What is the best practical joke you have seen or experienced?

[Doctor P]

When I was in college, one of the really, really straightlaced guys on my floor pulled what is one of the best jokes I have ever seen. He called the guys on our floor together to tell us what he was doing--he had somehow gotten hold of some (old) Selective Service stationery and sent one of the guys (a real idiot who was always doing mean things to people) on our floor a military draft notice (now, this would not have been funny normally [especially in today's times], but there was no military draft at the time and the guy who it was sent to was in one of the two or three birth years of American males who did not and have not had to even register for the draft--so there was no possible way that this guy could ever have been contacted to be drafted). He called us together to tell us on the the day it was supposed to be delivered to the guy's mailbox. The guy freaked out for a few minutes, until the straight-laced guy (who would never have been suspected if he didn't come clean) let him off the hook with a nice "gotcha". What are some of the better practical jokes you have seen or experienced.

 

[Goofyposter]

LOL!! I was at a casual seminar not so long ago, that was held at a municipal complex.....and a friend of mine had just restored an MG and had brought it to show it off...this guy's a 'type A' guy...and always on a schedule...he had to leave early that day due to another committment....he made a big point out of how maneuverable his new toy was....well ....he made a tactical error by parking his car between two parked highway dump trucks...being that this was a saturday...the trucks wouldn't have been used until the following monday...knowing that he had to leave at 3pm...and that the offices were closed....my evil mind devised the plan....I snuck out at one point proir to the lunch break...and hefted the front and back ends of the MG around so that it was 'parked' perpendicularly between the two locked, parked dumps trucks with no hope of moving! ...needless to say....we had 'entertainment' during the lunch break! ....not being completely evil....I had confirmed that another friend attending (and who worked for the Highway Dept..had access to the keys to the trucks!)...so it all ending happily... (despite the fact the my friend with the MG lost about 3 pounds from sweat! )

 

[The Mystery Machine]

Good Gravy, too many! OK I will tell you the most recent one, that my DH pulled on me, this summer in fact.

You see we have needed to get a new lawn mower for this year, we had to return the one we were using to my brother. So I would from time to time ask dh when he was going to give the mower to my brother. OK, with me so far?
Soooo....over a period of a couple of months this summer, my neighbors were constantly talking about new mowers, telling me to tell my dh to get out and mow the yard, etc...
We went on vacation and neighbor was watching house. We get back. Shortly thereafter *I* casually & (innocently I might add) ask Dh when he was going to give the mower back to my brother.
At this point DH can't take it and breaks down and confesses he gave it back 2 months ago. He has been mowing with a brand new one all this time. Every neighbor knew (of course) and I guess had a grand time that I NEVER even noticed the mower.
As it turned out when the neighbors were watching the house, they had taken pictures of the mower for "blackmail".
Needless to say I FELT STUPID. Also I was mad at dh because he broke down and told me. Now I wonder how long WOULD it have taken me to notice DH bought a new mower???

 

[Kitty 34]

Last year I got together with the principal of our Middle School to help me pull a practical joke on the teachers.

I was subbing for 2 weeks in an 8th grade class....the same class where all the teachers eat their lunch. They've been eating their lunch in this room for 10 years!!

The teachers had been "growling" about a new policy in effect that stated that if you were going to have kids eat lunch in the classrooms they (the teachers) would have to be in with them. Some teachers felt the students eating in their classrooms were trusting enough to be in there alone.

So........the first day of my 2 wk job, I had the principal write up an official-looking letter stating that because the "real" teacher was not in the classroom other teachers couldn't be in there, etc etc. I taped the letter to the door and headed quickly home for lunch.

Boy did the sparks fly as the teachers came down the hall with their lunches!!! They growled all the way to a different teacher's room to eat lunch. They discussed going to the board or the Union rep!! (Heard all this from another sub ) It wasn't til the next morning that I went around and told them it was a joke!!!

Some still can't believe I pulled this off on them!! Hehehe

 

[Kallison]

On April Fools Day in my step aerobics class we all did the wrong move in unison every time the instructor called it. We had several wrong moves we would do in unison, if she said lunge side to side we would do something completely different. After about 5 minutes, she stopped and said something like What the H*** are you all doing?

I wouldn't say that was the best, but it's the only one I can think of this early.

