Chewymom

When I was in high school, I was part of a youth group that was not very spiritually inclined. In fact, they seemed highly inclined toward being boy/girl crazy, and that annoyed me to no end. I mean, I was as boy-crazy as the rest of them, but I was not interested in any of the boys in our youth group. When I was at church, I was hungry to learn and to grow, and I just wasn’t being fed. I had tons of questions, from wanting to understand what the word “predestined” meant to how to really feel the presence of Jesus in my life.

Lest you think I was all spiritual and no fun, though, the other thing I was busy doing, when not asking questions, was playing pranks. The leaders were so glad that I (and a few of my recruits) wasn’t sneaking out to make out with my latest boyfriends, that they practically pushed me out of the cabin on retreats to go play my little pranks.

We short-sheeted the youth pastor’s bed, ran his underwear up on the flagpole, hosed down entire cabins of sleeping boys with shaving cream (and then ran away screaming!), pitched water balloons into sleeping boys’ tents, put Kool-Aid in the shower heads. Actually, let me pause there and tell you just how that was done. It’s a pretty funny prank! I, at the tender age of 15, snuck into my dad’s workshop and borrowed a wrench for the retreat. With that and several packs of Kool-Aid in hand, I (again, along with a recruit or two) snuck into the boys cabin and removed the shower heads. We then poured the Kool-Aid carefully into the shower heads and replaced them. When the showers were turned on the next morning, they water came out purple or red or whatever color–and sticky. Oh, we were so funny!

The boys failed to see the humor. And we got locked in the closets. For 45 minutes. And we proceeded to sing “Pass It On” and other fine youth-group-ish songs at the top of our lungs until we were set free.

But we weren’t finished. We went back, this time armed with Saran Wrap and Scotch Tape. We lifted the toilet lids and seats, stretched the Saran Wrap over the potties, making sure there were NO telltale wrinkles, and taped them down. Then we put the seats back down. Sleepy boys, upon being awakened early Sunday morning for breakfast, did not suspect a thing and were shall we say, shocked, when their pee went pouring down the sides of the toilet, or worse, bounced back up on them.

Oh the fun we had!

One summer–the summer after my senior year of high school–I got all of the girls my age involved during our week-long summer camp, Rutledge. We were so bad, pulling at least one prank per night, that we earned the ultimate punishment. The Recipe. The Recipe was disgusting. All of the leftover food from the week was poured into a huge pot and kept, mercifully, in the fridge until the last day of camp. It was announced at dinner that night who was the most horrible camper, deserving of this torture. That person was dragged outside, and the adults–yes, the adults–proceeded to dump the pot of mess all over the camper. So four of us gals had earned it, probably more than any camper in history. Everybody was mad at us, because nobody was exempt from our pranks. And we knew it. We had packed for it. We arrived at dinner, dressed in garbage bags, tied neatly at the waist. We had shower caps on our heads, and waited expectantly for them to call our names. They never did. Folks, we broke the tradition! The adults were so put out that we had anticipated it, that nobody got The Recipe that year!!

And that’s my history as a prankster. Stay tuned, because my past will become important in another post. Let’s just say, don’t mess with the Queen of Pranks.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 9:06 am and is filed under This and That. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.