Nice try DB, but I know a practical joke when I see one. You aren’t fooling me.
When I was in Naval Training School in Great Lakes, the long cold winters would drive my roommates and I to new lows of petty pranksterism.
Among the most clever:
Slipped some chopped up No-Doz into my roommate’s 7-Up right before he was going to bed, the night before he had to get up at 3am to stand a watch. He was up at 3, because he never went to sleep.
Filled my roommate’s (same one) shower soap bottle with corn syrup mixed w/ Vaseline. That shit won’t wash off, and it stays sticky for hours. That pissed him off.
Filled the padlock on the same roommate’s locker with Elmer’s glue. That really pissed him off. We used to mess with him a lot.
My friend and I got up in the middle of a very cold night, stole a hose from the gardening locker, went over to the Recruit Training Base across the street, and sprayed down the sidewalk outside the galley. Got up first thing the next morning and watched the recruits sliding all over the place on the ice.
I guess we were really easily amused.
There was a very popular guy who had treated my friend very badly. In the spirit of revenge we got the one of us with the girliest handwriting too write a message:
*Dearest Darling,
I don’t know how to tell you this, but I am pregnant. We need to talk.
love,
you know who
*
One of us was able to put it in his locker outside of school hours. He sat bolt upright when he read it in homeroom.
Yes, it was mean and cruel and immature. So was he. I would not do such a thing now. I hope he did seriously think about being more cautious.
Another time we left a message in a locker asking for the owner’s permission for his locker’s handle in marriage. We used all sorts of locker puns. The guy blamed one of his prank pulling pals and would never believe the poor sap that he had not left the message.
Let me guess, you’re OPS for “The State” just like me, aren’t ya?
Anyway, this one’s a prank in planning. It will be actually pulled tomorrow.
My supervisor has been away on vacation. When he comes in tomorrow morning, he will find out that the “Employee from Hell” we just worked so hard to get rid of is being sent back to our department. Not only that but he will be told by his boss (who’s in on it) that he will have to turn in a scathing evaluation of her work by Friday or her probation will end and she will become Career Service (it’s like tenure, we’d never be rid of her). The idea of possibly having this E.F.H,. forever would freak any of us out.
I’m going to enjoy tomorrow.
:evilgrin:
Chrisbar
More good fun.
A while back I spent a long weekend at my brother’s house enjoying several days of fishing and practical jokes. I got to sleep in Monday morning but since he cherished his job, he headed off to work bright and early. I awoke a short time later and after drinking coffee with my sister-in-law started packing up the truck to go home. Since I lived several hours away, and I knew that I’d not see him again for months, it was the perfect time for a prank.
My brother has a ton of fishing tackle and keeps it in the garage. His favorite weapons of choice are baitcasting reels. As I carried my bags through the garage to my truck, I detoured by his workbench, picked up a tube of superglue, and as I walked past the reels, put a drop of superglue on the spooled line in three of his reels. Just enough that the next time he went fishing, SOME of his lines were fubar. Until he hit the water he never suspected a thing.
SouthernStyle
When my cousing got married a few years back, he and my future cousin-in-law decided that, as a DJ, I would make the perfect MC at the reception. You know, introduce the wedding party, tell people it’s time to eat, time to cut the cake, etc. Being the good cousin I am, I accepted.
The reception starts, and I have a pocket full of keys. Just single keys. People are milling about, talking, etc. and I would go up to various women and ask them to do me a favor. Please hold on to this key, and give it back to me when I ask for it. Simple thing, really. Most everyone said okay.
It’s time for the best man’s toast. But before I let him make it, I ask for everyone’s indulgence, because I would like to do something myself first (keep in mind I’m in the middle of the dance floor with a wireless mic). “Scott,” I say, looking at him and his new bride, “I’ve known you all my life, I wish you the best, blahblahblah. But, I cannot in good concience let this continue.” I turn to the guests. “It’s official, ladies. Scott is out of circulation now. So I need everyone with a key to Scott’s apartment to hand it over right now. You won’t be needing it anymore.”
With that, 14 women get up, walk over to me, and hand me the key I had given them before. Young, old, large, slender…even one of the bridesmaids. People are laughing their heads off.
