Left an upside-down glass full of water on a table for the waitress to clear…
Haha! Were you able to do it without spilling any? If so, how’d you do it?
You just put something thin over the top and turn it over so you can slide it out afterward. I used to leave stuff like that for the morning crew, since we would mess with each other. All in good fun, no harm intended.
I took a “genetics” class for high school science. For a project we had to raise a jar of fruitflies, put them out occasionally with ether and record the different genetic variations. When the quarter was over, my best friend and I each had a full jar of live fruit flies and no idea what to do with them.
We also took High School band together. We’d stuck our fruit fly jars into our instrument cases until we decided how to best dispose of them. During practice we each sneakily dislodged the tops of our fruit fly jars and left our instrument case lids just barely cracked. About 20 minutes into band practice a lot of slapping of freed fruit flies commenced. As this was a large band, the instructor would have had to have halted band practice for some time to search every member of the band. I know he suspected us, but we didn’t get into trouble, it was really pretty innocent.
This one is probably urban legend status, but my uncle claimed he and his friends caught a bobcat, shoved it in a suitcase, and left it by a highway. Then they waited in the bushes.
Sure enough, a car pulled over and the people got out and picked up the suitcase. My uncle and his pals got into their truck and followed them down the road, noting with great delight the screams of the people in the car when they opened the suitcase.
Highly doubtful, as I don’t know of many people who without using painkillers on themselves and tranks on the bobcat could get one into a suitcase.
A stunt, not a prank: defying a cop and getting away with it.
I was involved in the theater in high school, doing set construction, stage crew, that kind of stuff. When we had to be at the school at night, we’d drive our cars across campus right up to the theater building, rather than having to walk a quarter mile from the parking lot.
At the end of my senior year, as we began rehearsals for our big musical, there were a few incidents on and near the campus where some asshole attacked a couple of girls, intent on raping them, but they got away. One of these girls was the girlfriend of the sound designer. A few nights after her incident, she saw the asshole - or at least she thought she did. I don’t remember how that came about; a group of us stage techs were walking down the hall, and the girl was sitting on the floor crying as her boyfriend was comforting her. He told us she thought she’d seen the rapist.
No words were spoken between us techs. We all looked at each other, then ran into the shop, grabbed 2x4s or whatever else was handy that could be used as a weapon, ran outside and piled in the back of the stage manager’s full-size Ford pickup, and slowly cruised around campus looking for this asshole.
We were found instead - by the cop the school had hired to patrol the campus at night because of the near-rape incidents. A lady cop. She asked us what we were up to (as if she didn’t know), and we said we were looking for someone - all of us in the back of this pickup with clubs in our hands. She told us we couldn’t be driving around, so we said OK, and turned around and headed back towards the theater. As soon as she was out of sight, we resumed our search.
Within a few minutes she caught us again. She didn’t seem upset, she just said “look, I can’t have you guys out here driving around. Please go back to the theater.” No problem, we said.
The third time she caught us she seemed a bit irritated, but only because we were defying her, I think. At that point, we decided since we hadn’t found the asshole by then, we weren’t going to that night, and since the cop was being cool there was no point in pissing her off further. So we went back to the theater.
It’s hard to capture in words, but we were all under the impression that the only reason the cop was telling us we couldn’t be out there was because her job required it; it seemed like if we had found the asshole and roughed him up, she might not have minded. At least, that’s how we thought at the time… looking back on it now, I’m sure she would have hauled our asses off to jail, no matter how much she might have secretly enjoyed seeing the rapist getting his due.
Oh, and IIRC, the asshole was never caught.
**GESancMan **, in my experience, you wouldn’t have been hauled off to jail, assuming you assaulted the “right” person. The officer’s big worry was likely that you’d choose some random innocent person.
My best childhood prank was never intended to be a prank, but it’s funny in retrospect. My aunt collected frog statues, and frogs tended to gather underneath the security light at my grandparents’ house. Us kids decided that we’d collect frogs for my aunt. So we gathered a metric buttload of plain old live frogs. In a paper bag. Which (of course) burst when the frogs peed all over it. After we carried it inside Grandmother’s house. Granddaddy nearly wet himself laughing, but I thought we’d never catch all of those frogs. And I’m surprised that Grandmother let any of us live long enough to produce great-grandchildren!
This is a “funny once” prank. I got hit about 5 times in one summer, and it gets old real fast when you have to keep cleaning up after someone else’s vandalism.
I STRONGLY suspected that one little shithead in the neighborhood was doing it all, or at least acting as the ringleader. One night my wife heard them, and woke me up. I got my big flashlight and went out in time to see them walk to a neighbor’s house, and one went inside. The rest drove off in a SUV. I got the license number using the light, and drove to the home of one of shithead’s friends. There was the car, there was shithead, and there was one of his friends. After trying to deny it, they copped to it, and they came back and were in my front yard until 2-3 AM cleaning up their handiwork.
Word spread, and I was the hero of the neighborhood. It seems that most of the neighbors suspected shithead of doing this, too. And I heard later that there were at least 2 others involved, and they didn’t get caught, so they razzed shithead about being inept as well.
I found out later that the local police could cite them for littering, and that might have a $25 fine. But a friendly cop told me that they could also write a “CO Littering” ticket, meaning one that a Conservation Officer would normally write. That has some interesting benefits, such as a $500 fine, loss of hunting privileges for a year, and potentially confiscation of the vehicle used.
I’m waiting for him to come back, but it’s been almost 2 years, and he’s either matured, or he’s to ashamed still.
