1. Motor sedately down the channel past the other boaters and shoreside onlookers with a single passenger bound, gagged and blindfolded sitting in your boat. At the same dignified pace, go out to the islands at the mouth of the bay and disappear among them. Return alone in the boat.
2. Come in from the open lake with a couple of friends, each of you with shotguns, and a pile of fake dead loons in the bottom of the boat. One of you can be plucking one while another fires up the hibachi.
3. A boatload of people all staring intently into the waters of Back Bay gave me the idea to put a fake dead body down there, perhaps chained to a cinder block. Grim, I know. A fake mermaid would be okay, but it's hard to make it move.
4. Motor in towing what looks like a water skier face down.
5. Motor in towing a bullet-riddled jet ski.
6. Motor in towing someone on a float tube on top of an overturned kayak with what looks like a pair of arms trailing limply on either side of the upside-down cockpit.
7. Motor in towing some sort of mock up of large marine life: big shark, small whale, walrus, or just a nifty inner-tube sea serpent.
8. Tool placidly out the bay, happily looking ahead while a roaring blaze appears to consume the rear half of the vessel.
9. Everybody in the boat is naked. No one has to be great looking.
We did find a radio controlled shark on the Internet. That could provide hours of fun at the many public beaches. We envisioned a churning fleet of boats crisscrossing each other's wakes, filled with bloodthirsty shark hunters with harpoons, rifles and heavy tackle.
Then there's the list of things we thought would be funny to do in front of Mitt Romney's place, each and every one guaranteed to get us severely arrested. In a way that's hardly fair, since the same pranks would be considered no more than a tasteless misdemeanor in front of an ordinary millionaire's summer shack. But then they wouldn't be as funny in front of any old millionaire's place. Since most of them involve large numbers of radio controlled model boats and aircraft our canned-beans budget (and our better judgment) guarantee that they will remain amusing private thoughts.