When teaching in an alternative school, I had a Little Thug stealing my Pepsi out of the staff refrigerator. I thought, game on. I took my bottle of Pepsi and drank it, then refilled the bottle with vinegar, cayenne, sugar, and dye. Then I tried to get the cap to look as new as possible and stuck it back in the fridge. Sure enough it disappeared.
An hour a later I went to the class where the Little Thug was and told the teacher discreetly but loud enough for the class to hear that I had a urine sample in a Pepsi bottle and it disappeared. I also mentioned that the doctor gave me an indicator dye to add to the urine sample and that it looked kinda like Pepsi. I left the class, and about ten minutes later the teacher calls me and told me his class was melting down. Apparently Little Thug had shared the disgusting concoction with several of his class mates.
I told the teacher to wait that I would call my doctor to see what he recommendation and call him back straight away. I called the teacher back and told him that the doctor recommended that they drink 1 gallon of water every two hours until they had drank two gallons of water. Sure enough they did and stuff stopped disappearing out of the staff refrigerator.
How about you Navy guys and your equator crossings, those were infamous. I never did that stuff as the closest I came to the military was being a “stay at home Army husband”.
Our camp counselor wanted to take us snipe hunting. Fortunately, I had already heard about snipe hunts. This is where the counselor drives his bunk kids out to a remote spot late at night to hunt for snipes. While his kids are in the bushes going “Here snipe, snipe, snipe!”, the counselor drives the truck away leaving his bunk kids stranded.
I explained what a snipe hunt was to the other kids, and we came up with a plan. When our counselor Uncle Mark (all counselors in our camp were called either “Uncle” or “Aunt”) took us out in the camp truck to snipe hunt in the middle of the night, two other counselors would follow us in another car. When Uncle Mark pulled over, we all got out doing our “Here snipe, snipe, snipe” bit, but carefully circled back to the trunk. The plan was to sneak back into the truck and let one of the other counselors drive us back to the camp leaving Uncle Mark stranded.
Of course, we had to have a way to get Uncle Mark away from the truck. We appointed the fastest kid in our bunk to be the decoy. His job was to go into the bushes just out of sight, and to scream “Uncle Mark! I caught one!”, and then “Ow! Uncle Mark it bit me. Ow! I’m bleeding!”
When Uncle Mark ran over to the bushes to see what was happening, this kid took off back to the truck, and jumped in back with the rest of us. The truck took off while we waved goodbye to Uncle Mark.
We were back at our bunk laughing and celebrating our great prank when five minutes later Uncle Mark walked into the bunk and ordered us lights out. Apparently, the third counselor who rode up in the car and was suppose to drive the car back, gave Uncle Mark a ride back to camp.
There was a guy where I used to work that had a little red Porsche that he loved. He always parked the Porsche at the end of the parking lot and took two parking spots to assure that his pride and joy was not scratched or dinged.
One day while he was traveling out of town, he left his car at work. His “friends” at work took up a collection and raised about $600. With the money they collected, they (i) paid to have his little red Porsche towed away, (ii) bought another little red car from a junk yard, (iii) had the little red car from the junk yard crushed flat, and (iv) had the crushed car moved back to their friend’s parking spot at the end of the parking lot.
When the guy returned from his trip, he found the crushed car in his parking spot. He was crushed and he cursed. Happily, he did not have a coronary and no one got a black eye.
Well, if you switch enough wires on a car without redundant spark (firing two plugs per coil) you can blow up the muffler. That’s pretty cool. Happened on my 86 Camaro, a friend of mine switched every wire straight across the cap, and when I tried to start it, within 5 seconds of cranking, there was a loud “BOOM!” and I looked at the back of the car, and there was a nice triangular hole where the seam on my factory muffler split open. The best part was, he felt so bad about it that he bought me a cat-back flowmaster setup after he came clean.
we used to take a soft lead pencil, pull a guys spark plugs, draw lines from the top of the plug to the bottom, and re-install the plugs. The spark would run down the pencil line instead of jump the gap, and the car would not start even though it seemed to have both gas and spark. I wouldnt think this was so funny today, but back then we were all just a bunch of guys in the air farce and we though it was hillarious.
