The Course of Pranking Never Did Run Smooth

This post is actually written from a computer, for once. I guess you could say my phone has gotten me at least slightly more into the habit of posting, and when something too good for 1000 characters and 1 picture comes across my path, I must get me to the press room.

Just such a something did indeed come across my path in recent days. It all started last week. Since Rachel was publishing an article with testimonies from the seven first-years in TOR (our church magazine), she wanted pictures of each of us. We were to get them to her by the end of the week. Sadly, we did not succeed (at least, the guys didn't), but that is not the point of this post. Saturday evening we finally got around to taking the requisite photos. Craig got out Clyde's handy dandy Nikon D70S, and we all pretty much lined up for a photo shoot. We all got pictures. They were good.

But there is so much more to the story than that! You see, we didn't just want to send Rachel boring old portraits. No, we wanted something original and lively! With this in mind, we all settled down around my computer while I clicked and dragged and typed until our pictures looked like this:






Rachel was highly amused when she opened the folder. "They were too good not to share," she said, and they quickly found their way to the Fairwood kitchen bulletin board.



We all laughed, of course, but we didn't know just how far Rachel was willing to go to share our hilarious photos. The next evening, we were stunned when she showed us a copy of TOR... with our edited pictures!

Good grief! Imagine the embarrassment and devastation! I was pretty stunned, to say the least. What would the magazine's faithful readers think of Fairwood's first-year guys? Would they call us names? Would they complain to the editors? What about my reputation? I went to bed and sobbed all night.

Let me correct myself: I MIGHT have sobbed all night, had it not been for the fact that Rachel pointed out (after allowing just a brief period of unutterable anxiety) that this was only a rough draft, and the official copies - the REAL ones - would be published with the much less original - but, oh, so much more acceptable! - traditional portraits which we had included in a subfolder.

Well, relief was ours, and the end of the story was a happy one for all. We got our laugh, and Rachel got hers. But the moral of the story is this: never play a prank on someone without evaluating what he could do to get you back.