Practical Jokes

My dad has always loved his Jacuzzi. Every morning, rain, snow or shine, he spends an hour soaking in his hot tub. One cold morning in March, my dad was taking his usual soak. Because the Jacuzzi was on a deck surrounded by a privacy fence, he never bothered to wear a bathing suit. On this particular morning, my mother got up and went to work as usual, locking all the doors as she left. She was completely unaware that she had locked my dad out of the house in his birthday suit in sub-zero weather. Soon after she left, he tired of his soak and decided to go back inside. He didn’t even have a towel, because the deck was attached to the house. He realized what had happened, and climbed back into the hot tub to contemplate how he was going to get back inside. It was around eight o’clock in the morning and my parents house was across the street from an elementary school, and of course, the children were arriving at that very moment. The only way my dad could figure a way into the house was to walk around the front of the house to the garage where there was a keypad to open the garage door. He looked around for something to cover up with and found a frozen rug by the back door. It was almost large enough to go around him. He waited until he heard the school bell ring and then decided to make a run for it. He safely made it around to the front of the house, and in through the garage door, shivering from head to toe.
Of course, he was a little upset at my mother for locking him out, so when he got inside he called her on the phone to tell her what she had done. He thought it made him feel better to get it off his chest. After he hung up the phone, my mother had a good laugh, then decided to play a practical joke on him. A few hours later, she had one of the men from her office call their house. My dad had left the house by then, so he left a message on the answering machine saying that he was an officer from the Spanish Fork Police department and there had been a report from the elementary school’s principle that there was a flasher running around near the school. He said that the police would like to talk to him, and wanted him to call back. Then he left the phone number of my mother’s office.
When my dad returned home and listened to the message he was so shaken up that he didn’t even realize that the number was my mother’s office. He called the number and when my mother answered he was still so shaken that he didn’t recognize her voice and explained who he was and that he was wanted for questioning. Of course, my mother busted up laughing and it was still a few moments before my dad realized what had happened.
At this point, my mother just had to share the joke with someone, so she called my youngest sister, Stacy, and told her what had happened. Stacy thought it would be funny to continue the joke, so she called my dad and told him that our cousin, Joni, who is an elementary teacher in a neighboring town, had called her. She said Joni had heard that there was a flasher at the elementary school in Spanish Fork and the school was on lock down, and did he know anything about it? My dad is very good natured, and just laughed along with her. But that wasn’t enough for Stacy. She called my oldest sister, Leslie, and told her everything that had happened.
That evening, Leslie called my dad. She said that she was driving home from work and she heard on the radio that the school across the street from my parents house was in a hostage situation because of a flasher. She said she was worried because they were so close to the school, and wanted to know what was happening.
This all transpired while I was out of town for a few days, and when I returned home, my sisters both called me to tell me all about it. I decided there was still some mileage to be had from my dad’s experience, so I e-mailed him a note that said I had been driving in downtown L.A. when I saw a billboard advertising the evening news. The billboard said “Naked man wrapped in a rug caught terrorizing elementary school children in Spanish Fork, Utah. Watch the eight o’clock news for complete coverage”.

This was the final straw for my poor father. He e-mailed me back a note saying, “I am sub-humanus primo uno! Will the pain never end? Well, that was the end of his pain. We dropped it after that but many glorious moments have been shared between my sisters, my mother and I in reliving one of the most successful practical jokes we had ever experienced.