Does anybody remember these? I don’t mean anything harmful, but rather mischievous things we did as kids. (Cecil mentioned kids jamming a potato in a car’s tailpipe.)
Not sure what the general question here would be, to be honest, but sure, I remember childhood pranks. As for if I did any, well, how do you think I came up with my nickname?
Brian O’Neill
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Let me give you two examples:
My older brother (still something of a smart-ass at 51) tied fishing line between two telephone poles on opposite sides of the street!! I guess he was waiting for a motorcyle to come by. A car hit the line–and the driver was scared to death!! My brother really caught hell from our parents for this.
About the same time, my sister (then age 11) went next door and, with a friend there, passed out Ex-Lax to kids on Halloween!!
Sort of like the above, but we used to all wait until twilight, get about 3 kids on each side of the street and then when the cars came by, acted like we were pulling a string across the street. About half the time, you could at least get a car to slow down that way which was always good for a laugh. Sometimes, the car’d stop and some irate motorist would yell at us and that was even better for a laugh. Anyone who just drove through was treated to a show of us all pretending to be thrown to the ground as our “rope” got pulled away.
“I guess it is possible for one person to make a difference, although most of the time they probably shouldn’t.”
My best friend and I used to run and jump over fences and stuff when we’d see a car coming at night. They would always get real suspicious and slow down, or even fallow us. The most fun was the pretend to beat the other one up, and take his wallet and run just as the headlights caught you. The motorist would almost always stop and assist the ‘victim’.
One I always wanted to try but never had the balls: Break the glass part of a light bulb in a bed room, dorm room, etc., and tie the fuse of a cherry bomb or M-80 to the fillament. Cover that with a paper bag filled with flour or any household powder, and wait. First person to enter room and flip the switch will get one hell of a bang. The blast is said to be powerful enough to shatter the windows.
We used to get great delight from “forking.” Take about a million plastic forks and under cover of darkness stab them serreptitiously into someone’s lawn (usually a teacher, or boss.) Sort of the same principal as TPing someone, but a much more surreal effect (imagine waking up in the morning to see an ocean of white stakes in your yard!) and easier to clean up, too. We would almost wet ourselves while we did this, it was that much of a hoot - piling out of the car, sprinting to the yard, stabbing furiously and hauling ass back to the car and speeding away while admiring our work. Ahh, memories!
About the same time my brother pulled the bit with the fishing wire, and my sister with the Ex-Lax, I used to get the goat of the store owner down the street–a Mom and Pop store. There was a phone booth outside his door and I wrote down its number. I would peek out my front window, looking at the store, and dial the number. The store owner was a grumpy old man; we would dial the number and watch him run out to answer the phone–then hang up. 
Gee, does anyone TP anymore? Oh, did the mention bring back memories!
“With enough courage, you can do without a reputation.” - Rhett Butler
Irish Spring soap can be made into a thick ‘slime’ by slicing peices off a bar and boiling it on the stove. Adding more and more soap, it thickens, and remains at that consistancy. Fun and easy to soap cars, houses, mailboxes, small yappy dogs, etc. It’s easier than rubbing a bar of soap all over, and leaves you kitchen smelling clean, and fresh.
These are some of my favorites. Locker room pranks were always cruel and demoralizing. Here are a few of the best ones:
Body Glove. When the victim gets out of the shower is still wet, the perpetrator would run up behind him, and slap his back as hard as he could. This happened to me a few times. I remember having my friend Joe’s hand print on my back when I went to bet later that night.
Flaming Locker. In the good ol’ days, stick deoderant was alchohol based, and thus flamable. My football lockers in junior high and high school were made out of this kinda grated metal. When someone is still in the shower or not in the room yet, we’d take deoderant and rub it accross the grated locker like grating cheese. Then, the shavings would be ignited, emitting a wonderful blue flame. Good fun ensues.
Of course, we’re all familiar with towel snapping. Some of my team-mates and I had towel snapping down to a science. We could actually make the tip of the towel…kinda, explode. It would shred, and towel peices would fly everywhere. Buttocks targeted by the the business end of a towel would always welt, and often bleed. Damn, that was fun.
Can’t believe no one has mentioned the shave-cream trick: you (carefully) pierce the seam of a shave cream can with a small nail, holding the nail in once the puncture is made. Then you knock on the unsuspecting victim’s door and, when he opens it, toss in the can and hold the door shut.
Or the burning bag of doggie-doo on the front porch. Ring the bell, run like hell, laugh yourself sick the rest of the night.
Or, how about the 12 gauge shell inserted in the tailpipe as far as you could get it? Much more interesting than some old potato.
Or, waiting 'til an unfriendly neighbor will be gone for a while, and slipping his garden hose in a basement window and turning it on? I did this once, figuring it would only get the neighbor’s basement carpeting wet while he was gone on a week’s vacation. I didn’t know the guy had placed a plastic cup in his basement drain to use for putting practice.
DIF, you rule.
Once, when a university friend went away for the weekend, I managed to get into his room and fill his sink with Jell-O. When he came back he scooped most of it out, but the remainder he removed by letting the hot tap run over it, leaving it to set in his U-bend. This was the same lucky guy whose carpeting we dampened down nicely and sowed watercress seeds onto. They take about the weekend to remove and will grow back if “mown”. Apparantly if you use mustard seeds you can do the wallpaper too.
It only hurts when I laugh.
