Pranks!

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 100,000^th 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.