Pranks a Lot!
Practical Jokes and the College Experience
"By the end of the day tomorrow, I'll get you back," my friend and floor mate prophesied--no, promised.
"Yeah, right," I said, feigning disinterest.
"I tell you what," he said coyly. "If you make it through the whole day without finding it, then I'll tell you what it was."
"Oh, I'll make it," I thought. "Easy."
My friend was talking revenge; payback for a fake letter I sent him from the "Dean of Students" informing him that, as part of the university's new "Up-Grade" program, he had two weeks to bring his GPA up to a 2.5 or he would be expelled. He was hovering just below a 2.0 at the time.
Everyone on the floor got a big kick out of the letter, including the victim‹two days later when I let him off the hook‹and all was collegial.
That is, until he thought about it and decided that it would be he who laughed last.
The next day I took every precaution. I showered on a different floor, very early, when I knew everyone would be sleeping. I took a different route to and from class and stayed in places
I seldom visited as a freshman‹like the library.
Late that night, I sneaked quietly back into my room, locked the door, barricaded the crack at its bottom to prevent him from sliding something under and went to sleep ... kind of.
The next morning I awoke tired and soggy, having fallen asleep clutching a Super Soaker water gun to my chest (for protection, of course).
Once again, I showered on a different floor (just to be safe) and walked back to my room beaming with pride, valiant in victory.
"I'll head down to his room," I thought as I plugged in my blow dryer, "listen to his best-laid plans and humbly explain where he went wrong. After all, he would expect ..."
POOF!
"What!" I cried, as my head jerked violently to the side.
A cloud of bright white smoke burst from the barrel of my hair dryer and encased my head and shoulders in a thick fog. I felt something soft in my ear and on the side of my face and in my hair, and smelled something fragrant, sweet‹familiar.
As the billowy shroud slowly dissipated, I realized that my friend had fulfilled his promise of revenge and in doing so taught me a great lesson about life that would stay with me for years to come.
The lesson: Pouring a large quantity of baby powder into the vent of a hair dryer can make for one heck of a fog machine.
Etched In Laughter
Ah, yes, college life and pranks, a time-honored tradition etched in laughter in the lesser-known volumes of the history of higher education. They're as much a part of college as studying all night before a big final or standing in line at the bookstore during the first week of class.
Despite the immediate polarizing effect of a prank, the stories of pranks are told and retold by those involved with such fervent "those were the days" fondness that you almost wish you were there.
Like the time Tom washed his hair with the corn syrup his roommate put in his shampoo bottle. Or the night when Susan awoke, petrified and convinced that the rumors of paranormal activity were true when she saw her giant inflatable alligator floating above her bed (rigged conspicuously with fishing line operated outside the room by "friends").
Or those weeks when Jeff couldn't understand why his new car went from getting 60 miles to the gallon to six. Answer: His friends were adding and siphoning gas.
Like all college campuses, U of L has hosted its share of pranks. They usually occur wherever large groups of young people live together. So when searching for the latest advancements in the field, a good place to begin is a residence hall.
Been There, Done That
Stacking aluminum cans in doorways. Yawn. Changing answering machine messages. Please. Resetting alarm clocks to go off in the middle of the night. Sigh.
Covering toilet seats with plastic wrap. Poking holes in garbage bags so they leak when carried to the trash chute. Reversing peep holes on doors. "Short sheeting" beds so people can't stretch their legs when they climb in at night. Organizing a simultaneous, multiple toilet flush while someone is showering. Placing red dye tablets (or Kool Aid) in the shower heads so the water flows out in an eerie crimson.
Seen it, done it, endured it, maybe even perfected it‹several times.
With 20 years experience working in university housing, Bambi Harris, former coordinator of residence education at U of L has witnessed tomfoolery, foolishness and shenanigans on college campuses nationwide. Fortunately, she says, the pranks in
U of L's residence halls were mostly harmless.