One Halloween, my friend made a dummy out of some clothes, gloves, and a hat and hung it from his basketball hoop like it had been executed. After all the little kids had gone in for the evening, he took it down and a bunch of us walked around the neighborhood with it like it was a drunk friend.
One of us had the idea to place it in the middle of the road where there wasn’t street lights. We waited for the coast to be clear, layed it across one lane (of a two-lane road), and hid behide a stone fence nearby. When the next car approached, we giggled with anticipation as the light from its headlights grew brighter. Then a heart-stopping “screech” as it stopped filled the air. I was dying to laugh, but my friends help stifle me. Then: blue and red lights began flashing across the house in the yard where we were hiding. We all had heart attacks.
The policeman searched with his spotlight, coming close to hitting us (it was a short fence). But he gave up and drove off. When we came out, my friend was pissed because the cop had taken the dummy. It seems he had used his good jeans and work gloves.
In high school I injected super glue into the lock on a guy’s locker. It had to be cut off.
Some other guys I knew went prowling around one night stole a “big wheel” three wheeler from one kid’s yard, and some children’s clothes from a clothesline in another. They stuffed the clothes and placed the newly made dummy in the seat of the big wheel which they pulled across the street with a rope when a car approached. They had to run like hell when they did it to a cop
This was not a prank that I pulled, but one that someone pulled on me:
My best friend in high school was a boy named Eric. He was a year older than me. After he graduated, he went to college up north (Lake Superior State, in northern MI). Anyway, he came down for a visit, and called me the night before to tell me that he was coming in to school the next day to see me & some other friends. I, of course, am delighted. I get to school the next morning to find him & several others gathered around my locker. After exchanging hugs & stuff, I open my locker…to find it filled to the top with those little styrofoam peanuts. WHOOSH! They were all over the floor, and across the hall. To this day I do not know how he did it.
i called my mom that evening, to tell her all about it:
Mom:Oh, so he did manage to do it, then? (giggling)
Me:You mean, you KNEW?
Mom:Of course…he called me a week ago and asked if I could help him get some of those styrofoam things.
Me:You HELPED him???
Mom:Well yes! You know how much I like him, and besides, it was funny. Wish I could have seen it myself.
Ever “penny” someone into their dorm room?
Sometime when you’re sure the victim is asleep, take an accomplice and a bunch of pennies to his door. Have the accomplice push inward on the door, as close to the jamb as possible. This will open a small gap between door and jamb; shove a stack of pennies in that gap. Really squeeze them in there, as hard as you can.
The stack of pennies keeps the door slightly bent, which puts pressure on the latch, which freezes the doorknob in place. With most kinds of doors, there’s no way to remove the pennies without outside help.
I’ve also got a story similar to Cristi’s, except that instead of styrofoam peanuts, it was popcorn. And instead of a locker, it was a little foreign car whose owner had left the sunroof open.
Of course I don’t fit in; I’m part of a better puzzle.
One my dad did as a kid:
At night, take some toilet paper (I assume the stuff was more durable back in the 50s) and make several loops between trees so that it stretches across a road right after a curve. Supposedly, at night when seen very suddenly with headlights, it looks like wooden planks.
Also, shortly after my mom and dad married, Mom’s brother streched a length of bare wire that was fastened to a nail driven into a plank on their house’s exterior. When rubbed with resin, it sounded like someone prying boards off the hosue.
As for myself…
From my dorm life: Take an LP cover and fill it with shaving cream. Slide the open end under a door. Drop a heavy book on the cover. This will shoot shaving cream all over a dorm room.
Carpe hoc!
Oh, god I loved pennying people into their rooms. My friend who lived kitty corner across the hall apparently had bumped into a high school girlfriend at the bar, and decided to go for a roll in the hay. They were going at it in his dorm room so we felt it necessary to penny them in. We did it real good and a few hours later we hear them trying to get out. We crowd around and her her say “I can’t get it open” then he makes a drunk attempt and after a few minutes of silence he figures it out and starts going apeshit. Apparently the beer she had drank was fully recycled and was filling her bladder. As he gets angrier, she has to pee worse, and now we don’t want to let him out because hes so mad. We close our door, and the pounding brings the RA out. He tries for 15 minute to get it open and can’t. Eventually he recruits some of us to help (we won’t admit to doing it) and he gets out and threatens our lives. Apparently she was embarrassed and never talked to him again.
Forking yards is one of the funniest pranks visually. The victim must look out and wonder, yet appreciate the effort put in.
I gotta figure out how that seeding carpets works. i intend to do that next time my friend goes out of town.
{{{One I always wanted to try but never had the balls: Break the glass part of a light bulb in a bed room, dorm room, etc., and tie the fuse of a cherry bomb or M-80 to the fillament. Cover that with a paper bag filled with flour or any household powder, and wait. First person to enter room and flip the switch will get one hell of a bang. The blast is said to be powerful enough to shatter the windows.}}}—Babar714
Use 1 or 2 M-80s with extremely short fuses.
Don’t use any sort of powder…potentially very dangerous!! 
Corn flakes work wonderfully!
The windows will be fine–unless you wire it up in something like a birdhouse with a picture window in it.
Don’t do this to anyone who wears hearing aids or has a heart condition.
You didn’t hear this from me.
–Kalél
Common ¢ for all ages…
The spin cycle on the washing machine does not make earth worms dizzy. It will however, make cats dizzy. Cats throw up twice their body weight when dizzy.
So, whats the deal with the powder? Iquiring minds want to know.