I Love This Prank So Much It’s Sick

(This entry is a blast from the past.  I have added some content and made a few edits.  I find it hard to believe I really played a part in this crazy story.)

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We have a request from a visitor named Jay, regarding 101 Things ~ About Me.

“’68. I love playing practical jokes. 69. Once the police were called to one of the practical joke scenes I was involved in. It was bad.’

This deserves a post of it own!!”

So, Jay, this post is for you.

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I went to college in a place that was rather unbelievably named “Normal, IL.”  By the time senior year rolled around I’d fallen in with an abnormal group much more to my liking. 

Although the previous year I’d lived with my best friend Linda, she was now living with her lover Cindy and my ex-boyfriend Jeff.  I met Linda and Jeff when I was 20, while working in a runaway home.  We all worked there.

This was the same place where a man attacked me in the middle of the night, after I failed to get the door locked properly, and the teens in residence ran the bad guy off with a baseball bat.

It’s the same place where the 14-year old sat having a very mundane conversation with me, maintaining a totally straight face, until I noticed his penis was sticking straight up out of his pants like a totem pole.  Almost 30 years later I can still see that little freak’s business.

I also seem to remember a scene at the kitchen table where some of the staff were grinding up sleeping pills and putting them in brownies, so the kids would leave us alone. 

We’re not talking about a group of Nobel prize winners working at this establishment.  I think the pay may have been $5/hour.  We were “counselors,” after all, making the big bucks back in 1980.

I was not entertained that my nemesis, Cindy, was living with my two best friends.  She was a little too happy, a little too blonde, a little too comfortable stealing my favorite people and making them hers.  It sucked.  (It’s probably a small issue, but I should mention that I was sleeping with both of my best friends and didn’t actually tell either of them before it all blew up in my face.)

Jeff blamed me for the break-up just because I slept with Linda.  How unfair is that?  I think he initially thought we’d get married soon after college.  I’m not sure how he missed noticing the instability that hovered over me like a cloud.  To put it lightly, I was fucked up.

This is a picture of Jeff and I from that time period.  He looks like a logger.  In reality, he was more of an intellectual, less a fan of hard work:

As for Linda, she was my first lesbian acquaintance and therefore the most fascinating single individual ever to cross my path.  I’d never met a real live homer-sexual.  When Linda told me she was gay it was like discovering my best friend was a martian.  I felt the need to search for her martian antennae and bring the information back to my homeland.  (I come from a small town where a loose dog on the grammar school playground merits mention in the newspaper.)

I probably asked her somewhere in the realm of 3,000 questions.  As long as her 12-pack still had a beer left in the box, she was happy & willing to fill me in on all the details.  Remember, this wasn’t long after Watergate and I fancied myself Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein.  It was great, one of the best experiences of my life.  Just a hop, skip & a jump until we were both naked and then I was being a bitch. 

Would you really expect me to treat a female any differently than I treated the males in my life?  I was unstable like a 3-legged table.

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So ultimately what happened was Jeff came into some money and bought a brand new television plus stereo equipment.  He was very excited about these purchases, a little too braggy about his good fortune.  We all thought he was a bit full of himself and we were probably jealous.

I got a call one night from Linda.  She was getting drunk (as she did daily) with the new chick & Linda’s ex-boyfriend Pete (she gave it a shot).  They were laughing and begging me to assist in a practical joke.  I was to come over and help hide the TV and the stereo in the basement, then tie Linda and Cindy up to make it look like there had been a home invasion, Jeff’s stuff had been robbed and his roommates immobilized.

Really, how could I resist? Like a good dumbass, I immediately agreed to commence with this idiotic idea.  “I’ll be right over.”

Peter & I tied the girls together with rope, back to back, and left them lying in the middle of the living room floor.  I believe we may have even put gags on their mouths.  Yes, I’m sure we did.  We also knocked over a lamp or two and messed up the room.  As Jeff’s car pulled in the driveway my cohort and I ran upstairs. 

Things did not go exactly as planned.

When Jeff walked in, instead of freaking out over his stolen TV, he believed the girls had been raped and actually began to cry.  He was flipped out.  He was sobbing!  We were upstairs peeing ourselves.

When the restrained girls saw tears in his eyes, they also began to cry.  We could not see them from our vantage point, but could hear a weeping chorus, Jeff asking if they were okay.  They were struck mute by his grief. 

Suddenly the worm had turned: the two chicks who came up with the idea were considered victims and I was a perpetrator!  Somehow our pre-planning had never made it to this stage of the game.

Pete and I were looking at each other in disbelief.  WTF?  What do we do now?  We could hear Jeff dialing the rotary phone, calling the police, and the “victims” were completely silent.  We could hear him talking with a police dispatcher.  We were stunned at what was happening to our genius-level prank.

Suddenly, Jeff heard a noise upstairs.  (I’m pretty sure it was the pee running down my leg.)  He believed the intruders were still in his house.  He came running upstairs like a rhino, red-faced and nearly hyperventilating, with a baseball bat leading the charge.  Pete and I were both hoping spontaneous human combustion was a real phenomenon, that we might burst into flames rather than face this nice, friendly, funny guy who we just made cry like a big pussy. 

Jeff saw me, I saw the look of recognition in his eyes, the gig was up.  Police immediately began knocking at the door.  Oh – my – God.

After explanations were provided, the officers told us they never expected to get another call involving any of our cast of characters again or we’d definitely be doing some time in a box.  They left.  We were left to face one another.

Jeff never forgave me.  He felt that I was the only responsible one of the crew and thought it would never have happened without my involvement.  I’m still confused by the utter ridiculousness of expecting me to be the mature one.

He forgave Linda and Cindy, continued living with them.  Of course, the fact that he could tell people his roommates were lesbians gave him a cache’ that I could not touch. 

It really was very unfair of him.  And that is why I will now report to you the fact that he is the only man I’ve ever known who preferred to climax with both feet sticking straight up into the air.

I love that f’ing prank.  Freaking guy had no sense of humor.

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