Practical Jokes, Funny Pranks and Dirty Rotten Tricks: 40+ Years of Innovative Antics

These are mostly true tales of me wreaking havoc on those around me for the amusement of myself and others. I started as a preschooler getting into mischief out of pure boredom, usually at school. It continued through grade school, junior high, high school, the military, college, my first job . . . My very first booby trap was balancing a teddy bear on top of my slightly open bedroom door to fall on the head of anyone who entered. I only wish that I hadn't forgotten something and ran back in there . . . and I REALLY wished that I hadn't use the heavy teddy bear with the really hard music box . . . I was probably three years old. My second booby trap, and the most infamous within our family, utilized a battery-powered, motorized, futuristic toy assault vehicle. It was silver, sleek, aerodynamic, made of metal and had sharp edges and bright lead-based paint. It had six giant wheels with knobby tires. The body would pivot 180 degrees while rolling in one direction and the side-gunner's door would snap open and sparks would fly and a red light would flash as the toy Space Marine mowed down imaginary space monsters. I was almost 4 years old. I used the round posts on my bed as a series of pulleys around which I wrapped yarn to ensure the proper directional pull on the ON switch so when my mother opened the door to my room, the yarn pulled the switch on the mechanical death machine and it rolled out from under the bed, spun around, as the side door flipped open and a gunner with dual laser cannons began to lay down cover fire toward the door of my room. I'm not sure if my mother had learned to levitate, or if she had previously been bitten by a radio active spider, but by the time I awoke from a deep slumber the hysterical screaming had stopped and she was gracefully (yeah right) returning to earth pointing frantically and speaking in tongues. I must be gifted, because I clearly heard, "Would you please turn off your wake-up alarm?" I think my mother may have been surprised . . . It's almost always best to be nice to people, however, sometime you just HAVE to shake up your buddy's beer before you hand it to him. I hope you enjoy reading these tales as much as I enjoyed remembering them and writing them down.