Dear Reader, please forgive me, for I have sinned. Well, I wouldn't exactly say sinned, perhaps 'for I have, during my time, done some things entirely for my own amusement at the expense of others' is more accurate. Please don't misunderstand this as a nasty streak. It has always only ever been about fun. My fun.
Hmmm, where to start? I guess my confessions should be chronological...
That means starting with a joint prank played upon my elder brother (R) which endured over the course of a whole Christmas holiday visit to our father's house. I say 'joint' because the deed in question was carried out by me, my elder sister (J) and my two elder step sisters (CJ and JJ). See? I learnt this behaviour. I am the real victim in all of this! Poor little impressionable me..... Believe that? Believe anything!!
[Note to reader - the family structure is different for this example from previous posts as it is based at my father's house rather than at my mother's] There were four of us girls and only one boy (R). Unfortunately for R, that meant us girls had all the power, and for my eldest step-sister (CJ), being the big girl that she was and not being adverse to sitting on him, she had quite a lot of it. I cringe (and laugh an ickle little bit) when I think back about it. Anyhow, back to the story...
Our Nannie had knitted each of us girls a raggy doll (not my favourite toy as, as afore mentioned in previous posts, dolls scare me a bit) for Christmas. However, a doll can only be as fun as your imagination... and we had that in bundles! So, very shortly afterwards we decided that our dolls would be used as currency to gain entry to JJ's room (JJ being the younger of my two step sisters, but still older than me). They worked like a secret password. One. Simple. Rule. 'No doll, no entry, no exceptions'. We all found this very reasonable, a perfectly fair rule, not based at all on age, sex or race. A rule that would probably stand up to scrutiny in a court of law discussing the finer points of the anti-discrimination law. R, on the other hand, oddly enough, did not! The conversation went a little like this: knock, knock [R on the door]. Us [CJ, J, JJ and me] (from within): "Yes"? R: "can I come in"? Us: "Do you have a doll for entry?". R: "No". Us: "Well, .....then no". R: "That's not fair, just because I am a boy!". Us: "No, it's not, it's because you don't have a doll". R: "That's because I am a boy!".... and so on, and so forth the conversation went.
Poor R!! Another of our favourites was to pretend that R was 'The Black Hole Man'. To this day, I don't really remember exactly what the rules of The Black Hole Man were, except that he was to be avoided at all costs, so anyone who saw R (aka The Black Hole Man) had to run in the opposite direction as fast as they could screaming "arrrgggghhhh Black Hole Man!!!" as loudly as possible. Poor R spent a lot of time on his own and didn't find the game as much fun as we did!
I, ashamedly, but in laughter, move on to my next confession...
Ok, well, chronologically, the next involves R (but he is a participant in this case), J and me and is set on our farm. We owned the farm, however, our farm was situated around a gravel pit owned by the local council who used to sell fishing licences to keen fishermen. The council owned some of the land nearby to the pit and this was allocated for fishermen's parking. Adjacent to this is was our land, which despite our repeated, polite requests to the contrary, was also used for fishermen's parking. We tried everything to persuade them not to park there: Polite requests, sign posts, even warning them of our dog (which unbeknownst to them was the stupidest, soppiest farm dog in the whole recorded time of farm dogs - although I am not sure exactly where farm dogs are recorded, and if they're not, they should be!). Anyhow, I digress, AGAIN!
So, we eventually found a way to communicate with the serial 'parking on our land' offending fishermen... We (R, J and I) would wait for a car to be 'illegally' parked, then when we were sure the fishermen had left, we grabbed our spades and hurried over to dig deep holes behind both of the back wheels. Then, when the hole was 'big enough', we covered the holes with twigs, leaves and grass to disguise it then rushed back to a safe hiding place to lay in wait. And wait. And wait.... (this bit was actually quite boring).... But, lo and behold, after hours our prey would return and, as he would have inevitably parked right up against our fence (right in front of the 'Private Property - No Parking' sign) the only way they could go was to reverse.... Right. Into. Our. Trap! I don't know exactly why we found this so hilariously funny, but we did. And, funnily enough, after the word got out (they must have a special fishermen hotline to share news about pesky hole digging kids), they stopped parking there. And thus ended our fun!
The person who has borne the brunt of most of my tricks, however, is my younger brother H.
Firstly, I convinced him when he was about six that he had to go to live at the zoo because there was a monkey shortage and they had to fill the spaces with children. A very simple trick, but also very effective! I used to do that ring-back thing on the phone when he wasn't watching and then intercept 'the call' and stage the following conversation: Me: "Hello? (long pause - pretending to listen) Oh, hi, you're calling from the zoo? (more 'listening') What's that? You have a monkey shortage? (more 'listening') And you need children to come and live there instead? ('listening') No, that'll be fine, H would love to come and live there! H: (looking slightly worried) But I don't want to go and live at the zoo!!". Me: "Sorry H, but you have to.... there's a monkey shortage".
The weird thing is, that he took this as an absolutely valid reason as to why, against his wishes, he would now have to go to live at the zoo in the monkey enclosure. It was all too easy! So, I tried something else...
Next I showed H a photo of my elder sister J. It was double exposed and had an image of her over the top of an image of an old castle and it looked quite ghostly. I explained that this was taken when J had turned, at age 8, from a boy into a girl. I then showed him a photo of R aged about 8. In this photo he was in fancy dress as 'The Incredible Hulk' - face painted green and looking very strange. This was 'evidence' of when R turned from a girl to a boy. It was not a far stretch to then convince him that when he turned 8 he too, would turn into a girl.
He only believed me for about a year. I can't imagine why, but he soon began to not take everything I said so seriously any more. How peculiar?!!
Another 'group' prank, was expertly performed by the whole of my Geography A Level class, whilst on a school trip to Wales, upon several students from another school staying at the same hostel. Throughout the week we had been the target of several pranks from the other students - including moving all our belongings into other rooms (they didn't steal anything, just mixed everyone's things up in different rooms so no-one could find anything). That was their most elaborate prank, however they were constant and undeserved. Our teachers were firm that we were not to retaliate against them, or at least if we did, to leave it till the last day and not hurt or damage anyone or anything. We took this as 'licence to trick' on the last day. We had become friendly with some of the other kids from their school, and obtained 'insider' knowledge. The key info being: they were travelling home by train and whereabouts in the breakfast hall the key instigators sat each morning. The penultimate day saw us trekking miles and miles to the nearest shop which doubled as a pharmacy. Operations began early doors on the last day. Everyone was involved. We crushed up a strong, but safe dose of laxatives, and added the 'special ingredients' to the milk on their breakfast table, stirred it nicely in, then returned to our rooms to reappear later with innocent, but excited faces. We were all giggles when they were polishing up their cornflakes. They looked at us so strangely.
We had let our 'friends' in on our trick against their classmates, and they seemed happy enough for it to proceed as planned. They were also the ones who reported back to us that, on the train home, there was a sudden rush for toilets and a few panicked faces. We were so proud of ourselves that our teachers knew we had done something naughty, so we told them and - after checking we'd been careful about dosage - they thought it was very funny and that they had needed to be brought down a peg or two after their incessant pranks on us during the week.
There are so many other stories... most of them involve H - poor kid! But, if you think about it, it is probably his own fault really for being so gullible ;)
Hark... is that the zoo phoning? Wonder what shortage they have today....
Disclaimer: No big brothers, little brothers or fishermen have been harmed in the making of this blog post.
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