Everone sits back down. I count the keys. “12, 13, 14… nope. There’s still one more. One’s missing. C’mon. Give it up.”
Looking sheepish, one of the ushers stands, comes from behind the dais, and gives me the final key. The place ROARS.
“There you go,” I say to Scott, “I feel much better about this now.” I plop the handful of keys on the table in front of him, and give the mic to the best man for his toast. Scott looks at me, smiles, and says, in a voice only we can hear, “Paybacks are hell.”
The best part of the whole thing–my aunt, Scott’s mom, put me up to it.
Scott still hasn’t “paid me back” yet.
CreaseMunky,
“Paybacks are hell, huh?” There’s no payback for what you’re about to hear.
Several years ago a friend was getting married. We tried to talk him out of it, good friends that we are. But he was in love and determined to go through with it so we decided that if he insisted on removing a perfectly good bachelorette from the dating pool that we’d give him a bachelor party that would haunt him forever.
The plan is for us to throw him his bachelor party on Friday night here in Tallahassee and get him to the airport Saturday so that he can fly to Miami for the Saturday night
ceremony. While he’s flying, the rest of us are going to be driving to Miami.
Well the party went on as planned. We toured several of the local drinking establishments toasting the groom and taking turns doing shooters with him. The groom-to-be soon had the obligatory “several too many” and while the night was still relatively young he passed out on us.
Huge mistake. Huge. Collosal. The rest of us were still in a partying mood. But it was pretty darned tough getting anyone to serve us liquor while carrying a passed out drunk INTO the bar.
In what can only be described as the most diabolical of all schemes, we drove to the bus depot and explained to the ticket agent that our friend is getting married tomorrow but has missed his flight. With considerable coaxing, the agent agrees that if we’ll buy his bus ticket he’ll let us put him on the bus.
So we buy the ticket, safety pin it to his shirt, remove his wallet, credit cards, change, keys, etc leaving him with the clothes on his back and a ticket to New Orleans.
He came to the next morning about sunup as the bus neared Louisiana with a monsterous hangover and what must be the most profound case of disbelief imaginable.
But the joke isn’t quite over. He has to get to Miami for the wedding. He knows noone in Louisiana. His “friends” are now car pooling to Miami and between them don’t own a cell phone. His family is on a plane heading to Miami.
The only person he can think to call is his to-be father-in-law. So he calls – collect. Explains that he’s in Baton Rouge, hungover, penniless, etc and needs a plane ticket to Miami.
Needless to say, his in-laws-to-be weren’t to impressed with his friends…
I forgot all about the wedding prank. Thanks for the reminder.
SouthernStyle
Southern,
Oh god…
You’re welcome for the reminder, and you’re right. There is no payback for that. It’s not possible. Not in just 1 lifetime.
oh, man… I’m still laughing…
And people wonder why I don’t get married.
The strangest thing I’ve done is “forked” a friends cube just before I got layed off. what I did is for about a week I went to the cafiteria and took a handfull of platic forks, knives, and spoons a couple of times a day. I had about 100 of them then when he went home I went to his cube and stuck them all over the place. Cubes have those nice holes in the joints and the forks stick out quite nice. I had them everywhere from the walls to taped to his computer chair, mouse, speakers you name it it had some sort of plastic utensil. I wish I had a camera then cause it looked funny as hell. He was not happy when he came in a couple of days later. I did this over the Thanksgiving holiday so it was there for four days even though most people worked on friday he didn’t!
This sounds fake. Why would Mullinator have to climb on top of a filing cabinet to move a ceiling tile?
I worked as an electrician before I got my current job, and we did a lot of work in offices. You’d be surprised how many offices have high ceilings. I would often have to stand at least 5 feet up to the top-most rung of my 8 foot ladder to move the ceiling tiles to get to the conduits.
Which reminds me . . .
I worked with a deaf guy named Cody as an electrician. This wasn’t meant as a prank, but I had developed a reputation (I don’t know how) and up to the day I left he thought I did it on purpose. As I said, Cody was deaf. When he was working up the ladder, he obviously couldn’t read our lips to know we were talking to him (which is how we usually communicated) and you never want to shake a ladder to get an electrician’s attention. (You have NO IDEA how much that pisses us off up there, especially if we’re working with live wires!) So I carried one of those little pen lasers and would shane it on the wall or ceiling in front of him to get his attention. Cody was working with live wires that day, and I was going to get his attention to let him know it’s time for lunch. I shined the laser beam into the light fixture where he was working. Cody, working with live electricity, thought it was a spark and flinched away from it - so hard he fell off the ladder. Wayne and I were laughing so hard about it, we could never convince him that we didn’t mean to scare him.
