To Prank or Not to Prank
Mar 29th 2008
Sabrina JeffriesMy Life As A Plebe
I come from a family of pranksters. My brothers tormented each other endlessly, and my dad used to regale us with tales of the pranks he and his buddies played on each other in college. Once in a while, even my mom would get in on the act.
But I lost my interest in pranking in 8th grade, after my two girlfriends and I pulled a truly spectacular stunt. We got mad at the boys in our class (I don’t even remember why), and decided to write them love notes signed “Your secret admirer.” We put a note in every guy’s locker. For a short while, they walked around with smug smiles on their faces, but it didn’t take them long to compare notes and figure out that they’d been had. They were furious.
It was great fun to watch … until the prank backfired. One of the boys didn’t get his note (it fell behind a piece of paper wedged in his locker) and the other guys started speculating that HE’D sent the notes. We felt awful about it! With all of them so mad, we weren’t about to fess up, but that did put an end to my prankstering.
What about you? Are you a prankster? Have you ever unscrewed the tops of salt shakers or made joke phone calls? What was the craziest prank you ever saw or were a part of? And have you ever had a prank backfire on you?
36 Comments »
Freedom Writer on 29 Mar 2008 at 7:30 am #
I have stacked a locker or two during high school. To Stack a locker, you take as many of the person’s school book as possible, put them on the top shelf of the locker and lean them against the locker door as you shut it. Then when the unsuspecting person opens the locker door the books all fall out. I had combinations to all of my friends lockers during High School, but no one ever had mine.
Also when one of my friends turned 18 we taped a picture of a nude male in her locker. This one back fired because my friend was a little miffed when she opened her locker and she tore the picture up.
That same friend and I sat next to each other is choir and we sat in the back row during practice. We would then put pop rocks in our mouths as we sang. Everyone looked around to see where the pop rocks sizzle was coming from.
Sabrina Jeffries on 29 Mar 2008 at 7:47 am #
Love the pop rocks in choir! Wish I’d thought of that when *I* was in choir.
I’ve never heard of stacking a locker! Very interesting.
doglady on 29 Mar 2008 at 8:38 am #
Brilliant prank, Sabrina! My senior class was notorious for pranks in HS. One day students arrived to find every single desk in the school on the roof! Took all night and the whole class participated, but it was great! The principal announced places for each class to assemble and then said “Seniors will meet on the roof.” We parked the quarterback’s Austin Heely in front of the principal’s office INSIDE the school. In college I went to a Baptist women’s college. There were strict curfews at night. Our entire freshman class sneaked out of our dorms one night and rolled the entire campus. We had maps, assigned areas, ladders hidden for easy access. We had stockpiled entire cases of TP. We had it timed so security would never actually SEE anyone. Worked like a charm until we saw one security guard stroll around the corner off schedule! We froze! He looked at us, grinned and said “You missed a spot.” and kept walking. The next morning it looked like it had snowed!!
Sabrina Jeffries on 29 Mar 2008 at 8:41 am #
doglady, what college did you go to? I went to a Baptist college, too, though it wasn’t just for women.
FreshEChelle on 29 Mar 2008 at 8:52 am #
My favorite prank is to teach my French colleges the wrong way to pronounce English. It started when I insisted that “binder” is pronounced “binnder”, not “bynder”. It’s silly but fun. This one has perpuated in the office and the worst offenders about passing on the trick to the new unsuspecting are French colleagues.
Emmiebee on 29 Mar 2008 at 9:33 am #
Sabrina, my husband has a great high school prank gone wrong story, too! He and a couple of buddies decided it would be funny to steal the “W” from the front of the school (at Bridgewater “W”est High School) the day before the Homecoming Dance. They hid it under a huge pile of wood that had been set up for a bonfire after the dance. They planned to retrieve it while everyone else was at the dance, and return it to the front of the school. Too bad, due to a forecast for rain on the night of the dance, the bonfire was lit THAT night, and the “W” was burned to a crisp! They found it’s sad, twisted remains and buried it under home plate on the baseball diamond! A major search was called, threats were made by the principal that when the culprits were found, arrests would be made. Hubbie and friends layed low and were never caught. Until this day, he ernestly says- “we were going to put it back, I swear!”
Ann in IL on 29 Mar 2008 at 10:13 am #
The only two times I tried to prank it backfired.
My Dad and six brothers were notorious for pranking and never got caught.
I answered the phone and said “it’s your dime”. It was my neighbor calling to tell my Mom that her sister had died.
