We are Our Stories: Pranks, Jokes, and Other Funny Memories

I needed (wanted) some bookshelves in my room as a teen and Dad in his infinite wisdom, decided it would be a great weekend project for us to do ourselves. We bought the unfinished wood, the shellack, we used my existing natural wood dresser as the workspace. It was a comedy of errors from start to finish. The shellack he put into styrofoam cups, not realizing when we let it sit - it would eat through the styrofoam.  Hammering a nail, he slammed his thumb which I thought was hilarious. Its only funny until someone gets hurt and then its hysterical, right? The shelves were finished and hung up on the wall with brackets if I remember correctly.. Oh lord - it looked so awful we called it Carpenter's Nightmare, and we never attempted anything similar again. Oh, and from all the hammering and nails we used, the top of my dresser had multiple permanent nail holes in it. Oops!! Bob Vila was popular at the time on "This Old House" on PBS - probably where Dad got the idea from!! Bob Vila probably would have had a heart attack if he saw it LOL

In later years, we said if Dad saw it on the Food Network, it was a Dad approved place to eat.  But before the Food Network, there was PBS and he watched Bob Vila and a few cooking shows - I remember "Yan Can Cook" was a Chinese food cook and that's how we ended up with the wok from what he watched on there.

Apparently if it was on PBS, some version of made it into our house.

 ..

Growing up, Dad and I were famous (or maybe infamous or both) for pranking each other. There were multiple water fights, ice fights, ice water poured over showers as one of us was showering..I can still hear him lovingly scream..you son of a bitch as I waited for him to retaliate. He would say something about payback and that there would definitely be a payback, but when I least expected it! And he did...

One time, I hid behind the kitchen wall, heard him approach and downed a bucket of ice cold water, stopping him dead in his tracks. He got me too, although I hated to admit it. I remember him coming up behind me and screaming trying to catch me off guard. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, sometimes I would hold it together even though it really rattled me and tried to prevent him from seeing that it did! Of course, he did the same with me.

One time in the house on Robertson Road one Sunday morning, we chased each other and I grabbed what I could to defend myself - a container of Johnson's Baby Powder. From the landing on the stairs between the 1st and 2nd floor, I squirted the baby powder towards him. Unfortunate for me, Mom was standing between us and she and her hair got caught in the crossfire. The one thing you still never do - is mess with Mom's hair. How we both managed to survive that episode, I'll never know.

This extended to driving...when one of us would scream to catch the other off guard, especially as we were backing out of a parking spot. I can still hear him bellowing "WATCH IT JEFF!!!" followed by me slamming the brakes. Years later, I tried it with a friend as she drove and she exclaimed "Shit! What did I hit?!" - I had a really good laugh over that with Dad. I was definitely his son in that regard.  If I had a water bottle in the backseat, I would fake sneeze and then spray water from the bottle on his neck which was pretty good at startling him and catching him off guard. More on driving in a different blog post, though.

For the most part, I caught him offguard, but the times he managed to get me..He would scream and holler in excitement and point his finger at me gloating over it. I hated to admit it, but he was right!

 There were a few times I really thought he was going to kill me.

1..We had a wooden screen door on one of the apartments we lived in, and it locked with a latch, but from the outside, you could still jiggle it a bit. The way the apartment was setup, the back of his desk faced the front door (screen door). I came home from school one day, and was typical for him - he was deep in thought at the computer, I saw my chance, and I yanked and slammed the screen door, causing it to make a really loud bang. He jumped a mile out of the chair and then he screamed. Its almost 37 years ago and I can still laugh and see this play out like a video in my head. I really scared him that time.

2..In that same apartment, one time, it was like a scene playing out of a movie. He was sitting at his desk, which was immediately behind our kitchen table. He stood up, like he was going to walk away. I pulled the chair away so I could sit in it...only for him to count on the chair still being behind him..He went flat down on his back with his head ending up underneath the kitchen table.. It was the best unintentional trust fall I have ever seen. He thought it was funny as I did, but Mom thought I did it on purpose. 

3..He had a metal Tweety tea kettle and with his back to me, I again saw my chance and I snuck up behind him and with a wooden spoon and the Tweety Kettle, I banged the two of them together. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! He jumped really high, he screamed, and his legs started moving like he was trying to run although he never moved from where he was sitting... I apologized to him but initially he had told me to "go away, go far away" because he was so scared he couldnt even look at me" he was so angry.

Luckily, he didn't. and I lived and survived to tell these stories.

Eventually, he would laugh over them too.