Wise
people have often admonished, "write about what you know." You
may have noticed that I most frequently write about embarrassing
screw-ups. There is another topic I feel fully qualified to cover: the
fine art of "pranking."
Anyone can
decorate a yard with toilet paper, or "fork" the front lawn of an
intended target, and I have gleefully done both. 
But the best pranks are
1. creative 2. funny to both the givers and receivers and 3. not
destructive in any way. I have to give mad props to my elder siblings
for much of my education in the art of pranking. One of my favorite
recollections took place in Japan when my oldest sister who was already in High
School and my slightly older brother who was in Middle School pulled a prank on
Mr. Lady. Yes, that was his name. He seemed to us to be the absolute
stereotype of a British scholar, right down to the cardigan that he wore
everyday. I'm not sure about this, but it may have even sported patches
on the elbows. Shirley was the only one of us to actually have a class
with him, and although she admitted later that he was a good teacher, at the
time she considered that English class sheer agony.
Unfortunately for
Mr. Lady, David (my brother) made a couple of interesting discoveries that
Fall. When he stepped out onto the roof that extended below his second
story window, David realized that he could see through the windows of the high
school classrooms several blocks away with a pair of binoculars. This
was great fun, because several teachers at The American School in Japan taught
English as a second language on certain evenings in that building. We
could recline on the gentle slope of that roof and "spy" on the
teachers!
There came a
day when spying just wasn't enough. But we had an amazing and harmless
weapon at our disposal. We had our father's disturbingly powerful strobe
light often used for the filming of home movies. I'm sure that no one
under the age of 45 could possibly have any clue as to the horrific intensity
of these contraptions. I have no doubt that the energy required to
operate these lights could have powered three small countries. Most of
the benchmark events of our family's life were accompanied by film of all of us
squinting painfully into a camera that was accompanied by this tortuous
device.
My genius
siblings realized that the strobe light was powerful enough to shine into the
window of the classrooms of the school like a giant spotlight. Armed with the binoculars, and perched on the
roof with extension cords hanging out of the window, they plotted their prank with
the precision of an armed attack. The
moment Mr. Lady turned his back to the window to write on the chalk board, the
beam of light would flood through his window.
In response to the light, he would turn around, but the “strobe fighters”
would extinguish it before he could find its source! Their reward was
great. They could see the unflappable
Mr. Lady becoming flustered before their eyes.
That was quite a prank. I knew
then as I sat on that roof top that I was watching greatness in action. 
They also modeled other minor pranks for my young impressionable
brain. I loved the time Shirley brought
a needle and thread to school and surreptitiously stitched the sleeves of Mr. Lady’s cardigan
closed as it hung enticingly on a coat rack.
To this day, I have to smile when I imagine him trying to put his arms
through the cuffs.
Usually a
good prankster has to have a partner in crime.
When we moved to Abilene, Texas, my partner was Susan Parker.
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Our targets were usually the staff members of
our church because we loved them. In our
twisted minds pranks = affection.
Examples of these little acts of love included the gathering of a couple
of dozen tiny little frogs that we captured out at Susan’s farm. We smuggled them into church on one of the
many school days that we were supposed to be out selling advertisements for the
school newspaper. When the coast was
clear we lovingly placed them into the top drawer of the desk of our Minister of
Music, Tom. (If you ever read this, Tom, I’m just kidding, it was
someone else).
There were
some great pranks at Baylor where my partner in crime absolutely was NOT Nancy
Thomas who later became a judge in the great state of Texas. Those were NOT our pledge uniform skirts hanging
from the flagpole either!
As a young
single news reporter at KRBC back in Abilene, I found myself teaching a sweet
class of young 8th grade girls in Sunday School. This is when I realized that it was time to
pass the tradition of creative pranking to a new generation. I asked my girls to begin collecting old
newspapers. When we had a huge
stockpile, I tricked the Minister of Music (always a fun target) out of his
house keys and we filled his bedroom from floor to ceiling with wadded-up
newspapers. I also bonded with my girls
during our little escapade. I learned
that harmless pranking can be very beneficial to building relationships.
You
probably think that once I became a grown-up, I put away childish things. You would be wrong! One of my favorite bonding moments with a
group of young women in my church in Columbia, South Carolina occurred when we
took a pair of enormous novelty nylon granny panties (I’m talking about panties
so large that my son was using them as a window covering), and hung them on a
clothes line that we strung between two columns on the front of our pastor’s
house.
These are wonderful, constructive
memories of church volunteerism. As for
other pranks….I cannot divulge them or our partners in crime (see Eli and Diane? I can keep a secret!)