This isn’t exactly a prank, but the previous posts reminded me of it. (The pranks will be next.) Several Christmases ago, I sent a package to a friend in New York. (I’m in Seattle.) Just to be funny, I got one of those same musical cards, tore it apart, and figured out how to brace the bit of metal so it would remain in contact and play continuously. Then I stuck it in the package, sealed it shut, and mailed it. You could just barely hear the music inside; you had to pause to be sure where it was coming from. The package went cross-country, and arrived in New York, still playing. It continued playing for days, until Christmas, when my friend opened it and found the little musical gizmo. Bet ya didn’t know those things play for two weeks before they stop. Highly recommended as an odd joke.
Now the prank:
The worst thing I’ve ever done to somebody else was after a ski trip. We stayed way longer than we planned, and got into night/ice skiing, so when we were done, my friend was totally exhausted. She got into the passenger seat of the car, nodded her head, and was immediately asleep. Or, maybe, comatose would be more like it. Anyway, I drove down off the mountain and headed for home. I’m a night owl; I was fine, not sleepy, totally alert. Then a horrible idea occurred to me. I debated with myself for a few miles, and decided, what the hell.
I pulled off the freeway into a rest stop. I drove around the main parking lot to the truck/trailer lot behind, and I parked nose-to-nose with the biggest semi I could find. With the engine still running and the headlights on, I gripped the steering wheel and shouted at peak volume, “OH SHIT AAAAAAAHHRRR!”
My friend, startled awake, managed to get in half of a bleary blink, then spied the semi outside the windshield and dove for the floor with a shriek.
Eventually she forgave me. Eventually.
Other ones:
I once nearly got a co-worker fired by calling his boss and pretending to be a recruiter calling for a reference for the job he’d applied to.
You can also screw with evil co-workers by signing them up for inappropriate magazines mailed to the work address. Not porn, necessarily; a couple of “Guns and Ammo” type mags will suffice to put the employer on notice.
For the fishing enthusiasts among you, there’s a great prank described in Linda Greenlaw’s book The Hungry Ocean. (She’s the woman swordboat captain described in Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, and will be played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrontonio in the upcoming movie.) Her book is a fascinating day-to-day in the life of a swordfishing expedition, and includes a few great gags where the fishermen torment one another.
One of them is “yellow foot syndrome.” The experienced fishermen told a newbie about the disease, how it can strike without warning, how it’s like gangrene in that your foot falls off. So they get this guy all worried, and then, one night, they pour a packet of ramen-noodle seasoning into his boot. He doesn’t notice, working all the next day. At the end of the day, one of the fishermen says, “Do you smell that?” They all look at each other, worried, and then order the newbie to take his boots off. Naturally, he’s horrified to discover his foot is an ungodly yellow-orange. They tell him if he washes and scrubs fast, he might be able to get it off before it “sets in” and makes his foot fall off. He scampers to the head for a scrub brush, leaving all the fishermen falling over themselves with laughter…
My senior year in high school my friends and I decided to “kidnap” another friend on his birthday. We all dressed up. I was wearing yellow pajama bottoms, a yellow t shirt and a glow in the dark hockey mask (think Jason in Friday the 13th). My other friends wore monster masks (werewolves, etc.) So we drove to his house and hid in his room with the lights off. When he comes in, we all jump on him. Unfortunately his first reaction is to defend himself. He busted a friends nose and punched me in the stomach. He calmed down only we were able to tie him to a 2x4 (think the Ewoks scene from Star Wars). Unfortunately when we carried him out to the alley behind us, there were all these greek families on their way to church (note:he lives in a predominantly greek area. no one knows any english.) Thye didn’t understand what was going on and called the police. they cops were pretty understanding and actually helped us retie him.
hehehehehehe
I posted this one in another thread months ago, but it bears repeating:
My all-time best, from when I lived in the dorms in college:
One year, in February, a friend of mine named Clint decided that he’d throw a surprise birthday party for Kevin, a mutual friend, in April. He started drawing up elaborate plans, creating maps of where people should park so as not to alert him, getting Kevin’s girlfriend to pretend to be going out of town, and so forth. He was so proud of himself…thought he was Mister Sneaky. So, I decided to take him down a peg.