Senior year the entire class decided to slam their lockers in unison AFTER the last bell. It was an all girls Catholic school. As we stood quietly in the hall waiting for the bell one of the teachers said we were disturbing her class so she gave everyone in the senior class DETENTION. On our last day!!
Ann in IL on 29 Mar 2008 at 10:20 am #
My brothers and cousins loved to sit on the patio and wait for my dates to show up. They always had ice cream cones and would act like they were missing a few cogs (not much of an act for some of them). When the poor guy showed up, they would sit there and smack themselves on the forehead with ice cream and say “hi, I’m Ann’s bruther”
Dad’s favorite prank.
He had a buddy that was hot to date a certain gal, but she refused to go out with him because of his colorful vocabulary. He finally got her to agree to go out with him by promising to be the perfect gentleman. While they were in a club, my Dad jacked his car up on blocks and waited to see what happened. When the car didn’t go anywhere, he looked at the rear tires, saw the blocks and let out a string of words to color the air blue. the gal got out of the car and walked home. Dad and his buddies were laughing in the bushes.
Kasey on 29 Mar 2008 at 10:36 am #
I was in on some pranks and hgih school. I went to a really small school (my graduating class was 42 kids) and there were only six of us in Calculus my senior year. So we had a lot of fun with the teacher sometimes. He always would let us go a couple of minutes before the bell would ring so one day when he left the classroom for a few minutes we set the clock forward 20 minutes and we said to him, well it’s time to go and we walked out. We thought he would catch on right away but the six of us girls got down to our lockers and grabbed our stuff and were walking out the door when he chased us down and told us to get back there. We didn’t get into trouble, just told nice try.
We got that teacher again when he got a shipment of stop watches in (he was a coach too). Again, when he left the room we took the stop watches and set them to go off every 15 minutes and hid them all over his room. He had this huge cuboard that ran the entire length of the wall that was full of…..
RachelG on 29 Mar 2008 at 10:39 am #
In high school my best friend and I did the secret admirer prank quite a bit. And long before the days of caller ID we used to prank phone call.
Theses days, not really a fan of pranks.
rachel
Kasey on 29 Mar 2008 at 10:40 am #
junk so we hid some in there. Taped one behind the clock. Hid them in his desk and really just all over the room. He knew it was us and again just told us nice on.
We alsoid let out some fruit flies in our genetics class and the sophmore class got blamed for it. But I think those were the extent of most of our senior pranks.
I also worked in a Marketing department for a couple of years and we pulled some great pranks there. Photoshop works great becasue you can paste people’s heads to other images. We really had a lot of fun our last couple of months there because before we got laid of we had lots of free time.
SuzyQ on 29 Mar 2008 at 11:34 am #
I am the queen of the labels. One of the duties of my department is creating shipping labels for the warehouse. When designing a new customer specific label, you can imagine how many wasted labels there are. Well, it became a game of sticking these labels on each other’s backs. I could easily stick a label on anyone without their knowledge. Many times, co workers would come in the next morning saying “someone on line at the grocery store noticed a label on my back” or “my kids were laughing at me again”. The funniest was one day a coworker comes out of his office with his lunch bag over his hand and a face drawn on the bag. He says in his puppet voice “Hey! Look everyone, Sue put a label on my back!” He then turns the bag around and sure enough there was a label there. But we all lost it when he turns around to go in his office and guess what was on his back!
SuzyQ on 29 Mar 2008 at 11:39 am #
My coworkers tried to get me back on my wedding day. They all brought labels to the reception. Although I did not have one on my back, the photographer had one on, the waiters and waitresses, various guests, and even the little ushers on the cake were sporting sku labels.
Sabrina Jeffries on 29 Mar 2008 at 11:45 am #
I did have a math prof in college who was quite a joker. We used to sneak into his office and write fake “Dear Donny” (his name was Don) letters on his blackboard. He would answer them very tongue in cheek. That was while I worked in the math lab as a tutor. We did have great fun in math lab. *G*
I know this isn’t quite a prank, but I thought this improv at Grand Central Station was very cool: http://www.break.com/index/200-people-freeze-in-grand-central.html
I’ve always wanted to get a group of friends to learn a song and dance number together, then go to a mall and break into song and dance as they do in the movies. Never got around to it. All this pesky writing takes SO much time. Sheesh!
Claudia Dain on 29 Mar 2008 at 11:53 am #
Nope, not a prankster. Didn’t come from a family of pranksters, so that’s probably why.
