Although I’ve traditionally had a very short temper, as I’ve gotten older I’ve learned a few things about revenge.

Several years ago there was a strange series of stories about Canada’s poppy quarters and whether or not they were actually listening devices. This was, of course, poppy cock, because everyone knows that Canada gets all its intel from the hundreds of comedians it exports to the USA every year. (Although, it should be added, that now that most filming is done in Canada, Canada’s spy chiefs are a bit confused at the chatter coming in.)

We are listening to you, eh?

Although this odd controversy proved true everything I think about government–too many people, too much money, not enough brains–a Canadian colleague of mine decided it proved everything he thought about the USA–too, well, I didn’t actually listen when he complained so I’m not sure what the complaints were. He therefore determined that he would slip spy quarters in our stuff and let us discover them in our own good time.

Let me say that again: To mock my country he was going to give me money. Mock on, I say. Mock on.

We, his colleagues, found the quarters right way. That’s when the revenge ensued. We agreed not to mention it just to see how long it took him to crack and bring it up himself. It took just over two weeks of him hint dropping before he finally just asked us if we’d found them.

The other revenge involved Avril Lavigne. A different Canadian colleague knew that I was not a big fan of the Canadian crooner and after he somehow “stumbled across” one of her posters. (i.e. took a spare one off his wall at home) he decided to use it as a joke. When arrived at work the next day, Avril Lavigne was tacked above my desk taunting me about why I had to make things so complicated and why I could actually spell “skater”.

I knew this would require a special level of revenge. I left the poster in place as inspiration and tried to think of a good way to get back at him. Two years later, my colleague was cleaning out his desk and commented that there was a shocking amount of brown twine in his desk. (The brown twine is used to bind bundles of exams.) He said “what is this, something from the Blair Witch Project?”

A bell went off in my head and my hunting dog ears went up and I knew I had the revenge. I got a bunch of brown twine and shaped it like a voodoo doll. I cut Avril Lavigne’s face out of the poster and stuck it to the voodoo doll and put it in his desk drawer.

He reacted exactly the way I hoped he would but the last bit of revenge happened when he got ready to go home. I’d made a second doll and put it in his coat pocket. He found that one when he went to put on his gloves.

I haven’t had to do anything like that for a while, but now that I have fifty cents Canadian listening to everything I say, I’d probably better get ready for something to happen.