That’s somewhere in between propping a bucket of water atop a partially open door and placing their hand in warm water as they sleep. The next few that come to mind:
Taping a suicide note to the hand of my sisters Cabbage Patch Doll as she hung by her neck from the ceiling, informing her she was an awful Mommy.
The rubberband around the kitchen sink sprayer trick
Untwisting the the top of the salt and pepper shakers.
Unscrewing the bottle top of their favorite salad dressing before dinner
Barbecued slugs??? OMG! You’ve made me remember the awful ticklefests. And when my much bigger cousin used to sit on me and - what do you call it? - you stick your middle knuckle out and thump the other person. Kinda like noogies, but he’d sit there on me and thump my chest for hours - at least it felt like it. At first I’d laugh and laugh, and then it would start to hurt.
I was the second oldest but the de-facto oldest since my older brother was kicked out of Detroit.
My personal favorite was in the winter. I got two of my brothers to lick a metal bus stop pole. They of course got stuck while I giggled all the way home to get my Mom and water.
I used to share a room with one of my younger brothers. My preferred method of waking him up was putting a radio right next to his head then with the volume cranked all the way up, plugging it in.
I had a different brother reach into a light socket to get my quarter back.
I convinced my sister that salt made food cooler. I used to laugh my ass off whenever my Mom would ask why she was using so much salt and she’d say her food was too hot.
This one backfired on me. One summer while my Mom was at work me and my younger brother managed to convince my youngest brother and sister that they were in trouble with my Mom. We had them so convinced that they ran to their room crying. I promptly forgot about it and went to watching TV or whatever. Then Mom came home, and as usual wanted to know where everyone was. They weren’t in their room. We searched the house, nada.
My other two brothers and I are dispatched to search the neighborhood and the park. The neighbors get involved, still nothing. My Mom called the police, they came out, asked us questions. My Mom is really upset and crying and I’m of course feeling like shit. I steel myself to tell her the truth, bringing my accomplice with me.
Now this was Friday. My mom was a single parent and she didn’t let us use the washer and dryer. So on Thursday my Mom would have us gather our clothes and bring them to her room, where shed sort them for washing on Saturday. My Mom is on the bed in tears when my brother and I walk in. My bother drops down on the huge stack of clothes, when we hear “oww… get off me”. There they were buried underneath a pile of dirty laundry, my sister still asleep. I never have figured out why they hid there, but it made us nicer to each other for a day or three.
I’ve just remembered something my brother and sister used to do to me–on weekends when they were up before me and the dog needed to go out, they’d let her into my room and close the door so she could wake me up by nudging me and licking all over my face. And of course I had to get up and take her out, because she couldn’t get out of the room on her own.
Come to think of it, they weren’t being too nice to the dog by doing that, either.
I got tickled an awful lot. I developed a very fast reaction to tickling by using my elbows or knees on them (or anyone) and that took care of that.
The thing I hated the most was being pinned on my back and getting the long slobbering drool spit done to me.
If my kids ever do that to each other I will not.be.happy.
We had one of these. Kids left alone unsupervised playing with hot little insect shaped molds that burned and the goo you put inside of it that could burn you if you fooled around with it ( which we did.) and it stained the carpet forever.
I was a dedicated brother tormenter, but it went both ways, there were only two of us, I was four years older. I’ll share what I feel was my finest moment. I had a friend spending the night, and he brought a huge dufflebag with him. We convinced my little brother to get into the dufflebag, and zipped it shut. (Why he believed us when we said we wouldn’t, I’ll never know.) We then carried him all over the house, spinning him around, as he thrashed and cursed us. We then told him he had him at the top of the stairs, and started swinging the bag. He really freaked, thinking about being thrown down the hard wooden, uncarpeted stairs to the concrete unfinished basement. We counted one, two, three, and gently lofted him into the air…
My older brother used to beat the crap out of me or a regular basis. It was a pretty abusive environment, but my older sister (eight years older) would protect me when she was around, which unfortunately, wasn’t often enough.
I repaid her by tormenting her with my all time favorite: nonchalantly walk up to her, pretend to notice something on her and yell, “SPIDER!” She would scream and start dancing around, “get it off, get it off!”
Ah, that joke never got old, and it worked every darn time. Poor Sis’.
I was the youngest, and my older siblings were pretty good to me most of the time. But my brother Mike used to pull this on me, when I was six and he was fifteen or so:
Big Brother: So, if there was a fire, would you save Inky or Kim? (Kim was my sister, 10 years older than me.)
Me: Mmmm. Both.
BB: Nope, just one. Which one would you save if you could (ominous voice) only save one?.
