I was 16 and we were sitting in Business Studies class. Ms O'Brien was explaining stock markets and how share prices rise and fall. Ms O'Brien was a replacement teacher filling in for maternity leave, she was young, pretty and by all evidence a decent person, something quite different to our other teachers.

An interesting discussion started around how markets could be manipulated by rumours started by accident or sometimes on purpose. Someone mentioned that chinese whispers could cause a lot of problems. "Whats a chinese whisper?" asked Ms O'Brien. "Its when a story gets passed from person to person but gets changed and miscommunicated and comes out as something totally different on the other end". "Oh" said Ms O'Brien with a twinkle in her eye "lets try it". I think she wanted to make a connection with her students, to break through the cold curriculum and have fun while being educational at the same time.

So someone at the rear left corner started it off, speaking their message to the person in front of them, up and down the rows of students the message passed in furtive whispers. Ms O'Brien looked on in pride.

I realized I would be the second to last person to get the message, the last person (sitting behind me) was Ger. Ger was one of those big friendly kids who lacked any form of common sense. Ger was a born follower. My teenage mind reeled with the possibilities open to me, there was a golden opportunity for a prank here. I would come up with something so good it would blow everyone away.

I don't even remember what the actual message was, I was so excited that it didn't register, all I could think of was how good the prank would be. I turned to Ger and delivered MY message. As Ger was the last person in the chain the entire class shouted at him to say what the message was. "Yes Ger, what was the message" asked Ms O'Brien beeming with pride at the students engagement in our market experiment.

Ger didn't bat an eyelid as he shouted "Ms O'Brien is a bitch".