An Unsuspecting Victim...

I work in the Youth Department at my church. I assist 3 youth group directors who work with kids 5th grade through 12th grade. This weekend we are sending over 140 students and leaders (7th through 12th graders) away for a winter retreat to two different location via 3 charter buses. It is my responsibility to make sure everyone has all of their permission slips, payments and medication lists in order before the trips take place.

In addition to these two retreats, we are registering for a 6th grade event, a high school mission trip, planning a fundraising dinner(that I am doing the food for), and another 5th and 6th grade event. So I have been working a lot of long, crazy hours and by the time I go home, I am fried.

Usually when I go home, I make sure my desk is cleaned up and empty-I hate starting a day off jumping into a mess. So today when I walked in and saw that someone had gotten the permission slip books out of the upper cabinet above my desk and just left them on my desk-I  wasn't very happy.

This is the cabinet as is usually looks when I come in, closed hiding the many folders that I use to organize permission slips and purchase orders.

 This is what it looks like when it is empty.

This was hidden inside...a box that had been modified with a ramp of cardboard-higher in the back and lower in the front. It was filled with ping pong balls!!

 

Enough to fill the ping pong ball dispenser, and cover the bottom 3 inches in a 3 gallon bucket. All of which flew out at me as soon as I flung the cabinet open to put the books away!!!

They went EVERYWHERE!!! I laughed and laughed and laughed! Then I started cleaning them up, and plotting my revenge! At first I just acted like normal when my coworkers started trickling in. I hid the balls and left the books out on my desk to make it look like I hadn't sprung the trap yet, but when I went to grab some ping pong balls to throw at the one guy whom I was sure was the mastermind-I tipped over the bucket and they all hit the floor again-and he just cracked up in his office!

I still have to come up with something to do to him to retaliate, I was too busy to think about what I could do that wasn't going to get me fired or in serious trouble! Any ideas?  A few years ago, one of our students took paper dixie cups, filled them with  with water and put them all over the floor of our previous department directors office. There were hundreds of cups! It took hours to empty them all!

Another prank a high school student pulled was to stick the director's stapler in a bowl of jello and when it hardened, she dumped it out onto a plate on his desk with a note. I can't use those ideas, because they know about those, Oh, and I got one of them today by sticking a small piece of masking tape on the bottom of his optical mouse-he kept trying batteries-to no avail!

I'm glad I work with the people I work with, because they have a great sense of humor, and that little prank was just what I needed to turn a crummy week into one that I'll still be smiling about for a long time to come!


So, let me hear your ideas! Have you had a good prank played on you? Or have you been the prankster? I'm looking for a fun way to reciprocate!!