This month on Little Spouse on the Prairie, we are sharing funny stories of pranks and tricks in honor of April Fool’s Day. Continuing with the theme of ornery teachers, I have a story about one whose birthday is actually on April 1st. I still haven’t forgiven him.
One evening, several years ago, when I was a high school teacher, I decided to go prepare my classroom for the next day’s activities. The halls of the old building were pitch black. I was a bit creeped out by the silence, and I was glad when I reached the door to my darkened classroom and turned the knob. Before entering, naturally, I reached around the corner to flip on the light. Instead of landing on the switch, my hand touched the warm flesh of another human hand.
After my colleague revived me with cold water, he explained that he had seen me walking on the sidewalk toward the school and quickly used his own keys to open my room. Without turning on my light, he stepped into my classroom. He waited patiently, his hand on the light switch and his back against the wall. He claimed he hadn’t wanted to frighten me too badly, so instead of shouting, “Boo,” he merely put his hand on the switch.
I still haven’t thought of a payback worthy of his evil, and I am canvassing listeners for suggestions. Go to facebook.com/littlespouseontheprairie or SpouseOnThePrairie@ValerieKuchera and help me out in the comments section.
I guess it could have been worse. A couple of other teacher cronies sneaked over to a friend’s house when he was attempting to ignite the pilot of his water heater and shot off a starter pistol behind his back. Hospitalization may have been required in that case -- first for the poor person who was the butt of the joke, and a couple of weeks later for the perpetrators.
My own dear husband, Joel, though he tries to appear innocent, apparently had a great deal of fun filling record album sleeves with shaving cream, placing the open edge under doors, and then stomping on poor Barry Manilow or Billy Joel’s face, an act that resulted in shaving cream splattering over every surface of the room on the other side of the door.
Now I’ve really given listeners ornery ideas with that one, but anymore, a person has to hunt for record albums, so maybe that trick will be a hard one to replicate (although I’ve heard it’s equally effective with manila envelopes). Luckily, my middle school son doesn’t listen to this program.
My favorite story about this particular practical joke goes like this: My husband and a group of equally immature guys placed the shaving cream filled album sleeve under the door of the local math genius, who was, let’s just say, a little short on funny bone. They stomped white lather all over this poor guy’s office and, like the responsible and upstanding citizens they were, took off running. The guy, whose real name Joel can’t even remember, went by the moniker of Gutterhead. Gutterhead took exception to the prank and chased Joel and his buddies down the hall. With the head start they had gotten, they were able to race into another room and lock the door. In a few minutes, Gutterhead was pounding on the door shouting words that can’t be said on the radio.
Normal people might have sheepishly laughed, opened the door, and apologized to Gutterhead. But no. What did my husband and his juvenile buddies do? You guessed it. They refilled the record album sleeve, placed the edge under the door, and shot a full-sized can of Barbasol out into the hall. Apparently, Joel’s friendship with Gutterhead never really got off the ground after that. Don’t worry, listeners. Joel learned his lesson.
Something that got ruined during this shenanigan was The Rolling Stones original Street Fighting Man album cover, which is now worth over $10,000. Joel insists the look on Gutterhead’s face was worth every penny.
See you next week!
