Practical Joke #2

As I mentioned in "Practical Joke #(Who Knows)”, we were heavily into playing little pranks on each other at the West Valley Free Wheeler.  I worked with a lady named Sylvia, and for the life of me I can’t remember the joke she played on me, but I do remember telling her that I was going to get revenge on her, that I would do it when she least expected it and that it would happen when I wasn’t even there.  I had no plan at the time, but I was a cocky 25 year old and over-confident in my own abilities.  Except this time I did it.

Sylvia worked during the days, and was usually the one that opened the store.  The driver I closed with that night and I brainstormed, came up with a plan and stayed up until the early morning hours setting things up for the morning.

We made a net out of string to hold a water balloon, attached it to the ceiling above the front door and placed a pin in the wall right below it.  Then we got a water balloon, put it in the net, hooked a string to hold it up and ran the string down the side of the door and across the bottom of the door. 

The idea was that Sylvia would come in, walk through the door, pulling the string out of the wall down below.  This would release the water balloon, which would fall onto the pin, pop and the water would fall right on her.  It worked perfect.  Exactly as planned.

Although she got me back even before I knew how well my plan had worked.  I came into the store that evening to work and the first thing Tonya, another employee, told me was that the water balloon had worked perfectly, except that Mike, one of the owners, had come by before the store opened to get some paperwork.  Instinctively I knew that couldn’t be true, wouldn’t because Mike hardly ever came out to the West Valley store, but that initial gut wrenching feeling of doom, despite only lasting seconds, was enough to give the two women a good laugh.

Practical Joke #(who knows)

My assistant manager, who’s daughters and nephew both worked with us at the West Valley Free Wheeler, lived in a duplex with pillars by the front door.  They were just far enough out from the door that you could walk between them and the house.  Which made a few of us think “hmm, this is the beginning of a great prank.”  So one evening, a few of the other employees and a couple of her relatives, quietly wrapped the pillars with toilet paper, creating a paper wall in front of the door.  One of our delivery drivers climbed up on the roof with a bucket of flour, and another employee and I positioned ourselves on either side of the door, where there wasn’t any toilet paper and we could easily drench anyone coming out of the front door.  One of her relatives, water gun in hand, went in the back door and started squirting her, chasing her around the house. As was our plan, she tried to escape our gunman out the front door, saw the wall of toilet paper, turned one way, got hit by a bucket of water, turned the other way, got hit by another bucket of water, then tried to escape through the wall of toilet paper.   She came out from under the front porch wet and covered in soggy toilet paper.  But that wasn’t enough, that’s when the driver dumped the bucket of flour on her.  Wet, soggy TP and flour.  What a mixture.  We were laughing our guts out, and fortunately she had a sense of humor and could only congratulate us on our ingenuity.  And laugh too, as she planned her revenge.

Yeah, I did it too…

I can’t remember how old we were, but my younger must have been at least 3 for this to have worked.

My older brother and I told him that he was adopted.  As a matter of fact, we told him, the Lexington Police had found him in on the streets and had asked our parents to take him in.  And the only condition to keeping him was that he had to do whatever his older brothers told him to. 

This worked really well for a week or so, until MOM found out what was going on.  Little brother was assured he was not adopted, that he wouldn’t be given away no matter what, and older brother and I weren’t allowed oxygen for a week.  Ok, we were allowed to breathe, but only the air in our own bedroom.