(~5 minutes to read)

The banning of an annual pillow fight at the famous West Point military academy in the USA a couple of years ago, and the banning of a baked beans advert in the UK for health and safety reasons last November, caught my attention again when I was browsing the digital equivalent of my newspaper cuttings file today.

The obvious comment about either or both of the stories would be along the lines of “why are we bubble-wrapping our kids/soldiers?” We won’t go there.

Instead, we’ll start by examining a rather obscure conspiracy theory promulgated by one Aaron Frogchoker, a chicken and pheasant farmer from North Wales.

Frogchoker postulates that the West Point pillow fights were banned by Homeland Security, the reason being that the American military didn’t want potential enemies to know the capabilities of the pillows. After all, he says, a broken nose, dislocated shoulders and numerous concussions were sustained under friendly fire; imagine the carnage these weapons could wreak in a co-ordinated attack.

Here are three excerpts from Frogchoker’s book, The Hydrogen Pillow: Myth or Reality?

1. An Archduke, Polish Annexation, and Feathers

I always assumed that World War III would be fought with nuclear weapons, and that it would be done and dusted by lunchtime the first day. It seems that pillows might be the weapon of choice instead.

This revelation came to me in a dream, in a hotel room in Cardiff, where I was attending a pheasant pluckers’ convention. In the dream, the Geneva Convention had been torn up, and man was doing unspeakable things to his fellow man for no other reason than he believed in a different spelling of the Hokey Cokey (or Hokey Pokey, for those who subscribe to that infidel heresy.) In my dream, Londoners believed in an H-free spelling, which resulted in them becoming the common enemy of both the Cokeyheads and the Pokeymen. It was worse than the Brexit result, I can tell you. Friend pitted against friend; fathers and sons fighting each other in what was known as the Cokey-Pokey war to one side and the PC war to the other. The world was in chaos.

These unspeakable acts were being perpetrated using pillows. Feathers and foam were strewn everywhere. The smell of goose down hung in the air, its odour leaving an imprint on the memories of fighters on all sides that would trigger flashbacks in later years whenever they went to feed the birds on the park lake.

The very next day, I realized my dream was actually a premonition. I had found my calling! I would unite Cokeyheads everywhere and lead them to victory against the Pokeymen, thereby saving the world from feather-filled anarchy and confusion at cheesy dances.

And that’s what it’s all about.

2. Pillows at Dawn

For years, I thought that the satisfaction of a gentleman was given and taken in a pistol duel at dawn. I was mistaken—it was pillows at dawn. From those humble beginnings, the military have secretly developed these duelling weapons into battlefield-ready killing machines.

Pillows have a versatility that assault rifles cannot hope to emulate. You can batter your opponent; you can suffocate your enemy; and if you’re lucky and your adversary has allergies, your pillow could make him sneeze himself to death. Try doing that with an Armalite, boyo!

Ducks and geese the world over started being genetically re-engineered to produce weapons-grade feathers. These feathers have a high mass-to-volume ratio, are sharply pointed at both ends, and are selected for their hyper-allergenic qualities.

Unfortunately, my lobbying on behalf of pheasant farmers yielded no results for the militarily superior pheasant feathers.

Irrespective, the arms race was on.

3. Bedroom Techniques

Secret cameras installed by the military in children’s bedrooms at home, in boarding schools, in summer camps and elsewhere, have for years been monitoring pillow fights and learning which types of pillows are most effective, and how best to deploy them.

From this invaluable raw data, military strategists have drawn the following conclusions.

• The common foot soldier’s standard-issue weapon should be a 16 by 20 inch foam-filled pillow. The filling gravitates to the business end of the pillow, enabling the soldier to maintain a more solid grip in the almost-empty handle end.
• Hyper-allergenic feather pillows are particularly effective against younger opponents, because statistically they suffer more acutely from allergies. In many cases, these opponents can be completely neutralized, unless they were wise enough to take their morning ration of anti-histamine.
• For really formidable targets, a full-size bolster is necessary.

The above excerpts show that Frogchoker has invested a lot of time and energy in his research efforts, and his magnum opus is truly incredible, in the literal sense of the word.

But what if his theory is true? Will we see America invading the homeland of their terrorist du jour looking for weapons of mattress destruction? Will these military heroes return suffering from BPTSD (Bolsters and Pillows Torn, Sheets Destroyed)? The sad thing is that bed rest—the best treatment for BPTSD sufferers—is anathema to the victims.

All in all though, I hope he’s right—I’d be more likely to volunteer to serve my country knowing that it was down and not lead that was travelling in my direction.

Beans

And what of that health and safety ban of the baked beans advert?

Apparently, three complaints were made citing the encouragement of unsafe practice, and a further six complaints claimed that the advert featured behaviour that could be dangerous for children to copy.

What was happening in the advert that was so unsafe? Were kids having tin can fights? Were they making unstable towers from them? Were they dropping them from 52nd storey windows or airplanes or the London Eye?

No. They were using them as drums.

To be precise, they were using both full and empty baked bean cans as drums.

As an aside, Heinz actually posted a video that shows how to use bean cans as drums safely.

And just for laughs and giggles, here is a baked beans advert from the 1970s(?). How did they allow this? The poor little mite could have choked himself on that tie!

According to percussion historian Arnold Stoatpeeler, it’s a well-known fact that drums are dangerous. The evidence is overwhelming. This is what he has to say.

So it’s little wonder that the Heinz advert received such a large number of complaints. After all, who would want their children to watch adverts that encourage them to become drummers?