Laugh Like You've Got a Hotfoot
Wikimedia,, Yann Segalen
"That gal is driving like she's got a hotfoot," I said as we rolled up to a stoplight. Two cars over, a driver in a silver jeep was revving her engine.
"A what?" said my son.
"What was that?" My daughter shook her head. My wife spared me a puzzled glance. She raised her eyebrows as if doubtful of getting a reasonable expectation. Or maybe she suspected this was a sign of me going senile.
It's an old phrase, for sure. But I was surprised to learn my wife and grown-up kids didn't know what a hotfoot was. Nobody pranks other people to that degree anymore, to the level where it's a low-grade assault. American humor has changed. Admittedly, for the better.
How To Do It
Find someone napping. Grab their shoe without waking them up or removing it from their foot. Stick matches in it. Light the matches. Walk away. Watch from a distance as the heat of the flame wakes them up.
Maybe they try to run from the blistering heat. The matches are firmly embedded in the shoe, remember. They can't get away. Hilarity ensues. They leap about like a court jester. Then they come to their senses, sit back down, and pull off the offending shoe.
By the time I was seven, I had heard kids talk about it. I had seen the prank carried out successfully once, on television in the visitors' dugout of a baseball game. One player had fallen asleep. Another player had given him a hotfoot. The camera caught the highjinx, the players and manager laughing at the victim of the joke. In the television booth, the commentators chuckled and slapped each other on the shoulder.
It looked like fun. Grown-up fun. Of course, I had to try it. You should try it, too.
But it's hard, when you're seven. You're not allowed to have matches. You have to steal them from the kitchen junk drawer, next to the gas stove. Then you have to find a friend, hold the matches in a fist behind your back, and tell him to go to sleep.
"Now?" he says. He's sitting on his front steps. He leans like he's considering resting his head.
"Yeah, of course."
"Why?"
When he won't sleep, you have to admit you wanted to try to hotfoot him. Then you both get involved in finding an appropriate pair of old shoes. You try the matches. They don't stick into the shoe right, not between the sole and the top of the shoe like you saw on television.
You break all the matchsticks trying to jam them in. Your friend gets a screwdriver to help the shoe have an appropriate hole. Back at your house, you steal more matches. You rush out to your friend. He has stolen a lighter from his father's cigarette tray. Together, you go to work on the shoe some more.
This time, the matches catch. And they do basically nothing. You try to burn the shoe, which your best friend took from his older brother's grass-mowing Keds. His brother had left them to dry in the basement. Even with the lighter held against a shoe, though, the moist canvas and the worn-down rubber won't burn. The best result you can get is melted rubber. And it's not much, either. You're making the soles of the Keds slightly warm and smooth.
"It doesn't work," Joe says. He's still your best friend. He's always willing to try.
"I saw it on television," you swear to him.
"Well, it's not doing anything." He continues to hold the lighter to the shoe. He's right. It's not burning.
How Different We Are
Not everybody carries matches, lighters, and tobacco, nowadays. No one tells ethnic jokes. We don't accept property destruction as a prank. Pushing someone downstairs is no longer funny. Chevy Chase falling downstairs is no longer funny. Actually, it never was.
Gerald Ford falling down is still a little funny. But he was President.
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