la vie en rose

In honor of April Fool's Day I decided to tell about a couple of my favorite pranks:


When I lived in Utah our house had 4 stories, and the very bottom was an unfinished basement. Our food storage was down there, along with my brother's stuff (when he lived with us). My sister was going to BYU, but during the summers she would stay at our place (remember how we used to watch "Days of Our Lives" together and we had a system to change the channel without Mom knowing what we were watching, even if she pressed the last channel button? Oh, John and Marlena and Bo and Hope...like sands through the hourglass...). We lived at the edge of a big field and wooded area and mice and spiders were always a problem. My sister hated mice. Hated. She stepped on one once in Port Orchard that Kitty had killed and she tracked its little nose and whiskers into the kitchen. Gross. So, the plans were laid. My brother bought a fake mouse (made with real fur) at a feed store. I put it in one of the traps and then my mom asked Allie to get something out of the food storage. Oh, how she screamed! We were delighted.


This next prank totally backfired. It was the summer before senior year, and me and Bridgey and Em were all lovesick. I had recently broken up with my boyfriend and so had Em; Bridge was along for the ride. We were out driving around (which is all we really ever did, wasn't it?) and moping and commiserating and we decided to take a bunch of traffic cones and put them in the guys' driveways. And maybe spy a little. (Come on, we were 17.) It was a success in the 1st two driveways (and neither guy was home). So it was on to mine. He lived out in the boonies, on a dead-end dirt road. Yes, he was home. Yes, he was outside. No, he didn't recognize the car (Bridge's mom's). We parked at the end of the dead-end street and wondered what to do. We figured we'd just gun it past his house and that would be the end of it. He was ready for that and he started following us. I freaked out and pulled the back seat down to get into the trunk. There was a bunch of camping stuff back there and every time Bridge took a corner, it smashed into me. I was so mad. We would think that we had lost him and then he would come around the corner and it would start all over again. (Side note: In high school I had a VERY strict curfew of 11:30pm and my dad always waited up for me. I would be in trouble if I was late, even just a couple minutes. This was probably because I tended to push the boundaries a bit.) Well, it came time for me to get home and I didn't want to get in any more trouble. So Bridge reluctantly drove me back to our neighborhood, and we were followed the whole time. It was pretty obvious now who it was that had put the cones in his driveway. I felt like such an idiot.