Pranks!
Over the years, Chrissy and I have been known to pull a few
pranks. Mostly on our best of friends. These little mischievous acts are
meticulously planned out with the greatest of attention to details and timing.
Here are a few that we have successfully pulled off over the years.
When we were in college, it seemed like we were always
involved in some sort of prank, whether it be covering someone’s white Chevette
with Oreo cookies to make it look like a Dalmatian, or awarding someone for
being the 100,000th visitor to the Historical Duck Decoy Museum
that, they recently had visited.
That was when we awarded a dollar store lint brush in the
form of a duck as a trophy. Upon delivery, the recipient opened the package to find
a very official-sounding letter from the duck decoy historical foundation, along
with the major award of the duck. The best part of a prank is watching how it
unfolds. For us it was sheer joy to enter this person’s home to see the letter,
along with the trophy, displayed in a prominent place in their home.
One of my absolute favorites was the Mickey Premium Ice
Cream bar wallpapering.
This was where we took a few wrappers that I had saved from
Disney’s most awesome ice cream treat in the world and photocopied them to make
10 x 8 sheets of Mickey Premium Ice Cream Bar wallpaper. We covered our friend’s
office with our wallpaper while he was gone on vacation to Disney World. He
actually loved it. We have a short video of this prank on YouTube. https://youtu.be/psBUDfRDmEA
Then we had another friend who highly disliked snowmen. So
we did a prank called “The Game.” We used left over garbage bag snowmen from a
series I had done, and we strategically placed them in his office. We staged
them as a scene from a mob movie. Again we made a trailer of this one too. It
is also on YouTube. https://youtu.be/irdEB77gCbM
I’m not sure why we did all the trailers. And I’m not so sure that he
appreciated my humor on this one.
There have been so many more, that I just can’t think of all
of them. But not all pranks go as planned or as you may expect. We had one such
prank that we pulled with friends of ours. I will keep their names anonymous. I
don’t want them to feel like I’m ratting them out or anything. Let’s just call
them Dana, Bruce, and the twins who owned the gorilla suit.
Well, we were sitting around playing cards one night as we
did often with our friends. This night was special because some of our children
were gone on a camping excursion. The Hunter Boys were out with their cadet
group.
Side note: The Cadets are a church-sponsored organization
that is like a Christian Boy Scout group.
This overnight camping trip was serving a purpose. Our church
was having an outdoor service the next morning, and the cadets camped out to
guard all the equipment at the church in the yard. These brave boys ages 8-12
would fend of any unwanted, ill-willed intruders.
So, as we were playing cards one of us got the itch to be
mischievous. That’s all it takes to set things in motion. We sat playing hand
after hand, throwing out ideas as to what we could do to some poor,
unsuspecting victim. Eventually, someone said we should prank the cadets!
The ideas starting coming, but we knew we didn’t want to go
overboard and do something that would scar them for life. So, we finally cooked
up the idea of launching water balloons onto and around their campsite. I have
a launcher, and to make it even better, we thought let’s make it seem like a
gorilla escaped from the zoo and was throwing the balloons at them. Dana made a
call to the twins, who just happened to have a gorilla suit. The plan was in
motion and could not be stopped. We made plans to meet the twins after we
filled the balloons.
We parked in an area that was not conspicuous, and rallied
the team for one last briefing on how this would go down. The four of us would
launch the balloons and make gorilla noises as one of the twins would dance
around acting like he was throwing water balloons in the parking lot under a
security light. It was fun and not too scary, or so we thought.
The balloons started to fly and the gorilla danced, but we
didn’t get much of a reaction. So we aimed for the tents trying to make direct
hits. As we rained down our balloons of fury, a few of the boys woke up, most
just kept sleeping. This is where it kind of went too far, remember the comment
about not scarring the kids for life?
Well, the gorilla was told to charge, someone said attack, and
we had balloons flying everywhere. The gorilla was shaking tents, and before we
knew it, that jungle beast was unzipping tents and surprising sleeping campers.
There were arms and legs going every which way. Screams of boys echoed left and
right. Then the gorilla came to one
little boy who wouldn’t wake up so the gorilla entered his tent, bent down and
gave a resounding gorilla growl. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, this was
a Hunter Boy. He sat straight up, screamed, and started crying hysterically.
This was a prank gone wrong. Luckily, most of the boys were
laughing-- all except for Jonah. He had just had the pee scared out of him. The
good thing was that his mom was right
there to take care of him and help him out of this awkward predicament. Mom
somehow just happened to be there to rescue her baby boy.
We still have a good laugh about this one, well, most of us
do. We learned not to mix gorillas, water balloons, and cadets together in the
middle of the night, unless you want to have gremlins.
We do still do a few mischievous acts from time to time, but
nothing harmful that may cause anyone years of counseling.