Shame on me

In honor of April Fool’s Day, I’d like to list some of the pranks and mischief that I’ve orchestrated in years past:

High School

1) Stealing the ball from Coach Tillman’s mouse so that it wouldn’t work. Once he discovered what was happening, he asked for a backup from Phil Sanders, the IT guy at David Lipscomb High School. I searched until I found the backup then I stole it as well. Coach Tillman found this quite frustrating, which pleased me.

2) On occasion I found a tube of lip balm on the floor in the hall. In the afternoon, just before I left school for the day, I’d screw it all the way up then cake it behind Coach Tillman’s door knob. That way, he wouldn’t be able to see it when he unlocked the door and grabbed it to let himself into his room. I enjoyed the thought of his disgust and surprise as the lip balm coated his fingertips.

3) After a half-day at school, I ate lunch with some friends at San Antonio Taco Company, known to locals as “Satco.” Jonathan and I saved our leftover queso dip. We drove down to the football field where the track team was practicing. I motioned to Sarah M., who walked over. When she was in range, I threw the styrofoam container of queso dip at her. It hit her in the neck. Cheese splashed up the side of her face into her hair. It dripped down her front and down her back.

4) David, Justin, Jonathan, and I threw a four-foot-tall blue stuffed animal, a bunny, off the Natchez Trace bridge. We then drove to the bottom and ran over it a few times. The decency left in us said it was wrong to litter, so we took it with us and junked up Jonathan’s Explorer with styrofoam pellets. Sorry, Nonny John.

5) On three consecutive weekends, Jonathan, Will, Justin, and I cruised the streets of Brentwood and Green Hills looking for roadkill. Each Saturday night, we crammed one dead animal into Brittany’s mailbox. A raccoon, a big turtle, and a oppossum. Sorry, Brittany.

6) We tipped over a port-o-john in my neighborhood.

7) At the Coming Home football game my senior year, I put a dead squirrel in a brown paper bag. This bag I put on the condiments table at the concession stand with its tail sticking out.

8. We stuffed a dried-Christmas tree in Barrett’s Jeep.

9) We ordered 10 pizzas to a certain Geometry teacher.

10) I was Student Body President my senior year, and thus, was in charge of making announcements in chapel. A few days a week, I worked in nonexistent announcements about Zach Morris and other pop icons whom the teachers wouldn’t recognize. The students laughed, I kept a straight face, and the teachers were very confused.

11) Coach Tillman was also my youth minister. Jonathan, Will, Justin, and I went on a mission trip to Honduras with him. Without asking for permission, we trekked two miles through the crazy streets of Tegucigalpa to buy condoms at the Pali grocery store. These we unwrapped and put in Coach Tillman’s bed. He was displeased.

12) Our friend Ted’s father owned a donut shop. We’d roll in a few minutes before midnight just as Ted was closing the shop down. He’d give us all the jelly donuts that hadn’t sold. We would then cruise around and throw them at cars passing the opposite direction. The sound of a jelly donut hitting a windshield at about 60 miles per hours is akin to the laughter of a child in its ability to thrill the soul.

13) Certain mailboxes were found in the middle of the yards of their respective owners. Certain metal trashcans had dents so large they were no longer functional. I know nothing about that.

14) At fast food drive-thrus, we would either order items that weren’t on the menu or make ourselves impossible to understand. One lady at Krystal had the pleasure of taking my order for a pitching wedge. As you can imagine, she was confused. She told us to drive around to the window. You should have seen the look on her face when we drove through in reverse. She started laughing and told us to get on outta there.

15) Waiting until Coach Tillman left his room before sneaking in and turning off everything.

16) Squirrel crepe

17) The time I used a piece of bad modern art to befuddle driver’s at a busy intersection. This was also the only time one of my ideas made the newspaper.

College

1) I moved the pizza guy’s car when he was delivering a pizza to Fanning. I was on a double date at the time. He came out of the building holding the warmer. Bewildered, he just looked from side to side. His shoulders drooped. We had to get out of there after he saw us laughing.

2) Justin and I yanked the Toucan Sam hanging from the ceiling by fishing line in Uncle Dave’s while Jessica was working. 

3) “Borrowing” the maintenance golf carts. Sad day when they started locking them up.

4) Sneaking into a Jars of Clay concert in Allen Arena by climbing up the roof then putting on yellow Staff t-shirts David found in a box.

5) My younger sister Laura and I sent our cousin Jessie a taco through campus mail.

6) “Napkin Surprise” every day at lunch. INSTRUCTIONS: Take half the stack of napkins out of the basket. Scoop the nastiest leftovers on your tray on top of the remaining napkins. Smush the rest of the napkins on top of the food, thereby disguising it. Wait several days. Return to the table and check the surprise, or know in your heart that the surprise has touched the life of someone else.

7) Paging myself over the intercom in the High Rise lobby.

8. Pretending to be the Domino’s guy, calling random numbers in Elam dorm, convincing these strangers to buy the pizza for $5 so it wouldn’t come out of my paycheck, then watching from a corner as the girls came down with their money in hand, the pizza guy nowhere to be found.

9) Setting up a table and chairs in Lipscomb University’s commons area called “Bison Square.” Petioning people passing by for their contact information, signatures, and beer of choice. The petition was to get beer on tap in the cafeteria. Lipscomb is, of course, a dry campus. Drinking can get you kicked out. The signees were nervous, asking me if my petition was “for real.”

10) Staging very loud arguments in the library so that Mrs. Byers, the eagle-eye librarian, would ask us to leave.

11) During one of my rotations as the worship leader for University Bible, “UB” for short, an extended chapel service on Tuesday and Thursdays, I told over 2,000 people that we were going to start the morning off with some calisthenics. You could have heard a pin dropped. I think the only person who laughed was my friend Wilson McCoy. 

12) Using the words “pissed off” in a chapel talk and doing damage control for weeks. Being fussed at by everyone from the Dean of Campus Life to the elders at my church at the time. For some reason, providing the “context” for my word choice and explaining the words’ rhetorical effectiveness failed to appease any of these concerned individuals.

13) Wrapping up a 2-liter bottle of urine and giving it to a girl named Emily for Valentine’s Day. Strangely, we never went out on a date.

14) Picking the flowers around campus and giving them to girls. I’ve always been a hopeless romantic.

15) Potlucks in the library study rooms.

16) Carrying a tiny watergun in my right hand and soaking the front of people’s pants while engaging them in conversation.

 

  • Please don’t judge me for any of the above. I’m a changed man. I did not send my mom an e-mail today telling her that I’d been laid off because of the economy. She did not write me back and say that she almost threw up after reading my e-mail. What sort of sick person would play such a cruel joke on his own mother? The woman who gave him life? Shame on whoever it was.

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