The prankster

I must be a born prankster, I do pranks all the time. I think about pranks all the time, or they just come to me and I do them. Not malicious pranks, just little fun ones. A couple of them I have done over the years come to mind, an early in my life one, when I was 13, and a fairly recent one about 3 years ago when I was 61.

when I was 13 I lived with my dad in a 30 story apartment complex in Durban, South Africa, on the 3rd floor, above the lobby roof, so you could climb out your window and walk on the roof. It was a 3 room apartment, my bedroom, my Dad’s bedroom and the front room. Each room had a window overlooking the roof of the lobby.my dad was in the front room typing out a short story he was writing, and I was in my bedroom reading. All of a sudden a joke came into my head like a flash of inspiration. To accomplish the joke I climbed out my window and crawled under the front room window where my father was working on his story so he wouldn’t see me go past, to his bedroom window, which was open to catch the breeze. I climbed into the room, and set his alarm clock to go off in about 10 minutes, then crawled back under the front room to my bedroom and climbed into my bedroom and lay on the bed, pretending to read. And waited with anticipation for the alarm clock to go off. It did, and my dad cursed and went into his bedroom to shut it off. He grumbled to himself and went back to work on his story.

after about 5 minutes I repeated the journey out my window and under the front room window and into his bedroom through the window, and reset the alarm to go off in 10 minutes. Then I crawled back to my room, being as quiet as possible. The alarm went off, and my dad started cursing quite loudly. He rushed into his room and turned off the alarm, slamming it down loudly on his nightstand. I tried my best not to laugh out loud. He grumbled all the way back to his typewriter, and continued to work.

after about 5 minutes I again climbed out the window, crawled to his bedroom, climbed in and reset the alarm again to go off in 10 minutes, then reversed my trip back to my room and waited. The alarm went off, and my dad exploded. He stormed into his bedroom, slammed down the clock, opened his window and threw the alarm clock out onto the roof. Then he went back to work, muttering loudly about the defective clock. I had to put the pillow over my face to stop my laughing from being heard. It worked even better than I envisioned. that was my first remembered prank.

The last prank I did was about 3 1/2 years ago. I had suffered a series of strokes, which left me vision impaired and disabled, so I couldn’t drive any more and couldn’t walk, so my wife had to drive me to my phyical therapy sessions. For some reason I had my car keys in my pocket, along with the fob that had buttons to open and lock the car doors, open the back hatch, and a panic button to set off the car alarm. So while I was in the therapy room doing my exercise, my wife was sitting inside the car reading a book. When I was finished, I came out and walked to the car, stood at the passenger door and chatted to my wife, who was sitting in the driver’s seat. As we talked, I put my hand in my pocket and hit the door lock button on the fob. All the door locks snapped shut with a loud click. My wife said “what’s happening?” “I don’t know” I replied, then hit the button again, and the locks opened. A look of bewilderment and confusion crossed her face. I hit the hatch open button, and the hatch started opening. Now she was really confused. I pretended to be confused as well. I hit the panic button, and the car alarm started sounding with a strident horn blast, over and over again. My wife was hitting her own fob to shut off the alarm, which stopped, but then the hatch oped, and the doors locked and unlocked repeatedly, like the car was possessed. Which it was, by me.

my poor wife was almost hysterical by this point, and I was laughing loudly and dangling my set of keys in front of me so she could see them. Luckily for me she saw the humor and started to laugh as well. She is a wonderful lady, and I love her dearly, but I also know that it would be dangerous for me to pull another prank on her. But it was fun, and we still laugh about it years later.