In a supermarket, take a few cans of house brand cat food and mix them in with the cans of house brand tuna fish. You’ll never see the victim’s reaction, and most will probably be caught by checkers or shoppers, but it’s fun to think about what will happen when one gets through. EA
In my prep school, the silverware was already set out when we came down to breakfast. Our favorite trick was to smear the bottom of the cereal spoon with butter, then cover the butter with salt. The person who sat down to his corn flakes would get a salty surprise. EA
for those, like me, not familiar with that Navy tradition:
http://www.desausa.org/pollywog_to_shellback.htm
if your kitchen sink has a spray hose, wrap a rubber band around the trigger, and leave the sprayer pointing straight at the next person who turns on the faucet.
In 1995, I worked as a software tester at a company here in town, and our bosses had morning meetings behind a closed door at the start of each day in their office across the hall. We testers complained that their meetings lasted too long and we had no instructions for our day, so one day I decided to make our statement.
I went out and bought a large piece of plywood that had been made to look like real brick, and on Monday morning, as soon as they closed the door, we put the “brick wall” plywood sheet against the door frame and sealed it tight using a table and whatever else we could come up with.
An agonizingly long hour later, we heard their door open and the sound of confusion and laughter on their side as they looked at the brick wall that had suddenly appeared in their door way.
For the rest of the day, they use the public address system to call people to the window to the outside so they could pass instructions to us.
Several years ago, there was a problem with people parking in employee spaces who had not registered their cars with Security, especially a couple of people in my department. On April 1st, I composed a memorandum which said that starting that morning, cars without Security stickers parked in employee spaces would be towed, at the owner’s expense, to a holding lot. I posted it in our department lounge, thinking I might scare the guilty people in our department. I had signed the memo with the name of one of our VPs. Someone, apparently thinking it was real, copied the memo and sent it out all over the facility.
Within a half hour, there was a long line outside the Security office of people despirately trying to get parking stickers. And naturally, Security was totally in the dark.
My supervisor called me into his office and told me that all the department heads had been told to find the “culprit”, and when found, to fire him or her. He then told me that he thought I “might be interested in knowing that”. I thanked him, and left the office. It was ten years later before I ever told anyone that I had been responsible for the Great Security Parking Hoax.
I read this in a book that, as I remember, was titled “How to Get Even with Your Ex.” The idea was that when the ‘ex’ was away on a trip you should have one of those fancy home alarm systems that contact the local police installed in the home. When the target returns and puts the key in the lock the police will respond. Let the ‘ex’ explain to the police that someone broke into the house while he/she was away and installed the system. I love the picture this conjures up in my mind!
In auto shop we used to stick the wire of a capacitor in a spark plug wire, crank the engine and charge the capacitor, as long as you did not touch the casing and wire at the same time you were ok. That is near impossible when you say catch an toss it to someone.
My girlfriend and I traveled the country and decided to stay in San Francisco. I took a job selling in house portraits. The sales crew was pretty bad to people they did not like, one memorable prank was crossing the bridge on a route with at least 4 tolls. They told him if he told the attendant it was Lem Motlow’s birthday they would wave him through. As he was following us the driver paid our toll and the toll for the car behind us. He would pull up, stop, say the spiel and get waved through. They did not pay for him on the last toll, and drove on. He tried his spiel, it didn’t work and he wouldn’t pay, we heard later he was arrested on the suspicion of public intoxication.
