Freshman Piece: The Payback

Pranks are always a part of childhood. Ever since I was young, I have loved to pull pranks on people. Often times, my older brother and I would come up with ingenious plans of making people (most of whom we didn’t even know) look foolish as a result of our practical jokes. My history of practical jokes have shaped me into the highly skilled prankster I am today. No one gets the best of me, and I held true to that saying on one summer night that my friends and I will never forget.

Head slightly starting to tilt sideways and eyes slowly shutting, I quickly snapped back to reality and grabbed another coke to try to keep myself awake. At sleepovers, the first person to fall asleep would often be the victim of cruel and unusual pranks. This person could not be me. All of the lights were shut off in my friend Charlie’s basement, and I was slowly losing my agonizing battle with sleep as we huddled around his computer looking at YouTube and playing games. It was 1:00 in the morning and I could barely keep my eyes open. Deciding that my friends’ activities on the computer were boring, I chose to lie on the bed in Charlie’s basement and watch some television. That is where the problem began. Televisions seem to have a subliminal power of making people fall to sleep. I gazed at the bright screen, unaware that I was being hypnotized into dormancy. My eyes started to close and instead of snapping up awake, I drifted off into a deep sleep. My buddy Tasos, who always falls asleep first at sleepovers, joined me in slumber. My friends began to look back at us and ponder ways of making us victims of their cruel and unusual pranks. They were especially interested to try and get me with a practical joke because this was a rarity; I am usually the last to fall asleep at sleepovers. They wanted to get revenge at me because I’m always the one pulling pranks on them. My friends giggled softly as they deliberated about what prank to pull on Tasos and me. When they had finished discussing, they turned off the computer to make Charlie’s basement black as night.

“Come on! Do it quickly before he wakes up.”

As I woke up to this barely audible whisper, I felt someone slightly bumping up against me. The bumping quickly vanished as I jostled a little bit. Had I been woken up by my friends trying to do something to me? I tried to look around but the room was pitch black and my eyes were still adjusting to the darkness.

“Is he awake,” I heard.

“Shut up! I don’t know, but be quiet,” another whispered.

As I became aware of my surroundings, I noticed that my lips felt like someone had lit them on fire. I touched my lips, and they began to sting even worse. It felt like 100 needles had been stabbed into them. I could not take my mind off this horrible burning. A mistake I made was trying to run my tongue along my lips to get an idea of what substance had been doused on them. My taste buds immediately detected flavors similar to scorching wasabi sauce and a rotten apple. What have my friends done to me? The question was racing through my head in the ten second time period of dead silence when my friends did not know if I was awake or not. One of my rival pranksters tried to creep up the bed to check if I was awake. The anger I felt towards my friends from my scorching lips gripped me and I knew that it would not let me go until I could get revenge.

“What the hell did you guys do to me,” I yelled at my friends, who were lurking in the dark. As I sat up, eyes now adjusted to the dark, I could see six faces looking at me and trying to hold back laughter. Clearly my friends had been caught off guard because two of them jumped in surprise. I stormed into Charlie’s bathroom thinking only about my agonizing lips and getting revenge. Upon first looking at the mirror, a stain was clearly evident on my shirt. Apparently they had missed my mouth on the first attempt. I touched it and discovered that the stain had formed a crust over my shirt. When smelling it, the stain exuded the odor of an old sock simmered in spices. My nostrils burned as the scent passed through them. I checked to make sure that the “old sock” smell that I had experienced was not my body odor; it definitely was not.

“That was hilarious! How does that stir fry sauce taste?” My rival prankster Tommy proclaimed his supremacy as he entered the bathroom. He seemed very proud of what he had just accomplished. I glanced at the stain on my shirt in disgust as he arrogantly stated, “You know that it was ten years old too, right? That stuff is gross.” Just thinking about the repulsive taste on my lips made me cringe now knowing the age of the stir fry sauce.

I would not let my friends get the best of me. Returning to the bed, I noticed that my friends had all become extremely tired. This was a big advantage for me. I also saw that they had left the stir fry bottle out after using it on Tasos and me; Another helpful advantage. A plan began to shape in my mind as I lay on the bed. I would wait until I was fairly sure that all of my friends were asleep and then get revenge by giving them a taste of what they did to me. The reason that Tasos was not going to help me with this was because he had not even woken up when they put the expired stir fry sauce on his lips and in his mouth.

The anxiety and excitement was killing me. I could not wait much longer. My mind was racing about the upcoming task. I knew my plan was flawless. If I could execute this operation in complete silence, I would have no trouble with anyone waking up.

Slowly but surely, all of my friends fell asleep. The whole basement now smelled like the stain on my shirt. When I heard three of them snoring, that was my cue. It was time to execute the plan. I got up and stealthily headed over to the stir fry sauce which they had forgotten to close the cap of. A roll of Tinfoil was left right by the bottle of sauce so I decided that that would be my weapon of choice. I quietly ripped six individual squares of tinfoil. Putting about ten drops of expired stir fry sauce on each square of foil, I knew what I was going to do next. The task at hand was one that required great skill, perfect execution, and proper timing. This was no prank for a rookie. If one of my friends woke up before I had finished, I would not be able complete the job. If I happened to miss when applying the stir fry sauce to one of their faces, I would stain Charlie’s rug or pillow. I realized that I would not have time to rub the tinfoil square with the sauce on it on each friends lips because that would take too much time to make sure that I was accurate. Experience in pranks clearly pays off when encountering a tough situation like this. After going over the game plan in my head, it was time to execute. I leaped into action. In about 20 seconds, I had used the squares of tinfoil as brushes to wipe the stir fry sauce all over my friends’ faces. I looked over them in triumph and awaited the results. They all instantaneously woke up.

“Oh my god! What’s on my face?” I heard from my victims. I couldn’t help bursting out in laughter at how clueless they were. I watched as my friends squirmed in their sleeping bags because of their burning faces. I even heard a couple shout, “This stuff smells horrible!” When I thought that this situation could get no funnier, my friend Nick, who had gotten stir fry sauce rubbed on his face, didn’t realize yet that I had done it to him as well. He stood up and proclaimed with a smirk, “Oh man! That sucks. He got you guys badly!”

Nick realized that I had rubbed it on him directly after he spoke; when he too, began to feel the intense scorching sensation on his face. No one was really that angry because they knew that I had a right to get revenge. They were very surprised; not one of my friends had even a hunch that I would get them back. To my enjoyment, it turned out that the stir fry sauce could not be washed off with water. My friends had to endure the burning for a funny 30 minutes. Their hilarious complaints about the burning and smell entertained me. All my friends could do was wait until the burning went away. Revenge felt so sweet and I knew that we would be talking about this prank for years to come. I hope that the one thing my friends learned from this experience is that nobody will ever get the best of me when it comes to pranks.