Clint was a very anal-retentive person. He was a total neat freak. Example: he had drinking glasses with the school logo on them. If you turned a glass so that the logo was no longer facing directly forward, he’d just HAVE to turn it back. So, my friend Stefanie and I figured we’d hit him where it hurts.
Working with Kevin, but not letting him know about his surprise party, we worked out a plan. We played Kevin and Clint perfectly: each knew of the surprise the other was getting. hehehe…
The day for the party arrived. I drove Kevin to the restaurant for his surprise party. Just after we left, Stefanie, who worked in the dorm office, gave Clint’s spare key to my crew, a band of about 8 people.
They proceeded to reverse Clint’s entire room, right to left, making it a mirror image of what it once was. His bed, television, refrigerator, phone, books, drawers, and even the posters on his walls all moved from one side of the room to the other. The only thing they didn’t have time for was the towel bars, which would have required unbolting from the wall. In less than an hour, they flipped his whole world, left to right.
Meanwhile, Kevin, myself, and the unsuspecting Clint were having a ball at Gardski’s. The party lasted a little less than two hours. Then, we headed back to the dorm.
Kevin came up to my room, two doors down from Clint’s room, so that he could see what happened. We watched Clint unlock his door and enter his room.
There was a pause. Then we heard his keys hit the floor. Then we heard, “AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”
Kevin and I stumbled into the room, falling over ourselves laughing. Clint stood, wide-eyed, in the middle of his room, looking around in amazement, hollering, “WHO DID THIS?!” I managed to say, “Clint…” when he pointed at me: “YOU!!!”
It took two days before he figured out how I’d done it. I’d been with him, after all; I wouldn’t have had time to do it.
He tried to put his room back in order that night, but there was just too much. So, he resigned himself to living with it until school was out in May. For the rest of the semester, whenever he opened a drawer, he’d go, “Dammit!” and walk to the other side of the room.
Ah, that was a great gag…
Here’s a few of my faves. Probably a little more tame than some of those I’ve read above.
We added an extra section of cubicle wall and totally sealed off a co-workers cube.
Once when the cubicle next to a really arrogant co-worker (named Joe) opened up, we had another name tag made up so that Joe had a cubicle for him, and then there was a cubicle for Joe’s Ego.
Many years ago while dating my future wife, I did the 'ol peanut butter on the toilet seat gag. She’s still mad at me for that. If you don’t know what I’m talking about. I put peanut butter on the toilet seat and brought my ‘girlfriend’ into my bathroom and asked her if she made that mess and didn’t clean it up. Then I scooped some up with my finger and ate it. “Just as I suspected! It IS shit!” She screamed and ran out of the room.
I still get some mileage out of the paper clip twisted in the rubberband trick. You then put that inside of an envelope. Some people call it rattlesnake eggs. Guaranteed to scare the shit out of you.
One of my all time favorite pranks is to challenge someone to a hair fight. Since they probably haven’t heard of it, you explain it to them… “Pour a small amount of water on a table, making a puddle about four or five inches across. If you take a hair from two different people’s heads and lay those hairs across the puddle of water, the static electricity in the hairs will make them look like they’re fighting.” You then take one of your hairs and set it gently on the puddle of water, follow that with the other person’s hair and lay it crosswise across the water. Now you watch …reeeeaaaaalllll cllloooosssseeee, and when the other person gets their face real close too… YOU SLAP YOUR HAND DOWN ON THE PUDDLE OF WATER! It’s funny as HELL! I’m 38 years old, and that one STILL cracks me up!
I don’t know if this is really a prank or just mean… I think the latter. On a school bus trip one of our friends had fallen asleep on the way home. We borrowed some nail polish and painted his eye glasses lens ‘ruby red’. He wasn’t too happy when he woke up.
