Season 9, Week 7...
Sitting around a table at the student union one Halloween in college, the conversation turned to various Halloween pranks people had pulled during childhood. The usual tales of toilet-papered trees and thrown eggs and burning bags of poo left on front steps were told to general amusement. One friend cracked us all up with a great story of a trick played on the trick-or-treaters themselves -- his dad rigged a harness system on the front porch so that my friend (dressed as an evil scarecrow) would seem to just dangle there, appearing to be just another decoration to be poked and giggled at by the visiting eight year olds. At least, it was all giggles and fun until he came to life and wrapped his arms around one of them while laughing maniacally. Then he said it was mostly just screaming and running and probably a little bit of peeing.
My friend Dave and I didn't have any great stories to tell, sadly, which surprised absolutely no one. "You're both too goody-two-shoes for that type of thing," our friends said. "You're not real pranksters, not even a little bit." They were quick to follow such statements with reassurances that they weren't trying to be mean, but were just stating the facts. We weren't upset with them at all, because they were right -- we *were* a couple of pretty big goody-two-shoes.
"We need to do something about that," I said to Dave as the group broke up to head to our classes. He vigorously nodded his agreement, clearly already thinking the same thing. "Swing by my room tonight and let's think of something to do."
Walking back to my dorm room that evening, another friend caught up with me. She handed me a grocery bag with some plastic kitchenware and dishes in it. "Can you drop this off at Shannon's room? I borrowed it last week and need to get it back to her, but I have to get going to my shift," she said. I indicated it was no problem and she waved her thanks as she jogged of towards her car.
As I entered my room, I set my book bag on the floor and put the grocery bag on the edge of the bed, next to my stuffed pumpkin pillow (my one decoration for the holiday). I sat down on the mattress to untie my shoes, which unfortunately was just enough motion to send the contents of the kitchen stuff bag tumbling to the floor. A bunch of plastic spoons, knives, and forks spilled out, clattering their way all over the tiled floor. Dave swung around the doorway into the room at that moment, coming to a halt as his foot crunched a couple spoons into mangled bits. He stared down at the other cutlery pieces and then at the stuffed pumpkin pillow, tilting his head in that particular way he had when he was thinking. Back and forth, he looked at them for about a minute. Then he raised his eyes to look at me; a slightly quirked eyebrow and the tiniest twist of a smile told me he'd thought of A Plan.
Twenty minutes later, we were in his pickup truck and making the rounds of every grocery, convenience, and dollar-type store in our small college town, stockpiling our purchases into two large duffel bags. Several hours later, in the wee hours of the morning long after the last trick-or-treaters had stopped wandering about, we started driving through the residential areas of the town to obtain the second half of our needed supplies. We stealthily plucked one or two pumpkin leaf bags from any place with a ton of them decorating the lawn. (Yes, we were stealing them, but not from anyone who only had a few of them dotted about. We did have some limited ethical standards, after all.)
Soon, the bed of Dave's truck was overflowing with bags (we had to put the last few on top of the truck cab) and we knew it was time to head to our final destination: the college president's sprawling front lawn. After a quick, silent prayer to ask for the president to be in bed and for all the cops to be sitting at the all-night diner, we grinned at each other like loons, leapt from the truck, and began our work.
Almost two hours later, the president's lawn had sixty-some leaf bags arranged on it in a huge smiley face, the interior of which was filled with countless thousands of plastic forks stabbed into the lawn. It took so long because both of us were extremely precision-oriented people -- each fork was carefully placed equidistant from all its neighbors, and we checked the proportions of the face several times from the street. Even though every passing minute brought the possibility of discovery, that was no reason to do the job half-assed, we thought.
The next day, our creation was the talk of the campus. The college president himself was overheard laughing about it, saying he'd leave it in place for a few days so everyone could get a chance to swing by and enjoy it. Dave and I listened with satisfaction as people discussed our handiwork, complimenting the unknown individuals and wondering who they could be. Our names, of course, were never mentioned in any of the lists of possible culprits.
We didn't mind, though -- true pranksters didn't need recognition, only appreciation.
This is my entry for the seventh week of Season 9 of therealljidol. The prompt this week was the quote "No true Scotsman." If you have never seen a forked lawn, a Google image search for 'forked lawn' or similar will give you the general idea. The results of course vary widely based on the initiative and precision level of the forkers.
As always, thanks for reading. :)