Punk’d but without Ashton
Dear That’s Life,
As you can probably imagine, I like to play practical jokes. Years ago, I played a prank on a co-worker who I knew had some unpaid parking tickets and therefore had a warrant issued for her arrest. While that was enough to make me laugh, she did not find it funny. In an effort to lighten the mood, I asked the head of security at the place where we worked rake her over the coals a little, saying he had received a call from the local precinct, wondering if she was still employed there. Unfortunately, she did not find that funny either and it actually sent her into a bit of a panic. He and I confessed as to what we were up to, calming her nerves considerably. Only now, years later, can I remind her of her days on the lam.
A while ago, when April 1st fell on a Sunday, I woke my children at the same time they usually get up to go to school. It was 6:50am when I nudged them like I usually do and told them to get moving, the bus supposedly coming in only twenty minutes. It took some time before any other them realized it was Sunday, and that there was no school. Unfortunately for one of my daughters, she actually got dressed and came to the kitchen, all ready, before she realized that it was a joke. G-d being merciful, she thought it was funny.
I have had my share of pranks in the classroom. For years, April Fools would come around and in the spirit of the day, I would teach my students in Hebrew. Had I been a Judaic Studies teacher, it might not have been funny. As a English language arts teacher, however, it was often pretty humorous. My students got back at me one year, taking full advantage of the insane and irrational fear I have of rodents. Totally unexpectedly and while I was teaching, one girl who sat in the front row pointed under my desk and screamed, “Mouse!” With lightning speed, I jumped atop my desk in panic, only to see that my entire class was in complete hysterics. Once I realized what had happened, and after my blood pressure came down to normal, I came down from the desk and laughed. I had been tricked but good.
If you can’t take it, don’t dish it. That is what I was always told when I was growing up. If you want to make jokes, be sarcastic and play with the boys (so to speak), you need to be able to take what is hurled at you besides being able to hurl as well. While I don’t love when jokes are played on me, it isn’t because I can’t take it. Rather, it is because as the prankster, I cannot believe when someone has successfully pulled one on me.
Starting on some camp shopping, my daughters and I walked through the parking lot of a strip mall, heading to the first store on our list. Like many other clothing stores, there were manikins in the window, none of which I was paying attention to, but noticed peripherally. As we got closer to the store and out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement in the store window. I jumped out of my skin when, for a second, it seemed that a manikin had come to life and was pointing at me, yelling something through the window. I gasped and then smiled – for a boy no older than 8 had been posing in the store front along with the manikins that were all his height, waiting to prey on an incoming customer who could be scared out of her wits. I fit the bill.
When I opened the door to the store, the boy was in a fit of laughter and I was laughing as well. “You’ve been pranked!” he yelled, pointing his finger right at me. Still smiling, I said, “You’re right – you got me,” then adding, “and I think you are the cutest kid in the entire world.” And even though I got a good laugh, as I walked further away with my girls beside me, all I could think to myself was, “My Lord: thank G-d that kid’s not mine.”
MLW
