[Reyoki]

When I used to go on summer trips with my choral group, we would always play dumb little pranks on one another. We would put toothpaste underneath the doorknobs of each other's rooms, we'd smear sunscreen on the outside of the windows, and one time one of the guys filled another guy's suitcase full of oats! I think the best one, though, was when someone brought this tiny magnetic alarm clock and kept sneaking it into other people's rooms, having it go off at odd hours of the day and night.

I've had a couple malicious pranks played on me, though, like someone telling me a certain person likes me, and then after I've made a fool of myself in some way I come to find out the person doesn't even know who I am.

The worst one, though, was during a gift exchange one year. The youth group at the church I'd been attending was having its annual christmas party, and there was a white elephant gift exchange.

If you don't know what it is, it's where everyone buys a small gift with a price limit of ten dollars, wraps it, and doesn't put a name on it. Everyone gets a number, and you go in order picking gifts from the pile.

Now, all throughout the exchange people were wondering what this plainly-wrapped white box had in it. Whenever someone would go to pick it, this group of people would shout "NO NO NO! NOT YET!" and make them pick something else. When my turn came, everyone wanted me to pick the white box. At that point, a little red flag went up in my head, and I picked something else. When I'd sat back down, I saw the youth group pastor ask the group what was in the box. Someone leaned over and whispered something to him, and he had the box removed. That was the last we saw of the box.

Later on, I found out that there had been live rats in the box, and that the group that had been urging me to pick the box had wanted to see me freak out. That's when I stopped going to church.