Me: But…but…
There was, of course, no right answer. No matter who I chose, he’d put on a hugely disappointed, sad face and say, “Poor, poor [un-saved]” and I’d be devastated.
Oddly enough, I used the scenario in a poem later and it never fails to get a good empathetic chuckle from the audience whenever I read it at a poetry reading.
He’s a great big brother, though. Other than that.
I use to take my stinky underwear and socks and put them in my brother’s pillowcase. One morning before school I put a pair of our sister’s panties in his pants pocket before he woke up. A few hours later on a full bus going to school I asked him to show everyone what he had in his pocket. When he was 12 he tried shaving for the first time and ended up with a bad case of razor burn. I gave him some Ben-Gay and told him it would help. While in high school we both had Ford Falcons. I found out one day the key to my car would work in his. It was great fun watching him search for his car after school.
Of course I would never do anything so cruel, but my youngest sister used to try and drive my youngest sister insane - literally. She’d lock her in the closet until she was screaming and crying, and then let her about and try and convince her that she had never been in the closet, that it had all just been her imagination. When youngest sister was at least half-convinced, and fearful of her own sanity, the process would begin again.
I was never so subtle - I’d just beat up my younger brother. Just my luck that he grew up to be 6’2"…
Wait wait wait. Your youngest sister used to drive herself insane by locking herself in the closet? Man, that is twisted! That is some serious torment.
I don’t remember this, but my parents say that when my twin brother and I were just toddlers (I walked sooner than he did), I’d fill his pockets with quarters so he couldn’t get up. Seems fishy to me, but it makes a cute story.
If you did things right, that wouldn’t matter. My younger brother, who is at least six inches taller than me, still won’t touch me. We were in a store one day, and of course, I was talking crap, he gets in my face, “You’re…you’re lucky I’m scared of you.”
I’m the oldest of six kids and was I ever a mean-ass big sister!
One of my favorite tricks was to creep upstairs while my siblings were watching TV in our nasty basement and flick the circuit breaker, cutting off the lights and TV. I would then hold the door at the top of the stairs shut and scream “Satan’s in the basement! Satan’s coming!” The kids would pile up on the stairs shrieking and trying to claw the door open. The flickering pilot light from our old furnace downstairs really added to the ambience – dunno why my sibs had problems with nightmares!
That should read younger sister locked youngest sister in closet. I’ve got three sisters, OK? How am I expected to keep track of them all? And my younger brother might have the height and the reach, but I’ve got the weight and the strength: a rematch would probably go 12 rounds, but fortunately we get on really well, and have even been known to pair up and go round to threaten a sister’s ex-boyfriend with a beating for spreading nasty rumours about her.
My brother is 10 years older than me, and we didn’t spend a whole lot of time together growing up. What’s more, he knew better than to torture me because the 'rents would have kicked his ass for picking on the baby. The most he did to me was give me “snuggies.” You know, when you grab someone’s undies and yank them up their ass crack… Also known as “wedgies.” Bro used to pick me up by the panties in the back and the front and lift me off the ground. Double whammy indeed.
I would torture not only him but Mom and Dad by being the ultimate screamer. Apparently, I would even threaten them. In my sweetest 4-year old voice, “I’m gonna scream…” and everyone would brace for the piercing shriek. Perhaps I was channeling Varuca Salt. Supposedly the last time I did it, Dad really wailed on my ass and I was cured. I don’t have any memory of all this, but bro takes every opportunity to tell everyone what a brat I was.
He also takes great pains to tell the story of how he got in trouble when I went into his room, found a cool Spoon Ring (remember those?) and swallowed it. Well, it got caught in my throat and I turned blue. Mom got me down on the living room floor and thrust her hand down my throat to fish the thing out. Then Mom and Dad laid in on him like there was no tomorrow. Still can’t understand why they got onto him for my stupidity.
When my parents would have people over for dinner, the grown ups ate in the dining room and the kids ate in the kitchen. The two rooms are next to each other, but separated by a door, which my parents always closed so that they could enjoy their dinner.
So once the door closed, we’d start in on the baby. This started when he was quite young, and continued for years.
“Baby wears underoos!” we’d chant softly, almost under our breaths. He could hear us, but the parents in the other room couldn’t.
“I do not,” he’d say.
“Baby wears underoos,” we’d chant.
“Do not!”
“Baby wears underoos,” still chanting, still soft.
About this point, he would begin screaming, “I DO NOT! I DO NOT!”
Parents would run in – what’s going on here? All these innocent eyes looking up at them: “We don’t know. All of a sudden, he just started yelling.”
Ah, good times.
A friend tortured her sister when her sister got braces. She told her that those were train tracks and that when she slept, a train would come through. The poor little girl didn’t sleep for a week, until the parents finally figured out what was going on.
