up of the book and visit different printers in the town to see where we could get the best price for 5,000 books.
At a very short meeting a week later we decided on our printer and Jack said he would see to all the details. Three weeks later we were the proud possessors of 5,000 Rag Week joke books.
They looked rather a lot to sell so we decided to get as many salesmen as possible amongst students and anyone else who might help.
Emma came to my room one evening in a state of great excitement. Her father owned five newsagents shops in the area and had agreed to put the books on sale in all of them.
“Oh, well done Emma,” I said. “We should sell hundreds in your dad’s shops.”
“Well, he’s agreed to take 200 in each shop,so that will be 1,000 accounted for if they all sell.”
“Great!” I replied.
When I went home and mentioned the matter to my mother, she agreed to sell the books in her hairdressing salon, so things started to look bright.
At our next meeting we went to Jenny’s room. Emma and I arrived a bit early so the boys weren’t there. We started talking about them in real girlie fashion and said how much we enjoyed working with them and how sexy they were and so on. Then Emma suddenly came up with an idea.
“Hey,” she said. “You know the main committee are looking for some students to volunteer to do a naked streak along the common to raise funds for rag week. What if we divide all the books into two lots of 2,500 and suggest that the boys sell one half and we sell the other half. Whoever sells the least number of books must volunteer to do the streak. I’d love to see Jack, Kevin and Jeremy running along the length of the common in the nude. I bet they’d look terrific. Mmmmm!”
We all laughed and thought the idea was great. “Splendid thought!” I enthused. “After all with Emma’s dad helping and my mum we should easily sell our half.”
“OK Mel,” said Jenny. When the boys arrive, you can suggest it.”
“Alright, I will,” I said. “But we’ll find out first whether they will be able to sell many books. We want to make sure that we win.”
When the boys arrived, we checked the number of books and then I said, “Jenny, Emma and I are willing to sell half the books. Are you three willing to sell the others?”
The three guys looked at one another and it was obvious that my idea was something of a surprise to them.
“Have you got many people who will sell them for you?” asked Emma.
“Well, at the moment we haven’t given it much thought,” replied jack.
It seemed obvious to me that they weren’t going to sell many so I made my challenge.
“You know that the Rag Committee are asking for volunteers to do a naked streak down the common to raise money for Rag Week. Let’s decide that if we three girls sell less we’ll volunteer to streak, but if you boys sell less, you’ll volunteer.”
At first they seemed taken aback and I thought they might not agree. Then Kevin said, “Well, I’m game if you two are. How about it?”
“OK,” said Jack. “I’d like to see these three girls running along the common stark naked.” Everyone laughed.
“So, do we all agree then?” I asked. Everyone did. “OK. So I’ll tell the Chairman of the Committee that he can rely on us to provide the streakers.”
We set a deadline three days before Rag Week began as our meeting to find out who had sold most books and to pay the money in.
Things went very well in the newsagents shops and within two weeks they were sold out. That was 1,000 books sold, so we arranged with Emma’s dad to supply him with more copies. My mother sold a dozen or so in her salon, but she said that some of her customers didn’t have much of a sense of humour and some thought the jokes were dirty, so sales were slow.
I saw Jack going to lectures one morning and casually asked how their books were going. “Oh, quite well,” he replied. “We’ve asked a few of our friends to help out and so far we’ve sold about 450.”
I inwardly rejoiced. With only two more weeks to go we had already sold more than twice their number. When I met Jenny and Emma and told them the good news, Emma said, “I hope the weather is nice and sunny for the naked streak. I want to get some really good pictures of the boys.”
“My dad bought a digital camcorder a few weeks ago,” I told them. “Perhaps I might be able to borrow it. It’s got a terrific telephoto lens. I should be able to catch every detail. My dad’s a really generous guy. I’m sure he’ll agree.”
Three days before our final meeting to add up the results of our sales, we had sold slightly over 2,000 books; there were less than 500 left. I wanted to be absolutely certain we would win the sales competition so I decided to wait outside Jack’s lecture room until he came out. Then I casually pretended to see him. “Oh, hi Jack! How are the joke books going?”
“Oh, really well,” he replied. “We’ve asked quite a few of the guys to help to sell them and, at the last count we’d sold about 1,200. How are yours going?”
I didn’t want to say we’d sold almost double their number so I said, “Well, my mum hasn’t sold many in her salon but Emma’s dad has sold quite a few in his shops.”
“We’re having our final meeting on Saturday remember,” I said.
“Yes, we haven’t forgotten,” he replied. “Let’s meet in my room about 7.30.”
I agreed and said I’d tell the girls. I decided to go home and ask my dad if I could borrow his new camcorder.
On the evening of the meeting I collected my money together and called for Emma and Jenny. We found that we had sold a total of just over 2,200 books; we were over the moon.
When we arrived at Jack’s room, Jeremy and Kevin were already there and were totalling up a pile of money in bags. We all sat aroiund the table and I could not wait to tell them how successful we’d been.
“OK girls,” said Kevin. “How many books have you sold?”
“Exactly 2,280,” I replied with some pride.
The boys’ eyes opened wide with surprise. “Wow!” said Jeremy. “Congratulations!”
I couldn’t wait any longer. “And how many have you three sold?”
Jack looked rather casual and said, “We’ve sold the lot.”
We three girls sat bolt upright with surprise. “What? You told me three days ago, Jack, that you’d only sold about half of them.”
“That’s right,” he replied.
“Well, how did you manage to sell all the others so fast?”
“Oh, it was easy really,” joined in Kevin. “We asked all the guys we know to take a pile each to the pubs they usually visit and, when it was getting fairly late and most of the crowd in the pub had had plenty to drink, the joke books sold like hot cakes.”
“Several of my mates said they could have sold a lot more,” said Jack.
He then smiled meaningfully at Jenny, Emma and me and gave a short cough. “Which, of course, brings us to the question of the naked streak and the fact that you three will be volunteering to do it.”
The three of us looked at each other with horror on our faces.
“Don’t worry about it girls,” said Jack casually. “I told the Chairman of the main committee that we six would not only provide the three streakers but would organise the whole affair also. I’ll give him a ring now to tell him that you three are the volunteers.”
He picked up the phone. “Hello Jim. You’ll remember our conversation about the Rag streakers. I said I’d let you know who the volunteers would be. Well, I’m happy to say it will be Melanie, Emma and Jenny. Yes, that’s correct. Don’t worry about that... We’ll organise the whole thing. Just tell me what time you want it. Two in the afternoon? That’s fine. No problem. We’ve been promised fine sunny weather so I’m sure there’ll be a good crowd to watch. We’ll arrange for the people to rattle the collecting tins and we’ll probably sell the rest of the joke books as well. No need to thank us. It will be our pleasure. Bye!”