My all-time favorite was one that Jay Johnstone, a former baseball player, wrote of in one of his books (he wrote several).
He was in the Dodgers spring training facility, and as part of the routine physical, he had to give a urine sample. Rather than do so, he went to the cafeteria and filled the specimen cup with apple juice. He brought it back to the nurse, who commented, “Hmm…it’s a bit dark.”
Johnstone looked at it and said, “You’re right. I’d better run it through again.” and proceeded to drink it. The nurse almost fainted.
The year before I started high school, my brother’s senior class prank was very impressive. They took the famously good-humored art teacher’s old VW bug, took it apart, transported to the roof of one of the campus buildings it by a complicated series of pulleys, put it back together (correctly!) and left it there with the engine running and lights on for everyone to see the next morning. It was beautiful.
One of the senior pranks for my senior year involved a bunch of kids kidnapping a FRESHMAN (big no no… one of the ‘unwritten rules’ is that senior pranks should involve only seniors) stripping him naked (it was only 40F or so), duct taping him to a flagpole and taping a huge sign over his head that said “Honk if you’re gay like me”. There were charges filed if I recall correctly.
Then, someone let 6000 crickets (and two white mice for some reason) loose in the halls of the liberal arts building. It was loud.
Then some people cut down the trees on campus and vandalized the gazebo that had been erected to remember those kids that had died while students there.
Finally, the cheerleading squad from our rival school across town spray painted and left handprints on the brick walls of two of the buildings. It cost several thousand dollars to get the paint off with sandblasting. The girls were caught when the principal checked everyone’s hands at lunch the next day and theirs were stained. They had to pay the school for their vandalism and scandal ensued when they were allowed to hold a bikini car wash to raise the money rather than having to do any actual restitution.
They don’t do senior pranks at my high school any more.
A senior prank at my highschool that I really liked was all the senior-kids going downtown and organizing a protestmarch, complete with banners, chants etc, against…gravity.
I remember one of the banners: GRAVITY = OPPRESSION!
We once knew a fellow that owned a tiny tiny Fiat…it was big enough for two people and two bowling balls. (One of the stories he told was driving UNDER the trailer part of an 18-wheeler, this thing was so small) One day while we were eating out, some of the guys went out, picked up this itty bitty car and turned it sideways 90 degrees in the parking lot.
One of the more brilliant senior prank ideas at my high school involved releasing pigs labeled 1, 2 and 4 in the hallways.
Sadly, they were caught…
Another time, after the last final exam of the semester, I returned from the bathroom to find the door to my chemistry class duct-taped shut. End of the day, 30 students walk into a door that won’t open. Hilarity ensues.
We thought about releasing greased pigs for our senior prank as well, but we didn’t do it. It would have been really horrible to come in the next day and see all the janitors enjoying a bacon breakfast… :eek:
My favorite took place back in high school.
One of the trombone players in the band had gotten a VW bug. (This was the 70’s, it was really cool to have a bug.) It was old, used, so old that the gas gauge didnt’ work. He just remembered how many miles it had been since he got gas, then filled up when he thought he was low. He used to brag about what great gas mileage it got. 25, 30 miles to gallon. (remember this was in the 70’s when gas was 40 cents a gallon) Well, the rest of us in the band were getting a little tired of his bragging. So, during 6th period (last of the day, stage band class, band director was in on it too) one of us would go out and add gas to his tank. (Several of us carried small gas cans in our cars for mowers etc.) half gallon here, a gallon there, pretty soon his claims for his gas mileage started to get outrageous. 40, 50, even 60 mpg. After about a month and a half, we stopped putting gas in his car.
He ran out of gas three times before he figured out what happened.
It was my favorite prank, because we were just giving him gas.
The disappearing room that bouv linked to was also done several years back at MIT. That particular time everyone on the floor was in on the gag and coached into pretending not to know the student when he returned from a weekend trip. They had to call it off when he began to freak.
About twenty-five years ago I was able to convince a friend who lived six hundred miles away that she was pregnant. I had a nurse friend here in Nashville contact one of her nurse friends who lived just south of Richmond. She pretended to work for one of the local pediatricians and called my friend to say that her tests had come back positive and that she would be calling in a prescription for vitamins and that she needed to schedule an appointment, etc. When my friend protested, the nurse turned loose with all sorts of private information including middle name, number of live births, birthday, etc. By the time my friend got off the phone, she was convinced that one of her doctors must have done a test that she was just getting the results on. (This was back when you had to wait a little for the rabbit to die or something.)
