Happy Sunday everyone! I woke up to a gray cloudy day today. Three boys home but running around. They’re currently in a robotics club that has a competition coming up in Vegas. That’s right, Vegas, baby. Nothing like letting smart kids loose in a town full of possible moral pitfalls. pffft. Guess who’s going as a chaperone.

They could do worse.

So, Last week we talked about whether we felt we were optimists, pessimists or just realists. So many good comments on that. You are great thinkers out there, and I loved reading your replies. Thanks! Last weeks winner (random pick, of course) is:

Andrea! *throws confetti*

This week’s question:

What’s the worst prank you ever pulled? (Of course this could also, given that we discussed glass half-empty/glass half-full last week, be called the BEST prank you ever pulled.)

I’ll tell you what, only ONE author was brave enough to sign up to share her prank with me: LE Franks is here to tell us about it.

My thoughts on pranks is I’m not really good at them. I don’t like making people feel uncomfortable. I never have. I’ve done things to surprise people. I let my daughter go to sleep on the eve of her fourth birthday in her toddler bed and then took her out and put her in a “big girl” bed, complete with dreamy bedding and nice pillows in its place so when she woke up her room was different (I pictured it like the Shirley Temple Version of A Little Princess, although the transformation was nothing so spectacular.)

Last week, I let my twin son Zack tell his brother Max they only had one iPhone left so we got him a clamshell phone they had leftover from the nineties with big button technology, but then that was Zack’s practical joke, not mine. I gave the game away as soon as I saw him, because he looked so resigned. I can’t stand to see people off-kilter. As a kid, I couldn’t watch shows the Beverly Hillbillies, because I don’t like to see people made the butt of jokes. I rarely watch reality television at all.

My husband is great at pranks and surprises, although he knows better than to pull them on me. He once bought me a car and told me the garage door remote didn’t work, knowing it’s snatch it out of his hand and try it anyway cause I’m that person who pushes “walk” even if you already did, who test things, opens doors, and generally has to see with my own eyes.

That was a GREAT prank/surprise and one I’ll remember forever.

One Man’s (er—woman’s) Prank is Another Man’s Worst Nightmare, or Our Road to Tying the Knot:

It’s really not my fault. I think it speaks more to his psychology than to my impulse to poke. Honestly.

It’s not like he secretly thought I was psycho…

Wait…there was that time I visited him in Princeton NJ about a month after we started dating—he was on a long-term job site, I was a travel slut looking for a good time and a 45 minute ride to the Big Apple…a match made in heaven. So what if he’d been staying in a tiny room no bigger than a closet filled with three weeks of stinky man-clothes?

He may have been a little disconcerted when at midnight (9 pm our time, for frack’s sake!) he awoke and found me leaning against a wall staring at him. Did I mention it was only 9pm on the west coast and the room was the size of my thigh? God’s great gift to mankind – the iPhone – had not been invented yet. And there was nowhere to sit. It was either lean against a wall or wake him up every 5 minutes moving around on the double bed.

He may have also jumped to conclusions that helped reinforce this idea of my shaky credentials the next day when he walked into his hotel room and found a naked man in the shower. (Stop it! I know what you’re thinking…I said travel slut, not slut-slut. Sheesh).

It’s really not my fault that he had a moment of crazy when he convinced himself that I’d traveled 2900 miles to steal his dirty clothes, especially since he’d stopped by the front desk to arrange a larger room for us before leaving for the day. So sue me. I did what any reasonably bored and efficient person would do…I got the key and moved us.

While that would have been a KILLER prank—it doesn’t count as one—but it may very well explain why when I did eventually prank him he thought I was serious. Deadly serious. Honestly, so much drama and yet, he still married me. [Editor’s note from ZAM: Knowing you — and adoring you as I do — this does not surprise me.]

Tiny more bit of backstory: I actually have really excellent taste. No, don’t scoff—don’t confuse my jean’s and t-shirts for fashion ignorance, because hey, California. It doesn’t mean that I can’t slide my hand across a nice white cotton broadcloth covered chest and not know the thread count and whether you’re rocking the perm-a-press. And there really is nothing worse that a lousy polyester or ugly print necktie. But I digress.

We’d been living together for a few weeks at this point—about six months after the whole unfortunate “you stole my dirty underwear” episode on the East Coast—still not the best of arrangements, but I’d moved in with him and his roommate who was her own brand of crazy-with-cat. She had weird rules, and we tiptoed around a lot. It just added to the atmosphere.

Moving in with him the first thing I noticed was a large mirror leaning against a corner, covered in neckties. Horrible, horrible, ghastly, ugly, polyester, and knitted cotton, and old, (not cool-old either. Not hot retro “my fashion is editorial”. Nope. The really, really unredeemably bad kind.) Ties that made my eyes bleed and teeth ache just to look at them…and he had a lot of them. No joke—dozens upon dozens, even ties from the eighties with their mauve and peach color schemes…soft blurred images with cow skulls on them. Nightmares. [Editor’s note from ZAM: You didn’t accidentally marry my husband did you? ‘Cause he has those too, and even older ones from his dad. 70 years of bad ties]

The Prank. I may have threatened the ties with extermination a time or two. He may have been in genuine fear for their lives…but still, I think the day that he came home from work, saw my note telling him I that I’d offed them (I believed I used words like “cut up” and “never see them again”) he might have paused a second to look around the room and notice the trail of dropped neck ties leading to the downstairs hall closet where they remained unharmed. Nope. Did not see a-one. (Editorial note from LE Franks: as I write this, I realize he had to have stepped over several of these ties on his way up the stairs, which is an entirely different post about why men’s clothes become invisible the second they touch the ground.)

The Result. Total Freak Out.

I almost wet myself laughing. Honestly. Like anyone would go to all that trouble to cut them up with scissors when there’s a perfectly good trashcan outside. (Oddly he didn’t consider that argument to be an improvement.)

Yeah, he eventually married me anyway—but I did use it as a teaching moment to point out how hideously awful his taste was (why let all those props go to waste) and in the end, he let me dispose of the worst offenders with the following caveat: for every tie he coughed up, I’d replace them with two very cool ones. And I did—I even got him nifty grown up tie hangers—Ties as colorful and cool as he is. Now, I hardly ever see him dressing like an 85 year old man anymore, because scissors. – Author LE Franks

Purchase 6 Days to Valentine on January 29th from Wilde City Press.