In my work as a youth pastor a few years back I formulated a couple of definitions regarding pranks. This became necessary each year as we embarked upon the prospect of church camp. You know, that place where corn flakes in your sleeping bag, and the old shaving cream in your hand and tickle your ear trick, among others - are common place. I had grown weary of dealing with sleeping bags that had been rendered unusable and having students completely out of clean clothes by Tuesday because of a well placed water balloon (or worse). So this is what I came up with...
A prank is defined as something that when it is over, both parties can share a laugh.
When, at the end, only one party is laughing borders on terrorism and will not be tolerated.
I am reminded of this because this past Sunday morning as I finished up my shower, my wife said, "You're not going to believe this but someone has rolled our yard." What? This isn't homecoming week! What's the deal? But then I remembered our youngest daughter is leaving for her freshman year of college next Sunday but some of her friends who will attend different colleges will leave earlier. It must have been a last hurrah prank.
Since I don't take as long to get ready (hair, makeup, etc.) it was agreed that I would clean up the front yard. As I reached up and bent over to retrieve not only toilet paper, but forks stuck into my lawn, and unwrapped my daughters car from the plastic wrap, and cleaned the 5# of Vaseline from under each door handle I wondered, "Do they think this is funny to me?"
I was upset, I even considered tracking down the miscreants responsible for this heinous crime and giving them a piece of my mind and maybe a piece of my right shoe as well.
Well, after my second shower and rushing around we finally arrived at church, I calmed down some but noticed that I was being smiled at a bit unnaturally by some of the young people. "Do they know something?" "Was it them?" Then I became aware of a situation altering fact.
It seems that my sweet daughter was involved in a yard-rolling incident earlier in the week that set in motion a retribution attack. So I cleaned up a revenge-roll? No longer could I be upset at the ne'er-do-wells that had attacked my lawn, but I could and I can state the fact that any subsequent cleanings will be done by the one who prompted the attack!
I wonder, do college kids roll yards?
