How to create mayhem with a mirror and a Chinese hat

When I was about 12 I got into trouble by doing another of my usual experiments.
We lived in the most bizarre house I have ever seen, at least in Bilbao, Spain.

Our house was an old fort built during the Carlist war back in the mid 1800s.
It was built on the side of a hill overlooking the old part of Bilbao so we enjoyed a magnificent view of the city.

It is hard to describe that house, it had about 5 different levels and you entered it from the top level.
The walls were made of big stones and in some places were up to 4 feet thick.

This peculiar home had a fairly large patio, a garden and a little orchard totaling about 2000 square feet.

From the main window on the top floor I could see my sister’s all-girl private catholic middle school.
The school was a red brick building about 8 story high and only about 100 meters from our house, so one could see clearly into about 20 classrooms.

I would spend hours watching how the nuns taught class to the 30 plus girls per classroom where all girls were wearing identical black skirt uniforms.

Sometimes I would borrow my dads binoculars and I could even see my sister sitting at one of those little old desks.

Actually, most times I used the binoculars to satisfy my own little perverted 12 year old mind by trying to sneak a peak into the gym changing rooms. Many times I waved from the window trying to get the girls attention.

Looking from the classrooms you couldn’t see much more than the public school my dad went to and our little fort house which stood beside it all by itself.

This meant the whole school knew who we were because they could see when we got home or left for work or went shopping every day for almost 14 years.

My sister had a 1 minute commute to school and on her way she could wave to her classmates.

For a little 12 year old this unique arrangement was a dream come true.
With not much effort I could have the attention of over 300 girls about my same age.

When I told my best friend at school about this privileged location he got all excited. So one day we decided to skip school so I could show him my sister’s school.
My friend was not shy and so he did the obvious thing to catch the attention of an entire school full of pre-teen girls and nuns, he pulled his pants down and proudly exposed his rear and part of his hairless balls to all of them.

Chaos ensued, hundreds of screams could be heard, the nun teachers waved their arms in disapproval and the blinds went down. I think I have never laughed so hard in my life. What a scene!

I was very shy so I never did anything similar. I stuck to spying on the girls with my dad’s binoculars and sometimes waving hello.

But somehow I envied my friend’s charisma and his immediate rise to complete unpopularity. So one day I decided to get me some catholic girl attention of my own.

It was probably late Spring and sunny days were starting to appear more often in our typically grey and rainy city.
This was one of those sunny days, about 2pm.
We had just finished lunch and my sister had to go back to school 30mins before me. (in many parts of Spain lunch breaks are still 3 or more hours long to allow for a nice family meal and a small siesta)

Right after my sister left, I went upstairs and opened the two big green wooden doors that covered our main window, the ones that faced my sister’s school.

Then I grabbed the biggest wall mirror in the house I could carry with my evil little hands. The mirror was about 4 feet by 3 feet.

To remain anonymous (as if I could after 6 years having been seen almost every day by the entire school entering and leaving my home) I put on a huge Chinese hat my dad bought on one of his business trips, to not China, I really don’t know where it came from.. mom?

What happened next is not hard to predict. Man was I excited, as I wiped the dust from the mirror for maximum damage, I knew I was up to no good and for some reason I loved every second of it!

Mayhem time! I sat behind the mirror with my huge Chinese hat and started to blast a huge blinding beam of reflected sun light into all the classes I could get to.

I felt so powerful. With little effort I could obliterate the quietness and peace the nuns had worked so hard to accomplish.
I blasted their strict and boring religious world with the blinding reflection of the God of many past civilizations, the almighty sun!

For the next 10 minutes of chaos I felt like the son of god, I felt like Jesus preaching to his followers but in my case the sun was my god and my sermon was blinding sun rays.

Girls screamed even louder than when they were exposed to my friend’s butt.
Nuns rushed to the windows desperately trying to block my devastating attack.
I could make my beam of destruction reach from one side of the school to the other with just a slight tilt of my evil mirror.

So much power in the hands of a little boy. Oh, how great it felt to be so evil to have so much power. I pointed at one classroom and all the girls screamed, then they stopped but then I pointed the mirror at them and they screamed again. I could make girls scream at will like an on-off switch.

Like most great things in life, my moment of glory did not last too long.
My unsuspecting parents were still at the kitchen table when suddenly the phone rang.
All this time they had no clue what I was up to so when they heard my little sister crying on the other side of the phone they could not give credit to their ears. Wtf, Your brother has been doing what?

When my mom came upstairs I was still having the time of my life blasting away with my huge mirror and Chinese hat.

I don’t even know what mom must have thought after seeing such a bizarre scenario.

Surprisingly enough she was not even mad. She just handed me the phone and said “it’s your sister”.

I was still holding the mirror and now I had my sister calling from the principals office, in between sobs, asking me to please stop reflecting sun into the school.

Oh, I felt so bad. My poor little sister was now paying for my nonsensical experiment. I apologized, took my ridiculous Chinese hat off, waved goodbye to my mob of screaming fans and put the mirror back on the wall.

I still had to go to school in 10 mins. I am pretty sure I left through the back door and took the long way just to avoid being seen by the school again.

But oh man, the fun I had in those 10 mins I will never forget!