The family marvelled at the news that night and told the children what had happened. One of their kids reminded them the next morning that they were due for a practical joke from my husband and me. So they called to find out whether or not they were with child.. They were happy to hear that they were off the hook that time.
I have a large model of the dogburster from Alien 3, mounted on my ceiling as though it were crawling there. The comedy comes from it being hidden behind a heating pipe. Guests tend not to notice the alien until they’re standing directly underneath it. Then, they catch something out of the corner of their eye, look up, and scream.
I also have a Weekly World News Article “Haunted Toilet Claims Third Plumber In Eight Years!” mounted on the door to my bathroom.
There was a brief but wonderful period when a valve problem with my toilet made a remarkable likeness of a scream when flushed.
I also taught a friend’s son to say “I see dead people.”
Well, I assisted in stealing a friend’s car at her wedding. We decorated it, then moved it to the bottom of the hill, so when they came out to leave, there was no car. The look on her face was priceless. It took less than five minutes for the groom to go get the car, bring it up, and get her and the dress loaded in, so there was no real harm done. She still grumps about it, but her husband just snickers (very quietly, so he won’t get in trouble for encouraging us.)
When my brother got married, his friends wrapped his car in an entire case of Saran-wrap. I thought he was never going to get the doors open.
When another of our friends got married, Dr.J got into his luggage and stole the underwear he’d packed for the honeymoon. Then he mailed it to the hotel. A pair a day. It was hilarious.
A friend of mine in high school wanted to march a couple cows up to the third floor of the Main building on our campus. His reasoning was that cows can walk up stairs, but not down. (I never verified this.) And that they would have to be lifted out by helicopter or butchered right there. The hallways up there were really narrow, which would complicate things further. He never did it, but it was a good idea.
For a collection of some of the best pranks ever take a look at the Interesting Hacks to Fascinate People from MIT. The latest was placing a Wright Brother’s flyer on the Great Dome.
A friend of mine had stacks (stacks!) of papers from Brian Mulroney’s landslide victory in 1984. (Her folks were disillusioned PC’ers.) Nine years later, she rustled up 10 co-conspirators, and the morning after a party at her place, we all got on a Granville Street bus heading downtown. Individuals got off at randomly-spaced intervals, and waited to board the next bus.
So, on the day that Jean Chretien was sworn in as PM, all these people were getting on the bus and sitting down to read (or simply carrying) various decade-old papers from the the beginning of the Mulroney era. Time warp!
First one isn’t a prank per se, but while my wife was recuperating from childbirth, she was in the mother-baby unit. Now my wife kept her maiden name after marriage. However, there was a patient in the Cardiac Care Unit in the same hopsital, who has my wife’s first name, and my last name. So when various friends came to see her, and inquired at the Information desk to find out which room she was in, imagine the look in their eyes when they found out that “André Wilson” had passed away earlier that day.
Second one was from my days playing highschool baseball. We were playing our literal next door rivals. It was an exhibition game, so we decided we would have a little bit of phone. We took an orange, let it ripen for a few days, and painted it white. Imagine the batter’s surprise when he gets a nice “juicy” fastball right down the centre of the plate, and when he connects, it splatters all over the place. Much hilarity ensued.
I read this one in a book of practical jokes - can’t say if it’s true or not, but I desparately want it to be…
It seems that a couple of summer employees at Yellowstone wanted to have some fun with the tourists, so one day a few minutes before Old Faithful woke up they walk purposefully out toward the geyser, carrying a T-shaped chunk of pipe. They stop some distance away from, but well within sight of the people gathered for the show, and begin to search for something on the ground. With seconds to go, (this being when the geyser was a little more predictable) one calls out “Here it is”, and his buddy inserts the long leg of the T into the ground at the indicated spot. As he begins to turn the handle, the anticipated steam erupts from the geyser, and continues until the pranksters ‘close the valve’, remove the handle and return calmly to their regular duties. As I recall there was quite an uproar, and near loss of employment.
I seem to remember the book was written by Art Buchwald, and I got it from the public library more than 30 years ago. Anyone else remember the story or the book?
