Prank'd

I know I'm way late on the whole April Fool's Day thing, but who doesn't love a few good prank stories? Although I like to think of myself as witty, creative, and borderline devious I'm really not any of the above. In fact, my prank resume is pretty weak. My prime, if you could even call it that, was unquestionably when I was in high school.

As a Sophomore one of my friends and I somehow got our hands on what I guess you could call a classified document. This document was the key/guide to one of the school's circuitboards, which for some reason was located in the boys bathroom right outside of the cafeteria. It told us which switch controlled what. For a span of 2-3 days we would periodically turn random switches on or off.



One day our admittedly haphazard approach messed with the school's bell system and extended our lunch period by at least 10 minutes. After a while we soon got careless and started turning off more and more items on the circuitboard. Towards the end of one particular lunch period we were caught virtually red handed by the school's maintentance man. He was walking towards the bathroom in response to something we had turned off as we were making our exit. As he sped up his brisk walk we sped up our not so casual departure from the scene of the crime. As I remember it, and this was 9-10 years ago, the maintenance man actually pushed me out of the way as he pursued and eventually reprimanded my accomplice (I was more of the sidekick to his evil genuis).

My friend was suspended for a few days because of the circuitboard fiasco, but he refused to rat me out. Thanks to his loyalty I got away scot-free. In fact, during one of the days that my friend was suspended our Global Studies teacher actually said to me, "So Mr. Stanczyk I hear that you're friend is covering for you," to which I replied, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

By the time I was a senior in high school I felt that I had to pull off some sort of prank on April Fool's Day. Not a senior prank. I wasn't that broad of a thinker or that much of a risk taker. As I was growing up two of my older brothers pranked each other relentlessly on April Fool's Day. I only remember an alarm set for an obscene hour in the morning and pine needles underneath the other's sheets, but I'm sure there were plenty of others. With this history of inter-sibling pranks I decided to prank one of my sisters.

It was a very simple prank, but it was well worth it. A few days before April Fool's Day I had a buddy of mine, who ironically enough now teaches at our high school, memorize my sister's locker combination. He once memorized my locker combination and stole a homework assignment of mine so that I wouldn't get credit for doing it (to get me back for something), so I knew he was highly capable. I would have done it myself, but I didn't want my sister to notice me and then suspect something after the fact.

During my free period on April 1st I took all of the books, notebooks, binders, mirrors, etc. from her locker and put it all in mine. I want to say that I left a note that said April Fool's Day because I didn't want her to start crying, but I honestly don't remember. I just remember standing about 20 feet away watching her face as she opened her locker and saw nothing. Just sheer terror and disbelief.



Ideally I wouldn't have come clean until school was over, but after a minute or two of her freaking out I approached her and told her that I would bring whatever books she needed to her next class.

While those are two pranks that I pulled off this last story is about a time when I was pranked. As most of you already know, in my senior year of college I wrote a column for my school newspaper titled "He Said/She Said" that often included some inflammatory language. Basically a female counterpart and I decided on a different topic each week and then wrote a 400 word column from our respective gender's perspective.

Well in the week after I wrote a column where I referred to girls as wildabeasts, heffers, dragons, asked why all overweight women are incredibly well endowed (definitely just the fat, right?), talked about the incredible urge to dump in the morning after sleeping in a bed with a chick, and mentioned how guys in college have their roommate's schedule memorized for masturbating purposes I was pranked big time by a group of girls that I was friends with (I'm a huge FOG).

During my senior year I lived in a tiny house on the beach with my cousin who will remain nameless, Mad Max, and a buddy of ours called the Raucc Man. Outside of our dinky little beach house (I can't stress how tiny this house was) we had a loose stone driveway that could fit one, maybe two cars. My roommates and I usually only parked one of our four cars there because on the other side of the street was a little parking lot that we shared with our neighbors.

On the Monday after the aforementioned column was released, I left our house in the morning to go to class like it was any other day. Sundays were a big day for intramurals and I was an intramural supervisor, so I usually got home late and was relegated to parking in the lot across the street. As I crossed the street and got closer to my white ‘02 Ford Taurus on that fateful morning, I noticed that something wasn’t right.

It looked like my car was littered with flyers from local businesses, which by the way is a marketing tactic that I don’t fully understand. I mean, it must provide some level of success, but I would assume that more often than not, people angrily crumple up those flyers and subconsciously take a stand against the companies for stealing two seconds of their time. Anyway, after a second glance I realized that this couldn’t be the case because every other car in the lot was unblemished.

My car, which was not nearly the most luxurious in the general vicinity, seemed to shine brighter than all the others on that sunny September morning. As I approached the vehicle I learned what was causing this peculiar luster.

My car had been tightly covered in saran wrap. It was as if someone had it for dinner and wanted to save it for tomorrow’s lunch. I tried to open the driver’s side door, but it barely moved. I pulled a second time, with much more force, but again the door would not budge.



It was at this point that I again noticed what I initially thought were business flyers. They indeed were not. They were pieces of white computer paper, each with their own message, taped to the windows above all four doors. The messages read, “Fat Girls Are People Too”, “I <3 my big boobs”, “Let Me Live Four Eyes”, and “More Cushion for the Pushin’.” On the front windshield was my article and accompanying picture cut out from an issue of our school newspaper.

It took me a good five minutes to rip through all of the saran wrap. I even had to go back inside to grab a knife. All the while I was removing the wrap I was scanning my brain trying to think of who could have done such a thing. Thankfully the vigilantes wrote the messages or else I might have thought the act was a serious retaliation to incendiary column (not really). By the time I was able to enter my car I had narrowed the potential culprits down to two groups of girls. Then I remembered that a girl crazy enough to conjure up this diabolical scheme was in my house the entire night before hooking up with the Raucc Man.

It turns out that the masterminds behind this plot were a group of girls that I regularly partied with. They snuck over around 11 p.m. (I presume) and did the dirty deed while my housemates and I were awake and in our house. They even got all dressed up in black and took a boatload of pictures around my car to claim responsibility for the prank. Kind of like how Al-Qaeda leaks a video tape claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks. Knowing that the prank was all in good fun, I took it in stride and told them that I was impressed that they pulled off such a stunt, but to be prepared for my retaliation.

That night, the Raucc Man and I were sitting around the house thinking of ways to get this group of girls back. Before I continue, there's something that you need to know about the Raucc Man. He’s one of those guys that has ‘a guy’ for just about everything. If you are looking for a new pair of shoelaces, his Uncle will have a friend who knows a guy that can pull a few strings (no pun intended) and get you 50% off.

That being said, our best idea was something that Raucc Man’s cousin’s friend told him about. The idea was to nail two large pieces of plywood over the front and back doors of the girls’ house, so they literally could not get in or not. I was all for it, but I didn’t want to respond right away with a return prank. I wanted to retaliate when they least suspected it. I wanted them to forget all about the prank war they had started and then wake up one morning and not be able to leave their house. Sure enough, I waited so long that I effectively forgot all about it.