Those close to me know that I am humor-impaired. I really just do not have a talent for it at all. So Nature provided me with Ben, a 9-year old boy who loves a good joke. Children sometimes do offer us an opportunity to try for more ourselves, to become better people. Ben has an enormous stuffed mouse in his room and I remember once putting one of those eyeglass/fake moustache/giant nose thingies on it. When he saw it, he was so much more delighted than I could ever have envisioned, just howling with laughter and literally begging me to “do more stuff like that mom.” I felt a tiny twinge, a flicker of delight and power that must wash over funny people in regular waves.
This year in school has brought a friendship with a real Class Clown, you know, a Jim-Carey type whose face just seems made for comedy—”Mom, Eric is funny even when he’s just smiling!!”—and an even deeper obsession with comic books like Calvin and Hobbes and Tundra. Aunt Ginny scored serious awesome-points when she presented Ben with fake poop. [And how she got it is a great story too—if only she’d blog about it].
Ben started pranking me this year when one of his more delightful teachers told them about how her son once wrapped a rubber band around the kitchen sink sprayer. I’ve turned on the water 4 times now to find myself and half the kitchen showered. This is highly irritating and a challenge to my previously-mentioned impairment.
With all this in mind—my handicap and Ben’s natural delight as a challenge—I resolved to punk him for April Fool’s Day. I think I scored a 5 or 6 with the breakfast cereal by putting a few drops of hot-pink food coloring in the bowl under the cereal. When Ben and Lucy added the milk, voila! Pink cheerios. But, the runaway winner, the prank I’ve been waiting months to pull, was gift-wrapping Ben into his bedroom. Last night, Karl and I unwound a few rolls of leftover Christmas wrap onto Ben’s bedroom door and secured it with lots of packing tape. This morning, Ben had to hack himself out of his room while Karl, Lucy, and I stood on and watched. It was awesome, a 10 if I do say so myself.
April Fool’s Day isn’t over, so if you have any brilliant pranks I can effect before the day is out, let me know. I’m on a roll.
5 Comments
So, so funny. You are giving Ben some great stories to tell at future dinner parties.
How about putting knots in his pantslegs tonight – the ones he’ll wear tomorrow morning?
That is truly fantastic! The kids and I switched cereal insides, so Michael would pour X and get Y instead. But then Michael did a big one, at dinner, I had him go to get something out of the kitchen and he called our home phone from his cell and pretended he was talking to the principal of the school — there was a mistake, the kids would have school on Friday! When Hannah burst into tears, he gave up the prank. Yours is the best.
I’m glad the poop has been of use to Ben. It was sent to me in a mixup of a internet order of a game for Christmas.
In my email to the company, I said “I ordered Pirate Farkel and you sent me plastic poop instead.”
They responded in apology and said “You can keep the poop”, which gave me the occasion to say to them “Thanks for the poop.” but also to imagine the correct recipient for the little package. Someone just twisted enough to enjoy it but responsible enough to use the poop wisely. Good work, young Skywalker!
Brilliant! You are such a fun mom!
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