Ah, good old April Fool’s Day. The day when you can pull a mean prank on someone you hate and actually have a built-in excuse for doing it. Unless of course they say it’s Opposite Day, then they really pulled the rope-a-dope on you. Anyways, in honor of the greatest prank day of the year, I’d like to share what I believe to be my greatest personal prank.
Arguably the greatest prank I have ever pulled took place in October of 2005, back when I was still at THE Eastern Illinois University. I was living in an apartment with two of my friends, Dane and Bryan, and with the three of us there was always a lot of tomfoolery mixed with a few shenanigans. One day, while Bryan was at the library, Dane and I were driving around looking for something to do when we came upon a storefront that was selling bales of hay. I don’t really know why they were selling hay, nor why they had so much of it, but Dane and I decided it would be funny if we bought a bale and put it in Bryan’s bedroom while he was gone. Hilarious, I know. So we paid the three or 4 dollars for a bale, crammed it in my trunk, and drove back to the apartment.
Upon dragging the 40 pound block of hay up four flights of stairs, we discovered that not only were we leaving a trail of hay behind us, we were leaving a rather large trail of hay behind us. Large enough, for example, that anyone in the entire complex could follow the trail all the way up the stairs and directly to our door. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have minded as much as I did about it. What is someone going to do, claim I actually dragged a bale of hay through the complex? Let’s be serious here.
Anyways, so we managed to get the hay into his room. At first, we were pretty content with the job we had done. I mean, no one really expects to come home to a bale of hay in their bedroom. However, we decided that the prank lacked a little…Je ne sais quoi (”I don’t know what” for the layman). So we ran to Wal-Mart and bought a cheap $1 Halloween DVD about an abominable snowman terrorizing a skiing community, along with a jack-o-lantern bucket filled with some candy. This, we hoped, would provide a fail-safe in case Bryan went crazy and wanted to club us to death. Eventually, we had everything arranged perfectly, but I decided to put the finishing touch on it by drawing up a note with the following inscription: “Hay” Bryan, this is the last “straw.”
Bryan came home about an hour later, and since we had closed his door, he hadn’t noticed what we had done at first. While he was hanging out in the kitchen, I proceeded to drop subtle hints like “You know, Bryan, you should really clean up your room. It’s a real sty in there” and “It’s like a damn zoo in there, were you raised in a barn or something?” He knew something was going on, and eventually went into his room and saw the masterpiece.
We all had a good laugh, and even watched the crappy DVD eventually. Now that I think about it, the bale of hay stayed in his room for a few weeks. At one point, I think he even re-decorated his room around it. After a while, I think we just shoved it out the window or something. Who knows.
Anyways, here’s the end result.
And Bryan holding the sign
I hope this inspires all of you to do something great. Be mean if you have to.
Peace out,
Matt