I can’t watch prank videos on TV or world’s funniest videos where someone is falling off a roof; I just always feel so sorry for everybody!
PJ on 29 Mar 2008 at 12:23 pm #
Nope, no pranks here. I’ve always been a good girl. Never made prank phone calls, never skipped school, never got a ticket, never short-sheeted anybody’s bed. My dad and his brothers were legendary in their home town for the pranks they pulled but I think that gene skipped me and went directly to my younger brothers.
Kasey on 29 Mar 2008 at 12:40 pm #
Sabrina - That Grand Central Station Freeze was really cool and funny. I saw on there that they tried to copy it in London, but the video quality wasn’t as good, but I still thought the concept was great.
Kathy/Cookiedough on 29 Mar 2008 at 1:04 pm #
we got our dad good one year. I was around 12.
My late father loved his treats. His favourite was ice cream. We lived at he top of a mountain in the country for a time and it was quite the drive to get to the grocery store. He had just come in with a load, and put away a gallon tub of vanilla. He found he needed some things at the hardware store and left again, warning us not to eat his ice cream.
So of course, we quickly got a washed old gallon tub, smeared ice cream around it, switched the lids- using my youngest sibling fingers to scrape some ice cream away so it looked good and eaten up- and waited for him to get home. The first thing he did when he arrived back home was go into the freezer to get himself a bowl. He started yelling and we started laughing.
The hardest part for me was waiting the hr for him to get back home.
Nicole Jordan on 29 Mar 2008 at 2:03 pm #
I’m usually a very straight and narrow kind of person, but my dh and his buddies pulled pranks on each other all the time. The worst one I remember was when they tried to put a 25 foot sailboat in the apartment complex pool. They failed only because the rudder was broken. But can you imagine how difficult it would have been to get that boat OUT of the pool if they’d succeeded?
Sabrina Jeffries on 29 Mar 2008 at 2:19 pm #
Maybe it’s just more of a guy thing (well, except for Kasey and SusieQ *G*). My brothers seem to live to prank. I can never think of a really good one.
Sabrina Jeffries on 29 Mar 2008 at 2:20 pm #
kathy, the ice cream stunt is something my family would have done in a heartbeat. My brothers and dad were always trying to one up each other with the pranks.
Kathy/Cookiedough on 29 Mar 2008 at 2:58 pm #
I don’t think we were much up for pranks other than that one. We were just a sadistically funny family. My sister Debbie and I have perfected the evil witche’s cackle; and we taught it to her daughter’s pet bird Baby. Baby can now say courtesy of us: “I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog too” and que the evil cackling bird! lol!
Kathy/Cookiedough on 29 Mar 2008 at 2:59 pm #
Suzy, I loved the whole label thing, and especially that they all thought so much of you to wear labels at your wedding.
Kathy/Cookiedough on 29 Mar 2008 at 3:02 pm #
…and not realy prank line… but I’m wondering how many babies will be born 9 months from the world wide lights out night tonight. lol
Margaret Garland on 29 Mar 2008 at 4:51 pm #
Tell you what, Kathy. I will use canvas bag, curlie light bulbs, try to get all my shopping done in one go but I will not, repeat not!, turn my tv off tonite and miss the bull riders on Versus. I love those cowboys. They are so cute.
Not to mention that I ususally only have one small reading lamp on at that time of night.
I’m not that PC, I suppose. Oh yes. I was happy to see that somebody else was a good girl. That was me. The worst thing I ever did was cut school, load my car with classmates and take off the Houston Rodeo & Fat Stock Show parade. But so did everybody else but the teachers. I guess it wasn’t such a bad girl thing, huh? LOL
Kathy/Cookiedough on 29 Mar 2008 at 5:11 pm #
Margaret, I was indeed a good girl.
I had pranks pulled on me. As a nanny for almost 20 yrs, there were alot of April Fools days.
the best one I remember was when my boss was pregnant with her fourth daughter. I arrived in the morning and her second daughter burst through the door at me screaming “mommy’s having twins!”
All I could do was squeal “what???!!!”
Then Julia yells April fools!
Kathy/Cookiedough on 29 Mar 2008 at 5:13 pm #
I haven’t decided if I’m going to sit by candlelight and read tonight.
My pc is downloading a movie right now, so that will stay on. oops, maybe not such a good girl after all!
wait- it’s not illegal in Canada to download, only upload, so I’m still fine!
