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Well, we did a few pranks of our own, even a scary one or two. But my favorite one was not a scary one.
My daughter was about 4 and liked the "E.T." move. I can't remember the trick anymore but there was a way to pick up one phone in the house and make the other one ring (we're talking dead technology here). She answered the other line and I pretended to be E.T.,told her that I'd gotten "home", and I did a pretty darn good job of soundling like him. Her excitement was hilarious!
I wouldn't do that prank today not bc it isn't funny but bc everyone has such a stick up their butts that I wouldn't be interested in the pearl-clutching parents who think everything scars their kids for life.
Hahaha I totally agree with you and I just wrote to the Mod asking for it to be closed, but it's their decision on whether or not to close it.
I think I'm too old to be posting in this forum. I'm a Boomer and we're accused of raising "entitled" kids. I honestly hope I'm not around to see what all of these coddled and pampered kids are like in 20 years.
Don't apologize - I think your prank was hilarious!
I come from a long line of pranksters myself and boy did we come up with a good one a few years ago.
My oldest daughter and her husband were on the way to my house with three of my seven perfect and adorable grandkids - it was about a four hour road trip. The kids were about 8, 6 and 4.
On the way there, she called me and said, "Mom - I have the most hilarious idea. Do you have a gorilla suit?"
Now - the fact that she thought I might actually HAVE a gorilla suit says a lot right there, and the fact that I did in fact have a gorilla mask but not the whole suit says something else...but I digress.
I said, "Just the mask - what's up?"
She said, "OK, can you get the whole suit before we get there?" I told her I probably could and she said, "OK, I have a cunning plan. A plan so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it a fox." (Good girl - she knows her Black Adder - I raised her right!)
She said, "I am going to tell the kids that you're not really a human - you're really a monkey. I want to tell them that when your parents were first married, they went to the zoo in New Orleans and you were a monkey in a cage and you thought they were so cute and sweet together that you followed them home and begged them to let you be their baby."
I said, "So far so good!" (the kids knew I was from New Orleans so we had to work that in somehow.)
My daughter said, "OK, this is where it gets really good: I am going to tell them that they got so tired of people looking funny at their monkey baby, that they got you a human suit and that you wear that human suit EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY DAY and that the only time you take it off is when you take a bath. No one knows that you're a monkey except your immediate family - and it's a huge family secret."
"i love it!" I said. "Go on!"
She said, "So what we can do for a couple of days is say stuff about monkeys. Like you could say, 'This is more fun than a barrel of monkeys!' and I could say 'Quit acting like a monkey' if the kids are acting up, and you could say 'For some reason, I'm craving a banana' - that sort of thing."
And I said, "And I'll go get them that Barrel of Monkeys game and have that out on the counter, and I'll get a stuffed monkey and put it in their room, and I'll tell them stuff like 'Quit monkeying around!' and I'll say, 'I nearly aped out when I saw that video!' - that sort of thing!"
By now I had picked up what she was putting down! I said, "Ok so here's the deal. The third night, I'll make a big production about having to take a bath upstairs because I always wash my hair in the bathtub up there or something like that. I'll go in there, run the water (but let it drain out) and then put on the gorilla suit and then I'll holler from the bathroom to one of the kids to go downstairs and get my shampoo and bring it up to me. Then when they bring it up, I'll stick the gorilla hand out from behind the shower curtain to get the shampoo!"
OMG I am laughing as I'm writing this - IT WAS SO FREAKING HILARIOUS!!!!!
So anyway...this worked beautifully. For two or three days we dropped the monkey phrases very casually. We got a big kick out of this because we would catch the kids looking over at each other wide eyed when we'd say something about monkeys.
The third night I did exactly as planned - going into the bathroom, running the water while I changed into the complete suit that I'd found (oh, and it had the GREATEST gorilla hands, with hair on them and everything!), and their dad got the video camera ready, and then I hollered, "Will someone bring me my shampoo from downstairs? I forgot it."
Oh you should have heard them whispering and murmuring among themselves. Finally my daughter said to the middle one, "Oh for heavens sake - run down there and get that shampoo for your MiMi." So off she scurried. Of course, when she came back up, there was no WAY she was going into that bathroom by herself - more whispering and rustling around and bumping the door and little voices hissing, "YOU do it! "No, YOU do it!" and finally the oldest said, "We'll all go in together."
I was nearly dying laughing and it was hotter than Hades inside that mask, so I managed to calm my voice and I holllered, "Oh for pete's sake - someone bring me the shampoo!"
The door creaked open, and I could hear all of them breathing and rustling around...and suddenly I stuck that gorilla hand out of the shower curtain and BAM! You should have heard the screaming!!!!!! Then of course I had to rip back the curtain and they were so freaked out that they were running into each other, trying to get out the door all at the same time, IT WAS FABULOUS!!!!!
Of course I immediately took the mask and hands off and followed them out into the hall, where they were still screaming and hollering for their mother, and their dad was catching it all on film and my parents were standing there with their mom nearly dying with laughter!
As soon as they saw me, they all had a different reaction. The oldest immediately started laughing and said, "I KNEW you weren't a monkey!" (Right, then why did you scream and run out of the room?) The middle one stood there with her mouth wide open and then burst into laughter too and said, "It was a trick? You're not really a monkey????" and she ran and hugged me. The youngest just stood there with huge eyes, looking back and forth at everyone and then finally she came over and hugged me too and started grinning about it - but she never would touch the hands or put on the mask (the other two already had them on and were running around growling at each other).