I can appreciate that, but what would it take to convince you otherwise? #2 and #4 four were related in the school paper, but that was before it went on-line.
If you PM me, I’ll get you in contact with a writer for Salon.com who will attest to these things, and others.
Another one: We found the circuit breaker for the “Sky Ride” at Sea World. (Not only was it in a box that said, “Sky Ride,” but the box was unlocked.) It consists of gondolas for four people that hang from a looped, constantly rotating cable and that transport you from the park, across Mission Bay, to a Restaurant, and then back to the park.
Of course we waited for an opportune moment and then switched it off. It took them at least 15 minutes to find the problem, while about seven gondolas dangled over the bay, halted.
As my accomplice said, “Crude, but effective!” (I think he got that from Spock on Star Trek.)
Once? Maybe. Maybe once about 50 years ago, if at all. How much must you be wanting in imagination to TP someone’s house? When we saw that, we just shook our heads in pity and muttered, “Amateurs!”
Jeez, what a bunch of juvenile delinquents.
Harmless:
Ordered weather balloons from Edmund Scientific catalog.
Filled them with hydrogen, and tied with the narrow, 100 foot rolls of magnesium tape we “found” in the lab at school. A nice breezy evening could take each balloon 3 or 4 thousand feet, and a couple of miles away.
The police would get calls about a mysterious floating light that would explode into nothing. Did this many times throughout a couple of summers.
Semi-Harmless, and too long, but what else do you have to do?
High School was next door to a country club. While looking out the window in class one day, a friend and I noticed that they only picked up the driving range balls on Monday morning.
One Sunday night, we took our 9 irons and pitched thousands of balls into a pile, and came back with trash cans, washtubs; anything that would hold balls. We filled my pickup and his car with balls. We estimated we had 20k balls.
Just out of town was a large park where you could always find a few old guys whacking balls, and then going to retrieve them. We’d go whack hundreds, and leave them for the old farts. It got boring after a while, and we still had tons of balls.
David lived at a 4-way intersection in your average neighborhood. The house kitty-corner to his had a pool in the back yard. For weeks, we’d chip balls from his house over the neighbor’s house into the pool. This guy would have a stroke every day when he’d get home to find another 200 balls in his pool! He bitched to everyone in the neighborhood, (like I would today), and one day, finally caught us. He made us clean his pool and some clay pots that had fallen victim to our artillery, and take back all the balls he’d collected.
Now we **still **have ass-loads of balls at our houses.
We decided to sell the rest to the mom & pop driving range that was also in our neighborhood. Pop said, sorry boys, I just bought my supply for this year. I asked what the going rate for a range ball was, and he said “60 cents”. I told him he could have ours for a quarter each. He looked at us, and said “Give me all you got”.
We went home and counted out 15k balls. We couldn’t believe it. We’ve been wasting balls all summer, and haven’t made a dent in the numbers.
As we unloaded balls for Pop (into a big shed with a lock on it) he said “I don’t suppose you’ll tell me where you found these, eh?” We just smiled & he gave us over $3,500.
We continued to leave balls for the old guys in the park for weeks, tossed them out the car window on the road to watch them bounce - anything to get rid of them.
We decided Pop needed the rest of them, so we went back. Pop wasn’t having any of it. He had heard the CC was missing balls and didn’t have any money for balls, anyway. “Yeah, but the rest of ours are just a dime!” we told him. He glared at us for a minute, then said “ok, but this is the last time I want to see you guys, ever!”
We loaded another 4k into his shed, took our lousy $400 bucks and continued having the best summer ever. D bought a car, I got a sailboat, Pop got balls for pennies on the dollar, and the CC started picking up the range balls every night.
One of my college roommates used to get shitfaced drunk at his frat parties every Saturday night. The weekend before everything shut down for Christmas, he staggered back in and passed out. We stripped him, picked him up in a blanket and carried him down three flights of stairs, then threw him in the swimming pool of the girls dorm next door. The temp wasn’t quite freezing but it was in the 30s.
Needless to say, he sobered up real damn quick when he hit that water. And boy, was he pissed off.
When I was in 4th grade, my best friend and I turned a street sign 90 degrees. Being stupid kids who didn’t think things through, we didn’t realize it could actually cause people problems.
As it happened, a person from out of town was driving to see her friend, and drove along Oak Street, mistakenly believing she was on Maple Street, for a frantic hour trying to find the home of her friend. I guess everyone in the neighborhood knew it was me and my friend who turned the sign (because that corner was our regular hang-out spot). So after she got the situation straightened out, the lady came and knocked on the door of my house while my friend and I were inside playing, and lectured us angrily about what a horrible problem we had caused her, and she was so late getting to see her friend, etc. etc. We felt wretched.
But just now that I tell this story, I call bullshit on the lady who tracked us down. It was a well-marked neighborhood and the main street she allegedly drove up and down for an hour in confusion had another dozen side streets with correctly oriented street signs. Also, her story was oddly precise (“of course ordinarily I would have known where my friend lived, but she just changed houses…”). And what lady from out of town is going to track down the neighborhood kids on her own to yell at them? And what are the chances that she is going to knock on the door of my house at just the right time, when my friend and I are inside?
I bet some neighborhood busy-body saw us do it, and conspired with my mother to cook up a false drama. (If you knew my mother you’d know this sort of thing would fit her child-raising MO perfectly.)
So assuming I’m right and the distraught lost lady from out of town was a fake, that’s TWO pranks for the price of one.