 

[MeanLaureen]

I guess the funniest one I was ever part of was wiring a person's car horn to their brake lights so whenever they stepped on the brakes their horn would blow.

I love to play April Fool's day jokes on people. My employees dread working with me that day. I think the best one yet though was the April Fools day that I didn't do anything to them. They were on pins and needles all day wondering what was going to happen to them

 

[wdw4us2]

I pulled lots of them on my brother when we were kids.

My favorite: Does anyone remember Zotz candy? It was a hard piece of candy that had powder in the middle. When you got to the powder part of the candy - it would foam up in your mouth (kind of like Pop Rocks).

Anyway, we had just moved to Florida and we had to deal with "Palmetto Bugs" which are like huge roaches! Yuck! My Dad was still trying to figure out which pesticide to use to get rid of them - so there was always something new on the ground.

One day, I had a piece of the Zotz candy out and was about to eat it when my brother snatched it out of my hand and popped it in his mouth. Well, he bit it and of course there was foam coming out of his mouth. He screamed, "What is this?" and I, being the cruel older sister said, "It's a roach pill! Dad has been putting them on the floor to get rid of the Palmetto Bugs".

You never saw someone run so fast in your life! He put his head under the water faucet and was rinsing his mouth out. When he heard me laughing in the other room, he knew he'd been had.

He never took another piece of candy from me again!

Lisa

 

[Doctor P]

Some of these are really good! Who has more to add?

 

[mhopset]

Well, in my teenage years we used to play this game called "pocket book"

We would tie fishing line to an old purse and lay it by the road. People would stop their cars and get out to see if there was any money in it. We would be hiding behind a building or hedge, and when they bent down to pick it up, we would yank on the string and it would go flying.

I can't tell you how many times we got yelled at and chased home. It was so much fun.


Another one is... Do you remember the old pop machines dthat had the bottles in them that you would pull out? Well we would take a pop bottle opener and cup to the machine. Opend the bottle and tip the machine so the pop would go into the cup. Replace the bottle cap, then when someone actually paid for the pop and pulled it out there would be nothing in the bottle.

I was such a bad kid. If Seth ever does anything like this I will ground him for life! LOL

 

[CamColt]

These are all great! Kallison, I would have loved to have seen the class.
One that stands out was my bosses DH liked giving her assistant a hard time. One day he called her at the office and used an accent. He went on to tell her that a warrant for her arrest was being issued becuase of a failure to show up for Jury Duty. She never really had JD, but he claimed they had record of sending her notice. After a few minutes, our whole department was in on it and we were listeing to the assistant supervisor freaking out on the phone. We all got a good laugh out of that one.

 

[A kid at heart]

When I used to work in this huge office(Like 485 employees) if someone needed to call in a message to someone we would just put it itnot he computer and it would go to the printer and whoever was working with the TTY(hearing impaired) had to be tehones to deliver it. WEll a friend of mine and I decided to have fun and sent the message for Ringin/Isabelle to call home asap.
We had to put it in last name first. WEll Andrea got the message and was walking around the office looking for someone named Isabelle.SHe figured that its got to be someone of hte older crowd in the office(thinking its an old fashioned name) and for about 15 min she went to the different teams and asked pretty much everyone if they knew who isabelle was. When some of them saw the message they got the joke and went along with it. Finally Andrea went to a sup and said do you know of anyone named Isabelle int he office. The sup says not that I know of, let me see the last name. SHe read it and bust out laughing and said Andrea didn't you see the lastname? SO she says it out Loud for her.. Isabelle RIngin!

 

[dizneegirl]

Just this summer we filled my BIL's car with 50 pounds of popped popcorn...

Did you know it takes 2 hot air popper 7 hours to pop 50 pounds of popcorn?

 

[CathyCanada]

Kallison reminded of one that my DanceFIT class pulled on me a few years ago.
It was the last class of the sesion and they plotted for weeks and brought all kinds of props that corresponded with the names of the songs. Since I had to dance with my back to them, I had no idea what they were doing unless we did a turn. When they all had their bras on the outside of their shirts I thought I would die. They did all kinds of things and at the end of the last song, soaked me with water pistols. What a crazy bunch, my cheeks hurt from laughing and I could barely call the steps. I miss them!
CC

 

[CathyCanada]

Another was while I was in University, the guys in Jim's residence pulled some great "deeks" (stunts). My favourite was when they moved this guy's entire room (bed, dresser, desk chair, everything that wasn't nailed down) into the quad just outside the dorm. People were going by killing themselves laughing and we all stood in windows watching the guy whose room had moved, walk past it, take a doubletake and immediately look up into the windows where he knew we HAD to be watching. It was funny!

