What is practical about practical jokes?

[David Terrenoire]

In honor of April Fool's Day (a day late), I want to talk about practical jokes, or one joke in particular.

It should surprise no one that, as a kid, I loved hand buzzers, whoopee cusions and stink bombs. Which would lead you to think, quite wrongly, that I loved April Fool's Day. But to those who know the nuances of fake vomit (tip: sprinkle water on it), April Fool's Day is like New Year's Eve is to a serious drinker.

Not that any of the jokes worked worth a damn. What third-grader could keep a straight face when a plastic dog turd was involved?


But as we grow older, the pranks become more sophisticated and the really great jokes are the ones that play off a person's own weakness. The best I ever saw was pulled by a pretty country blonde receptionist named Buffy, a woman you underestimated at your peril.

Our boss was known to rifle through trash and desk drawers after hours in order to find out what his employees were up to, because he was sure they were up to something. He would sneak around corners and stand in hallways, hoping to overhear the mutinous staff hatching their plots against him.

And as paranoid as he was, he was even more of a misogynist. Pretty women were stupid and pretty women with country accents were really stupid. When Peter talked to Buffy, he was so condescending that no one would have blamed her if she'd shot him. But she didn't. What she did do was even better.

Buffy began carrying a manila folder that held a few typed sheets of paper. She would pretend to read it at her desk and when the boss approached she would casually close the folder, smile, and say, "Is there something I can do for you, Peter?" No, he would say, and slink away as the only thing he hated more than secrets were confrontations.

When Buffy went to the bathroom, she took her folder with her. When she left for the day, she took the folder home. And with each passing day, Peter became more and more obsessed with fiding out what Buffy was reading.

But of course, she wasn't reading anything. The typed sheets of paper were just that, merely office effluvia she'd picked up for the prank. Buffy did this for almost two weeks, the folder her constant companion and Peter so strung out on the secret that he could think of nothing else.

Then the folder went away.

It took Peter a few days to stop spinning. And I believe that to this day, just as Peter is falling asleep, the picture of Buffy with that folder comes into his head and he starts awake in the dark, unable to close his eyes for hours.

Practical jokes. When they're this smart, you've got to love them.

How about you? Have any favorites?

[Stephen Blackmoore]

Pranks. Sometimes they go horribly, horribly wrong.

My old man used to work on a loading dock and he and the rest of the crew would be there when the office staff showed. They see everyone as they come and go since they're right there over the parking lot.

There's this one guy really paranoid about his car. Comes out once an hour to check on it. Keeps thinking someone has moved it. Asks all the dock guys if they saw anybody. Then accuses them of moving the car when they don't know what the hell he's talking about.

Every day, once an hour. Like clockwork.

So, one day, they decide to fuck with him and pour a ring of flour around the car. That's it. Just flour.

Well, he comes out, sees the ring and goes batshit. Ranting, screaming, wagging his finger, running in circles. Takes an hour for the boss to calm him down and send him home. And all of this is going on in the parking lot. The dock guys are eating it up. A real knee slapper.

The guy doesn't come in for about a week. When he does, he's subdued, quiet. Looking a little haggard. Stops ranting about his car. Stops coming out to check on it.

Over the course of the next few month he gets worse. Stops shaving. Comes in wearing yesterday's clothes. Sometimes he hasn't showered. Misses days. Whole weeks. Then he stops showing up at all.

Come to find out that he went home that weekend and ate a bullet.

Was it the flour ring? Nobody knows, but everybody's pretty sure he was already heading round the bend when it happened.

[Angie]

Well, that's...depressing. If he was that OCD about his car, there was clearly something going on well before the prank. Interesting difference between your story and David's - in his, the target was a bit of a bully, while yours was about picking on the weirdo. Also, in your story there was some public humiliation (everyone laughed at him to his face). Hmmmm. Veddy interesting.

