The Ultimate Prank

Many years ago, when I was a girl of 18, I pulled one of the best pranks ever on my older brother, Ed. It turned out to be the ultimate sibling prank, only because of events that happened earlier in the night that, at the time, I was completely unaware of.

My boyfriend and I had gone out on a date, and he was bringing me home. My hometown was having construction by the highway, and several of those orange barrels were there. On our way to my house, where I still lived at the time with my mom, stepdad, one of my older brothers, Ed, and my youngest brother, we passed a side road where one of those barrels was just sitting, at least 3 miles from the construction zone. An inkling of an idea started to form in my mind, and I knew I had to take that barrel home with me. I made my boyfriend stop his baby blue Ford pick-up so that I could jump out and grab that barrel.

My boyfriend asked me why I wanted the barrel, and to be honest, I was not entirely sure how I would prank anyone with it; I just knew I was going to. So I couldn’t tell him exactly what I would do with it. I just said to him that he would see.

Arriving at my house, we carried the barrel inside. Once inside, I saw Ed had not returned home yet, and that was when the inspiration hit me.

I made my boyfriend help me get the barrel down the narrow hallway to Ed’s bedroom. Once in my brother’s bedroom, I dragged it to his bed and pulled his covers back. Placing the construction barrel in his bed, I covered it entirely with his blankets and tried to make it look as much like a body as possible. Then I grabbed my boyfriend’s hand and dragged him into the living room to wait for my brother to arrive home.

Luckily, my brother arrived home within 30 minutes of hiding, so I didn’t have to wait too long. And he was drunk like I hoped. Unluckily, he was hungry, so we had to wait another 30 minutes while he cooked and ate before going to his room. I was having a hard time being quiet.

Finally, we could hear my brother bouncing off the walls in his hallway. We heard him fumbling with his door and going into his bedroom. Suddenly, we heard my brother shout out, “What the fuck!!” And with that, my boyfriend and I cracked. We laughed when my stepdad came upstairs to find out what all the commotion was.

My brother told my stepdad, “I thought a fat woman hitting on him in the bar had followed me home at first, but when I jerked the blankets off her to tell her to get the hell out, it was that damn barrel. That barrel followed me and would always be following me.”

That’s when my stepdad asked me what I had done. So I told my stepdad what we had done that night, ending with us putting that barrel in my brother’s bed. I don’t know how he understood me through the laughter and tears, but he understood every word I uttered.

My stepdad just shook his head and told my boyfriend to throw the barrel into his truck so he could return it to the construction site on the highway, then went back to bed, chuckling.

Shaken up, my brother, stayed up, talking about that barrel. He had grabbed it from the construction site and thrown it out on the side road I found it on. He thought the barrel was haunting him for his evil deeds, for turning down a woman for being fat and ugly (his words). He was so stressed out, which made things funnier because, you see, my brother is 6’8”, 280 pounds of pure muscle. I’d never seen him shaken up like that before or ever again.

My family still laughs about this prank to this day. I hope it at least makes you smile.