Consider her past: During a stint as a resident director at a school in Texas, one of her resident assistants smuggled his pet horse into his room to live with him.
"I think I figured it out in a day," laughs Harris, referring to the odor that even the largest rolled-up towel could not corral.
And then there was the mock automobile auction conducted by a group of enterprising students who removed all the furniture from a residence hall lobby and drove in several cars.
"I'm the biggest prankster in our office," chuckled Harris last fall, before leaving U of L to return to Texas. "That's why it doesn't phase me‹because I've done most of them."
Professor Prankster
While residence halls probably breed the most pranks due to the sheer number of students living in close proximity, another building on
U of L's main campus--Ford Hall--is quite possibly the largest per capita producer, thanks to political science professor Phil Laemmle.
Laemmle, who has been at U of L since 1972, is a legend among colleagues and students for his practical jokes.
 Professor-prankster Phil Laemmle |
"Laemmle insults more students than you can shake a stick at, but he does it in a way that invites return insults and jokes. This has the effect of enhancing the student's self confidence and sense of their own abilities," says colleague Paul Weber, also a political science professor.
"Strange, but it works."
One unsuspecting out-of-town student several years back fell prey to the good professor's humor as he was being guided on a city tour by Laemmle. When the professor learned the incoming freshman idolized former
UK basketball coach Adolph Rupp, he seized the opportunity.
"Of course he didn't know anything about Rupp except that he thought he was great," Laemmle says. So he told him that Rupp was from Louisville.
"Really!" Laemmle remembers him responding excitedly.
"Yeah. In fact the city is building a memorial for him."
"Really!"
"Yeah, I'll take you to it. It's just down the road."
"Pumping him up" the whole way, Laemmle steered the car down Market Street to the old stock yards.
"There it is," Laemmle said, pulling up to the "memorial"--a giant manure dump.
"He was seething," Laemmle says, laughing. "I think he thought it was funny but he didn't want to admit it ...He was a good student."
(Just for the record, the student went on to graduate from U of L with an engineering degree.)
Of course, what comes around goes around, and the true test of any great prankster is how he or she "takes it."
One that came around for Laemmle occurred in front of several thousand people during a graduation ceremony three years ago.
As he stood behind the podium to address the graduates and their families, he opened the booklet of notes that he had left inside the podium before the ceremony began. On the first page, an unexpected photo stared up at him.
A group of employees had "borrowed" his booklet and placed a series of goofy photos throughout, hoping to make him laugh.
Like a veteran vaudevillian, the professor maintained his composure‹though he admitted it was a struggle‹and delivered his presentation.
Young and the Restless
Jack Walker, a student of Laemmle's, can relate. He knows about funny pranks--not personally though, but he's "heard" about some.
The senior political science major, who graduated this past December, didn't get to be Inter Fraternity Council president by being free with words. So when asked about his knowledge of campus pranks he prefaces his statements carefully.
A few involved small creatures.
For example, Walker said that one fraternity allegedly released several thousand crickets (believed to procreate rapidly) in another fraternity's basement a few days before a big party. Another story involved mice set free during a party.
Most, though, were not unlike what goes on in residence halls everywhere when restless students have time on their hands‹and access to friends' rooms: crumbs littered in beds, full trash cans leaned against doors, prank phone calls.
"It was all in good taste," Walker says, adding that the amount of pranks would "depend on how the semester was going. We wouldn't do any during (testing periods)."
Walker remained virtually unscathed during his Greek tenure. The worst prank played on him was when someone called several hundred pagers and left his number as the return call.
"Every two minutes, literally, I got a call," he says. "I eventually had to turn the phone off."
Years from now when Walker and his fraternity brothers get together, they'll laugh as they recount the tricks they played on each other and describe in animated detail the reactions of their unwitting targets. Similar scenes will unfold at various U of L reunions or whenever friends get together.
And maybe that's the best measure of a prank--if it lives to be told another day, embellished and squeezed as the years go by to get just a little more laughter each time.
