Pranks!

Dear Readers, planning the perfect prank is a craft that only a few possess. Usually these pranksters are simple folk. The quiet ones of the party who you thought would never hurt a fly. And then someone yells “Prank Time!” and before you know it, they have coerced you into burning down half a building in the name of a perfectly planned prank. I’m just kidding, that would be a terrible planned prank; fake fire alarms are so much more exciting.

One of the most perfectly planned series of pranks I orchestrated with a few roommates of mine happened in my first year on April Fool’s Day. It all began the morning of the infamous prank day, at 1am. It began with a few decoy pranks on the floors above and below our own. These are a few of my favourite that we executed perfectly.

1.) The Leaner: A very simple prank for beginners. Grab a garbage bin, a nice plastic one. You can use the ones in your room, but a bigger one is more desired. Fill it to the brim with water in the communal showers. At this point you can either put a dozen raw eggs in it, or pee in it, but these are optional. I only add the raw eggs for people I hate (they never come out of the carpet). Now take the elevator to a random floor and peak your head out. Make sure no one is around and carry it out and lean it up against a door at a 45-degree angle. Then knock loudly and RUN, RUN, RUN! Open, splash, scream, instant prank success.

2.) The Minty Fresh Device: This requires two things. An entire roll of Mentos, at least four, and an entire 2L bottle of Diet Coke. First off, get some tape and take off the lid of the Coke bottle. Tape the four Mentos into the lid so it can still be refastened to the bottle. Make the tape lose enough that it will come apart when shaken. Go to a random floor, shake bottle well with enclosed Mentos and get the hell out of there. Fizzle, KA-BOOM, annoying 2am wakeup call, instant prank success.

3.) The Close Shave: This is my personal favourite, but obviously not one of my well planned ones. It’s just a simple little, hilarious prank. Step 1 – get shaving cream, step 2 – get envelope, step 3 – fill envelope with shaving cream and slide open end under a door, step 4 – stomp on said full envelope. Stomp, Wooosh, Ewwwww, giant mess, instant prank success.

After these decoy pranks have been accomplished it’s time for your big idea. I hope you take inspiration from my own. Here’s how it went.

Stage 1: 4am – as everyone is sleeping, take the 150 feet of rope we bought and tie every door to the one across the hall from it, in a criss-cross pattern all down the hall.

Stage 2: 5am – find the circuit breaker for your floor, they are usually located at the end of the hall in the storage room behind the door. Flick off all the switches and kill the power to all the fridges, clocks, computers and lights throughout the floor.

Stage 3: 6am – Attempt at your own risk!!! Pull the fire alarm, shout FIRE! down the hall several times and watch as people scramble in the dark to try and get out of their locked-from-the-outside-doors thinking they might die. LOL. But seriously, attempt at your own risk. For an alternative, we just waited for a day when everyone had midterms early the next day, which was coincidentally April Fool’s Day. No one got up before 11am the next day. Kill power, remove ability to get out of the room for their midterms, not happy campers, instant prank success.

How to avoid getting pranked: Don’t be a douche to people, keep an eye out for the above pranks, and don’t let people know that you’ve pranked them or you become target number one. And Dear Readers, I cannot stress this enough! Look outside the peepholes in your doors in case of ‘leaners’. They are the worst things to have to clean up.

The best advice I can give you…find a master prank planner, or become one by searching pranks online and combining them all. Plan them out to the second and plan for everything that can go wrong. And have fun because pranks are one of the best parts of living in residence.

Until next time.