The best “put ons” are not planned. They just happen as the situation presents itself. For example: A friend of mine ran into this ditsy female at a social gathering. When she inquired about his line of work, he told her that he was an announcer for a deaf radio station. She was impressed that such a service was provided and wanted to know how to tune in. He told her the call letters were WHAT located at 00.0 on the radio dial. She never caught on.

My career in “put ons” began rather early. I remember in high school our basketball team was playing in a tournament and when the brackets came out, our first round opponent was “Bye.” When someone remarked that they had never heard of that school, I told them that it was a rural school in the next county. And when we appeared in the next bracket as the winner without playing, I told him that “Bye” had to forfeit because they couldn’t’ afford to travel that far. There was considerable sympathy for “poor, little Bye.”

When I was doing my doctoral work at UT, we lived in an apartment unit with several students who were doing advanced degrees in psychology. They loved to psychoanalyze everybody so I spent a good bit of time “putting on” the psychologists. One fellow kept trying to figure out my motive for growing a beard. The things I said and did kept him bouncing between “trying to hide” and “trying to stand out.” Finally, one day I told him I was doing it as part of a study being conducted by his own department and that I had to sleep over in the Psychology Department two nights each week. Of course, this got him all excited. “Tell me about this study,” he demanded.

“Well,” I replied, “they’re studying the correlation between beard length and room temperature as to whether a person sleeps with his beard inside or outside the covers.”

He mulled this over for several seconds before replying, “That sounds like an interesting study. Let me know how it turns out.”

I used to play golf each week with a group of retired fellows who would have a “special” rule for each outing. One time our “special” rule was that each team could have one member hit a drive from the ladies/red tee on one hole. Our team was in the process of exercising that rule with our best and longest hitting member up on the red tee box preparing to drive when a golf cart pulled up behind us. It was a course marshal. He could see that Pete was swinging the club pretty well and gave me a quizzical look that seemed to ask, “What’s that guy doing driving from up there?” I thought he deserved an explanation so I said, “That fellow is going through a sex change and we’re letting him hit from there so he can get a feel for it.”

The marshal nodded knowingly and winked as if to say, “It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone his secret.” The rest of the group found a good deal of humor in the exchange. Pete was not particularly amused.

Honey and I have a single lady friend named Mona. Mona has a group of friends who gather regularly on a rotating basis at each member’s home. We are not members of this group but Mona invited us on one occasion as her guests. We did not know many of the other members so a large percentage of the group was trying to figure out just who we were and what we were doing there. Apparently, one lady learned that we were friends of Mona so when we encountered each other over a bowl of salted nuts, she asked in a demanding tone, “Just how do you know Mona?”

I’m not sure just what came over me at that moment but I replied rather seriously and with a straight face, “Mona used to be the Madam of a whorehouse that I went to quite often.” A startled look came on her face, and her jaw practically fell on the floor. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish too long out of the water. Some sounds came out but no words. I just stood there munching nuts and letting her flounder. Finally, she pulled herself together enough to say, “You’re kidding, of course.”

“Yes, I really am,” I replied. A look of relief came over her face. But then I leaned in close as if to let her in on a big secret. “She wasn’t the Madam,” I confided. She was again doing her fish imitation as I moved away to mingle with the other guests.

Some days later when she found out that I had really been putting her on, she sent Mona a hand-decorated wineglass with “Madam” Mona painted on it. A suitable reward.