FreshEChelle on 29 Mar 2008 at 5:16 pm #
Suzy Q, your label prank lifestyles sounds like it must have been a fun place to work. Had I been drinking when I read it, my computer would have shorted out! What makes it so funny is that it sounds like it was always funny, never got old.
Kim on 29 Mar 2008 at 7:14 pm #
hehehe! I love to pull pranks. When I was working at the furniture factory I:
Taped every tool of a co-workers up like a mummy with duct tape.
Hid various chairs.
Clipped the thread through a sewing machine. That one kinda back fired because she was sewing leather and got really mad *g*
When it was my bosses birthday I saved up all my bobbin spools for a month and on her birthday tossed them all on her floor, taped up her scissors and saran wrapped her machine.
Paged Ben Dover *g*
Then there was the horrible gargoyle statue my sil gave me one Christmas. ugh. I took it to work and would hide it in various co-workers work areas for them to find at 5am. LOL
Sabrina Jeffries on 29 Mar 2008 at 8:48 pm #
Kim, you’re just wicked! But we already knew that.
PJane1031 on 29 Mar 2008 at 8:56 pm #
Didn’t really pull a lot of pranks in high school. College and after is when I got started. . . . the one that backfired on me was a friend that I worked with in college. He always left his keys in a cubby in the office when he was working, so I went in to the office, ‘borrowed’ his keys, and his girlfriend at the time and I went and silly-stringed his room. It was totally covered and looked so cool! We had also gone out to eat Chinese food for supper, so we had left the take-out in his fridge in his room (no prank there–just being nice). Well, when he got home from work he hit the roof and did not see the humor in the prank at all. So I went back over and cleaned up the room by myself (it had been my idea initally anyway, so I just took all the blame and didn’t bring the gf into the fray). After he calmed down, and then realized we had also left him food, he did apologize for blowing up, but that cured me for a long time of trying to pull any sort of prank.
PJane1031 on 29 Mar 2008 at 9:11 pm #
Several years ago, soon after I had started at my current job, there was a guy [Brent] in another department and I who got into a ‘fun’ prank war. I work as a Public Safety officer at a college–he worked on Grounds Crew. First thing we pulled on him (most of the initial pranks were done with another of my co-workers–was great for me–the other guy usually retaliated towards them and not me!!) was to put an auto-immobilizer on the tire of his truck. A couple months later we filled up the cab of his truck with balloons. Some time after that we got a hold of an industrial-sized roll of shrink wrap, and we shrink wrapped his Ford Bronco. That was probably the best to see his reaction on that one!!
Kasey on 29 Mar 2008 at 9:55 pm #
I forgot about the pranks that we pulled on an office worker on his birthday. On year we put tin foil over everythng and the next year we strung streamers of paper all over his desk. It is the long edges that you rip of paper from those older printers wherre the paper is all connnected. Then we put hole punches all over like confetti. I guess I have been in a lot of pranks. Oh and one year in college my roommate and I got involved in a prank war with our other roommates boyfriend. That was a lot of fun, but he did start it witht he fake snake on our door when he found out we were both terrified of them. He somehow heard we were going to write on his car (with car washable writing - but since he never washes his car with thoght it would work), he found out when we were going to do it and parked his car like 3 blocks away, but we found it and wrote on it anyways.
doglady on 29 Mar 2008 at 9:57 pm #
Sabrina, I went to Judson College in Marion, Alabama. It was founded by the same people who founded Vassar, supposedly!
We called it the Baptist Convent for Women! The funny thing is I am Methodist. They put me in a room with the token Catholic! We had a great time!
Where did you go to school?
ladydawgfan on 30 Mar 2008 at 12:01 am #
Ooooh, pranks!!! I’ve only been in on a few, but I’ve seen plenty!!
Our senior high school prank stayed visible for at least 5 years after I graduated. Someone knew someone who knew someone in the street department of the city I lived in, and they got ahold of a hot plastic line painter for painting lines on roads. With that, they painted our class’s “farewell message” on the bus drop off in front of the school in bright flourescent yellow plastic paint. Several years later, someone tried tarring over it, but it just came right through. I honestly have no idea who was responsible, but the school never forgot my graduating class!!!
I also went to a tech college. My first year, some enterprising souls reassembled a VW Beetle in the lobby of my dorm in the middle of the night. I have no idea how they did this without someone seeing them or saying anything to security.
Sabrina Jeffries on 30 Mar 2008 at 11:09 am #
doglady, I went to Louisiana College. We had no dancing at all, and no football. We had curfews, too, if I remember right.