[Stephen Blackmoore]

Yeah, it was pretty fucked up. At the time my dad was in his early 20's, fresh out of the Army. And this was the early Sixties. Terms like OCD weren't exactly in the public sphere. It stuck with him, though. Stuck with me, too, apparently.

[David Terrenoire]

Angie,

It should surprise no one who knows Stephen that his story would be a dark tragedy where mine was a comedy full of puppies and rainbows.

Because that's me all over.

[Stephen Blackmoore]

Yeah, puppies, rainbows and Panamanian whores.

[Angie]

*cough, cough, bullshit, cough, cough*

You're both nicely dark and twisted dudes. Stephen's just... Well, Stephen's just another lovable monkey with a gun.

[Sandra Ruttan]

I never think of Stephen having parents. I thought he was hatched in a laboratory...

[Stephen Blackmoore]

If you'd ever met my dad, you'd believe I was his. Of course, it's certainly possible that he'd been hatched in a lab.

[Sandra Ruttan]

When I worked at a residential school there was one weekend almost everyone was away. I was one of the only staff on site, just a handful of students (adults) there. As is the case with places like this, ongoing practical jokes were rampant. One of the girls was having an issue with one of the guys, so...

We packed up all of his belonging. Every single thing. When he returned he found his accommodations about as empty as the day he arrived with a note saying he'd been expelled.

[norby]

I spent a summer during college working at a church camp. One of my co-workers was just out of high-school and somewhat naive. One of her first acts of the summer was to write a newspaper column about the camp she was working at, with a look at all the people she was working with. A not so nice look at all the people she was working with. No, she didn't mention any names, but there were five teeneage girls working at the camp that summer, it wasn't too hard to figure it out.

We decided that since it was a short summer, we'd play nice, pretend we hadn't seen the article and just get the summer over with. I was a counselor so I was out in the cabins with the kids most of time anyway.

Remember those sparkling fruity water drinks they used to sell-Mystic, Clearly Canadian-they looked exactly like wine coolers but there was no alcohol in them? Well one night two of the girls bought a bunch of those and brought them back to the staff cabin. They told our young friend that they were alcohol and proceeded to start chugging them down. Knowing that this girl was very straitlaced (and remember that this was a church camp), they kept offering some to her-needless to say, she declined.

I'm pretty sure she immediately phoned her mother the next day, because that weekend our camp director paid us a surprise visit, coming through the door to our kitchen, which no one ever did. He never said anything, but he kept looking all over the kitchen. Whe he finally saw the remaining full bottles of the drinks, he started smiling, then left a few minutes later. Our take, mommy had called and complained about her daughter being offered alcohol at the camp and he had to check it out.

[Daniel Hatadi]

I renamed Crimespace to Crimefools for a couple of hours, but I chickened out when I realised it affected all the email notifications and RSS feeds.

Someone did think it Crimespace was hacked, though.

[norby]

When I was in college I was a Resident Assistant-a job that really is very rewarding, but you have to be willing to put up with some teasing and joking from the students on your floor. The hardest lesson to get across to college students, believe it or not, is getting them to always lock their door. A hall director I knew once learned the hard way that locking your door is the best way to prevent people from stealing your belongings.

Bill had gone to the bathroom across the hall from his room to take a shower. Apparently, reasoning that he wouldn't be gone long, he didn't bother to lock his door. After finishing his shower, Bill returned to room to find that all of his furniture was gone. Gone. Beds, chairs, books, everything. He had been gone fifteen, twenty minutes max and it was gone. Knowing that whatever had happened couldn't have gone far, he started roaming the floor, looking for his furniture, hoping he wouldn't have to tell anyone that he had lost a full set of room furniture. Entering the stairwell, Bill found his furniture set up in the exact same way it had been in his room. The guys on his floor had moved it while he was in the shower. They did, of course, help him move it back.

I've lived in that same building, and I still can't figure out how they did it so quickly and so quietly.