Here's the lesson we taught them when they settled down. We told them about practical jokes vs lies. We told them about the difference between a harmless practical joke and one that might actually hurt someone. We told them that it was only OK for us to fool them because we knew we were going to tell them the truth at the end, and that we knew no one would be hurt by it.
They really did seem to understand - which is a good thing, because like I said, we are a family of practical jokers.
April Fools Day is huge in our family. My husband has put baby powder in my blow dryer. I've put a mixture of tuna fish, garlic, and cod liver oil in a baggie and hid it under the seat of his truck. He's taped down the handle on the sprayer on the kitchen sink so when I turned the water on, it's sprayed me in the face. I've taped down everything in the house that he picks up (keys, glasses, phone, toothbrush, remote control, you name it) and he falls for it all day long.
My mother plays the most elaborate jokes of all - I won't go into all them but let's just say that even she was impressed with my daughter's monkey plan!
Oh, speaking of scaring kids, my mom got my brother BUT GOOD one time. He was about 12.
We lived out in the country, and had a burn barrel that we burned the trash in every other night or so. It was dark, and my mom told my brother to take the trash out to the burn barrel. Well, that was already funny because we knew he got the heebie jeebies about going out there after dark anyway, even though we had a big light out there. I think he was really afraid of whatever was hiding outside that circle of light...
Anyway, so at the time we had a Ayotollah Khomeini mask. If you know who that was, then you're probably a Boomer. The Ayotollah Khomeini was the leader of Iran or something like that at the time and he was horrible looking in real life, so you can imagine how weird a rubber mask of his face and beard would be. Here he is:
So my mom put that mask on, and put this weird robe on that she'd gotten at a garage sale, sort of like a smoking jacket satiny sort of thing, and then (this is the good part) she GOT DOWN ON HER KNEES just inside the back door, turning the porch light off, so she looked like some sort of weird dwarf or something standing in very dim light.
Well, we stood there and watched my scared brother who was trying to act like he wasn't scared, scurry across the back yard to the burn barrel, and then he scurried back and stepped inside the door and my mom just sort of leaned forward and made a little groaning noise.
HE TOOK OFF LIKE A BAT OUT OF HELL and ran all the way down the driveway (which was very long) screaming! Honestly, my mom and I nearly wet our pants we were laughing so hard!
He was mad about it at first, but when he calmed down, he got to looking at that mask and he begged my mom to let him borrow it to scare HIS friends with. So to sort of make up for it, she agreed to let him have a spend the night party and of course, he scared his friends with it too - so it was all good!
My kids were raised in the 60's 70's. They were allowed very little TV, they had no computers, no video games and no cell phones and they played outside sometimes (unsupervised, --holy unfit mother!!) after dark all summer long because that's best time to play hide and seek.
And yes I pranked them and the neighbor kids quite a bit and even scary stuff now and then.. They loved it and seemed to always know it was me, or that I was joking about something happening. They begged me for my made up scary stories around the campfire on our weekend camping trips. Hmmm none of them grew up with any fear of me, society, or of the dark
Later I even played a couple pranks on the grandchildren and like their parents they knew to expect a fun time or scary story surprise from mamaw.
Now I have a couple great grandkids and I hope to be around to play a prank or so and pass on some of my silly made up scary stories on them when they get older
Personally, I think many of today's parents need turn off all the electronics in the kids rooms to spend time playing with the kids.
To the OP and all prankster moms..Keep on having fun with your kids and their friends and they will carry fond memories into their adulthood..
I think just because it was accepted years ago doesn't mean it was nice or ok. And just because most or many parents wouldn't do it these days doesn't mean our kids are pampered or coddled. Maybe we are just teaching them not to take joy in other peoples fear/discomfort/embarrassment.
Oh - here's another great memory from my childhood.
I have a cousin who is seven years older than me, so when I was about ten and he was seventeen, of course I thought he was the coolest dude EVER when he pulled up into my grandmother's driveway in a 280Z!
My brother and I wanted to hang out with him all the time, and you know he found us tiresome!
Any time he spent with us, we felt like we were receiving manna from heaven or something - he really hung the moon.
He used to "make us" go into the dark front living room and turn off all the lights and sit on the sofa. Then he would sit across the room and I mean, it was pitch black - and he'd start telling us all these urban legends. You know, the ones about kids parking out on a deserted highway and some guy breaking into their car and killing them, or the woman who thinks it's her dog that's woken her up in the middle of the night beside her bed, and when she reaches down to pet the dog, it's really a crazed killer - ghost stories, zombie stories, Bigfoot stories, you name it, he had a hundred of them it seemed.
WE WERE SO DELICIOUSLY SCARED! We would squeal and cover our ears and he'd tell us if we didn't shut up and listen to him, he wouldn't take us down to the snow cone stand in his car or something like that, so of course we'd listen (we really WANTED to).
Now he is 60 and I am 53 and he's still my favorite cousin and he still gets a kick out of me telling him how tough and scary we thought he was. Actually, he's a real softie, and as gentle a man as there ever could be - but to us he was cooler than James Dean ever could be.
I think it's terrible to scare your child. I wouldn't ever do it because I was on the receiving end as a child and I really didn't think it was funny at all. If a parent did that with my kid over, she would hear from me big time and my kid would never be over there again. Damn I would be mad!
Not. Funny.
I'm sorry. In today's world you would have every right to be mad. How old were you when you when this happened to you and how old are you now?
As I stated before, things were way different 23 years ago and after this thread is done, I may refrain from posting in the parenting forum and maybe suggest that we can have an "Old Parents" sub forum where we are over age 55 because we surely don't agree with the younger generation.
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) after dark all summer long because that's best time to play hide and seek.