In college, our dorm was divided in half. Each hall had 7 rooms, with the bathroom in the middle, making each hall a mirror image of the other. My roommate and I lived in the room across the hall from the bathroom. Occasionally, one of us, being the fine and upstanding college students that we were, would hear someone in the shower, stop at the ice-cold drinking fountain and fill up a glass, and sneak in and toss it around the corner on the hapless victim…bringing the bliss of a nice, hot shower to a screaming halt. Because we were just bringing the arm with the glass around the corner into the shower area, we had to toss high, since we couldn’t see (weren’t looking) in the area.
Well, one day, my roommate saw Jack, one of the seniors at the other end of the hall, going toward the bathroom in a bathrobe, with a towel over his shoulder and his aluminum soap dish in his had. Chris waited for Jack to get the shower good and hot and to get a good lather. He then went to the drinking fountain, filled a large glass and snuck into the bathroom. I heard a scream, then Chris came pounding back into our room, slammed the door and threw the bolt. A second later, Jack, dripping wet, had grabbed his belongings and was pounding on the door and twisting the handle.
Chris pulled out his neon sign generator, holds one lead on the door handle, and starts waving the other lead under the door, saying “lookout, Jack…lookout, Jack.” Well, at some point, the lead contacted the spreading puddle of water outside our door. The only sounds were BZZZZT! and the clang of the metal soap dish hitting the floor.
Jack was fine, and Chris had to hide for a couple of weeks, but we were both ushers at Jack’s wedding several months later. (I think the powder-blue tuxes were his revenge…)
Air National Guard technicians wear two hats, their day job and the specialty if they’re to mobilize. Roger was an engine mechanic days who worked on the Prat and Whitney 4360’s that powered the KC-97Ls that belonged to my Tennessee ANG Group. His other hat was as a flight engineer when he was off work or mobolized. He began commuting to work one day on a beautiful Triumph Bonneville motorcycle he had lovingly restored and parked in the hanger where he worked. Two flight engineer ‘friends’ came in soon, every day at lunch, and with an oil can left a dozen drops of oil under the engine. After weeks of this, Roger, exasperated, tore down the engine and rebuilt it with new seals and gaskets. Roger, luckily for his friends, had a sense of humor when they admitted the prank to him.
I haven’t done this one for a while but I used to take the long cable ties (12" long) and connect them to the drive shaft. What happens is it slaps the floorboard and makes one hell of a noise. They usually wont fall off and need cut off. Great prank!
In 1962, I was 20 years old. My generation, as many of you did, took any job if we had to. I washed dishes in a hospital. The dishwashing machine was a gigantic thing, I don’t know, maybe 20 feet long. One put the dishes in at one end, they were soaped, then washed, then rinsed then air dried with hot air.
The hot food went up in plates in a carrier with a heavy metal plate under it. When the food was served a metal plate was taken out of a heater, and placed under the plate to keep the food hot.
Everything had to go through the big dishwasher for hygiene reasons. When those heavy metal plates came out of the dishwasher, they were painfully hot. One had to hold them with his finger tips, and ‘twiddle’ the fingers rapidly to keep from hurting.
When we got a new guy, we’d take one off the rack, and stand there twiddling our fingers for a minute, then we’d hand it to him. In a second, a scream and a loud metallic noise as that metal plate hit the floor. Then, we’d show him how to handle them.
One of the young men left there in 1962, telling us he could make much more gambling illegally. Over thirty years later, his name was in the newspaper arrested for illegal gambling. He had supported himself all those years, apparently, by gambling. I’ve always wondered if he ended up washing dishes again in his old age, since he had no legal job experience.
Really simple, really evil. My 14 year old son and I had an appointment in a downtown Seattle hi-rise office. We boarded the elevator with a crowd, and as soon as the doors closed, all conversation stopped, as it often does on elevators.
So, completely unexpectedly, AND, I might say, without any provocation, my son turns to me and says, "oh dad, was that YOU?"
He got me and he got everyone else on the elevator.
By the time we got to our floor, everyone on the elevator was howling.
I love that kid.
Bruce Futhey
Seattle WA