I hate pranks.
Anyone who knows me knows that I hate pranks. It triggers my confusion, which is a quick way to send me into an emotional spiral - especially if the prank has even the slightest hinting tease towards any kind of negativity like pain or fear. Jump scares of the mildest form (like hiding behind a door I'm about to walk through) bother me so much that by the age of 13 I had schooled my body out of any visible reactions whatsoever. No reaction means the prankster is less likely to try again.
My husband loves pranks.
He found out where I stood on the matter one day when he tried to show me some "funny videos" of people being pranked. Shampoo in the shower head. Jump scare at the door. Replacing a favourite food with something disgusting. Each one immediately made me cry. They hurt too much to watch. The panic from the person in the swim club shower who can't get their shampoo to rinse out, the terror from the woman answering her door who thought she was being attacked, the betrayal when the kid's favourite dessert is actually mayonnaise - I felt each of those situations so viscerally that my whole body was shaking.
But my husband is a genius. He's figured out how to prank me in ways that I actually appreciate. So this is a list of my favourites.
Shaking the sour cream container. This one's a little odd because we were newly married and Hubby had discovered that I tend to carefully scoop a congealed dollop of sour cream from the container without stirring. To this day I'm not sure if he was intentionally doing this at me or if he was just being his silly self. However it was, he grabbed the sour cream before I could scoop any out, secured the lid, and shook it as if he were making a cocktail. At first I was horrified, but quickly saw the humour of the situation.
Shocked eggs. Breakfast is my favourite meal, so I'm more likely to put in the effort of making something a little extra even if it's just for me. And eggs are a staple. Painstakingly, in pencil, Hubby had given a unique expression to each egg in the half-empty carton. One was startled by the opening of the lid. One was embarrassed. A few looked nervous. Fortunately, none of them actually looked afraid of me. If they had, I don't think I would have been able to eat breakfast that day.
Milk gone bad. This one was brilliant. Because Hubby and I keep fairly different sleep schedules, he'll often leave me notes to find in the morning. On this particular morning, I found a note warning me that the milk's "best before" date was past and he thought the milk may have gone bad. Well, I opened to fridge to find the milk glaring at me, threateningly, its angry face drawn on with a sharpie and one of my little paring knives taped to it's sketched-on "arm." Gone bad is right!
I love you. I'm so very thankful I have enough keyboarding skill that I don't need to look at my keyboard to type. The down side to having such a skill is that I didn't notice this prank right away - I wasn't at my computer for a few days, and once I was I didn't look down at my keyboard for a while. My husband had very carefully popped off the letter caps from several different keys on my keyboard and rearranged them to read "ILOVEYOU" across the top row of letters. The second O was created by carefully scratching off the tail of the Q.
Easter eggs. I'm not sure what it is about Cadbury crème chocolate eggs, but they are by far my favourite chocolate. And because they're only available once a year, I tend to stock up and dole them out slowly to myself over several days. By "stock up" I mean "buy about 20" and by "dole them out slowly to myself" I mean "try to make the last a few weeks." This year was no different. Except that each time I thought I'd eaten my last chocolate egg, I'd find another one on the counter behind the bowl of apples. So I'd eat my last last one, and a few days later another one would appear. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but this one took me a whole week to catch onto. Turns out Hubby had bought 19 extra Cadbury crème eggs and had been slyly tucking a new one somewhere for me to find after noticing that I'd eaten another "last one." This one was particularly enjoyable because I'm notoriously difficult to surprise. I always guess my Christmas or birthday gifts.
If you love someone who hates pranks, but you're desperate to prank them, I recommend finding out what it is about pranks that's too difficult for them. If they're just highly sensitive people, like I am, maybe they just need really kind pranks.