Almost got in a fight on Halloween

I took my son out trick or treating in our neighbourhood last night and thought it would be completely uneventful. How wrong I was.

We were making the rounds in our large neighbourhood and stopped at one house that had a small bonfire on the front lawn. I stopped to chat with the man at the fire while my son, who is 13, continued on. I watched him circle around the street which had a large open area at the centre of it.

The man turned out to be quite friendly and interesting and we were having a pretty good chat when what appeared to be a homeless man walked slowly by. He looked like he was in an old dark coat, had an old trucker hat and long grey hair and a beard. He was carrying a coffee cup and that was it.

I looked at the owner of the house, Kevin, and we both kind of chuckled as the old man turned the corner at Kevin’s property. I hadn’t realized there was a path there and thought he was just going into the neighbour’s yard. Seeing homeless people passing through the area is not common, but happens occasionally.

A couple minutes later, the old man came back from the path, walked up onto the lawn in front of us and slumped into one of the lawn chairs on the front lawn.

We stopped talking and looked at the man, who sat there, not talking. We noticed he was wearing a small mask. He began looking around from side to side. We said hello but he didn’t respond. We kept talking and the man was silent. Finally, he jumped up, turned around and set off towards the front door of the house.

Kevin had his eyes riveted on the old man as he moved quickly towards the door. I was shocked as the old man opened the door, went inside and just closed the door! As he was doing this, Kevin shouted “Hey! Hey, what are you doing!” while running toward the door.

I followed Kevin to the door and he got to the old man first. He had his hand on the man’s arm and it looked like the old man ripped off his mask. I couldn’t quite see what was happening but then I heard howls of laughter as it turned out the “old man” was a friend of Kevin’s.

We all had a pretty good laugh over it. Kevin said if his friend, Chris, had locked the door he would have smashed it down. It would have been even more interesting if Kevin’s wife and child had been home at the time.

Now that I know that Kevin doesn’t mind a good practical joke or two, I will have to come up with something to get him with again.

On a lighter note

I have always been a really big fan of practical jokes mostly as the one doing the organizing, but I have had some good ones played on me too. When you become predictable, you become susceptible. When I was at TRU my roommates Manny and Scott got me one morning. It was April Fool’s by coincidence.

They had already left for class when I got up. What’s the first thing I usually do? I go start making coffee. They knew that, I realized, when I turned on the water, but nothing came out of the tap. No, the water shot out of the sprayer which had been strategically pointed at me with the handle taped so it was open. Brilliant!

My plans for making coffee were altered on the spot as I decided to seek revenge. I walked into the living room and saw Scott’s 52” big screen TV. In a stroke of genius I decided I would hide Scott’s TV, his stereo equipment, his CDs and DVDs in Manny’s room. It was no small task because Scott has a lot of the aforementioned equipment and accessories.

I had to work quickly to be able to move all of that stuff into Manny’s room and still make it to class on time. It was a big job! Manny’s room was absolutely packed full of this stuff.

I can’t quite remember if I was there when they discovered it later, but what I do remember is that Scott thought Manny did it and Manny thought Scott did it. That was the unintended icing on the cake! We had a pretty good laugh about it. Everyone thought it was funny except for Scott. I think he’s still pissed at me over that. What surprises me though is that after pulling that joke on me that morning they still thought it was the other guy who moved all the AV equipment. The whole thing still makes me laugh.

Got a good practical joke story? I would love to hear it.