Then one night one of our friends had his room "papered" with newspaper. Our hands were black as coal from the newsprint as we had a line going down 3 flights of stairs to move it out.
CC

 

[wendym]

The two most recent ones were both done to the same guy. He was a student teacher at my school and I was his mentor. Well we had a open evening and I spent ages doing up my lab, making it interesting ect and I was left with one empty tank. Something got into me and I filled it with water and put on a sign. "Glass carp the only transparent fish in the world. They are totally transparent to avoid predation."
So in comes Alistair and notices the new tank. I busy myself at a microscope and he goes up to the tank and starts asking about them. "Where are they Wendy - bottom right hand corner, about 3 inches. So he peers away for 5 mins until I can take it no more and go running out of the room in hysterics! Of course next day he tries to catch all the pupils out with it but none of them fell for it!!!
The other one was after he left. He mentioned a video he couldn't find but I tracked it down for him. It didn't arrive till he had gone so I was supposed to pass it on via a mutual friend. In between it turns out he hadn't gone back to his lectures - feeling "ill". So I substituted the video for an educational one with a note telling him he would get the right one once he returned to lectures! He opened up the video in front of his coach's wife singing my praises for getting it. Well you should have heard the phone call I got - how dare I do that to a poor naive boy (he is 24) and he would get me back. Still waiting although I keep getting ancient cracks (I am 33) from him and a vacumn is what is between my ears.
Wendy

 

[Val]

I teach/do research in neuroscience at a large state university. We do surgical procedures on rats (they're rats- the guys you all exterminate!) to study stroke and addiction. Anyway- two of our young surgeons have a bad habit of just reaching into our group cages and grabbing the first rat, rather than taking the rats in order like they are supposed to (makes a difference for data collection). Oh- they are doing the surgery at about 5 AM. On April 1st, to get them back, two of our other students came in REAL early (about 15 minutes ahead of these guys), and took rats out of the freezer (these would be DEAD frozen rats) and put them in the cage.....along came the surgeons, reach in and ugh!!!! cold dead rats! And, we caught this all on tape!


.....the guys now LOOK before they grab!

 

[NurseKim]

A friend of mine took a "House For Sale" sign off of someone's lawn and put it on their neighbors lawn!

 

[KimR]

When DH was in college he and a bunch of fraternity guys worked part-time for a law firm and they were always pulling pranks on one another. One time DH had a term paper due. This was way back before everyone had computers and he had gotten one of the secretaries to type it up for him and had left it sitting out on a table somewhere. One of his friends had made a copy of the first page, stuck it on top of some blank paper and spilled a coke on it. When DH went to go get his term paper to turn in that day, he totally freaked - his term paper was due in 10 minutes and was totally destroyed! They had to fess up fast!

I have another one but it's kind of gross, so if you are eating anything or have a weak stomach, I recommend you hit the back button. Having said that, here goes:

One afternoon before lunch, the guy who played the coke prank asked some of the other guys to bring him back some fried chicken when they went out for lunch. On the way back to the office after picking up the chicken, the guys happened to find a dead pigeon which apparently sparked a brilliant idea in their devious minds. They took the chicken out of its container and replaced it with the dead pigeon, stuck a few french fries in its mouth and wrapped it back up. When they brought it to him, he went to the cafeteria, took it out and without even opening up the container, he stuck it in the microwave! When he sat down and opened up his 'lunch'....the whole tabled cleared.

 

[Doctor P]

Any others you want to share?

 

[Regina]

Last year, I was working for the Asst. Principal of a HS.

We decorated our office for Christmas. Next thing I know, her "dancing snowman" comes up missing with a ransom note left behind.

Over the next few weeks, the "kidnappers" left pictures of this little snowman in all sorts of scenarios: sitting in a recliner, drinkng a beer, on a window ledge, etc. My favorite was him in a saucepan on top of the stove.