My English teacher in high school had a framed print of Bill Sheakspeare hanging in her classroom. We cut out the eyes and put white paper behind the print. That really cracked us up. It kind of made him look like the blind guy from Kung Fu, except with a frilly collar.
Geez, this is getting long. This will be my last one. In 9th or 10th grade math, we had a ‘slow’ student in the class with us. She was already older than everybody in the class, and kids can be mean… so, there was an empty desk in our class room and we put an extra math book there every day opened up to the right page. It was Herman’s desk. We all had conversations with Herman, etc. We did all of this for the benefit of Janice (the slow one), we didn’t really think it was mean… just sort of harmles fun. One day, after a few weeks of this, the teacher notices the book and picks it up… “Who’s book is this?”. Janice blurts out “It’s Herman’s, can’t you see him sitting there?” (I’m laughing so hard just retyping this, I haven’t thought about this for ages!) Anyway our teacher is now convinced that Janice has gone off the deep end. She gets called into the office, and we never saw her again. Our teacher laid into us pretty good for that little episode.
I’m sure not in the same league with you guys.
I guess my worst prank was when I hid the Rook card from the deck my coworkers used when they “quit” work 30 minutes early to play a few hands.
BAWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I used to coach women’s athletics. It was a blast. It had a lot of perks besides getting to watch women sweat.
On one of our road trips (to Oklahoma City) one of the girls decided that this was the perfect time for a gag. We were spread out in the hotel so that the coaches had their rooms and the girls were scattered out in 5 or 6 more rooms. We were all on the same floor.
I arose first the next morning. When I opened the door, there was this “whoosh” sound and all kinds of visuals that didn’t immediately make sense. One of the girls had taken newspaper and completely taped over the door. (It certainly had the desired effect as my heart went from idle to mach 1 in a single beat.)
I tore down the paper and noticed that the doors to ALL of our rooms had been papered, except Becky’s.
Well, I like a good gag as well as the next person so I immediate set about getting even. My plan is to remove ALL of the newspaper without making a sound so that there is no gag. At some point she’ll have to start asking questions and ultimately confess to the prank.
So I set out removing the paper. Quietly. No sound. I get to the last room, and as the paper’s coming down I notice that the bottom two pieces of tape have been applied from the inside.
Linda and her roommates had gone to an awful lot of trouble to set up Becky and her roomies, only to have me come in behind and ruin it by trying to pull my own gag on Becky.
Two rights certainly made a wrong in this case!
SouthernStyle
Boredom, I guess.
I can’t compete with any of these, however: Back in my Army days, an accomplice and I managed to adjust an entire platoons webbing gear, making everyone’s belt 15-20 cms shorter. (On old-style webbing gear, this is a quite a task - you essentially need to take all bags and pouches of the belt before it’ll give).
When the order was barked for the company to muster in front of our barrack, everyone grabs webbing, helmets, and rifles with smooth, precise, well-exercised movements - everyone, that is, except third platoon who swear, fidget and generally behave like recruits, except they curse more fluently.
In the courtyard:
Staff platoon - looks good.
Mortar section - looks good.
1st platoon - looks good.
2nd platoon - looks excellent except for the two soldiers desperately trying to stifle a laugh.
3rd platoon: Gear and loose webbing flaps around wildly. A few soldiers have managed to clasp their belts and look as if they’re in extreme pain. Others are still trying to help each other. Officers and NCOs are either screaming or looking embarrassed.
MAN, that was beautiful.
It was beautiful, Spiny Norman, and certainly lived up to the others that have been posted.
It reminds me of a first cousin that managed to steal another company’s colours and smuggle them off the base.
SouthernStyle
Enright3:
Ahhh. In the Boy Scouts, we would perform a similar prank. Every year during summer camp in Michigan, one of our leaders would perform his miracle of science, the “Endothermic Reaction.” It involved standard kitchen staples, and you were able to start a fire with it. It would start by putting a piece of white bread on the table, then put ketchup and mustard on it. You would get volunteers to “feel for the heat”, but there wasn’t any yet. A little bit of salt, and finally the magic ingredient that would set the whole thing off, pepper. You would get a few more volunteers , and they would verify that the concoction was starting to get warm. Victim puts his hand over the bread to check it, SPLAT!!
