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Being a member of team sports for my entire life, I’ve seen some great
pranks over the years. Many of them were pulled on me. I learned from
these experiences and passed on all of this knowledge, through
experimentation, to those who would follow the tradition. Let me take you
back to some of my experiences from being on the swim team.
The most classic prank we have is Icy Hot in the Speedo. One would think
that the smell would give it away, but so many people are wearing it on their
shoulders, you think it’s normal to be smelling it. When your testicles are on
fire, you realize you’ve been had. So what do you do? Jump in the pool?
Let me tell you from experience that getting wet is a BAD idea. For some
reason, that makes it burn worse. I used this prank on several people
during my 13 year tenure in swimming. Once someone gets the trick pulled
on them, they smell their suit before putting it on so it’s hard to repeat. In my
time, scentless Icy Hot was born. And with it, repeat pranks were born, too.
Another prank I took part in came at an all-star meet, known as Southern
Zones. One of my hotel roommates was shaving his head, and he ended up
with several cuts and knicks that would not stop bleeding. He tried
everything to help it stop and asked me for advice. Being a young teenager,
I had some Sea Breeze astringent in my toiletry bag and said that would stop
it. Robbie wasn’t the smartest of guys so he put a healthy dose in his hands
and rubbed it in. His expression was priceless and he started screaming like
a banshee. I’ve never seen a guy rubbing his head so hard into the carpet.
After about ten minutes of screaming, he looked into the mirror and he
wasn't bleeding anymore. He actually thanked me for the suggestion!
There were many other pranks pulled during my time. But I wanted to talk
about how the knowledge I received while swimming led to a prank war with
my then-roommate, Madpup. We originally pulled a few pranks on each
other in good fun, but then we made it official and laid down some ground
rules.
The first stipulation we had was that we were going to score each other on
the prank, based on originality and effectiveness. I say effectiveness and
really mean how bad did it smell, how long did it take to clean, etc.. Another
rule was that we couldn’t destroy anything. Finally, we were to not involve
our other roommate, Tonebone. So the stage was set. I can’t remember the
exact order of how these pranks went down, but I’ll give you the overview of
many of them.
Madpup got me pretty good with several pranks. One day I came home from
coaching swim practice and was going to change clothes. I looked in my
dresser to find only pink clothes. I own nothing pink, so this was
unacceptable. Even my closet had been changed to an all-pink wardrobe.
So I took all of these newfound garments and tossed them tornado style
across Madpup’s room and searched the house for my missing clothes. I
found them in a closet down the hall. It took me a while to fold up all of my
clothes and hang up the rest. It took Pup longer to clean up from Hurricane
T-Bone. I awarded him lesser points because he ended up having to clean
more than I did.
Another Pup prank included him taking everything in my room and stacking it
on my bed. This included my TV, computer, couch, entertainment center,
lamps, you name it. I feel that by far this was his best prank. I think he had
help, but oh well. The major pain in the butt was putting things back to
where I had them, by myself. The couch was the hardest, so the back of the
house sounded like a construction zone for about an hour. I did end up with
a different layout for my room that I ended up liking better. For that, I say
thanks.
For that one, I retaliated with total “destruction” of his room. I went and
emptied all of his drawers and tossed his clothes around. I took his bed
apart and leaned it against his door, along with his now-empty dresser. I
deleted all of the channels from his TV and rewired all of his electronics. I
would have restrung his guitar, but that would have crossed the line. So
when I was effectively finished screwing with his room, I exited out of his
window and shoved the lawnmower in front of it. That seems kind of weak,
but it ended up raining that night. He got home around 10 pm and went
straight to his room to find his door unavailable. He shook his head in
shame and thought I’d just locked his door again and reached for a coat
hanger to unlock it. Once it was unlocked, he still found the entrance to be
unavailable and just kind of smirked. He walked around to the back yard
and found it pouring outside. Our patio could accumulate water very easily,
so he trodded through our mini-pond, moved the mower, eventually got the
window open, and crawled into his newly decorated room. He was soaked
before the end of it. I got major points for that one.
A few days later, it would have seemed that the war had taken a bit of a
hiatus. This was unacceptable for me. Since Pup is a nocturnal man, he
sleeps til about two o'clock in the afternoon. It never occurred to him that he
shouldn’t leave his keys in the kitchen. I stole his car and parked it a few
blocks away at a friend’s house. I was off to do my intern job at the
Chamber of Commerce and around three, I got the call. “T-Bone, you
wouldn’t happen to know where my car is, would you?” I wish I’d kept myself
composed, but I cracked up. The gig was up. I told him where it was and he
informed me that I had about 30 minutes to come get him because he had to
be at work within the hour and needed a shower. So the prank sorta got
lessened by the fact that I actually gave him a ride to his car. But his initial
thought process was priceless.
Not all pranks went as planned. For instance, Pup placed an egg soaking in
milk underneath my bed. He says it sat there for several weeks and I never
noticed it. He had to bring it to my attention. So this plays off as ineffective,
whether it was just a crappy prank, or my room smelled bad already to the
point that the rotting egg/milk solution rendered no effect.
We ended up breaking our rule in not involving Tonebone. He’s just an
easy target, no offense to Tone. See, Tonebone is a bit on the anal-
retentive side. There’s never a dish in the sink, everything has it’s place,
and everything is always clean and sorted. We started doing what everyone
else does, rearranging DVD’s, things that he’s accustomed to. He’ll walk in
on the way to his room, stop, take a quick look and notice it immediately. He
quietly walks back to the entertainment center and puts it in it’s appropriate
place. That got old rather quickly. Tone also has something known as the
'shirt rotation.' This is a plan he’s devised in his closet. I can’t remember
the exact number, but it’s not divisible by 7. Let’s say 13. So Tone puts 13
shirts that he’s deemed worthy in his closet in a certain order. The order is
apparently important. If Tone wears his green shirt with blue stripes on one
day and wears his orange shirt the next day, you can rest assured that the
next time he wears his green shirt with blue stripes, he’ll be wearing the
orange one the next day. So Pup and I, along with some frequent house
visitors, went in and rearranged the shirt order. Tone was not pleased.
However, I do believe that it prompted him to enter some new shirts into the
rotation.
The best/worst prank we pulled on Tone took a long time to realize. The
length of the prank is what makes it bad, but the eventual reaction is what
makes it great. Pup and I got into the attic with a boombox (there’s got to be
a less 80’s word for that) and placed it above Tone’s room next to the A/C
vent. We had put a CD in it containing scary sounds, like footsteps,
moaning, and other stuff like that. We set the alarm for it to go off around
3:30 AM and only last for 2 minutes. This thing went off for a few weeks
before Tone finally mentioned something. Pup and I played it off like we
didn't know anything. We let it go for another few weeks and Tone made
mention of it again. We finally fessed up and Tone was somewhat amused
by our prank. He had wondered if we’d done something for a while because
he kept waking up around that time. By the time he had become awake
enough to figure anything out, the 2 minutes was up and it quit. It’s funny
that it took him so long to figure it out. Pup and I actually went back up in
the attic to turn up the volume and angle the speakers closer to the vent.
So while our little bit of fun did nothing to make society any better, it was still
a worthwhile little venture because was had a lot of fun doing it. It left us with
some great stories. In the future, I may bring up some of the pranks that
column length has prohibited me from posting. I might also share some
more swimmer pranks and the pranks my brother endured during college. If
you have some great pranks that you’ve pulled/experienced, contact me and
I will try to post it.
Until next time, throw up a “T” for…
T-BONE!
