It all started one Sunday afternoon when my roommate, Blake, bored with the football game we were watching, decided to break from our weekly tradition and try something new. He called my name, and when I turned to face him, he extended his middle finger crudely, a giant smile on his face. At first I didn’t know what to make of it, so I ignored him. But somehow over the course of the next few weeks, we managed to create a game around it, awarding points to the individual who could sucker the other into looking at a fully unfurled bird through some act of embellishment or guile.
Blake created the bird toss, which consisted of him calling out to me, “Catch!” and moving his fist in a tossing motion only to release his middle finger. For effect, he would bob it up and down so that my head could not help but bob in anticipation of whatever I thought he was actually throwing. Then I came back with the pocket bird, which I usually delivered smoothly with a phrase like, “Hold on. I forgot to give this to you this morning,” before removing my middle finger from my front pocket.
And there was the “symphony conducting” bird, the “let-me-scratch-my-chin” bird, the “boy scout sign” bird, the “ooh-I-just-touched-something-hot-and-burned-my-middle-finger-so-I-have-to-shake-it-in-your-face” bird, and the classic “take-a-picture-of-yourself-shooting-the-bird-and-snail mail-it-to-the-other-person” bird. By the beginning of our senior year, we had managed to persuade a good thirty people to participate in this ongoing game.
We knew we were being silly, but it was what we did: take something many people found offensive and flip it into something we could make a running joke. I mean, think about it: it was just a person holding up a finger; it wasn’t like someone was waving a loaded Desert Eagle in your face.
But even with all of our reckless, rebellious energy, I would have never thought we would ever plot to get the graduating class of 2005 to agree to collectively shoot the bird to our commencement speaker. After all, there had never been a precedent for such a massive bird shoot, let alone one aimed at the President of the United States.
As much as I usually love to claim credit for masterful ideas, the bird shoot was really Blake’s brainchild. The irony of it all is that he voted for Bush—in both elections.
While trolling YouTube, he came across of a video of Bush shooting the bird to a video camera man, all in jest, and apparently the light bulb went off in his head.
“Gerald,” he yelled to me from his bedroom. “I have an idea.”
With Blake’s ideas being legendary, I knew whatever he was going to propose would probably have some stiff consequences. He played the video for me several times before saying, “What if we organize it to where the entire graduating class shoots him the bird during commencement?”
I looked at him like he was wearing Alex’s penis-face mask from A Clockwork Orange. “You must be high as hell,” I finally said.
“Not at all. Think about it. If we did it the right way, I think we could pull it off.”
I shook my head. “This is the freaking President of the United States, man, not some frat boy from across campus. They would throw all of us under the jail.”
Blake looked at me, his lips poked out in an exaggerated manner, his eyes pleading in the way that small children sometimes did with their parents. I just looked at him, unfazed.
“Well, I tell you what,” he said. “How about this: we just consider how it could be done if, hypothetically speaking, we actually went through with it.”
I knew I would never hear the end of it if I didn’t at least agree to play his game. The only problem with Blake and his hypothetical situations was that we often wound up figuring out a way to do something that was so kick-ass that it would have been a shame not to at least try it—just for “scientific purposes.”
And so it was with what we came to refer as “The Mighty Bird Shoot.”
The first thing we did was tap into the growing Facebook network on campus. Nearly all of the tastemakers had accounts now, so we referred them all to the YouTube video of Bush’s infamous bird. Because it all came from us, everyone immediately got the joke. By the end of the week, nearly all of the graduating seniors had seen the video. That’s when Blake stepped in with Stage Two. He explained how the bird-shooting game went and how it would be classic if we were to pull off one of the best-organized bird-shoots in history.
All of the pranksters, frat boys, and party people fell right in line, but the other three-quarters of the graduating class were not as sold on the idea. This is where I came in.
After fielding nearly a hundred questions through my Facebook account, it became clear that they didn’t really have a problem with the bird-shoot, as much as they feared being caught participating in it. After all, families were driving long distances for a solemn occasion, not to mention it was still unclear if we could get arrested for doing all of this in the presence of the Head of State.
I didn’t know what to tell them in response, except that Blake was working on the idea of how it could be done. “Just hold on and see what he comes up with,” I offered, but I doubt that comment did much to assuage their concerns.
For two weeks things dragged along at a snail’s pace, and even I began to think Blake couldn’t come up with an idea on how to pull it off. That was probably for the better. He was white and his alleged sin could be explained away through youthful playfulness. My being black, on the other hand, meant that I was damn near threatening the life of the president. I would definitely be comfortable tucking the bird shoot idea away on the small heap of “Couldn’t Quite Pull It Offs.”
But then Blake returned with his idea.
And I realized that it could actually work.
The question now was, how did we sell the rest of the graduating class on something so risky?
As it turned out, that part would not be as difficult as we’d anticipated.
The coincidence that Willingham College had a falcon for a mascot was not lost on Blake. A bird from the birds, is how he billed it. That made it even more important that the idea go off without a hitch.
As he ran down everything to me, I was astonished at how much thought he had put into the idea’s execution. I wondered briefly if he could have applied that same kind of focus to his schoolwork. He would have surely graduate summa cum laude then. He wasn’t even graduating “Thank you, lawdy!” In fact, he was provisional, which meant he still had six credits to take after he marched across the stage in full academic regalia to accept an empty degree folder.
“It’s like picking a pocket,” he said, although we both knew he had never done that. “You have to distract a person by touching him in a place away from your primary target.”
I listened, nodding my head, realizing he had a point. When I recounted the information to the other seniors, I knew we had struck pay dirt. The only thing we had to worry about was if any of the graduating seniors would snitch.
That was no small concern, either. Even Harriet Tubman had to carry a pistol and a pouch of opium when helping slaves sneak along the Underground Railroad. Interestingly, and much to everyone’s surprise, not a soul leaked our plan.
That Sunday, donning our black robes, we sat patiently, our middle fingers itching.
When Blake originally mentioned the idea to me, I had assumed he meant we would be shooting the bird to President Bush during his commencement speech. That would have been the most obvious choice--and the choice that would have surely gotten all of us expelled (if not more). That’s not what we did, though.
Tickled with ourselves, we had all shot choreographed and enthusiastic birds, all at the same time, some people doing it with a left hand, other’s with a right. We were so smooth with it that we went virtually unnoticed, as if nothing had even happened.
The only person from our graduating class who didn’t shoot the bird that commencement morning was Blake. He alone took the photograph that verified what really happened. Using a high-speed film and a camera with a lightning quick shutter, he got off the single picture that would serve as proof of what we had done.
He would later show me the solitary 8x10” picture he had printed, commemorating the occasion.
I could still hear the college president’s voice, as I studied the photograph: “Congratulations! You are now graduates of the class of 2005!”
In the distance, between our victoriously flying hats, lifting from our extended middle fingers, was a barely distinguishable George Walker Bush, a giant smile dancing upon his face.