Over the past few months, Ann Romney has frequently insisted that Mitt Romney is not the stiff, humanesque automaton he’s come to be known as. He’s actually a mischievous and naughty prankster! The same wild practical-jokester he was in high school! Likable human qualities! Honest!
We were skeptical, but today’s Washington Post story on Romney’s high-school years corroborates Ann 100 percent. Here’s but one example of a hilarious prank Romney pulled as a senior at Michigan’s elite Cranbrook School.
John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.
Uh-oh, you pissed off the Romster! This is going to be good …
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
Ha! You walk around with hair like that, and you’re just asking for Romney to make you pay …
A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground.
Lauber never saw it coming. He must have been in tears from laughing so hard.
As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
You got got, Lauber!
After the incident, Lauber seemed to disappear. He returned days later with his shortened hair back to its natural brown.
Classic! They still talk about this one to this day.
“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said.
“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”
Lauber himself was still chuckling over the epic stunt decades later, when he ran into an old classmate at the airport.
Lauber paused, then responded, “It was horrible.” He went on to explain how frightened he was during the incident, and acknowledged to Seed, “It’s something I have thought about a lot since then.”
That’s the telltale sign of a Mitt Romney prank! It’s seared into your memory, forever!
“Governor Romney has no memory of participating in these incidents,” [according to spokeswoman Andrea Saul.]
