Family Pranking
My family (the aunts and uncles generation - I'm in the cousins generation) used to play pranks on each other. There was a moth-eaten elk head that we passed around for years - you'd come home from a vacation and it would be in a chair in the living room, ashtrays full of cigarette butts, beer bottles all over the place, and a sign draped over it, saying, "Great Party!" We (cousins generation) gathered as a group of 7-20 and did pranks for a few years about hmmm... 20 years ago, but ran out of steam for lack of creativity.
The background for this story is that in my home town (So then we turn back towards Bar Bills, and Mini rejoins us somewhat breathlessly. As we arrive in front of the bar, Barb whips my chair around so it's facing the street, jams the brakes on hard, jams a cane through the wheels of the chair, plops a sign over my head, shoves a can of pencils in my hand, and says, "Sell, sell, sell, crip!" Shrieking with laughter, they run into the bar, and I, laughing/bewildered, turn the sign so I can see it. It says, Pencils for Sale, 25 cents. HAHAHAhahahaha, hysterically laughing, I turn to the picture window of the bar front, and there they all are, laughing, pointing at me, encouraging others to look at me, and I'm laughing so hard I'm having a hard time not falling out of the chair. A couple comes out and asks if they can buy a pencil, and in renewed paroxysms of laughter, I find the best pen in the can and try to sell it to them. It was probably a $20 pen, which I thought was only appropriate. They exchange worried glances, and say, no thanks, not really, and scurry off into the night.
Still chortling, I start to make a sign of my own on the back. Scribble, scribble, scribble, making the letters large enough and thick enough to be read from 15 feet away, I finally hold up the sign so they can see it. COUSINS UNFAIR. They double over in laughter, and I think, aha, I'll get them. I stand up, hop around the chair, pull the cane out from the wheels, oops the chair almost gets away from me, plop myself into it, and wheel off down the street. Fifteen feet later, it occurs to me that this isn't a great strategy - after all I'm 20 blocks away from home with only a can of pencils to my name. Lucky for me, they come barreling out of Bar Bills, and we roll on, sharing all the moments of the planning and the denouement again and again. Chuckles, yuks and hoots all the way home.This is referred to as the best prank we (the cousins) ever played. Even though it didn't meet the rules of prankdom - that 'no one knows' whodunit, and the done-ees never say that they were pranked.
February, 2001
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